First South Australian strike threat in 1836 by crew of company ship of George Fife Angas: not friend of working class
South Australian Company chairman George Fife Angas (at right) , never a friend of the working class, had the crew of the Emma (inset), one of four ships chartered by his company to lead settlement of South Australia, stage the first strike for extra wages after arriving at Napean Bay (Reeves Point shown) on Kangaroo Island in October 1836.
South Australia’s history of labour disputes began with the start of its European colonisation at Kangaroo Island in October 1836.
A strike was threatened over a demand for extra wages by members of the crew of the Emma, one of the nine first fleet carrying the first European settlers to South Australia. The Emma was one of four (others: the Duke of York, Africaine, Lady Mary Pelham) chartered by the South Australian Company, chaired by George Fife Angas. Angas wanted to the vessels to be refitted for whaling: a cause for the company’s haste in settling South Australia.
After a horrendous journey on the Emma to South Australia, its crew were likely to be in the mood to make strong demands for wages. Charles Simeon Hare, bookkeeper and and accountant for the South Australian Company, was left with little option but to pay the extra wages to the crew members who were backed by some of the settlers. As Hare explained in a letter to Angas: "Six or seven of the Emma's crew Hutton, Barnet, Howland, Palmer, Thompson, Lyne, Cranfield, and others joined the men previously mentioned – and they held meetings, formed societies etc. to coerce Mr. (Samuel) Stephens (South Australian Company manager on Kangaroo Island), their first rule being to strike one and all when a man was discharged for any cause whatever and refuse to work until he was again employed.".
As an important figure in South Australia’s founding, Angas was aggressively against democracy for the working class. Although he agreed with responsible government, he was against the upper house of parliament being elected and he wanted franchise based on an educational test. Angas’s dread of the “democratic element” extended to gold discoveries that could enrich individuals from any class.
The first known strike on the South Australian mainland was by the laborers in surveyor general and Adelaide founder William Light’s survey team who had worked long hours under poor conditions and pressure to complete land surveys so that settlement could start. Light’s survey labourers specifically protested against the 12 shillings a week they had contracted for before they left England. They found that other locals were earning up to 15 shillings a day. Those caught out by this system were called “two shillings a day slaves”.
Light’s survey team was employed by the colonisation commissioners in London. Their poor wages were part of a wider problem that beset South Australian settlement. The province was started with the main source of funding coming from the sale of land. Those funds went into funding the free emigration of laborers and their families, with little left for the early workings of a government administration and its employees.
Charles Simeon Hare, involved in the Emma dispute of 1836, reappeared in another significant industrial action: the great miners’ strike at Moonta in 1874. Hare, who was managing a mine near Monta, opposed the workers’ demands. That was the reason for him being an unsuccessful candidate for election to the South Australian House of Assembly that year.