Remember Broken Hill (1894)

Ye care encumbered thousands,
Who bare oppression's chain,
Strike manfully for freedom
In "ninety-four's" campaign.

When Dibbs invokes your suffrage
Shout with voices loud and shrill,
A plague upon corruption
We remember Broken Hill.

The "Trial" and the "Sentence",
With its mockery of laws ;
That well elected jury;
Who condemned the people's cause

But honest hearts in prison garb
Have stanch supporters still.
For every true Australian
Should--remember Broken Hill.

When bright departed spirit
Judged rightly of your claim.
He gave your cause the lustre
And honor of his name.

Sweet are the deathless tributes
To his impartial will ;
That name is breathed with reverence
By those at Broken Hill.

Ye faithful wives and mothers,
Who nobly stood the test
Of weary want and hunger,
The bravest and the best ;

If women's bond be sisterhood,
Let men be brothers still--
And in a common heritage
Remember Broken Hill.

Stand firm, ye Knights of Labor,
By the memory o this stain ;
Strike once again for liberty.
Hit home with heart and brain.

When Dibbs next asks a hearing,
Raise your voices with a will,
That every town may echo,
We remember Broken Hill.

Let Union leaders circulate
This watchword thro' the land ;
Let every man hold high aloft
The baying, blackleg brand.

That that hopes may brighten,
That weaker hearts may thrill
With the next election war song,
Remember Broken Hill.

That to your day of reckoning,
Let it not come in vain ;--
Mete out the fullest measure
To him who would have slain,

The men who struck for justice,
And arrive for justice still ;
Show then the titled tyrant
To Remember Broken Hill.

From histories new unwritten.
To children yet unborn,
Fathers will tell this story
With utter, hating scorn,

How Dibbs and his confederates
Longed the bare hillside to fill
With graves of unarmed citizens
Who toiled for Broken Hill.

When cannon threatened slaughter
From the heights above the town,
The word alone was wanting
To shoot the workers down.

Had they but once begun it
That fight had waged until
Freedom and Independence
Would start from Broken Hill.

Shall we, who bear the burthen
And turmoil of the day,
Swot again such miscreants
To filch our rights away !

Such despots merit knighthood,
These precepts they institute
In place of bread give bullets
To fight for Broken Hill.

Workers of every handicraft,
That is our common wrong ;
For hearts and hands united,
Make the defenceless strong.

Let Dibbs and his confederates feel
Australians have the will
And power to rouse the people-
With--Remember Broken Hill.

Australians worthy of the name,
Respond to freedom's chords ;
Talk not of federation
With England's mimic Lords."

Fight for a true democracy.
With free-born, native will ;
That land to our inheritance.
Remember Broken Hill.

Grong Grong, N.S.W.

Chief Justice Hotham. of Victoria.

Notes

From the Broken Hill Newspaper The Barrier Miner 27 Mar 1894 p. 4.

The use of the military and police put down strikes was not unknown in Australia in the 1890's, see for example the songs of the 1891 Shearers Strike in this collection. Any further information about the song above would be most welcome.