People Australia

Andrew Galloway (1862-1934) coal miner and trade union leader

Birth: 2 January 1862 at Wallacestone, Sleman, Stirlingshire, Scotland, son of Andrew Galloway (1837-1895), miner, and Janet née McLuckie (1835-1897). Marriages: (1) 26 June 1888 at Mount Kembla, New South Wales, with Presbyterian forms, to Margaret Fraser (d.1894). They had two sons and one daughter. (2) 24 April 1896 at the bride’s home in Korumburra, Victoria, to, Emma Jane, née Easton, late Blakeney (1854-1943) a widow, born in Hobart, Tasmania. They had no children. Death: 23 January 1934 in South Perth. Religion: Church of Christ. 

• Arrived in Australia by 1888.
• Coal miner in Korumburra district, Victoria, between 1894 and coal strike of 1903.
• Active in affairs of Victorian Coal Miners’ Association (VCMA), being scrutineer in 1898. Trustee of Coal Creek lodge 1898. Also VCMA delegate and treasurer of Coal Creek Accident Friendly Society about this time. In 1902 was one of co-defendants in George Gregory case.
• During 1903 coal strike moved to Collie, Western Australia, where he became active in Collie River District Miners' Union (CRDMU) and helped establish a co-operative colliery. Acting district treasurer CRDMU in 1904 but narrowly defeated for treasurership early in 1906 by ex-VCMA activist George Gregory. In same year Galloway and other co-operativists were outvoted and expelled from CRDMU for continuing to work their mine during a strike, despite the fact that the co-operativists were strong unionists.
• In 1911 Galloway visited “the old Country”.
• His son Andrew James McLuckie Galloway, who had married in September 1915 was killed in a fall of earth in Collie Co-operative mine on 8 December that year.
• Unlike Victorian co-operatives, Collie co-operative proved successful and when it was sold in 1920 Galloway and other shareholders received substantial payments.
• Galloway had been one of the early members of the Collie Industrial Cooperative Society Ltd, inaugurated in 1901.
• Cause of death: pneumonoconicosis and cardiac failure.

Sources
Outtrim News; Great Southern Advocate; CRDMU MSS, Battye Library; information from Mrs. Kemp, Perth; P. D. Gardner, Too old to rat: the radical miners of South Gippsland 1893-1904 (Ensay, Victoria, 1994).