Published Resources Details Journal Article

This article examines interconnections between workplace, culture and politics at the New South Wales Government's Eveleigh railway workshops and in the predominantly working class communities that surrounded it between the 1880s and the 1930s. By focusing on industrial and political meetings that were held in the local streets, halls and hotels, as well as in the workshops and on their boundaries, the article shows how such working class cultural practices enabled workers to protect their working conditions and also enabled them and their families, neighbours and Labor leaders to articulate and communicate shared values and aspirations. Taska argues that these practices created an impression of a common class identity. It was through them that working class people politicised their grievances and pursued a better quality of life. For this reason, they provide an insight into the roots of labour's political culture in a specific urban context