Monty Miller was an Australian unionist, secularist and revolutionary socialist. Westbrook claims Miller went with his family fromVan Dieman's Land (Tasmania) to Melbourne, Victoria in 1839. Miller was apprenticed to a joiner at the Ballarat goldfields and worked at his trade throughout his life. On 3 July 1862 he married Sarah Elizabeth Scott at Ballarat, where they lived for some years before moving to Melbourne. Miller had an early exposure to Chartist ideas and became a lifelong atheist. He took part in the Eureka Stockade rebellion as an adolescent and was a founding member of the Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886. He was prominent in the unions and was a delegate to the Melbourne Trades Hall. In the 1880s Depression, as the Carpenter of Richmond, he set out to avert the starvation of the most distressed areas of Melbourne, especially Richmond. His work was the centre of the Relief Movement that contributed food in every suburb.
Miller moved to Perth, Western Australia, in 1893 and was on the strike committee of the general building strike. For his activities he was boycotted, but a good Samaritan gave him work. He early saw the divisive role of craft unions and campaigned for industrial unions. Miller was a founder of the Labor Church and the Social Democratic Federation. His motion, which was carried, at the 1902 Trades and Labor Congress of Western Australia urging 'establishment of an Industrial Commonwealth founded on collective ownership of land and capital and upon direct popular control of legislation and administration', marks him as a socialist.
Miller became disillusioned with the Australian Labor Party and embraced the principles of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was official correspondent in Western Australia for Direct Action, their newspaper. When World War I broke out they carried banners 'War? What For?' declaring it was a war for the profits of the capitalists of the nations involved. Now, well over eighty, Miller was the most effective speaker on the Perth Esplanade despite attacks on the platform. Soon after the defeat of the first conscription referendum Miller and ten others were arrested and charged under the War Precautions Act with seditious conspiracy,. Three of the charges were dropped. Miller gave a brilliant example of how to use the court as a platform against the war and conscription, against the unfeeling exploitation of working people and the sabotage of their family lives. Miller and six others were sentenced to two years jail, or to be bound over to keep the peace and were released.
Miller immediately went campaigning to Broken Hill, New South Wales, to Adelaide, South Australia to Melbourne, Victoria, and then to Sydney, New South Wales, knowing he would be arrested. On bail Miller spoke to a massive meeting in the Domain, Sydney, of one hundred and fifty thousand people. He called for the whole working class to come out in a general strike. Back in court he was threatened with six months hard labour, not to be carried out if he kept out of action. But Miller refused and the eighty-five-year-old was sentenced to six months hard labour. Miller was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery in Western Australia with the mourners singing the 'Red Flag' at his funeral on November 17, 1920.
(Source: Eric Fry 'Miller, Montague David (1839 - 1920)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, MUP, (1986): 512-513; Sheila Suttner Review of Eureka and Beyond: Monty Miller tells his story The Guardian (19 September 2007); Westbrook, Angela (Annie) 'Monty Miller: An Appreciation (1831?-1920)'. International Socialist, 4 December 1920).
See also the full Australian Dictionary of Biography Online entry. For 'Miller, Montague David (1839-1920)'.
