late. These men, said Hope (how well named she was), these men marched in innocent good order, unaware of the denial of a licence for the procession.
In the gallery, with other men of the press, Paddy Dykes sat recording events for the Australian Worker.
I indicated to Hope in sign language that I wanted to speak for my marshals. She frowned, then told their worships that one of the defendants, an emigrant unfamiliar with Queensland law, wanted to make a statement. The magistrates turned their gaze my way. I said that I was one of the leaders of the strike marshals whose job it was to keep order on the march. If it had been left to us, order there would have been, imposed by men the strikers respected. As it was, the sudden baton charge gave us no time to tell the marchers to withdraw.
Thank you, said the magistrate in a voice empty of gratitude.
We were fined ten pounds each and threatened with jail at our next offence.
Rybakov, Suvarov and I were held back for a special talking to by the chief magistrate. The sovereign state of Queensland was kind enough to welcome energetic immigrants, we were told, but not rioters of foreign anarchist backgrounds.
This upset Rybakov very much and caused him to wheeze aloud at the magistrate, We are not anarchists. Anarchists are children.
***
I would find out the next morning that an array of charges were levelled at Amelia Pethick when she was brought into court on her own as an especial offender, charged with causing grievous bodily harm to Deputy Commissioner Geoffrey Cahill and the damage of a police horse.
A policeman produced in court the bloodied hatpin he had found on the ground near the affray. Hope, who was defending her, asked the bench whether it was credible that a woman of the scale of Mrs Pethick posed a threat to a big man like Cahill, especially if he sat atop a police mare. And yet Commissioner Cahill wanted us to believe that this woman of five feet two inches had been able to reach the Commissioner’s upper thigh with a hatpin! Perhaps, she suggested, Mr Cahill should enter the court on his seventeen-hands mare and we could find out whether Mrs Pethick could reach his stirrups, let alone his thigh.
In the court people laughed, but the magistrates did not. Amelia confused things by saying she had been charged down, and that she was ashamed of her actions since she intended only to wound Cahill, her assailant, not the poor brute who carried him.
She was remanded for trial and bail was set at one hundred pounds, which the Trades Hall officials meanly decided she should meet herself and out of her Typists and Secretarial Services Union’s fees. (It was Hope Mockridge, in fact, who put up the money.)
Premier Digby Denham praised the firm but just action of the police and declared respectable Queensland had rejected us. Hope’s husband Mr Mockridge KC now chose, like much of Brisbane’s bourgeoisie, to be alienated from the strikers by the events of Baton Friday, as we would call it. Hope wondered why blows delivered by the police, together with the resistance of the most inoffensive of strikers, Amelia Pethick, had suddenly made the strikers unworthy and dangerous to society.
I found out later from Hope that something like this discourse took place:
Mr Mockridge emerged from his study the Sunday following the march and asked his wife where she was going on the Sabbath. A good roast was cooking downstairs, he told her.
I’ll be at Trades Hall most of the day, she told him.
There is work to do on a Sunday? I thought that the point of a strike was no work.
Hope asked her husband, You wouldn’t be free for some pro bono work, would you, Edgar?
If your people had had a permit to march, I would make myself available.
The permit system is unjust. Some judge, with the right nudging, might overthrow it in favour of freedom of assembly. Freedom of assembly subject to a permit is not freedom.
Mr Mockridge returned to his study. Things had happened between them
In the gallery, with other men of the press, Paddy Dykes sat recording events for the Australian Worker.
I indicated to Hope in sign language that I wanted to speak for my marshals. She frowned, then told their worships that one of the defendants, an emigrant unfamiliar with Queensland law, wanted to make a statement. The magistrates turned their gaze my way. I said that I was one of the leaders of the strike marshals whose job it was to keep order on the march. If it had been left to us, order there would have been, imposed by men the strikers respected. As it was, the sudden baton charge gave us no time to tell the marchers to withdraw.
Thank you, said the magistrate in a voice empty of gratitude.
We were fined ten pounds each and threatened with jail at our next offence.
Rybakov, Suvarov and I were held back for a special talking to by the chief magistrate. The sovereign state of Queensland was kind enough to welcome energetic immigrants, we were told, but not rioters of foreign anarchist backgrounds.
This upset Rybakov very much and caused him to wheeze aloud at the magistrate, We are not anarchists. Anarchists are children.
***
I would find out the next morning that an array of charges were levelled at Amelia Pethick when she was brought into court on her own as an especial offender, charged with causing grievous bodily harm to Deputy Commissioner Geoffrey Cahill and the damage of a police horse.
A policeman produced in court the bloodied hatpin he had found on the ground near the affray. Hope, who was defending her, asked the bench whether it was credible that a woman of the scale of Mrs Pethick posed a threat to a big man like Cahill, especially if he sat atop a police mare. And yet Commissioner Cahill wanted us to believe that this woman of five feet two inches had been able to reach the Commissioner’s upper thigh with a hatpin! Perhaps, she suggested, Mr Cahill should enter the court on his seventeen-hands mare and we could find out whether Mrs Pethick could reach his stirrups, let alone his thigh.
In the court people laughed, but the magistrates did not. Amelia confused things by saying she had been charged down, and that she was ashamed of her actions since she intended only to wound Cahill, her assailant, not the poor brute who carried him.
She was remanded for trial and bail was set at one hundred pounds, which the Trades Hall officials meanly decided she should meet herself and out of her Typists and Secretarial Services Union’s fees. (It was Hope Mockridge, in fact, who put up the money.)
Premier Digby Denham praised the firm but just action of the police and declared respectable Queensland had rejected us. Hope’s husband Mr Mockridge KC now chose, like much of Brisbane’s bourgeoisie, to be alienated from the strikers by the events of Baton Friday, as we would call it. Hope wondered why blows delivered by the police, together with the resistance of the most inoffensive of strikers, Amelia Pethick, had suddenly made the strikers unworthy and dangerous to society.
I found out later from Hope that something like this discourse took place:
Mr Mockridge emerged from his study the Sunday following the march and asked his wife where she was going on the Sabbath. A good roast was cooking downstairs, he told her.
I’ll be at Trades Hall most of the day, she told him.
There is work to do on a Sunday? I thought that the point of a strike was no work.
Hope asked her husband, You wouldn’t be free for some pro bono work, would you, Edgar?
If your people had had a permit to march, I would make myself available.
The permit system is unjust. Some judge, with the right nudging, might overthrow it in favour of freedom of assembly. Freedom of assembly subject to a permit is not freedom.
Mr Mockridge returned to his study. Things had happened between them
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