Labor History Lectures 2014 Professor Philip Payton

1848 & All That: The Cornish Radical Traditions and the Emergence of Labor in South Australia

(Tuesday 6 May 2014)

The lecture looked at the Labor Party in South Australia and why it has been considered ‘different’ from counterparts in other states.

This talk reassessed the early origins of the Labor movement in South Australia, and examined the influence of Cornish ethno-religious identity in South Australia’s copper districts. It asked to what extent was political and industrial behaviour in those localities moulded by a pre-existing Cornish radical tradition, and looked particularly at Methodism as a distinctive component of the emerging Labor movement in South Australia.