that he had been paid Р€100 to kill Brookfield. The poet Mary Gilmore wrote:
Tell it abroad, tell it abroad, Tell it by chapel and steeple, How, in the height of his manly prime, Brookfield died for the people.
Of the Twelve, most had had their fill of notoriety, and were happy to abandon public life. They once more became workers, and probably active unionists, but they left no further mark on the history of Australian labour. There were three exceptions. A Communist Party was formed in Australia in October 1920, three months after the first ten of the IWW men were freed. Jock Garden was a leading member. The Communist International at the time was seeking to draw the syndicalist revolutionaries of the IWW into its ranks. Tom Glynn and J.B. King became Communists, and Glynn the first editor of the party's paper. But the ideological differences were too great; a year later, Glynn and King broke with the Communists, formed the Industrial Union Propaganda League, and began to republish Direct Action . A temporary rapprochement followed a "unity conference" at which the Communists agreed to recognise the IUPL as the Australian section of the Red International of Labor Unions, a Comintern affiliate. But this did not last either, and Glynn and King finally broke with the Communist Party in March 1922. Their syndicalist venture did not prosper. King worked for a time in Russia, but returned disillusioned with the failure of the Bolsheviks to realise their earlier slogan of "industry to the toilers who work therein".
Donald Grant, too, threw himself into revolutionary politics. Three weeks after his release from gaol, he was back on the Sydney Domain, preaching with all his old fire that he "hoped before long to establish a big organisation of rebels in the country, an organisation that would revolutionise the present social system ". He said Mr Justice Pring, Mr Lamb and others were true to their class but the workers were not. ... "A class war would have to be fought the world over, and it would have to be fought to the bitter end, even if the streets of the cities of the world were drenched with the blood of the workers ".
He continued to agitate for the revolution for some years, but finally he made his peace with parliamentary politics, and became a Labor Senator. The last of the Twelve, Donald Grant, at the time of writing was living in quiet retirement in Sydney. There was still the clear blue gaze into the future, the Scots burr and the fiery turn of phrase, the pride of bearing - that made him a hero of his time, but his voice was no longer raised. p> What made the men who played their parts in these extraordinary events - the police and the Wobblies - act as they did?
It is almost impossible to dig through a pile of police documents to the minds of the individual men behind them. Policemen are trained to report in formal officialese, and there is little in the police reports of anything else. In the IWW files, those reports which concerned political activities showed little sense of discrimination about the finer distinctions of political ideas and organisations. There were only the broad divisions - the conservatives, who were beyond observation and above suspicion, for it was only change which was suspicious; the Labor Party, whose public propagandist activities sometimes came under police survey and some of whose members might fall into the category of "doubtfuls"; and the radicals and revolutionaries, who were one big bundle of sinister and dangerous elements who must be watched. The reports lacked human understanding, they were not concerned with situations or motives, but with acts.
None had the slightest touch of humour; they were all deadpan. [8] What then does emerge from these files? A conservatism that was quick to suspect radical agitation and anti-"patriotism", and to associate these with moral turpitude and crime. A moralism that was quick to denounce criminality in conventionally loaded phrases. It is no wonder that the police were alarmed and affronted by the IWW. p> How did this conservatism and moralism get along with the corruption and malpractice which undoubtedly existed in the force? Once again, there are no direct clues. One must assume that many members of the force applied a double standard - that they thought of themselves not only as law-enforcers for the community at large, but as law-makers for themselves. For even when they were clearly in the wrong they showed no sign of recognising it. And, with a strong sense of solidarity, when one was accused his fellows covered up.
Perhaps this came from a sense of embattlement, of the law-enforcers in continuous war with those who break the law. War is a dirty business: the opponent respects no rules; so he must be fought with his own weapons. If he is guilty, then he must pay - even if his guilt cannot be established b...
