View article

Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class was a moment of scholarly and publishing significance. The book was a co-production of a commercial publisher and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH) and was, in fact, a special issue of the society’s journal. 1 There has since been an explosion of work on Australia’s mixed history on matters of race, labour, and colonialism that were the book’s key themes. Here, I look back at that early foundational text, to provide historical context for current scholarly conversations. I address several questions–who produced it and why, and why then? What was its intellectual and political context? What came before it? And how does it look now, 45 years later? As I open the book to reread it in preparation for this paper, I wonder will I be proud of this book, or will I be a little embarrassed? Has it worn well, or is it sadly dated? Whatever my judgement …