1912 Brisbane General Strike - Aftermath

Aftermath

Justice H.B. Higgins in the Federal Arbitration Court ruled that the precipitating event was a lockout rather than a strike, and that the regulation refusing tramwaymen the right to wear their union badges on duty was both unauthorised and unreasonable. Higgins could not intervene in restoration of jobs.

When the Employers Federation agreed on the 6 March 1912 that there would be no victimisation of strikers the strike officially ended.

The savagery of the baton charges by the Queensland Police and specials on Black Friday created a bitterness and hatred of the police which would last for several decades. The strike reinforced solidarity and collective identity of the Australian labour movement in Queensland. The Denham government immediately won an ensuing election on a "Law and Order" platform and passed the Industrial Peace Act of 1912 ushering in compulsory arbitration specifically to deter strikes in essential services.

Employees of the tramway company who had struck were sacked. The tramway company refused to ever re-hire these workers. When the tram system was acquired by the Queensland Government in 1922 the sacked workers were reinstated. Interestingly, badges on uniforms - the cause of the strike - were forbidden even when the tram system (and later bus system) was under government and later Brisbane City Council control and were to remain forbidden until 1980.

In the aftermath of the strike three years later there was an electoral swing to Labor all over Queensland, and the second Queensland Labor Government was elected in 1915, led by T. J. Ryan.