Tom Mann

Thomas Mann: revolutionary unionist, investigative journalist and whole-hearted advocate of the overthrow of capitalism took on BHP for the workers of Broken Hill during the Great Strike of 1908, and won.

At 10 years old, Tom Mann’s education near Coventry, England, was considered complete and he was sent to work underground in a colliery. By chance, an underground explosion closed the coal mine, and Tom ended up with an engineer’s apprenticeship in Birmingham where, in the 1870s, the air was choked with industrial fumes, and poverty and gang warfare was rife. The growth of factories, mass production and manufactured goods favoured the factory owner and not the worker, and none of this escaped the attention of a young radical like Tom Mann. His leadership during the London docker’s strike in 1889 – which was partly financed by Australian Trade Unions – placed Tom Mann at the heart of the union movement and foreshadowed his emigration to Melbourne in 1901.

When he arrived in Australia, Tom Mann shook up the labour movement, formed the Socialist Party of Australia and convinced the union movement to adopt the unwavering policy of the eight-hour day for the worker. Any self-respecting unionist with communist sympathies would have been drawn to Broken Hill in the early 1900s. Tom Mann was no exception. He became the industrial organiser for the Broken Hill Combined Unions Committee and fought alongside the miners against BHP during the 1908-1909 strike.

After being arrested for sedition (inciting rebellion against the state) during the 1908 Strike, Tom Mann was no longer permitted to address an assembly in NSW. In the town of Cockburn, which straddles NSW and South Australia, Tom Mann stood in South Australia and addressed the 2,700 people who had travelled from Broken Hill in the open wagons of a goods train to hear him speak.

When the Federal Arbitration Court ruled in favour of the unions in March 1909, BHP shut their mines for two years, forcing many miners to leave town. Tom Mann was later acquitted and left Australia in December 1909. He was unsuccessful in gaining a visa to return.

Tom Mann, a worker’s hero, is memorialised as an iconic unionist in the Broken Hills Trades hall. He died in Yorkshire in 1941.

Audio transcript available.