Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This colour narrated clip from a 1956 documentary film produced by the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) Film Unit focuses on Sydney’s May Day celebrations honouring the achievements of workers across the world. It shows men at work, banners being prepared for the May Day march and footage of the march itself, accompanied by rallying music. Political messages on signs celebrating socialism, unionism and peaceful coexistence frame the voice-over narration. Scenes of the march follow showing banners, marchers, a band and onlooking crowds.

Educational value points

• May Day, or Labour Day, shown here in 1956 in Sydney, is still celebrated in Australia with parades that commemorate the worldwide fight by workers for improved working conditions. On 12 May 1856 building workers in Melbourne marched to celebrate achieving an 8-hour working day. An International Workers’ Day was declared on 1 May 1889. The first Australian May Day march was held in 1891 by striking shearers at Barcaldine in Queensland.

• The political and social concerns of the labour movement in 1956 are represented in the posters and signs carried in the May Day march. The depiction of mushroom clouds and the opposition to Australia’s signing of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in 1954 indicate a widespread fear of nuclear war and militarism. Union support for the olympic spirit is indicated, with Australia preparing to host the games in Melbourne later that year.

• The signs being prepared display the newer mural and poster styles adopted in the 1950s to convey messages about issues, but the carrying of banners in the May Day march reflects a long tradition in unionism going back to the 19th century. Marchers wear their union ribbons and march behind their union banners as a sign of the strength of their union and their commitment to the solidarity of unionism across the workforce.

• The opening sequence celebrating the value of the ‘working man’, with no acknowledgement of working women, reflects a union culture that largely ignored issues affecting working women and tolerated inequalities of remuneration until the 1970s. Women had been recruited into men’s jobs across a range of industries, including heavy manufacturing, during the years of the Second World War, but from 1946 were redirected into the less skilled clothing, food processing and textile industries.

• The Menzies government banned the May Day public holiday in 1941 and 1942, causing this union movement celebration to be moved from 1 May to the first Sunday in May, except in the Northern Territory and Queensland where a public Labour Day holiday occurs on the first Monday in May. All other states and the Australian Capital Territory now celebrate a Labour Day public holiday across dates in March and October to maintain a public holiday for the cause.

• The clip is from Banners Held High, a film in celebration of the labour movement made by the WWF Film Unit for the May Day Committee of the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council. The narrator is Jock Levy, a former wharfie and one of the founders of the Film Unit in 1953. The Unit produced many films on subjects affecting workers, filmed from the viewpoint of the worker.