People Australia

Ben Tillett, n.d.

ANU Archives, 1885/44540

Benjamin Tillett (1860-1943) British seaman, trade union leader, “Pale Christ of Labor” and politician

Birth: 11 September 1860 at Bristol, England, son of Benjamin Tillett (1821-1888), labourer and comb polisher, and his first wife Betty, née Lyne (1824-1863). Marriages: (1) 2 April 1882 at Bethnal Green, London, to Jane Tomkins (1859-1936), a brushmaker. They had nine children, though only two daughters survived infancy. (2) in 1897 he began a relationship with Eva Margaret Newton (1877-1955), an actress, born in Sydney, by whom he had two daughters and two sons. (3) August 1939 at Paddington, London, to Lilian Morgan (1894-1982). Ancestry files suggest he had a son, born in 1895, by Emma Young, a laundress, and a daughter born in 1914 and a son born in 1916 by Esther Ray Hall. Death: 27 January 1943 in hospital at Golders Green, London. 

• Claimed to have been employed in a Bristol brick factory aged 6, lived with gypsies and travelled with a circus. Joined the Royal Navy in 1873 and at 16 was a merchant seaman. Gave his occupation as “cooper” at his marriage in 1882.
• Involved with organisation of London dock strike in 1889.
• Left London for health and financial reasons in December 1896 aboard the SS Aotea for New Zealand, arriving at Dunedin on 22 February. After six months recuperation and public activity there, he reached Sydney in August 1897. A charismatic public speaker, he addressed many trade union, Labor and socialist meetings in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania (where he persuaded Hobart wharf labourers to reorganise).
• Bernard O’Dowd, writing in the Sydney Bulletin as ‘Danton’, welcomed him as the “Pale Christ of Labor” and “Rienzi of the Docks”. Tillett caused public controversy over a slight to the queen. Inspired founders of the Victorian socialist paper Tocsin (established 1897). Laid the foundation stone of the Broken Hill Trades Hall.
• In Australia he began a relationship with a Sydney-born actress, Eva Newton (1877-1955), who followed him back to London.
• Tillett left Sydney on 10 July 1898 for New Zealand and returned to England aboard the RMS Aotea. In the following years he was involved in the early developments of the British Labour party and became an enthusiastic proponent of Australia’s compulsory industrial arbitration system.
• He came back to Australia in 1907, arriving in Melbourne aboard the SS Essex on 18 May. He again addressed gatherings. At one memorable meeting he was on the platform with visiting British labour activists Tom Mann, Keir Hardie and the by then Melbourne-resident. H. H. Champion. He had, however, lost his enthusiasm for compulsory arbitration.
• Back in England by 1908 he was out of favour with Labour in parliament and worked with the Social Democratic Party. On the outbreak of war he became an avid patriot. He was elected Labour member of the House of Commons, for North Salford, at a by-election in 1917, but had little influence in either the party or the trade union movement. Defeated in 1924, he regained the seat in 1929, but lost it again in 1931 and retired.
• Cause of death: carcinoma of stomach and arteriosclerosis.

Sources
John Saville and A. J. Topham, Benjamin ‘Ben’ Tillett, in Dictionary of Labour Biography, volume IV, pp 177-185; H. J. Gibbney & A. G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987); Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905, (Sydney,1985).