William Guthrie Spence
Contents
Background
William Spence was born in 1846, on the Orkney Islands, Northern Scotland. The Spence family emigrated from Scotland in 1852 and settled at Spring Hill, Creswick in 1853. [1]
Spence died in 1926
Goldfields Involvement, 1854
As a young boy Spence was an eyewitness to the events of the Eureka Stockade, claiming to have heard the shooting. Spence started work as a shepherd aged 13, and obtained a miners licence as a 14 year old. [2]
Post 1854 Experiences
Spence founded the Australian Workers Union at Jackass Creek near Creswick. Spence was self-educated, a teetotaller and a member of the Creswick Presbyterian Church. In 1874 he started a trade union that became part of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association of Victoria (AMA). In 1878 Spence assisted to bring the Creswick Miners’ Union in the AMA, and was secretary of the Creswick Branch. By 1883 the AMA had nineteen Victorian branches, and around eight thousand members. From 1882 to 1892 Spence was general secretary of the AMA. He broke with the union in 1891-2 over political representation. He formally entered politics in 1998.[3]
Reminiscences
- In his boyhood days Mr Spence said he lived it Creswick and when eight years of age he resided within nine miles of the stockade. He retained vivid memories of the terror that reigned at the time over the collection of the gold licenses by the mounted police who were 'a body of tyran nical bullies performing the work of a rotten, tyrannical Government. The mounted police wee about the lowest class of men that it was possible to find. They were cowardly curs who rode about all day with their swords clanking and when the fight occurred they skulked around the outskirts waiting their opportunity to shoot innocent men "some o£ them boasted after the fight that their swords lind been stained with human blood during fierce encounters but those stains were not the result of any fight on the paet of the police. The cowards who made the boasts had gone about prodding their swords into the dead and wounded bodies of the miners who had fallen in the struggle for justice against tyranny. It was not the golddiggers who had opposed law and order. They had maintained them but the same could not be said of the police or the Government at the time. There were people at the present time who were afraid to express approval of the stockade. This surprised him, as after it it consisted of the sacrifice of life in the cause of de mocracy. To maintain that democracy and to prevent it being stolen from them as some would have it, they would have to be active and vigilant in the future. They had so called progressive Governments that would deprive them of that freedom which had been won at such a sacrifice, and democracy would continue to be in danger until they removed those who were opposed to it.[4]
See also
Further Reading
Corfield, J.,Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.
References
- ↑ Wickham, D., Gervasoni, C. & Phillipson, W., Eureka Research Directory, Ballarat Heritage Services, 1999.
- ↑ Wickham, D., Gervasoni, C. & Phillipson, W., Eureka Research Directory, Ballarat Heritage Services, 1999.
- ↑ Wickham, D., Gervasoni, C. & Phillipson, W., Eureka Research Directory, Ballarat Heritage Services, 1999.
- ↑ The Argus, 7 December 1914.
External links
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goold-james-alipius-3633/text5649
