"R. S. Ross" redirects here. For the American professor, see Robert S. Ross

Robert S. Ross

Robert S. Ross is a professor of political science at Boston College, associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, senior advisor of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations...

.

Robert Samuel Ross (5 January 1873 – 24 September 1931) was an Australian

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 socialist journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, trade unionist, and agitator

Agitator

An agitator is a person who actively supports some ideology or movement with speeches and especially actions. The Agitators were a political movement as well as elected representatives of soldiers, including the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, during the English Civil War. They were also known...

 best known as the editor of a series of political magazines associated with the Australian labour movement

Australian labour movement

The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...

 in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Ross' militant journalism and agitation against Australia's involvement in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 led to repression by the authorities. Ross' works during the war were censored and confiscated by the police and Ross faced multiple arrests for opposing conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

, waving the socialists' red flag

Red flag

In politics, a red flag is a symbol of Socialism, or Communism, or sometimes left-wing politics in general. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its...

, and circulating anti-war

Anti-war

An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...

 literature. His publication of the article "Bolshevism Has Broken Out in Heaven" led to a 1919 trial for blasphemy

Blasphemy

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...

.

Ross' political views were drastically moderated during the 1920s. His contributions to Australian political life ended with his death as a respected member of the Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 in 1931.

Biography

The eldest of three sons born to Robert Mitchell Ross, a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

-born compositor, and Anne Matilda (née

NEE

NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...

 Bonham), Robert Mitchell's English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

-born wife, Robert Samuel Ross was born on 5 January 1873 in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

. The Ross family relocated to Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

 in 1885, where Robert Mitchell Ross found work as an editor

Editor

The term editor may refer to:As a person who does editing:* Editor in chief, having final responsibility for a publication's operations and policies* Copy editing, making formatting changes and other improvements to text...

. The younger Robert was educated at state schools, attended a Brisbane Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 sunday school

Sunday school

Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...

, and contributed to the family's finances by working as a messenger boy before became an apprentice compositor at seventeen. An precocious youth, he began working as a magazine editor at twenty, at first editing the sports magazine

Sports magazine

A sports magazine is usually a weekly, monthly, biweekly magazine featuring articles or segments on sports. Some may be published a specific number of times per year.Major sports magazines in print include:...

 Queensland Cricketer & Footballer, later becoming editor of the Queensland Sportsman.

Politically involved by his early twenties, Ross was self-taught in the political dimension as a voracious reader of socialist and rationalist texts. An early influence on Ross' orientation in this respect was the writing of Australian labour movement

Australian labour movement

The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...

 pioneer William Lane

William Lane

William Lane was a journalist, advocate of Australian labour politics and a utopian.-Early life:Lane was born in Bristol, England, eldest son of James Lane,from Ireland a Protestant Master Gardener , and his English wife Caroline, née Hall...

, whose 1890s work concerning a co-operative society gave emphasis to the role of trade unionism. Ross responded to left-wing appeals of this kind enthusiastically. He became a founding member of the Queensland Socialist League in 1894 and helped to found the Socialist Democratic Vanguard in 1900. He married Ethel Slaughter, who would become an ally in his political efforts, on 14 March 1900.

Ross left Brisbane in January 1903 in order to edit Broken Hill's Barrier Truth, but soon found himself at odds with the local workers' movement over strategy and his anti-clerical concerns. Reproached for undermining the authority of the local Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 chapter, Ross resolved to abandon Barrier Truth following a vote of no confidence in his editorship and resigned his position in November 1905. Consolidating support as head of the Barrier Social Democratic Club, he went on to establish and edit the Flame. Employed as a Broken Hill librarian from 1906 to 1908, he succeeded in introducing radical literature into the municipal library.

Ross became secretary and editor of the Victorian Socialist Party

Victorian Socialist Party

The Victorian Socialist Party was a socialist political party in Victoria, Australia in the early 20th century. The VSP was founded in 1906 in Melbourne, bringing together a number of older socialist groupings. A leading influence in the VSP's formation was the British trade unionist Tom Mann, who...

's magazine the Socialist in August 1908. Lavishly praised by Tom Mann

Tom Mann

Tom Mann was a noted British trade unionist. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the labour movement.-Early years:...

, he received accolades a "comrade" of "whom it would be impossible to speak too highly, he is exceptionally well read, keeps in touch with the movement internationally... a good platform man, but superb as an editor." At times and attracted to and at times repelled by the Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 throughout his life, he supported permeation tactics following the failure of Socialists against the Labor Party candidates.

Ross edited New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

's Maoriland Worker

Maoriland Worker

The Maoriland Worker was a leading New Zealand labour journal of the early 20th century. It was initially published monthly.It was launched in 1910 by the Shearers Union, and was soon taken over by the New Zealand Federation of Labour and became the official organ of the federation.The journal...

 in Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

 from 1911 before returning to edit the socialist press in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, Victoria in April 1913. A strong supporter of secular society and rationalist ideas, Ross joined the Victorian Rationalist Association during the Melbourne period. His influential pamphlet Eureka—Freedom Fight of '54 appeared in 1914 — in commemoration of the Eureka miners' rebellion

Eureka Stockade

The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 was an organised rebellion by gold miners which occurred at Eureka Lead in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Battle of Eureka Stockade was fought on 3 December 1854 and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict...

 of sixty years earlier.

A significant portion of Ross' political work during the First World War, which Ross stood against from the beginning as a committed pacifist, consisted of anti-war

Anti-war

An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...

 activities. He agitated for a general strike

General strike

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

 against Australia's entry into the conflict in 1914, and lent his support to various organizations organized to oppose the draft

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

 and the wartime crackdown on the political opposition at home. He was arrested for such activities on various occasions after 1914, but remained unflinchingly committed to the anti-war cause in spite the political repression targeting the pacifists and socialists during this time. The Magazine of Protest, Personality and Progress, founded and edited by Ross during the war and soon known simply as Ross' Magazine, came to acquire a reputation as a source of anti-militarist, anti-clerical, socialist, and atheist radicalism.

Though he considered Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 methods of struggle inapplicable to Australia — and would continue to support the distinctly moderate line of reformism

Reformism

Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...

 for the remainder of his career — Ross greeted the 1917 Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 warmly and produced the supportive pamphlet Revolution in Russia and Australia in 1920. A satirical article entitled "Bolshevism Has Broken Out in Heaven" — penned by an anonymous author known only as "Woodicus" and published in a Ross-edited magazine — led to a Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 blasphemy

Blasphemy

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...

 trial and a sentence of six months' imprisonment. Undaunted, Ross protested the looming gaoling by joining the poet R. H. Long and other socialists in Brisbane for an illegal public display of a red flag

Red flag

In politics, a red flag is a symbol of Socialism, or Communism, or sometimes left-wing politics in general. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its...

 — one more activity officially forbidden at the time. The flag-wavers were violently suppressed and Ross was once more arrested. The draconian sentence for blasphemy was, however, eventually reduced to a mere fine of £50 on appeal.

No longer so much on the political fringe during the 1920s, Ross cemented his association with the Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 in the post-war decade. He became council-member of the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

 in 1925, and trustee of the Melbourne's public library and museums as well as the National Gallery in 1928; he was appointed a commissioner of the State Savings Bank in November 1930. The Victoria branch of the Labor Party elected him to its vice-presidential post in 1930-1931.

Ross died of uraemia in Richmond, Victoria

Richmond, Victoria

Richmond is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...

 on 24 September 1931 and was cremated after a modest and secular ceremony. Among those paying the last respects were Tom Tunnecliffe, J. P. Jones, Don Cameron, and Harry Scott Bennett

Harry Scott Bennett

Harry Scott Bennett , originally Henry Gilbert Bennett, was an Australian socialist speaker and organiser. He was born in Chilwell, Victoria and died in Sydney....

.

Ross' two sons, Lloyd (1901-87) and Edgar (1904-2001), both became prominent as Australian activists and trade unionists.

External links

• Papers of Robert Samuel Ross, 1907-1927 at the National Library of Australia
  National Library of Australia
  The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...