Maffra and District Historical Society

M&DHS operates the Maffra Sugar Beet Museum, part of the Local History Collection at the Maffra Library, and a Dairy Museum at the Robotic Dairy at Winnindoo.

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Location: Victoria, Australia

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Early Labor Party records


Sometimes, something unexpected comes along. We are working away cataloguing, and have just found that what we previously thought was a set of farm records from 1944 to about 1956, was actually written in a much earlier book, which held the records of membership payments by the Maffra Branch of the Political Labor Council. 

Digging around, we found this had actually become the Australian Labor Party in 1908 - although this book, with the above stamp, was used for the records for 1913 to 1915. [Late note - see comments - it obviously operated under this name well after 1908]

There are a few women in there - not many, but a few. It will be interesting to be able to pass on to families who enquire, details of their ancestors' political affiliations - not something we usually know.

2 Comments:

Blogger Lenore Frost said...

The PLC was still trundling along after 1908 - I'm not convinced that the Google result you came up with is the last word. The State Library has a report of Proceedings of the PLC Annual Conference in 1916 Persistent link: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/121966. In some diaries I edited which were written in the period 1917 to 1920, there were references to the PLC (I can't say as late as 1920, but certainly in 1917).

What a great find!

October 30, 2013 at 7:07 AM  
Blogger Linda said...

You are correct - so much for shallow Googling. Going back, I have even found the branch formation, under the name, in 1913.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65279678

It does seem to get mentions until 1922 at least.

October 30, 2013 at 7:20 AM  

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