an old black and white photo of a procession of people walking along a street outside a hotel with text on their roof that reads Royal Hotel
Procession at Mt Morgans during the Beer Strike, 1903

Beer Strikes: A History of Hotel Boycotts in Australia, 1900-1920

Introduction

The tactic of ‘boycotting’ individuals, businesses and organisations by ostracizing them, refusing to supply them, or to purchase their products, dates back millennia. Mainly associated today with lifestyle choices and large scale environmental, union and anti-discrimination campaigns, historically boycotts in Australia were often localized, community based campaigns focused on industrial disputes and the cost of living.

Traditionally many Australian boycotts in regional areas targeted pubs and other alcohol based venues. Popularly known as “beer strikes” these involved drinkers refusing to patronize some or all of the hotels in a locality until their demands were met. The outcomes of these campaigns including reductions in the price of alcohol, food and accommodation as well as improving their quality and the wages and conditions of those working within hotels. To find out more about the history of these events, and the dynamics and uses of boycotts more broadly, check out the resources below.

Watch Video

In this presentation Iain McIntyre discusses the grievances that gave life to early “beer strike” campaigns, who was involved in them, how they were typically carried out and their outcomes. It is based on a talk given at the 2022 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History conference.

Read Article

In November 2024 Labour History published ‘Parching for Principle: Hotel Boycotts in Regional Australia, 1901–20’ by Iain McIntyre. It can be downloaded here or purchased here. The article provides an in-depth study of the nature, dynamics and growth of a set of consumer boycotts in early twentieth-century Australia. It examines how campaigners created and adapted a body of tactics and forms of organisation between 1901 and 1920, to the point where beer strikes became an established and recurring form of contestation. Identifying beer strikes as a primarily regional tactic, it also sheds new light on consumer activism outside of cities. It finds that beer strikes had continuities with other forms of working-class activism: making use of methods of organisation rooted in unions and in labour politics, and drawing on modern adaptions of ideas concerning “fair” prices and rightful compensation for work. It discusses the dynamics involved in successful boycotts and demonstrates that they played a greater role in Australian working-class distributive and consumer struggles than has been previously acknowledged.

 

Cover of Labour History journal that features a cartoon regarding beer strikes.
The cover of Labour History #127. It features a 1911 cartoon from the Tamworth Daily Observer canvasing possible responses to a forthcoming increase in the price of beer. The town’s first documented beer strike occurred three years later. Copyright Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.

  • Author:
  • Location: Australia
  • Release Date: 2022
  • Content length: 20:28 mins

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