Welcome to
   The Australian Centre For Fraternal Studies

               Where You Can Find the
                           Truth About Mateship

The Centre for Fraternal Studies (CFS) is a Research, Conservation and Display facility furthering the study of fraternalism and the neglected world of fraternal associations, ie, in the main, trade unions, friendly societies and Freemasons. It's only purpose is to educate.

The Centre is based in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, where its Convenor and Co-ordinator is Dr Bob James.

The work of the Centre, which is a non-profit, incorporated society has been substantially supported by the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, and the Friendly Societies Association of NSW, the members of which include, in addition to GUOOF:

• The Independent Order of Rechabites
• The Independent Order of Odd Fellows
• The Manchester Unity, Independent Order of Odd Fellows
• The Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society, and
• The United Ancient Order of Druids.

The initial, seed capital was provided by GUOOF and when that entity was merged with Australian Unity (previously Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and Australian Natives Association, both in Victoria, that funding was continued.

The Board of Management is actively seeking sponsors for its work, donations of suitable material and volunteers to assist with its day-to-day running.

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About the Centre for Fraternal Studies

The Centre for Fraternal Studies is an ambitious project and may be unique.

Its objects are:

• To protect and preserve Australia's fraternal heritage;
• To make that heritage available; and
• To encourage further study and understanding of that heritage.

They Call Each Other Brother

- extract from MAIN TEXT, May, 2007.

The world-wide publishing phenomenon, the Da Vinci Code has renewed interest in what are commonly known as ‘secret societies’. Numerous commentators have joined in, attempting to explain, exploit or undermine the claimed ‘messages’ of the book’s author Dan Brown.

In May 2006 I suddenly found myself a minor part of the frenzy. Fran Metcalfe, journalist on the Courier Mail newspaper contacted me for information relating to today’s relevance or otherwise of ‘trade unions, Freemasons and their forerunners’. When published, her double-page article, ‘Ritual Key to Brotherhood’ was introduced with a sub-editor’s teaser about ‘the Da Vinci’ and featured a photo of myself wearing an authentic Druid robe.

Coincidentally, in the same month, May, of 2006, the rescue of two trapped miners in the Beaconsfield mine kept Australians transfixed. The notion of ‘mateship’ was once again coupled with ‘Australian spirit’ to describe the joy attendant on the successful operation. Again in 2006, stemming from riots at Cronulla in NSW, a debate raged over a loss of Australian values and community cohesion.

Rather than it be the case that ‘everyone knows what Australian values are’, public debates have shown there are wide differences of opinion about just what they are, what the best terms to express them are, and what the various terms mean in practice.

Just to take the ‘mateship’ example: at the heart of the story of ‘mateship’ as it is popularly understood, there is a contradiction. There is the idea, firstly, that ‘mateship’ is a rough-and-ready amalgam of self-help and mutual aid, represented by ‘blokes’ just getting on with whatever cards life deals them. A variation on this locates ‘mateship’ among the ranks of ‘the battlers’ at times of high risk and challenge, such as at Gallipoli.1

There is another, widely if vaguely held belief that the time of the ‘invention’ of mateship was also the time of the birth of the hierarchical and highly centralised Australian Labor Party, and that the ALP and the 'labour movement', somehow embodies ‘mateship’.2 

Henry Lawson’s 1890’s writings are, of course, central to the creation of both of these ‘versions’. I think it fair to say that people today have a reverential, romanticised view of him and of his ‘mateships’. It is not well known that his key statement gathered together less-than glamorous ‘virtues which others found in bohemia’. He wrote:

There were between us bonds of graft, of old times, of poverty, of vagabondage and sin, and in spite of all the right-thinking person may think, say or write, there was between us that sympathy which in our times and conditions is the strongest and perhaps the truest of all human qualities, the sympathy of drink. We were drinking mates together.3  

This Lawson-quote is completed with the words: ‘We were wrong-thinking persons too, and that was another bond of sympathy between us.’ Put simply - at one extreme of the ‘mateship’ spectrum, rowdy anti-authoritarianism and jovial debauch, at the other, calm, disciplined steadiness under fire, extremes seemingly harmonised by the notion that ‘the true Australian’ was a chameleon, capable, like no other people, of adapting at will, as circumstances required.

History-shy Australians will be surprised to know that what we call ‘mateship’ is not unique, and that the values debate, the Beaconsfield Rescue and the Da Vinci Code are all closely and directly related. Bizarre as it might seem at first blush, a serious accounting of the Australian evidence for the making of oaths, the wearing of regalia, and the use of secret passwords, signs and grips provides a different and, I believe, a more insightful context for significant events and elements in our day-to-day lives that we have taken for granted. Even that well-known handshake is, or was a secret sign.

This is not to advance into the thickets of fantasy and conspiracy theory, which seem ready to engulf the Freemasons, for example, at any moment, but rather to sceptically and relentlessly chase down and accumulate relevant facts.
 
Twenty years ago, I was looking at the large, marching banners associated with trade unions and asking myself how it was they showed beehives, and angels and doves of peace. Since no-one involved in labour history could help, I started a journey which today sees me looking at what I believe is the real story of mateship in Australia.

When the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, the Sirius, Supply and the rest had on board members of various 'secret societies' - the Freemasons, the United Irish Brotherhood, and the Operative Shipwrights, and the like. There were other even less-well known societies among the convicts with their own oaths of initiation, passwords and secret signs.

Today, I call societies which have been organised in this way, 'fraternal societies'. I've found that the point of the ‘secret theatre’ conducted in ‘lodge’ rooms was precisely the maintenance of a philosophy of 'mutual aid', what we call today ‘sticking by your mates.’ Just one example to make the point – the Laws of the Princess Royal Lodge No 2, of the Ancient and Independent Order of Odd Fellows, printed in Adelaide in 1857, are introduced with words which, firstly, emphasise ‘tramping networks’:

There are a variety of unforeseen events, to occasion many an honest and deserving man to leave his family and his home in quest of employment, who after travelling one or two hundred miles, has met with no success;..Should any of this description be Oddfellows, they are relieved from the severity of such trials, and are enabled by the benevolent assistance of others to pursue their way, both creditably and comfortably, to another town, where they may apply and be again relieved, should need require.

They call each other Brother, from the strong union that subsists among them in everything connected with themselves, individually and collectively; and they are bound by a solemn obligation, not to injure anyone, either in a word or action; the same principle must operate with him out of lodge, as well as within it.4  

Today, after 200 years of deep involvement by ‘brotherhoods’, in every facet of Australian life, their common, guiding principles are commonly held to be under threat, if not rendered altogether irrelevant by changes, deliberate and accidental, to Australian society.

During those 200 years, some Australian ‘fraternities’ barely survived their day of establishment, such as the ‘Order of the Wattle Blossom’5, the ‘Order of Arossi’6 and the ‘Daughters of the Court’7. Others, surface markers of a deeply-hidden Anglo-Celtic heritage, survive only in weathered, rarely-visited indicators. Coal miners still have their 'lodges', printers have their 'chapels' and, if you know where to look, even commercial travellers will disclose evidence of the once-common, secret signs of recognition. Chinese miners, Jewish, German and Muslim shop-keepers have long had their own 'mutual benefit' societies to guard against unforeseen accidents.
Many theatre-types, singers, dancers and actors once congregated in a society known as the Improved Order of Imps. Short-term visitors, such as ‘Buffalo Bill’, a Freemason as many circus people have been, Grattan Riggs, an Irish-American actor who died at Strahan (Tasmania) and whose headstone reminds us he was a co-founder of the ‘Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks’, and the ‘Ancient Order of Frothblowers’ left marks once considered notable, but now unknown.
Before 1945, the ‘brotherhoods’ we are more likely to recognise, had evolved from being 'secret societies' treated with suspicion by governments, into such well-known organisations as private health funds, the ACTU, retirement villages and celebrations of Australia Day and Henry Lawson's birthday. Hundreds of thousands of celebrities and non-entities have been members. Les Darcy was buried as a Hibernian, Don Bradman was a well-known Freemason, as many Governors and politicians have been. The St Johns Ambulance Corps of paramedics, once ubiquitous at sporting grounds around Australia, began life in England in 1877 as the Order of St John of Jerusalem, with a Grand Prior at its head.8
The transition from secretive and under suspicion to apparently unremarkable, mainstream institution has not been casualty or conflict-free. Stellar careers have been enhanced, others derailed by their involvement with ‘fraternities’. Many families survived or bettered their level of existence only because of assistance given them by ‘the Orders’. The houses first secured by many families were purchased through fraternal societies. But all Australians have been deeply affected simply because of fraternalism’s central role in the shaping of communities and personalities, and in the playing out of the ‘modernist’ struggle between tradition and reform.

Much of the hidden history of fraternalism revolves around religious beliefs and practices. ‘Our’ fraternalism reflected our Christian heritage in its symbolism and practices, societies insisting on the highest of high moral grounds as their reason for being. Yet, ‘brothers’ competed fiercely with and often fought in the street with fellow-Christians for social, economic and political advantage. There are a number of comparatively well-known clashes between protagonists of the Orange and the Green, in Australia, but there are numerous other, less-well known examples of individual assaults and murders.

Many Australians, especially women first experienced fraternal discipline and its value system in a Juvenile Lodge, or in one of the many church-based ‘Orders’, eg, the Methodist Girls Comradeship, or the Methodist Order of Knights. These all had degree structures, regalia, and secret signs and passwords.
So, this attempt to rediscover fraternalism is much more than a feel-good exercise. Many ‘fraternals’ have claimed to be a-political, yet it is their politics which have been central to their survival. It is not surprising that a new ‘values’ debate has been triggered by conflict over the practice of Islam. Jews have been castigated by fellow-Freemasons, on occasion. In response, or because it was the natural thing to do, they established their own ‘fraternals’, such as the ‘Righteous Path’ Benefit Society. ‘Celestials’ have been beaten up if found too near an Anglo-Saxon lodge, but they chose to later represent their triads as a Masonic Society. Aborigines were sometimes initiated by the more adventurous Europeans.
Anxious, or is it far-sighted fraternalism, has also bred ‘White Australia’ policies. The Australian Natives Association, or ANA, was the major organisational force in the push for Federation. After 1901, its branches advocated numerous 'Australia First' schemes such as protection of native flora and fauna.
Temperance groups battled hotel interests for shorter drinking hours or for total prohibition, with differing degrees of success. Eight Hours Day and May Day continued a fraternal tradition of street processions, and provided a place where mate battled mate and mateship itself struggled against hostilities and prejudice of every kind.
One major question that I’ve grappled with for over 20 years - how has this amazing story escaped attention until now? – can perhaps only be answered by acknowledging its complexity and its scope.

For example: understanding of ‘our’ fraternalism, our mateship, must begin with its European origins, with the stonemason builders of the huge Gothic cathedrals, and their fellow workmen – carpenters, moulders, plasterers, quarrymen, and so on. Organised into strongly religion-based ‘combinations’, they worked together, lived and drank together and defended the city walls together. They also maintained collective standards of acceptable 'product' on the job, they inducted apprentices together and they inspected workplaces to see that all usual customs were being observed. They also maintained a watch over the number of master workmen in an industry, among other means by keeping a look out for 'strangers' who might come from outside the city to take the jobs of 'brothers'.

The other side of this coin is that because history is often turbulent, stable jobs can easily disappear and skilled workers, settled and secure one day, can find themselves looking for work the next.
Being 'on the tramp', as expressed in those 1857 Rules (above), is a constant thread linking the old and the newer parts of this story, and it's not surprising that swaggies and 'matildas' are mixed in with the folk-lore of Australian mateship. From mediaeval times, craftspeople have had to 'prove' their competence in the trade in which they sought work, and there were only two ways in which they could do this. Either by doing the work, which wasn't always practical, or by showing they had been 'accepted' into that craft at another place and that they knew the passwords, signs and secrets which went with ‘learning the misteries’. Think Dick Whittington!!

In the nineteenth century, tramping 'networks' which linked all the major towns and cities of Europe became the basis of national trade union federations, of various 'unities' of Friendly Societies and of United Grand Lodges of Freemasons.
All the fraternals continued to supply their members in Australia with 'travelling cards' and passwords until well into the 20th century. Female societies, such as the Daughters of Temperance, had their 'cards' too. In 1988, the Grand United Order of Oddfellows still listed ‘to grant aid to our brethren when travelling in search of employment’ among its major aims.9

As white populations spread out from Sydney, Hobart and Moreton Bay, they took fraternal ideas with them and wherever there was the tiniest settlement or mining camp, there was likely to be a 'lodge'. Many were accident and benefit societies, since there was no government health or insurance scheme back then. Designed, too, to alleviate the loneliness with a place to have a drink and to find company, some were deliberately intended to be active in politics or religious and social causes, such as education and domestic violence. They were the first providers of 'social capital', they helped to open railways, hospitals and bridges, employed the first doctors, and raised money for the ambulance. They established fire brigades, provided community halls and made it possible for ambitious men, and women, to attain an audience.
Fraternalism’s many aspects make its one central idea difficult to grasp, and its integrity as a single 'story’ hard to see. Even the suggestion that Freemasons and trade unions, for example, could belong to the same family seems preposterous, that both could be 'secret societies' seems absurd.

Yet, the evidence is overwhelming, and it leads to one conclusion - that our notions of 'a fair go' and 'standing by your mate' came to this country long before Gallipoli or the 1890's. It is with the first consignment of human cargo from Europe that ‘mateship’ owes its origins in this country, not a century later in the backblocks of NSW and Queensland.  

Today, people rely on 'fraternals' for assistance in their most basic of needs - work, hospital and accident crises, retirement and death - without knowing what lies behind their modern formats.

Totally forgotten are the colorful street parades and street corner confrontations, the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and the major institutions which have been built on the back of thousands of personal struggles for survival. In our ‘History’, personalities and conflicts are usually treated separately, as one offs, if treated at all, without the context which links them in an understandable whole. I happen to think the Freemasons, the United Irish Brotherhood and the Operative Shipwrights deserve special recognition and a special place in our history books, but taken together the ‘fraternals’ provide the missing context for much that we today take for granted.

Unless otherwise specified all web text is by Dr Bob James.