Captain Swing, the Phantom of Workplace Resistance – Did He Ever Come to Australia?
- Brian AJ Newman LLB
- Jan 14
- 3 min read
Every labour movement has its ghosts.
In England, his name was Captain Swing. In Australia, he was never named — but he was felt.
This article asks a deliberately uncomfortable question:
"Was Captain Swing ever a feature of Australian workplace disputes — and if not by name, then by function?"
The answer goes to the heart of how worker resistance has always been framed by power.
Captain Swing: a warning from history
Captain Swing emerged in 1830 England, not as a person, but as a collective threat. Agricultural workers, crushed by enclosure, starvation wages, church tithes, and the mechanisation of their labour, fought back the only way they could.
They smashed machines.
They burned property.
They sent letters.
And they signed them:
“Captain Swing”
There was no captain. No leader. No single author. That was the point.
Captain Swing was a shared name, a way to act collectively while denying the state its favourite weapon: identifying, isolating, and destroying ringleaders. The authorities panicked. The repression was savage. Hundreds were hanged, imprisoned, or transported — many to Australia.
Captain Swing was never caught, because he was never one man.
He was hunger.
He was fear.
He was solidarity.
Australia: no Captain Swing — but the same accusation
Australia never saw letters signed “Captain Swing” nailed to barn doors. But the logic of Captain Swing arrived early and never left.
Whenever workers:
acted collectively,
refused arbitration,
challenged property over profit,
or stepped outside “approved” industrial channels,
Australian authorities reached for the same explanation used in England:
There must be a hidden agitator.
A secret organiser.
A phantom force stirring the men.
The language changes. The fear does not.
Enter the IWW: Australia’s real “Captain Swing”
If Australia had a Captain Swing, it was not a man — it was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
The IWW rejected leaders, parliament, and respectability politics. They believed workers should organise as a class, not as individuals begging the state for relief. Their slogans were blunt. Their methods terrified employers. Their anonymity was deliberate.
To government and press, this made them dangerous.
Not because they burned buildings — but because they refused to play the game.
Like Captain Swing, the IWW became a phantom enemy:
blamed for unrest,
accused of conspiracy,
charged not for acts, but for ideas.
The Sydney Twelve: Australia’s Captain Swing moment
The clearest expression of this fear came in Sydney, 1916, with the prosecution of the Sydney Twelve — members of the IWW accused of treason, sedition, sabotage, and conspiracy.
They were charged during wartime hysteria, amid industrial unrest, labour shortages, and unexplained fires. Evidence was thin. Ideology was treated as guilt.
The men commonly identified as the Sydney Twelve include:
Donald Grant
Bill Beattie
Tom Glynn
William Burns
Harry Hooton
Montague (Monty) Miller
Charles Reeve
Ted Moyle
William Anderson
Frank Franz
James McPherson
John Turner
They were not convicted because they lit matches.
They were convicted because they refused obedience.
Just as Captain Swing terrified English landlords, the IWW terrified Australian governments because it suggested something unthinkable:
Workers do not need permission to resist.
Why this still matters
Captain Swing was never about arson.
He was about who gets blamed when workers stop accepting misery quietly.
Then, as now, the story goes like this:
wages fall,
conditions deteriorate,
workers push back,
and power insists there must be a sinister hand behind it all.
Not hunger, Not exploitation, Not injustice.
A phantom ....
In England, they called him Captain Swing. In Australia, they called him the IWW.
Today, they call him “illegal action,” “outside agitators,” or “militant elements.”
Same story. Different decade.
Final thought
Captain Swing never sailed into Sydney Harbour.
But his shadow has walked Australian workplaces for nearly two centuries — every time workers are told their anger is illegitimate unless it is polite, slow, and harmless.
History tells us something important:
When workers move together, power always invents a ghost to blame.
If you want next steps, I can:
sharpen this further into a call-to-action piece
localise it specifically to Sydney waterfront struggles
or align it explicitly with modern union law and repression narratives
Just say where you want to take it.
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