Radicalism and the Sydney press c. 1838-1846

© 1978 David William Lyle WebsterClaims by historians about the nature and scope of radical and working class activity in New South Wales before the gold rushes vary considerably. On the one hand stands Robin Gollan's view that until 1848 Australia had nothing that could properly be called a radical movement. On the other stands L. J. Hume's assertion that in 1842 radicalism in association with the working classes reached a peak in New South Wales and thereafter went into a decline. Differing from both Gollan and Hume, Michael Roe argues that a distinct working class political movement began to emerge in 1843 and from then on became progressively stronger. The recent writing of T. H. Irving and others of the New Left has attempted to incorporate the pre-1850 period into broad these about the nineteenth century development of a bourgeois hegemony. To attempt to reconcile these conflicting interpretations would be a futile and impossible exercise. Specific studies can help instead to reveal some of the complexities which have allowed such a disparate group of opinions to be formed. The aim of the present thesis is to develop a new perspective on pre-gold rush radicalism through an examination of the role of Sydney's newspaper press. The period to be considered centres on the 1838-46 years of Sir George Gipps' governorship, but a preliminary study of the background from 1824, (the year when the Australian was founded,) was considered essential. In the course of the thesis it will be shown firstly that the radicalism which emerged in the depression of the early 'forties differed in important ways from the emancipist radicalism which preceded it. Secondly it will be argued that by 1846, the radicals and the newspapers of Sydney had pushed New South Wales a long way on the road to becoming a political, rather than an a-political or anti-political society. Notions of a society divided into mutually hostile groups of employers and employees were thus common subjects of controversy at the end of the depression where they had been virtually unknown before