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in 1853, for at least the next 15 years.
Why then did Richard, aged 87, write to The Age newspaper in March 1916 and say: 'I claim
to be the last of the 75 masons who marched from the Belvedere Hotel to the Old Cremorne
Gardens on 21 April 1856. I did not join the association it not being convenient at that time. I
am a colonist of 63 years. ) was in Melbourne and helped to fight the eight hours agitation to a
finish.'
Who were these masons, and why was this march so important that Richard, wished to be
connected with it 60 years after the event?
The march of the masons in 1856 arose out an even more historic event in 1854, when the
miners at Ballarat become so incensed at the cost of licences (30 shillings a month), at their lack
of political rights and the strict laws of ownership, that they banded together in defiance of the
colonial government. In December 1854 about 800 representatives of law and order,
policemen, soldiers and marines, marched on Ballarat and 270 stormed the stockade that had
been built on the Eureka claim. 22 miners were killed and 14 wounded; many were jailed. But
the new Australians, who had fled social oppression in their native lands, were on the miners'
side, and the Eureka Stockade became a symbol and a rallying cry in the working man's fight
for his rights. In 1855 licences were abolished and a Miner's Right established. It allowed a
miner, for £1 a year, to occupy a piece of land for mining and to reside thereon.
All this occurred while the Crimean War was being fought on the other side of the world.
In southeast Australia, workers now actively sought an improvement in their wages and labour
conditions. There were local strikes, and a movement towards the establishment of an eight-
hour working day, reducing current working hours from 60 a week to 48. The stonemasons,
who were strongly
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organised as a trade union, and influenced by several newly emigrated British Chartists and
trade unionists now in their midst, led the way, and at a meeting of the Stonemasons Society in
Sydney in August 1855 a motion 'that in the opinion of this Society eight hours should be the
maximum days work' was carried unanimously. Employers were advised that six months hence
masons would only work an eight-hour day.
The dispute was not centred on money. For the masons and carpenters received a higher than
average daily wage. They earned almost twice as much (about 16 shillings) as railway workers,
who were paid between 9 and 10 shillings per day.
The Stonemasons Society in Melbourne was headed by James Stephens (president) and James
Galloway (secretary). Stephens was Welsh, and had emigrated in 1853 when he was 32. He
was a Chartist and trade unionist, as was Galloway, who emigrated from Fife in Scotland in
1854, aged 26, and died six years later. Another influential figure was a another Scot and
Chartist, Charles Jardine Don, a former hand-loom weaver, aged 33, who had founded one of
the earliest Mutual Improvement Societies in the UK and emigrated in 1853. Six years later he
became Australia's first Labour MP.
Did Don and Stephens and other disaffected Chartists voyage to Australia on the same ship as
Richard Honeycombe? What influence did their strong convictions have on him? Or was he
already of their thinking, and only needed their leadership and example, as with other masons, to
become as militant as they?
The Victorian Stonemasons Society, numbering about 250, was reformed in March 1856 and a
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