May Day leaflet authorised by Spirit of Eureka NSW

People are doing it tough. Groceries, power, petrol, rent and mortgages are through the roof.

Corporates and bankers lock down wages and push interest rates up.

Workers won’t cop it. A wave of protests and strikes demands relief.

“I call on my fellow diggers, irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross as a refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth.”
Raffaello Carboni, Eureka Rebel Leader and political refugee 1854

Our struggles today echo the spirit of the 1854 Eureka rebellion.

Eureka’s flag unites people in rebellion. Bosses fear it. Workers defeated the ABCC when they charged rank & file building workers who flew Eureka crane flags in 2018.

Why do workers have to protest and strike to protect a decent living? Corporate profit rules. US corporations sit at the top of a foreign owned corporate shit heap. Australia spends hundreds of billions preparing for US wars.

When workers in their millions fire up, we’ll be more than a few foreign corporates and their agencies can handle.

Eureka’s Unfinished business

• Flags flew in thousands in 1975 after the bloodless CIA coup overthrew Whitlam’s elected government.

Today our economy and military are still dominated by foreign corporate hands. US corporates, not British Governors, tell governments what to do.

Foreign corporates wreck our economy. They hold wages down. They endanger workers lives. They cripple workers struggles in ‘Fair’ work cages. They march us off to war. All for their profits.

They steal our resources, wreck the environment. They charge us so much for ‘OUR’ gas they are making billions.

Australia can afford much better wages and conditions, welfare to live on, climate action, top-flight healthcare and  education. We need to make the rich foreign monopolies pay up.

Spend $368 billion on nuclear subs for US wars or spend it on us?

Eureka – A Multicultural Rebellion

The 1854 Eureka miners’ revolt against British colonial oppression took place on unceded Wadawurrung land. Wadawurrung traded and mined to survive as their land was stolen and destroyed.

They recognised a common enemy. They supported the rebellion taking giant steps to Australia’s independence from British rule.

An African American, a Jewish rebel, an African-Jamaican, an Italian political refugee, and Irish Republicans were charged with treason for their part leading the Eureka Revolt.

Thirty other nationalities, women and men, multiple races together, armed in revolt against Britain’s oppressive rule.
Some now say Eureka means hate, individualism and division.
But when African American John Joseph, tried for leading Eureka, was declared “not guilty”, he was carried in triumph around the streets of Melbourne by a 10,000-strong crowd, a third of its population.
Eureka strengthened local people against British colonialism and partial self-government across Australia.
It set the stage for more advances in workers’ rights, improved living standards, the 8-hour day, voting rights and towards Australian independence from domination by foreign capitalist powers.

Unless we fight, people have no real say or power over our lives and futures.

What was Eureka?

In 1854, gold miners in Victoria demanded abolition of a gold mining licence, end of brutal police enforcement, and for the right to vote for a local government in place of British colonial rule.

The government stepped-up arrests. Miners resisted.

On 3 December 1854, British soldiers massacred diggers in their resistance stockade as they slept. 30 men and women were slaughtered. 30 more died later of wounds or when evading the British troops murderous hunt.

Thirty nationalities faced the British guns. An Italian, an African-American and Irish were among those tried.

The British Governor of Victoria called Eureka’s flag ‘The flag of independence’. It ‘threatened British rule’.

Australia-wide protests helped transform parliaments and removed some injustices. Britain still ruled, still divided this land.

The Eureka rebellion and huge outrage against British repression show what a mass uprising it was. Movements for justice and democratic rights are repeated countless times in Australian history with the Eureka flag proudly flying above.

• Striking Queensland shearers flew the Eureka flag in 1891 when they faced down British machine guns.
• Striking Port Kembla wharfies swore Eureka’s oath as they refused to load pig iron for Japanese weapons to use on China before World War Two.

THERE’S A PITTANCE SPENT TO RELIEVE OUR HARDSHIP

Stand up to make governments act for the people, not for foreign-owned corporate monopolies, their profits and US war on its rivals.

Spirit of Eureka supports people’s mass movements for a just, really democratic, independent and sovereign Australia.