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

To give Brady his due, amid the hurley-burley of slogan and propaganda, the infighting
and back-scratching, he saw through the material benefits Labor policies
would bring the workers, beyond the practical and urgent vista of food, employment
and financial stability to the vision of a spirit relieved from oppression and restriction.
He put it quite simple in and article in The Worker:
The scope of this great humanitarian renaissance is not the providing of food
and clothing and dwelling alone. It is for the sake of the soul of man as well
as for his bodily food that the social-democrat labors and suffers – not all in
vain. To offer opportunity for genius; to foster the arts; to place upon the
sensitive border of poetry a crown of laurel innocent of thorns; to be the
Maecenas of science and philosophy – these are to me as much the obligations
of the movement towards humanity as the providing for everyday human wants
and requirements. 1
This is the vision of an idealist, a statesman, a philanthropist, a humanist and above all
a patriot. That he worked towards this ideal and helped further it, perhaps not very
spectacularly but with vision and perseverance, is to Brady’s credit.
In many ways his vision of a socialistic utopia of Labor was similar to William
Lane’s, whose early editorial in The Worker’s predecessor, The Hummer, proclaimed
that socialism was mateship. “I am sure,” Lane wrote, “that Socialism – true
Socialism – will destroy tyranny and make men what they should be – mates.” 2
Sharing Lane’s vision but lacking his fervour, his dynamism, singleness os purpose
and directness of action, Brady yet contributed in some measure to Labor’s
advancement. Through his writing, lecturing, and constant propagating of Labor
theories he aided its progress from what he himself described as the “Era of the
Martyrs” to the “Epoch of the Conquerors”.
1 “Labor in Relation to Culture”. The Worker, 6.5.1905
2 16.1.19892. It was quoted with approval by R.J. Cassidy in his “Notable Worker Contributors” in a
special supplement, 4.2.1942. It was also included in a letter, Brady to Cassidy, 1.8.1911, in National
Library.
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