Monty Miller

Montague David "Monty" Miller was an IWW activist and anarchist.

Life

Born in what is now Tasmania, Australia, his family immigrated to Port Phillip Bay (now containing Melbourne and Geelong) in a whaling ship and his parents began work in the whaling industry. When gold was discovered in Ballarat in the 1840s, his family left for the mines and he became apprenticed as a carpenter at only 10 years old, working until he was 17. He participated in the Eureka Rebellion and was permanently scarred by the action with bayonet and bullet wounds. He vowed to be an enemy of the state for the rest of his life.

He had many jobs, working as a farmer in Gippsland, logger, cook and got married at 21 to a 17 year old woman who he stayed married to for 45 years. He liked to read Shelley and moved to Melbourne, working as a builder and carpenter, and worked tirelessly to establish relief depots for the hungry during the Long Depression and Maritime Strike. He quit being a builder as he refused to subject those under him to long hours, he had an accident while working at 77 and spent weeks in hospital. He became a pensioner after this but continued to build houses.

He became an atheist from an early age and later a feminist, he came in contact with exiled Chartists at a young age. He preached on the banks on the Yarra River to value of freedom of thought and socialism. He often debated university graduates and any money he got from debates he gave away. He also helped the early Labor Party by advocating for him (although they eventually betrayed him). Many capitalists tried to bribe him to get him to stop but he refused to. He joined the IWW as an old man, and was later arrested for it by the Labor Party for speaking out against the First World War, his opposition to conscription, his support for the Easter Rising in Ireland and his membership in the IWW (essentially, freedom of speech and association). He helped set up the Melbourne Anarchist Club and hated the IWW split between anarcho-syndicalists and DeLeonists.