A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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In a further attempt to improve the lot of the common man Brady campaigned in his
various periodicals for a review of the law and legal practices. Perhaps because of his
own experiences with the law, perhaps for more idealistic reasons, he wished to
correct the tragic situations where the poor were deprived of justice by the high fees
charged by lawyers. Making a plea in one light-hearted verse for a revision of the law
to remove old-fashioned injustices, he is visited by a ghost who is able to solve every
problem put to him – except one. When the poet asks when the laws of the land are to
be reformed there is an unexpected response, for ‘his spectral head dissolved in air,
and then his arms and chest;/ And as I finished he had fled; he gave the query best!” 1
On another occasion, after describing the law in many unusual terms (A will-o’-the
wispy, risky, crispy dummy of wigs and jaw”; “A twistable, gristable, irresistible
thing with a holt in its maw”) Brady concludes: “Oh! An excellent thing is the law,
my friends, and excellent thing – to avoid!” 2
Often Brady essayed to analyse his society in an attempt to better it. He saw one of
the functions of the politician, the poet and the journalist was to make society more
cohesive by warning against the dangerous divisive forces within it. In one verse he
examines the different backgrounds, overt wants and likes, occupations and interests
of the drinkers at a particular hotel. He attempts to show that the poet, being more
observant than average men and more sensitive to people can reach out and help those
whose moral inclinations and interests run counter to those of the majority. Migrant
discontent because of non-assimilation forms the subject of “Ananias Australian” and
that man is decried who attempts to be regarded as an Australian citizen while still
regarding England as “home”. 3 It is obvious that Brady favours a pluralistic society,
one bound by common aims and ideals although expressed in a variety of ways; but
one with a common body of attitudes such as altruism and mateship and a general
concern for individual welfare. His interest in such social questions makes his light
verse a catalogue of contemporary mores and events.
Brady’s socialistic dogma placed great stress upon economic issues. They were
central to his view of a society based upon equality and altruism. Although he never
claimed to be an economist he contributed a considerable number of editorials and
articles to the various journals on the topic. He claimed to have read Gresham,
Keynes, Morgenthau, Vargas and “many other authorities on banking, finance,
currency and exchange" and fully subscribed to the Marx-Fabian school of political
economics. This acceptance of Marxian economic theory was an early development
and remained the chief guideline for his economic discussions throughout the years.
As early as 1891 he wrote in an editorial in The Australian Workman:
Those of us who have accepted the theories of the Marx-Fabian school of
political economists, for example, say that the co-operative system of wealth
production is about to succeed the competitive, and that individual ownership
will, in the near future, be superseded by state ownership of the means of
production and the machinery of industrial civilisation; that the selling labour
for wages shall cease, and that there will be an end to rings, trusts,
monopolies, syndicates, corners, combinations, over-population and
unemployment. 4
1 “It Was a Spook”, The Sunday Times, 3.3.1895
2 “The Law”, The Worker, 25.2.1905. Another Worker poem (26.11.1904) presented a droll piece on
the law in the vein of Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner”, calling it “The Ancient Litigant”.
3 The Bulletin, 229.7.1909
4 “Economic Change”, 26.9.1891