Labour Day (44 Hours) - Australian Timber Workers' Union, Victorian Branch No 2, banner and float

Abstract

The highly decorated Victorian Timber Workers’ banner reflects the influence of such socialists as John Curtin, Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Timber Workers Union, 1911-1915, and Prime Minister of Australia, 1941-1945. An active member of the Victorian Socialist Party prior to the First World War, Curtin was one of many unionists attracted by the possibilities of the One Big Union movement and committed to union reorganisation, as the banner’s slogan ‘One Industry, One Union’ testifies. At each corner of the banner are cameos illustrating the different phases of timber production: tree-felling in the bush, hauling logs to the mill along a bush tramway, cutting logs in a sawmill and removal by rail to metropolitan markets. The central map of Australia supported by a radiating pattern of light suggests that this may have been the work of a Melbourne banner painter named Hennessey, who used a similar device on an equally impressive banner for the Victorian Railways Union.