Scared by the anti-union and terror laws? Repression isn’t new in this country.

Early colonial Australia kept its army of convicts under control through draconion laws and fear of the lash. In Bathurst alone, 11,380 lashes were administered between February and July 1836.

But the convicts also resisted. Surgeon Bowes complained that even floggings didn’t cow the women prisoners of the First Fleet. Once land, some convicts absconded. Bushrangers became rampant in Van Dieman’s Land, where the common people heroised them. When Mathew Brady was captured in 1826, ‘his cell was filled every day with visitors bringing baskets of flowers, fan letters, fruit and fresh-baked cakes. If his fate had been decided by vote, he would have gone free...’

Bushranging blossomed in NSW after the 1819 Bigge enquiry brought a crackdown in convict discipline. One of the most remarkable cases was Ralph Entwhistle’s 1829 rebellion at Bathurst.

Transported for stealing clothes and assigned to serve a free settler, Ralph started out as a ‘good convict’, well-behaved and hard working, and was recommended for a ticket-of-leave giving him a degree if freedom.

Then one day he and a mate went swimming in the Macquarie River just as Governor Darling passed. They were spotted by police magistrate Thomas Evernden, a ‘martinet of extravagant refinery’ who had previously led troops against both convicts and Aborigines. Everndon sentenced Entwhistle to 50 lashes.

After the flogging, Ralph convinced other convicts to take arms and horses and head for the bush. Another group who had risen up in the Hunter Valley may have joined them. This rebel band of up to 80 struck fear in the hearts of the colonial elite. ‘The consternation’, Darling admitted, was ‘pretty general’.

A party of volunteers tried to capture them. They found Ralph, his head covered in green ribbons – symbol of Irish anti-colonial struggle – ready for a battle after which the volunteers somehow lost their horses and trudged home in despair.

The authorities then sent a party of mounted troopers who charged the rebels. Entwhistle’s men returned fire from the shelter of rocks and trees, killing two troopers. A third attempt to capture them also failed, the convicts again using guerilla tactics to good effect, but the rebels did lose their horses. It took a fourth set of troopers a forced march from Sydney to capture them.

Tried before a jury of eight military officers, two of whom had taken part in the campaign against the insurgents, Ralph Entwhistle’s men inevitable ended on the gallows.

But convict rebellions continued and took many forms. Two years later several hundred women broke out of the ‘Female Factory’ at Parramatta, seizing a hated overseer and shaving her head, while threatening to go to Sydney and shave the head of ‘the Governor and his mob’ as well. Once again it took soldiers to quell the revolt.

The revolts couldn’t win, but they left a tradition inspiring later figures like Ned Kelly. Most important of all, the convicts also found ways to take industrial action against their oppressors. The first recorded ‘combination’ of workers occurred in 1795 among reapers harvesting wheat, and go-slows were common on convict labour gangs.

With the growth of a ‘free’ population, many of them ex-convicts, a labour movement began to take shape. Waterside workers held protests over wages in the early 1820s, a coopers’ strike in 1824 spread to several other groups of employees, and around the time they flogged Ralph Entwhistle, Sydney experienced Australia’s first strike wave. All this despite severe anti-union laws.

Australia’s history of repression is also a history of resistance.