WHAT DID JOHN CURTIN
BELIEVE IN?
As the editor of the Timber Worker, John Curtin had the perfect opportunity to develop his ideas and tell others about them in his editorials. He criticised anything that he thought affected the workers, including poor working conditions, war, the lack of social welfare, universal minimum wages, the fight for an eight hour day and industrial arbitration. His editorials and the cartoons he chose to publish reveal these concerns.

As a socialist, John Curtin was an internationalist. He firmly believed that the interests of the workers, and therefore of the majority of the population, were best served by cooperation between nations. This meant that John Curtin was not only an anti-militarist; he was also against any structure that exploited the workers including imperialism and capitalism. Like many others in the socialist movement, John Curtin believed that it was the leaders of industry who financed war, spread imperialism and kept the worker in a subservient position. For him, the only way to escape this tyranny was to support a socialist revolution, a revolution in which the interests of the worker rather than those of the capitalist shaped society.

 

"The Burden Bearer - A good time for the parasites", Timber Worker, 8 April 1914, p.1.
Courtesy of the La Trobe collection, State Library of Victoria.

John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, Records of the Curtin Family, John Curtin at Trades Hall, Melbourne, 1914, Timber Workers Union, JCPML00376/13
John Curtin (back row, far right).