Chartism had an influence on the political life of goldfields society, even amongst some of those involved in the Eureka Stockade, and did so within a diverse political climate. H.C. Harris observed that the Chartist tradition in Victoria in the 1850s is best assessed as ‘an indirect undercurrent promoting faith in democratic methods and objectives, particularly concerning electoral reform.’ It is important to consider the aims of European miners in terms of the Eight Hour Day movement, Liberalism, and Trade Unionism. After all it was in Melbourne, Victoria, that the Eight Hour Day was first proclaimed, in 1856. Similarly, it was not by accident that electoral and labour reform occurred in the aftermath of the uprising at Eureka. Helen Hughes made this observation when commenting succinctly that ‘the success of the shorter hours movement cannot be accounted for without consideration of the atmosphere of social and political radicalism in Victoria during this period.’
In the tradition of the treatment of British democratic dissenters of the 1790s, a number of Chartists were transported to Australia for their political beliefs. Others, not as overtly political, were immigrants attracted to Australia by its offer of the political autonomy not available to them in Britain. Invariably, some found their way to the Victorian goldfields, and it was through them that echoes of Chartism could be found in the egalitarian attitudes and the social transformation of the goldfields, particularly in the theme of the world turned upside down – an inversion of the social order that is readily associated with the gold rush era. Ernest Scott has argued that the Ballarat Reform League agenda was essentially a variant of Chartism modified for a Victorian context.
