Rothbury Riot
1929 CE.
Shown on the map at -32.680°, 151.345°.
On 16 December 1929 New South Wales Police drew their revolvers and shot into a crowd of locked-out miners in the New South Wales town of Rothbury in Australia, killing a 29-year-old miner, Norman Brown, and injuring approximately forty-five miners. The incident became known as the Rothbury affair or the Rothbury riot, and is described as the "bloodiest event in national industrial history." In 1929, colliery owners on the Northern New South Wales coalfields combined as the Northern Collieries Association. On 14 February 1929 the mine employers gave their 9,750 employees a 14 days' notice, that the miners should accept the following new conditions: A wage reduction of 12½ per cent on the contract rates, one shilling ($0.10) a day on the "day wage" rate; all Lodges must give the colliery managers the right to hire and fire without regard to seniority; all Lodges must agree to discontinue pit-top meetings and pit stoppages. The miners refused to accept these terms, and on 2 March 1929 all miners were "locked out" of their employment. In September 1929, the NSW State Parliament introduced an Unlawful Assembly Act designed to suppress the miners, which authorised police to break up any
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