Memory as political intervention

Abstract

This chapter considers how labor activists and leaders use life writing to consolidate and construct the movements’ collective memory. This construction is often competitive, as activists from different political perspectives use personal memory to bolster, or critique, the ‘official’ memory of the movement. It does so by focusing on the life narrations of E.J. Holloway and May Brodney, née Francis, exploring how they used their accounts of the 1916 struggle against conscription in Australia to subsequently address contentious issues in the movement. It queries what is remembered in these accounts, what is forgotten, and how such recollections help and hinder in appreciating the motivations ..