1892 Broken Hill miners' strike

The 1892 Broken Hill miners' strike was a sixteen-week strike which was one of four major strikes that took place between 1889 and 1920 in Broken Hill, NSW, Australia.

During the four months from July to November 1892, both local miners and Women's Brigade were active in defending the mines from imported labour using organised direct action methods.

The strike collapsed after several strike leaders were arrested and tried for 'unlawful conspiracy and inciting riots', found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment and it became unpracticable for locals to defend the mines from imported labour.

Broken Hill developed as a mining town in the arid north-west of New South Wales near the Barrier Ranges after Charles Rasp, then a boundary rider/station hand for the Mount Gipps sheep station studied a 'black craggy hilltop' which he believed to contain black oxide of tin. The first shaft (the Rasp Shaft) was sunk on this hill in January 1885 with the Broken Hill Mining Company formed on 25 April, becoming The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited on 3 June 1885. It is for this hill (since mined away) that the town is named.

The original introduction of unionism in the area was through a meeting at the Adelaide Club Hotel in Silverton on 20 September 1884 with the resolution 'That this meeting deem it advisable to form a Miners' Association, to be called the Barrier Ranges Miners' Association' and with the object to form 'a Friendly Society, to afford succor to members who sustained injury as the result of a mining accident.

Following the adoption of Trade Union Acts throughout Australian states in this decade, a further meeting was held at Silverton on 12 January 1886 where it was decided to reconstitute the organisation as branch of the Amalgamated Miners' Association of Australasia. The branch was later transferred to Broken Hill where the mining population had grown to 3000. At this time it was estimated that unionists out-numbered non-unionists in the town by a factor of 7:1.

Broken Hill's first mining strike occurred in 1889 as a result of the trade union ultimatum that members not be made to work with non-unionised workers. The strike lasted a week and during this time the Women's Brigade was formed. In the following year, in an attempt to achieve 100% unionism for Australian workers, major strikes of the Maritime unions and Shearing unions erupted. While mining shut down as a result of the wharf closures preventing supplies from reaching Broken Hill, the maritime dispute ended in defeat and work resumed at Broken Hill within the month

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