Workers’ Assembly Halls (Australia)

Description

Workers’ Assembly Halls is a proposed transnational serial nomination that is representative of the global phenomenon of mass organisation of workers by the international democratic labour movement in the context of industrialisation during the formative period of working-class internationalism from 1850 to 1950. Purpose-built and established by international democratic labour movements from the 1850s onwards, the tradition continues with new workers’ assembly halls still being built today. They are located in proximity to industrial zones or directly related to developing industrial areas and were always managed by international democratic labour movements. They were self-confident in architectural expression and intended to stand out in the surroundings, thereby signalling a permanent presence of the international democratic labour movement. The buildings continue to function as meeting places with public access, either in direct continuation or in clear relation to their original purpose. They are in a good state of conservation and still retain the layout and floorplan of their original function. This includes meeting rooms of various sizes, service areas, offices, often kitchens and sometimes apartments, printing press, cooperative businesses, or other sources of income. Decorations and architectural features intended to motivate a sense of community are also preserved.

Name(s) of the component part(s)

Broken Hill Trades Hall
Lat: -31.9579594726 Long: 141.4631474830
Victorian Trades Hall
Lat: -37.80747 Long: 144.96645

Description of the component part(s)

Broken Hill Trades Hall  

Broken Hill Trades Hall was constructed between 1898 and 1905. It is built of stone and rendered and painted masonry. It consists of two floors with an iron mansard roof. The building contains offices and meeting rooms on the ground and first floors, the latter accessed by a stairway leading off the entrance foyer. Stained glass windows feature flower motifs honouring the British Isles origins of early miners. The main feature of the building is a large meeting hall, which has a high ceiling painted in shades of pink and green in a geometrical pattern, supported by surprisingly delicate trusses, with a timber floor and fan-light windows. The entrance to the meeting hall features a stained glass window with Australian native flora surrounding an oval with the words “unity” and “friendship” and two hands gripped in a handshake at the centre. At the back of the building, a bare concrete space marks the site of a former boxing ring, which was once surrounded by timber grandstands. 

Broken Hill Trades Hall also houses a substantial collection of moveable cultural heritage, including documents, records, badges, flags, paintings and other material of great significance to the building and the trade union movement in Broken Hill and Australia.  

The Hall is one of the most substantial buildings in Broken Hill, a tangible manifestation of its importance to the history of the labour movement in Australia and globally.  

Victorian Trades Hall

The Victorian Trades Hall is believed to be the oldest workers’ hall in the world still used by trade unions and is certainly the oldest of its kind in Australia.[i] Initially a modest timber structure erected in 1859, the Hall was rebuilt in stages between 1874 and 1925. Further additions were undertaken in the 1960s.[ii] Construction of the Hall was funded by the trade unions and their members, who had come together to establish the original Trades Hall Committee and its successor, the Trades Hall Council.[iii] 

The land on which the Victorian Trades Hall sits was granted by the Victorian Government in 1858, after petitioning by the trade unions who recognised the need for a dedicated space. The site occupies a prominent corner at the intersection of Victoria and Lygon Streets on the edge of Melbourne’s central business district. The sections constructed between 1874 and 1925 are completed in a consistent classical revival style, typical of large institutional buildings in Melbourne in the nineteenth century.[iv] The building is considered an outstanding example of nineteenth century craftsmanship, owing to its union-associated builders priding themselves on employment of the best local materials and skills for a building that served the purposes of the workers’ movement.[v]

The building is predominantly two stories and constructed from rendered masonry set on a basalt foundation. The two street-facing facades bear repetitive giant-order Corinthian pilasters, surmounted by a solid parapet decorated with orbs. The Lygon Street frontage is dominated by a central Corinthian portico supported by eight columns, flanked by two three-storey stair towers. The use of eight columns is a symbolic reference to the eight- hour movement, which was integral to trade unionism in Victoria following the early achievement of an eight-hour day in 1856. This symbolism continues throughout the building, with the number eight featuring across fixtures, fittings, and decorations. 

One of the most prominent rooms in the Victorian Trades Hall is the Old Council Chamber, opened in 1884, which features a striking decorative scheme of stencil work and hand painted friezes, complete with cameo portraits of men considered influential in the union movement. The ceiling is encircled by a band of Greek key pattern, with painted medallions of female figures in the corners. Further painted lunettes sit above the doorways. The U-shape seating arrangement alludes to a parliamentary chamber, evidencing the hope that the Victorian Trades Hall would become a ‘Parliament of the People’.[vi] A later two-storey Council Chamber (Solidarity Hall) was developed in the 1890s, in response to a demand for further accommodation. Partly destroyed in 1963 and subsequently renovated, the room was refurbished in 2019 with extensive original murals now uncovered. Social and professional spaces are accommodated within the building, including a ballroom and offices originally allocated to the individual trade unions.

Throughout the building interior and exterior are painted murals, plaques, honour rolls, sculptures and other memorials that commemorate members and events in the history of Victorian trade unions. The Victorian Trades Hall building retains a significant presence in its immediate environs, and demonstrates the important and constant societal roles workers’ movements and trade unionism have had in Australia and internationally since the nineteenth century.

[i]  Kellaway C (1988) Melbourne Trades Hall Lygon Street Carlton: the workingman's parliament, Victorian Trades Hall Council, Carlton:1.

[ii] Lovell Chen (2016) Trades Hall – 54 Victoria Street, Carlton Conservation Management Plan

[unpublished document], Victorian Trades Hall Council:7.

[iii] Kellaway 1988:3; Rich J (1993) Victorian Building Workers and Unions 1856-90, [unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University:283.

[iv] Goad P (ed) (2004) Bates Smart: 150 Years of Australian Architecture, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne: 44.

[v]  Victorian Heritage Register database, ‘Trades Hall’, Victorian Heritage Register number H0663.

[vi]  Kellaway 1988:3-5; Brigden C (2005), ‘Creating Labour's Space: The Case of the Melbourne Trades Hall’, Labour History:127,132

Justification of Outstanding Universal Value

Workers’ Assembly Halls is a transnational series that bears eloquent testimony to the development of the international democratic labour movement and its impact on societies on a universal scale. It comprises the most significant examples of a distinctive type of multifunctional building which is the most tangible expression of the cultural tradition of the international labour movement. The halls were designed and built by this movement, independent from the state, during the formative period of working-class internationalism from 1850 to 1950. They were physically, and symbolically, fundamental to the mass organisation of workers.

The social and cultural phenomenon of the international democratic labour movement was self-organisation as a response to industrialisation and industrial capitalism. It became increasingly globalised from the mid-19th century and gained significant impetus during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to serve as a platform for the establishment of both trade union and political labour movements. These movements profoundly shaped our modern world.

The distinct building typology of a workers’ assembly hall is recognisable by its architectural form and function. Foremost, multifunctionality and the ability to accommodate large groups of people were central to the success of mass organisation, while high-quality and imposing architecture was used to reflect national and period styles and to instil pride and belonging. The halls were strategically placed in industrialised centres. A large and commonly ornate main hall provided for assemblies, political meetings, and communal events. Additional facilities typically included kitchens and communal dining rooms, educational classrooms for workers and their families, libraries and reading rooms, and numerous offices for trade unions and workers’ clubs accessed on multiple storeys via staircases and hallways. Some were international models.

The multifunctional workers’ assembly hall was part of the daily lives of the working class in Europe, Australia, the Americas and with examples in Africa and Asia, and lay at the centre of their collective political, social, educational, and cultural activity. Core values of equality and democracy, community and solidarity, welfare, identity, and belonging empowered workers to unite and improve all aspects of life.

Criterion (iii): Workers’ Assembly Halls bears exceptional testimony to the cultural tradition of the international democratic labour movement, which flourished during the formative period of working-class internationalism from 1850 to 1950. A group of the most significant assembly halls are some of the most tangible monuments to the development of the labour movement and its universality.

The buildings bear testimony to the establishment and development of the international democratic labour movement as a political, social, and cultural framework for the lives of workers. As sites for a multitude of activities and the daily workings of associations, the buildings both concretely and symbolically testify to how the international democratic labour movement offered a community and a new identity to millions of people uprooted by processes of industrialisation. Central aspects of the cultural tradition of the international democratic labour movement are:

• The expression of a universal longing for emancipation, belonging, and dignity of workers through mass organisation.
• The principle of self-organisation as a central to achieving the ideals of freedom, liberty, and solidarity.
• The education and training of workers to take part in democratic dialogue.

Throughout its development, the international democratic labour movement has fought for and achieved significant rights for workers. These include the 8-hour workday, holiday bonuses, access to healthcare, labour leave, equal pay for equal work, and maternity protection. The progressive attainment of these rights by the working-class reflects the evolution of societies in relation to production systems, as well as the vital role that labour unions play in safeguarding dignified working conditions. The buildings comprising this transnational serial nomination bear living testimony to the struggles of workers for labour rights and the ongoing defence of these rights to enhance the quality of life for workers. 

Criterion (iv): Workers’ Assembly Halls is an outstanding example of a type of building which illustrates a significant stage in human history, that of the international mass organisation of workers by labour movements, independent of the state, from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. These multifunctional buildings were central to the establishment of both trade union and political labour movements that profoundly shaped democracy, welfare, and workers’ rights.

These buildings bear physical testimony to the main features of organisational and identity-shaping efforts of the globally distributed international democratic labour movement in the context of the dramatic and unprecedented processes of industrialisation, population increase, and urbanisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These were:

• Collectivism and multifunctionality in both physical and immaterial terms as central to the success of mass organisation.
• The importance of self-governed physical meeting-places as central to identity building among workers.
• Presence in industrial centres and central in working-class cultural landscape.
• The emergence of a type of building and the need to claim space.

Criterion (vi): Workers’ Assembly Halls is directly and tangibly associated with ideas, events, achievements, and living traditions of the international democratic labour movement and its outstanding universality across continents. The human rights of workers to freely associate and organise, the development of trade unions and labour political parties, the 8-hour day movement, and May Day celebrations, are examples that are joined by others.

Workers’ Assembly Halls is of outstanding universal significance for their manifest association with and architectural reflection of central ideas and beliefs about the path to popular emancipation, welfare, and justice for workers promoted by the labour movement on a global scale. Established around the call for unity among workers, they embody ideas about social relations and the conditions of wage labour highly influential on the development of societies across the world. These included:

• The idea of workers as a particular class in society defined by the relationship between capital and labour, reflected in the construction of assembly buildings as whole-of-life environments.
• The belief in formal organisation and formal democratic institutions as a pre-requisite for the emancipation of workers, reflected in the flexible and multifunctional layout of assembly buildings.
• The transformational influence of mass organisation of the international democratic labour movement on societies.
• Events in Workers’ Assembly Halls and effect on society and the cultural expression of the working-class heritage.

Statements of authenticity and/or integrity

Authenticity 

Workers’ Assembly Halls has high authenticity overall, especially regarding form and design, material, substance, use and function. Buildings have been extended and modified to accommodate core functions associated with the contemporary evolution of the labour movement and its changing needs, while still retaining substantial original form and architectural detail. Some halls retain their original function while others have assumed compatible cultural functions, continuing important parts of the original role of the building.

Broken Hill Trades Hall  

The Broken Hill Trades Hall has been continuously used for industrial purposes since being constructed. Built as a Workers’ Assembly Hall, it remains one. The built form of the Hall is relatively unchanged. Subsequent additions complement the original industrial purpose of the Hall.   

The built fabric of the Hall contains many original features relating to trade union politics and organisation as well as everyday life and custom. These include thematic stained glasswork throughout the building, banners of the affiliated unions, exterior ornaments and decorations, rendered stone painted with ornamental mouldings and other ornate features including a mansard roof in a European style. The original building directories and letter boxes remain intact.  

Intangible heritage of community and labour continues in the present day. Trade unions still have offices, social functions still continue, political organisation still takes place. The Hall is home to significant industrial victories including the 35-hour week in Australia, globally significant strikes of varying degrees of success, as well as world-leading improvements to national working conditions.  

The Broken Hill Trades Hall Trust, which owns the building, maintains internationally significant collections of material culture at the Hall, reflecting both its centrality to Broken Hill’s industrial history and its significance to social, educational and sporting priorities. 

The material is extensive and varied, including banners, art works and illuminated addresses (presentation certificates), posters and honour boards, photographs, sporting memorabilia, dance and theatre programs, badges, ribbons and other union regalia, scab effigies and other strike paraphernalia – a collection that serves as an appropriate counterpoint to parallel archival collections, covering not just the activities of the Barrier Industrial Councilthe peak body for Trade Unions in Broken Hill, and the Trades Hall but also many affiliate unions and social organizations, with the earliest material dating from the formative years of unionism at Broken Hill. 

While nationally significant, these collections are equally compelling as primary documents of the international labour movement. The Trades Hall banners include an example of the work of George Tuthill, the famed British banner making firm. Its pamphlets, leaflets and correspondence include appeals supporting the release from goal in California in the 1920s of labour organizer Tom Mooney, while local Trades Hall-sponsored groups also participated, half a hemisphere away, in agitation for Irish independence. Binding this international focus together is the recurrent emphasis on industrial health and safety, construed both in a local and an international context. Job reports, draft legislation, posters, correspondence and conference proceedings over decades generated in Broken Hill, the USA, South Africa and Great Britain reflect the power of agitation for industrial reform as well as the efficiency and scope of union networks across the world.  

Victorian Trades Hall

The site of the Victorian Trades Hall has remained in use by trade unions since it was received by government grant in 1858, with the first building opened in the following year.[i] Construction commenced on the present building in 1874 and was completed in 1925 (with additions in the 1960s), and retains the key spaces that demonstrate its ongoing, original use. 

The Victorian Trades Hall is a well-preserved example of its type, having undergone little substantial change since its 1925 completion. Externally, the building retains its original appearance with rendered masonry with decorative pilasters, stringcourses, cornicing, parapet, and orbs. The portico with Corinthian columns, flanked by two stair towers, remain the dominant features of the building as intended. Many aspects that explicitly relate to trade unionism and the workers’ movements remain visible, including various painted murals, plaques, honour rolls and commemorative sculptures.

The staged construction demonstrates both the initial overarching vision for the institution, and the ability for the organisation to achieve this as it grew in strength and financial capacity. As the building has continued to be occupied by the Victorian Trades Hall Council and remains in use by unions and associated entities, all changes that have been undertaken relate directly to changes in the way parts of the organised labour movement have operated throughout history in Victoria.

The number eight, which symbolically references the eight-hour day movement, is visible across the site in fixtures, fittings and decorations. Ephemera connected with the building’s ongoing use, such as name plates on doors and directive signage, remain in place. Many of the internal spaces bear testament to their constant use, perhaps best illustrated by the worn treads on the stone staircase built in 1882. The collection of materials relating to both the history of the site and trade unionism in Australia, some of which is on display, is of international importance for its ability to inform the global understanding of workers’ movements since the nineteenth century. 

The Victorian Trades Hall’s physical spaces support elements of intangible heritage. As an operating Trades Hall, the building sees a continuation of day-to-day use in union organisation and political activism, and provides spaces for education and social events. The continued use of the building itself as a vehicle for political messaging, including the display of banners on the prominent street corner, remains an important tradition.

Conservation works undertaken in the late 2010s and early 2020s have uncovered important decorative work that relates directly to the building’s social history and enhances its authenticity. The retention of the entire parcel of land granted by the government for use as a Trades Hall is notable, and evidences the importance of the labour movement and its early political influence.

Integrity  

Workers’ Assembly Halls comprises a series of monuments that constitute a single property that fulfils the overall condition of integrity. In terms of size and wholeness as a coherent group, the series contains the most significant examples of workers’ assembly halls, worldwide, that are the most tangible expression of the cultural tradition of the international democratic labour movement and its global spread. The halls span the formative period of working-class internationalism from 1850 to 1950 and contain all cultural and architectural attributes necessary to convey proposed Outstanding Universal Value. There are no extant threats from development or neglect.

Some additional workers’ assembly halls, as revealed in comparative analysis, may have the potential to enhance specific aspects of integrity of the overall series, especially in terms of history of the international democratic labour movement, its geo-cultural reach, other aspects of internationalism, and variations in architectural form, function, and style. States parties that collaborated on their shared Tentative List entries welcome other States Parties that wish to consider the possibility of joining an incremental serial transnational nomination.

Broken Hill Trades Hall 

The Broken Hill Trades Hall has been continuously in use as a Workers’ Assembly Hall since its construction. 

The Hall was constructed in stages between 1898 and 1905, with provision for a large meeting hall and offices for affiliated unions. Additions between 1904-95 added a lobby and stairwell to further upstairs meeting rooms and, beyond that, an attic level for storage, masked by the steep Mansard roof. 

A supper room was constructed adjacent to the main hall in 1910 and, ultimately, a range of offices were commissioned along the Hall’s Blende Street perimeter, complemented between 1913-1914 by a caretaker’s cottage and a separate band hall for the Amalgamated Miners Association (AMA). 

An open space immediately behind the main hall became known as the Quadrangle, used variously for meetings, concerts and, between the world wars, as a boxing venue. 

The Trades Hall and its related buildings, as completed in 1914, remain essentially intact, in terms of use and purpose, and of architecture and design. 

The Barrier Industrial Council, the Town Employees Union and the Mining and Energy Union (successor to the AMA) continue to occupy offices at the Hall and other unions use it for meetings. The main hall hosts a variety of industrial, political and social functions and while the Australian Labor Party no longer retains an office it, too, continues to use the Hall. 

The facade of the building remains intact and unmodified, as is the original floor plan and internal layout as envisaged more than a century ago.  

Interior decoration and ornamentation also remain intact, particularly the hall’s stained-glass panels which acknowledge the British origins of Broken Hill unionism and the new identity of Australian unionism. The original decorative finish of the main hall has been refreshed under heritage supervision. 

The Hall’s integrity in architecture and purpose is matched by an equivalent integrity in terms of the building’s civic purpose. A handsome, multi-storied building, topped by an impressive Mansard roof, was designed to impose itself upon its immediate urban environment, emphasizing the stability and importance of trade unionism and acting as a counterpoint to a range of public buildings one street away. It succeeded in this purpose when constructed: it succeeds today. 

The constancy of the Hall’s use and its continuing alignment with its original design and purpose draw heavily upon the deep commitment of unionists to ‘their’ Hall. Close attention was paid to the conceptualization, design and execution of each stage of the building, as minutes and correspondence in the Trades Hall Archives attest. A union official or a striking mineworker from a century ago could today walk into the Hall and orient themselves without difficulty. There are more photographs and displays in the hall today, but by referencing past struggles and social events these serve to reinforce the fact that the essential integrity of the Hall is intact.

Victorian Trades Hall

The Trades Hall demonstrates the key characteristics of the Workers’ Assembly Hall building typology, as it developed within the Australian context. The functional integrity of the building is supported by elements that indicate its ongoing use by the Trades Hall Council and associated unions, for whom it was built. These include specific spaces like the fireproof banner room, the early Council Chamber with its parliamentary-style arrangement, and Solidarity Hall, all of which relate to the function of the Council and the unions. The retention of other original or early spatial arrangements, such as the rooms provided for individual unions and social events, reflects the high level of integrity of the building and its multifunctionality.

The architectural style and scale of the building are typical of public institutions erected in Melbourne in the same period, reflecting the aspirations and self-perception of those in the early labour movement, who believed that an organisation embodying their cause would take a prominent position in society. The prominent siting of the Hall and low scale development in the immediate environs allow it to retain a sense of the physical presence intended in its design. Much of the surrounding area is controlled under a Buffer Zone established for the nearby World Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens in 2007, which has ensured the ongoing low-scale character of the neighbourhood to the north and east of the Trades Hall. A strong visual relationship present between the Hall and the nearby Eight Hour Day monument is also retained.

Memorials and memorabilia visible across the site, both internally and externally, evidence an ongoing connection with the trade unions associated with the hall and their members. These provide an insight into the ideals of the labour movement, such as democracy, equality and solidarity amongst workers, and the key traditions of remembrance that developed in association with these ideals. Other ongoing traditions include the use of the building itself as a vehicle for causes and political statements by the labour movement, such as the flying of a (once illegal) red flag from the tower, and installation of large banners on the prominent corner.

The building can thus be understood as the physical manifestation of the ideals, values and purpose of the organised labour movement in Australia, both in a physical and aspirational sense.

Justification of the selection of the component part(s) in relation to the future nomination as a whole

Component parts have been selected as the most authentic and integral examples of workers’ assembly halls, nationally and internationally, with special consideration of the contribution that each component part is able to make to the series as a whole and thus overall integrity.

Broken Hill Trades Hall 

The Broken Hill Trades Hall and its associated building belong to the epoch of globalization and mass immigration that commenced after 1870. 

By the late 19^th century there were several global hotspots that developed in the wake of the English-speaking diaspora that became the crossroads of industrial radicalism. In Australia this would be Broken Hill, in South Africa, Johannesburg and the Rand. In North America a string of hard-rock mining communities in the American mid-west served a similar purpose. The radicalism of these communities and their politics were sustained by a generation of itinerant mineworkers who travelled globally and mixed their employment with industrial politics between the turn of the 20^th century and the years following the First World War. 

While the Broken Hill Trades Hall stands in comparison with its peers in this serial nomination, it is unique in critical respects. It is a large, ornate industrial and cultural building in a remote mining community in a remote country. By way of comparison, Broken Hill is as far in distance from its state capital, Sydney, as Paris is from Warsaw and as far from Melbourne, the source of mining capital and much recruitment, as Brussels is from Munich. There are examples of miners riding bicycles hundreds of miles on unmade tracks to seek employment in the Broken Hill mines. In this respect, the scale and influence of the Broken Hill Trades Hall reflects the triumph of an emerging labour movement over the tyranny of distance. The integrated nature of the building and its function as a social and political reference point for the community emphasizes not only the significance of a building of such scale and importance in such a geographically remote location but also provides an insight into the dynamics of emigration, technology and ideology that represent the intangible foundations of the building. 

The international dimension of Broken Hill is apparent from the earliest days of unionism. In 1889 local unionists contributed £1000 to support striking London dockworkers. In return, one of the dockers’ leaders, Ben Tillett, laid the foundation stone of the future Trades Hall in 1898, while another leader, Tom Mann, would later spend years organizing in Broken Hill, culminating in the bitter 1909 strike.  

The Broken Hill Trades Hall transcends its core industrial purpose in a way matched by few other public buildings in Australasia. Through the deep immersion of the Trades Hall and its unions in the daily patterns and rhythms of life in Broken Hill – itself a product of remoteness and isolation – this site represents a unique example of the global penetration of international labour and its social aspirations. 

Victorian Trades Hall

The Victorian Trades Hall is believed to be the oldest continuously operating Workers’ Assembly Hall in the world. It provides exceptional testimony to the spread of the labour movement around the world from the middle of the nineteenth century, often as a result of British colonial and commercial expansion. Its foundation was a direct result of the struggle for the eight-hour workday by stone masons in Melbourne in 1856, one of the world’s first successful eight-hour campaigns in the world. The eight-hour movement was a manifestation of the worldwide growth of the workers’ movement in response to the depredations of industrial capitalism.

Two globally significant types of mass population movement were important to this development of the workers’ movement in Australia, and are reflected in the Victorian Trades Hall: the transportation of convicts, and gold rush migration. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, until 1868, convict transportation to the Australian colonies brought tens of thousands of convicted prisoners. Amongst those transported to the penal colonies were democratic reformers (such as Chartists), rural labour protestors, Irish freedom fighters and socialists. These people brought with them ideas that helped lay the foundations for workers' rights movements in the fledgling Australian colonies.[i] 

The discovery of gold in Victoria in the 1850s brought masses of working-class people to the colony, particularly from the United Kingdom, but also from continental Europe, China and the United States of America amongst others. Many of those arriving in Victoria, seeking to improve their circumstances, had also been exposed to workers’ movements and ideologies in their home countries. The burst of wealth from gold and sudden population influx led to a rapid expansion of the local economy and its role in global trade. This unprecedented economic growth and the attraction of workers to the goldfields meant high demand for labour in Melbourne. It is within this context that workers leveraged their position to improve employment conditions, often via protests and strikes.[ii]

The adoption by the Victorian eight-hours movement of the British utopian socialist Robert Owen’s slogan “eight hours work, eight hours recreation, and eight hours rest” firmly and consciously placed the Australian unionists within the international struggle for labour rights. As such, the Victorian Trades Hall stands as a unique monument not only to the spread of industrial capitalism but to the effort by the labour movement to ameliorate it – or, in some instances, to overthrow it – in the interests of the working class.

The building provides an outstanding example of the way that the early labour movement sought to create a whole-of-life environment for its members, at a time when workers were mostly excluded or prevented from participation in the formal political system, received only limited education, and had very few welfare services provided by the state. The Victorian Trades Hall demonstrates the importance of this multifunctionality in a particularly authentic way. From its earliest days until the present, the Victorian Trades Hall has been the location for the development of a distinctive working class and labour movement culture, with spaces for industrial, political, entertainment, educational and cultural activities.

The building features its original Council Chamber, laid out in the style of a Westminster parliamentary chamber, reflecting its purpose as the “workers’ parliament” where

democratic resolutions could be made to organise workers and address issues facing the working class.[iii]  This was particularly important given that many workers, such as those belonging to the all-female Tailoresses’ Association of Melbourne, were excluded from the electoral franchise at that time. Cultural and educational pursuits were encouraged through a variety of programs housed at the site, including an Artisans School of Design and a union radio station. The ongoing diversity of use attests to the building’s key purpose as a hub of social, political and industrial organising.

The grandeur of the Victorian Trades Hall building and its ornate interior decoration reveal a concerted effort to advance the interests of workers as a class worthy of respect for their contribution to the development of modern society. The intactness of the building, the scale of its ambition, and its continued use as the home of trade unionism in Victoria, made it a model for other workers’ halls, and make it of global significance as an example of the Workers’ Assembly Hall.

[i] Monash University (2023), Conviction Politics: A digital investigation of the convict routes of Australian democracy, www.convictionpolitics.web.app.

[ii]  Australian Council of Trade Unions (2023) History of Australian unions, www.actu.org.au; Bridgen 2005:130.

[iii] Kellaway 1988:3,5; Brigden 2005:127,132

Comparison with other similar properties

The transnational serial nomination of Workers’ Assembly Halls responds to the relative absence of “popular” sites on the World Heritage List, that is, sites associated with ordinary people and their long struggle for recognition. In more recent years, the List has been improved by the addition of industrial heritage sites, including Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, the Derwent Valley Mills and Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape in the United Kingdom, Volklingen Ironworks in Germany, the Wouda Pumping Station in the Netherlands, and several more. Other sites, such as the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, Australia, reflect the development of industrialisation and trade throughout the world in the 19th century. 

What these industrial sites have in common is an emphasis on the development of industrial technology and economic processes, important themes to a World Heritage List that tries to accurately represent the motive forces behind the development of human cultures. What the Workers’ Assembly Hall nomination does is focus on the people that made these technological and economic processes possible, providing the social, political and cultural context, and showing how those processes were shaped by, and in turn shaped, the actions of ordinary people. Studies of Workers’ Assembly Halls and the research done for this nomination project show that thousands of workers’ assembly halls were built around the world on the initiative of local union organisations across a substantial period of time since the late 19th century and well into the 20th century and beyond. A large number of these have been refurbished or rebuilt, while others have been lost. Thus, only a few buildings have retained their integrity and connection to their original purpose as assembly halls.