Labour and the Great War: The Australian Working Class and the Making of ANZAC (edited by Frank Bongiorno, Raelene Frances and Bruce Scates). A special issue of Labour History, no. 106 (May 2014)
The working class was present at the birth of Anzac. The labour movement was present at the birth of Anzac Day. This collection of essays (a special issue of the journal Labour History) explores how workers, unionists and Labor politicians engaged with the meaning and legacy of the Great War both during the conflict and in the decades that followed.
You cannot write the history of working men and women in the twentieth century and after without dealing with the upheavals of war. Workingmen did not cease to be workingmen when they put on a uniform. The history of war is everybody’s business. It is therefore important to salute the scholars who have joined together to produce this volume, in showing how much labour history has to offer us, not only in this, the season of the centenary of the Great War, but also in informing us of the dangers in the militarised world in which we live.
– Professor Jay Winter,