Eureka Stockade (Political Protest)

Protests are a common thing throughout Australia. Some of these protests were about conscriptions into the army, the Vietnam War, shearer’s strikes, ECT. The Eureka Stockade was what paved the way for these types of protests.

The Eureka Stockade was started when a digger by the name of James Scobie was murdered outside a hotel. This did not cause the rebellion however. It only started when the suspected murderer had been let free because of his ties with one of the camp officials at the time. This was not the only reason though. Mining licenses were also main causes. This did not depend on whether a digger had struck gold or not. All had to pay. Many diggers who were not able to find gold found it difficult to pay for their licenses.

The first meeting was held on the 17th of October. This meeting was to be used to bring the men that had killed James Scobie to justice. After the meeting a crowd burnt down the hotel. 3 men were arrested. On the 11th of November 10,000 diggers met to demand the release of the three diggers, abolition of the mining licenses and the right for all men to vote. Out of this the Ballarat reform league was formed in bakery hill. They had many long term and short term political goals including abolishing mining fees and letting everybody have a voice on making the laws they are meant to abide by. Many of the reform league leaders had been involved in the chartist movement in Britain.

This meeting was then followed by an even larger meeting. In this meeting the diggers decided to publicly burn these mining licenses. At this meeting the Eureka flag was first unveiled. Hoping to imprison many of the people that were involved in these meetings the gold commissioner ordered a license hunt for the following day.

On 30th of November at the meeting, thousands more mining licenses were burned. They left bakery hill and went to eureka as they felt that site was less exposed to attack. At this site a stockade was built out of mostly wood. It covered about an acre of the goldfield. Approximately 500 diggers occupied the Stockade. Over the next 2 days they gathered fire arms and forged pikes for those without guns. An Irishman by the name Peter Lalor was chosen as commander in chief over all the diggers.

Early in the morning the law enforcement raided the stockade. 22 diggers were killed and 114 were taken as prisoners. 13 of them were charged with high treason. The others were freed within 48 hours of there arrest. Peter Lalor escaped with a badly injured arm. Later to be amputated.

The brutal attack that the law enforcement had done to the diggers is now known it was more of a massacre. The death of these diggers did not go unpunished. Those in authority had found that there forces were no longer in service. Also the British authorities granted all the demands within 12 months of the rebellion. These actions were helped by the massive support within and around Melbourne.

The Eureka stockade is the only example of armed rebellion leading to the reform of unfair laws. Many of Australia’s qualities came from this one incident. No longer were immigrants treated differently but were treated the same. These immigrants came from far and wide. The vast majority were British but they also came from America, Ireland, China, France, Italy, Germany and many others. This was a base for our multicultural society today. South Australia extended the right to vote to nearly all males. Followed by Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland in the following 3 years. By 1859 the colonies holding more that 90% of the people were governed by politicians whom every man could cast a vote for. By federation day the women of Australia were given the right to vote.

Most importantly though it led to Australia’s trade unions. This was largely responsible for the Australian Labor Party whose aim was electing members to parliament who would represent the interests of people working in Australia. This works on the same principles as the Eureka Stockade.