Summary

Note: This object includes white superiority messaging. Such attitudes and beliefs are not condoned by Museums Victoria which considers them to be racist. Historical distance and context do not excuse or erase this fact.

Horseshoe-shaped badge with chain ring issued by the Amalgamated Carpenters & Joiners Australasia, manufactured by G.A. Miller, Sydney. The Australian District of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners was first registered in 1911. By the end of 1922 the title of the union had been amended to become the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters & Joiners of Australia.

Some carpenters had felt that the relationship between their Australian union and the British Amalgamated Society of Carpenter and Joiners (ASCJ) was too strong, and established an independent Australian union, the Progressive Society of Carpenters and Joiners in the 1870s. This division in the Australian carpenters union was not healed until the 1920 when the Australian ASCJ broke off links with the parent union in Britain. In 1945 is name was changed to the Building Workers' Industrial Union of Australia.

The frequent use of a white map of Australia as the iconography for badges, medals, published materials and more, reinforced the desire of governments and organisations to create a trade-protected, white, predominantly British population. It also erases any presence of First Peoples and their rights, heritage, culture and sovereignty.

This badge provides an example of the popular promotion of the White Australia sentiment which dominated Australian immigration policy after Federation and which was particularly promoted by unions.

Physical Description

Horseshoe-shaped badge with chain ring. Blue enamelling on horseshoe, over which is inscribed: 'Amalgamated Carpenters & Joiners Australasia'. Set within the horseshoe is a white enamelled map of Australia, with the six states inscribed.

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