Australia First


3rd December

EUREKA STOCKADE ANNIVERSARY

A Celebration of Australia's Cultural Heritage

On this day Australia First commemorates the diggers of Ballarat and their sacrifice in making a stand for democracy and justice against an old order of patronage and privilege.

The miners "rebellion" on the Ballarat gold fields of 1854 left the Nation a powerful legacy: a "myth" of Australian identity and a symbol of patriotic struggle bathed in Australian blood. The Eureka Stockade incident and its Southern Cross Flag were elements in the nineteenth century fight to define who the Australians were in the then environment of British imperial control of the continent.

Eureka was not a fight on a foreign battlefield; it was a fight on our own soil for freedom and independence. In this new era, these aspects of our national spirit still offer a beacon.

Today, the freedoms won by past struggles - from our working conditions to our values, culture, heritage and European identity - all that make for our Australian way of life - are being undermined by authoritarian internationalist forces at the beck and call of Global Capitalism. These forces organise against our own Nation and People in the same way the Colonial Authority organised against the working people of Ballarat in 1854.

Yet a rebellious spirit is on the march in Australia today as Australians mobilise to reclaim their national future. Australia First sets the pathway!

The men of Eureka were not a riotous mob, but had formed the Ballarat Reform League on 11th November 1854, which submitted their complaints to authority in an orderly fashion through democratically decided resolutions, appeals and formal deputations.

The miners’ grievances related to restrictive licence fees, and the police methods of enforcing the licence system. They were also disturbed by the presence of Chinese “coolie labour”; wanted access to land, and sought the vote and representation in government. But in the face of an authoritarian administration serving colonial interests, they were driven to militant means to attain their rights as free men.

The incident was not a class type struggle as between capital and labour. It was a struggle for freedom and independence of all - tradesmen, labourers, storekeepers, other business people, civil servants, squatters, teachers, etc, all united in the search for gold, and the future they sought.

This was the first time on our continent that men from the old nations of Europe joined together, not as Irish or English, nor as German or Italian or whatever, but as Australians under a uniquely Australian flag. This is the reality as understood from our history - in stark contrast to the lying propaganda of Traitor Class multiculturalists and internationalists.

In confirmation of solidarity, hundreds of the diggers swore an oath - "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by one another and to fight to defend our rights and liberties".

The fight took place at 4 a.m. on Sunday 3rd December 1854 when the diggers’ stockade was charged by the troopers and police, being overwhelmed in a short time, the stockaders and bystanders continuing to be brutalised after surrender. The camp, as a peoples’ militia, was a failure, with some thirty diggers killed, as well as five troopers. Our Cross of the South was trampled in the dirt of Bakery Hill.

But at the price of the diggers’ blood, although the true spirit of their demands was never accepted, many of the reforms they sought later came to be implemented, and the incident passed into our folklore tradition as "the finest thing in Australian history".

Australia's nativist movement, from the 1850's onwards, celebrated the Eureka Stockade as an inspiration for the character and identity of Australians - European, democratic, independent, mateship, disliking of authority, determination, just returns from labour.

The Southern Cross flag was subsequently taken up in the quest for independence and freedom from colonialism in the struggle to build "the Great Southern Nation". In our history it has been acclaimed as "the Australian flag", "the safeguard of Australian nationality", "the symbol of Australian liberty and unity", and "the emblem of White Australia".

A Eureka-like flag was carried in the 1861 incident at Lambing Flat [Young, NSW] when the gold fossickers rose against "the Chinese plague". Again in 1878 the Eureka flag was raised during the Sydney maritime strike against Chinese labour. In 1891 the shearers of Queensland flew the "flag of blue and silver stars" in their fight against poverty by an overseas-induced depression, taking to arms to defend their cause.

In these new times our Southern Cross flag remains above all, an Australia First flag, to be raised high in our struggle for the survival of our Australian national identity and culture. And it is being raised in the struggle to eject from political power the Traitor Class of liberal cosmopolitan internationalists with their globalist doctrines of foreign dictates and financial control, multiculturalism and alien mass immigration, doctrines that compromise our Australian nationality. The Eureka flag reflects the spirit of Australians still - freedom, identity, democracy, independence - the same values advanced by Australia First.

On the commemoration of Eureka, Native Australians can proudly reflect not only on the sacrifices of the stockaders, but also the achievements of all our pioneering and settling peoples who have built, advanced, and defended our European civilisation. Australia First charges all fair dinkum Australians not only to commemorate the day with pride, but to rally to the continuing struggle to achieve true political, economic, and cultural independence for the Australian Nation.


*All quotes from historical sources.


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