I learned today about The Australian Newspapers Digitization Program. It’s just getting started, but naturally I did a little hunting.
(The optical character recognition they’re using is pretty sub-par, or perhaps it’s the quality of their scans that’s the problem. But they’ve taken an approach that I haven’t before seen in on-line digitalization of newspaper archives — they’re inviting users to proofread and correct these automated transcriptions, wiki-style. So over time the archive may improve in quality.)
I found this article from the edition of The Argus about the meeting of a union of unions in New South-Wales devoted to the overthrow of the capitalist state.
The Workers’ Industrial Union of Australia submitted a motion calling for tax resistance — a tactic I haven’t seen much evidence of in the labor movement otherwise (though it was a tactic of Marx-aligned democrats in Germany, and of anti-Czarist revolutionaries in Russia):
[Resolved] That the working class movement throughout Australia refuse to pay State and Federal income taxes on incomes of £500 or under that amount per annum.
The motion passed. An article in the same paper reported that some union activists had already started using tax resistance in the Northern Territory:
Eight cases for the non-payment of income tax were heard .
The following were sent to gaol for 28 days:— James Fitzgerald, R.H. Green, K. Spain, John O’Neill, Albert Colley, R.J. Doling.
They all admitted having the means, but declined to pay.
The defendants are well-known unionists.
One group of miners’ unions took up a similar tax resistance proposal and went further: “It is also suggested that if any member is imprisoned, or has his wages garnisheed, for refusing to pay tax, a general strike will be declared until the member is released, or his money refunded.“
