23-571: Ora Banda is a townsite and locality in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia located 66 kilometres (41 mi) north-west of Kalgoorlie . The town name is Spanish meaning "band of gold". It includes several operational mines and at the 2016 Australian census had a population of eight people. Gold was discovered in the district in 1893, and in 1909 the Ora Banda Progress Committee requested that
46-450: A postmodernist approach, emphasizing the importance of language and questioning whether classes could be so considered if they did not use a "language of class". Other historians emphasized the weaknesses and moderation of the historic labor movement, arguing that social development had been characterized more by accommodation, acceptance of the social order and cross-class collaboration than by conflict and dramatic change. Labor history in
69-519: A class analysis: for example, C. L. R. James , a Marxist who wrote about the struggles of blacks in the Haitian Revolution . Others questioned whether class was a more important social category than gender or race and pointed to racism, patriarchy and other examples of division and oppression within the working class. Labor history remains centered on two fundamental sets of interest: institutional histories of workers' organizations, and
92-507: A more traditional liberal historian, explains the dynamic: Morgan sees benefits: Morgan tells of the downside as well: Thompson and Hobsbawm were Marxists who were critical of the existing labor movement in Britain. They were concerned to approach history "from below" and to explore the agency and activity of working people at the workplace, in protest movements and in social and cultural activities. Thompson's seminal study The Making of
115-548: A revenge attack by a member of the Gypsy Jokers. In the early hours of the morning of 18 May 2019, the hotel was destroyed by fire. In August 2020 an impact crater was found near Ora Banda. The meteorite crater is estimated to be over 100 million years old, with a diameter of about 5 km. Eastern Goldfields The Eastern Goldfields is part of the Western Australian Goldfields in
138-564: Is now the main railway service into this area. Water to the area is supplied by the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme . It was the region of inspiration for a group of writers - Gavin Casey, Katharine Susannah Prichard , Henrietta Drake Brockman and others. It has been an important cultural region as far as labour history and Australian political history, with a rich worker and trade union history. The history of
161-533: Is opposite the historical Ora Banda Inn. The town hit the headlines in 2000 with the Hancock case . A Gypsy Joker , Billy Grierson, was fatally shot while sitting at a camp fire on the old town site. Former Criminal Investigation Bureau chief and Ora Banda hotel owner Don Hancock was suspected of the shooting and his properties were later fire-bombed. Hancock was later killed in a car bombing in 2001 in Perth in
184-485: The Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia , covering the present and former gold-mining area east of Perth . The region encompasses the towns of Kalgoorlie , Boulder , Coolgardie , Kambalda , Southern Cross and other smaller settlements within this area. The name is derived in two parts: Eastern in relation to its location from Perth , and Goldfields as the name suggests comes from
207-526: The "history from below" approach of the Marxist historians. Despite the influence of the Marxists, many labor historians rejected the revolutionary implications implicit in the work of Thompson, Hobsbawm et al. In the 1980s, the importance of class itself, as an historical social relationship and explanatory concept, began to be widely challenged. Some notable labor historians turned from Marxism to embrace
230-495: The English Working Class was particularly influential in setting a new agenda for labor historians and locating the importance of the study of labor for social history in general. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, historians began to give serious attention to groups who had previously been largely neglected, such as women and non-caucasian ethnic groups. Some historians situated their studies of gender and race within
253-473: The United States is primarily based in history departments, with occasional representation inside labor unions. The scholarship deals with the institutional history of labor unions and the social history of workers. In recent years there's been special attention to historically marginal groups, especially blacks, women, Hispanics and Asians. The Study Group on International Labor and Working-Class History
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#1732802171012276-463: The field is declining, and stresses its innovation, modification and renewal. Kirk also detects a move into conservative insularity and academicism. He recommends a more extensive and critical engagement with the kinds of comparative, transnational and global concerns increasingly popular among labor historians elsewhere, and calls for a revival of public and political interest in the topics. Meanwhile, Navickas, (2011) examines recent scholarship including
299-460: The field was "designed to service and celebrate the Labor movement." In the 1950s to 1970s, labor history was redefined and expanded in focus by a number of historians, amongst whom the most prominent and influential figures were E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm . The motivation came from current left-wing politics in Britain and the United States and reached red-hot intensity. Kenneth O. Morgan ,
322-560: The focus of labor history was often on institutions: chiefly the labor unions and political parties. Exponents of this institutional approach included Sidney and Beatrice Webb . The work of the Webbs, and other pioneers of the discipline, was marked by optimism about the capacity of the labor movement to effect fundamental social change and a tendency to see its development as a process of steady, inevitable and unstoppable progress. As two contemporary labor historians have noted, early work in
345-528: The formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History in 1960. He reports that labor history has been mostly pragmatic, eclectic and empirical; it has played an important role in historiographical debates, such as those revolving around history from below, institutionalism versus the social history of labor, class, populism, gender, language, postmodernism and the turn to politics. Kirk rejects suggestions that
368-609: The goldfields region also developed into a significant number of publications over time. Labor history (discipline) Labor history is a sub-discipline of social history which specializes on the history of the working classes and the labor movement . Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors besides class but chiefly focus on urban or industrial societies which distinguishes it from rural history . The central concerns of labor historians include industrial relations and forms of labor protest (strikes, lock-outs),
391-475: The government make additional lots available, but it was 1911 before a decision was made to declare a townsite there. The survey of lots was made in 1911, and the townsite gazetted in 1912. By 1910 there were approximately 2,000 miners and their families living in the area. The town had two stores, two butchers, two bakers, a town hall, dining halls, a post office, a police station, churches, boarding houses and billiards saloons. The once famous Huntington Mills Bank
414-426: The histories of collective action, environment and human ecology, and gender issues, with a focus on work by James Epstein, Malcolm Chase , and Peter Jones. Outside the Marxist orbit, social historians paid a good deal of attention to labor history as well. Addison notes that in Britain by the 1990s, labor history was, "in sharp decline", because: For most of its history China had a limited industrial sector, but
437-402: The mining of gold in the region. In the 1980s, a series of surveys were reported for the broader region. The component areas were designated: The region was the destination of the long-running Westland overnight railway sleeper train run by Western Australian Government Railways ; for decades this was the main means of travelling to the "coast" or metropolitan Perth. The Prospector
460-412: The rise of mass politics (especially the rise of socialism ) and the social and cultural history of the industrial working classes . Labor history developed in tandem with the growth of a self-conscious working-class political movement in many Western countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Whilst early labor historians were drawn to protest movements such as Luddism and Chartism ,
483-801: Was established: 1971 and has a membership of 1000. It publishes International Labor and Working-Class History . H-LABOR is a daily email-based discussion group formed in 1993 that reaches over a thousand scholars and advanced students. the Labor and Working-Class History Association formed in 1988 and publishes Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas . Prominent scholars include John R. Commons (1862–1945), David Brody (b. 1930), Melvyn Dubofsky , David Montgomery (1927–2011), and Joseph A. McCartin (born 1959). Kirk (2010) surveys labor historiography in Britain since
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#1732802171012506-669: Was situated there; in its time it was the largest bank in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1911 the Ora Banda Hotel was constructed by Alfred E Garnett using stone and brick. On 17 June 1913, Eileen Walls (13yrs old) led a procession of school children up the main street, and had the honour of cutting the ribbon and so officially opened the Ora Banda State Battery . The five head battery ran three shifts and in 1936 another five heads were added. Water
529-630: Was supplied to the town by dams until the town was connected to the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme from Kalgoorlie in 1933. Today's gold mining companies are still working the same sites discovered nearly a century ago, and on the outskirts of town you will find the Ora Banda State Battery which is still used to crush ore. Annually in September the population swells for a day for the Ora Banda Race Day. The race track
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