Latest news with #Diggers
The Citizen
13-05-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
Diggers outplayed by ruthless Wits attack
The Diggers Rugby Club senior team faced a tough afternoon on their home ground as they were outclassed by Wits University's senior side, who walked away with an emphatic 85–7 victory on the day. From the opening whistle, it was clear that the visitors meant business, applying early pressure and taking full control of the game. Read more: North Riding rugby star shares recovery tips Wits were quick to make their mark, scoring two converted tries to take a 14–0 lead within the first few minutes. Their attacking play was swift, sharp, and difficult to contain. Diggers struggled to keep up with the pace, often caught off guard by Wits' well co-ordinated movements and quick passes. The standout performance of Wits' left lock Kgoposto Matlena, who scored two quick tries, widened the gap even further. Diggers had no response to the visitors' smooth and structured gameplay. By halftime, Wits were firmly in charge, with a 28–0 lead. The second half followed the same pattern, with Wits picking up right where they left off. Their right centre Keith Chirwa added two more tries to his name as Wits' attack continued to slice through the Diggers' defence. At one point, the scoreboard showed a staggering 71–0 in favour of the visiting side. Spectators could be heard chanting, 'Give us 90!', reflecting the confidence and excitement surrounding the dominant performance. Wits full back Latica Nela commented on the teams performance. 'For the first time in a while it was a good, holistic performance. Of course, it was a bit of a loose game and I think we adapted to that. We would still like to see the boys put in a bit of structure against the bigger teams.' Though the match was clearly beyond their reach, Diggers kept pushing and were finally rewarded with a consolation try. It was a small moment of joy in an otherwise forgettable outing. The match ended 85–7, a result that will likely prompt some serious reflection within the Diggers camp. Also read: Heronbridge College rugby star eyes professional career path Diggers' first team rugby coach Kane Mavrodaris expressed his disappointment with the team's performance. 'We knew we were the underdogs going into this game, and it felt like we didn't deal very well with their ball movement. We didn't trust each other on defence and let each other down a little bit' For Wits, the match was a clear display of their attacking depth, fitness, and discipline. Their ability to control the game from start to finish made it one of their most commanding performances yet. As for Diggers, they will look to regroup, learn from their mistakes, and come back stronger in their next fixture. Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! Have a story idea? We'd love to hear from you – join our WhatsApp group and share your thoughts! Related article: Development rugby takes centre stage at Saints SportsFest day 4 At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
West Australian
07-05-2025
- General
- West Australian
VE Day was a milestone victory in Europe but the war went on for the Diggers
VE Day was a milestone victory in Europe but the war went on for the Diggers
Mail & Guardian
01-05-2025
- General
- Mail & Guardian
May Day: From the maypole to the picket line
You may not: Trade unions and May Day celebrations and rallies trace their roots back to medieval Europe. Photo: Nic Bothman/EPA Long before the red flag waved from factory gates and trade union halls, 1 May was a day of greenwood misrule. In medieval Europe, it marked the turning of the seasons. Villagers gathered around the maypole, to celebrate the fertility of the earth and renewal of communal life. On this day, the usual hierarchies were unsettled. Peasants and nobles danced in the same space and the daily rhythm of labour briefly gave way to collective celebration. Yet even these early rituals carried the seeds of organised struggle. As historian Peter Linebaugh reminds us, May Day was not only a tribute to spring, it was a rehearsal of freedom. In the forests and commons surrounding early villages, people gathered herbs, cut wood, grazed animals and met to share knowledge and organise resistance. These communal forms of life represented early collective politics. Long before formal trade unions existed, there were forms of mutual obligation and shared labour that resisted exploitation. As pioneering social historian EP Thompson argued in The Making of the English Working Class, these customs reflected a moral economy grounded in reciprocity and collective rights. In medieval England, peasants held woodland, marsh and pasture 'in common', defending them through customary law and communal action. When these spaces were enclosed and turned into private property, they were defended, often collectively, through early proto-union-style alliances between villagers. But with the rise of capitalism, the commons were systematically dismantled. From the late 15th to the 18th century, enclosure laws stripped communities of access to shared land. Hedges were raised, fences hammered into the soil and what was once held in common became the property of landlords and merchants. This was the beginning of what would become a generalised wage relation. Resistance erupted, not just through riots, but through coordinated efforts to reclaim land, sabotage fences and defend communal labour. The revolts of 1607, and the Diggers of 1649, embodied this spirit. These were not yet trade unions but they were precursors — collective, organised, rooted in the workplace (the land) and resistant to extraction. May Day became a day of resistance. The apprentices who rioted in London in 1517, and the communities who defied maypole bans in the 17th century, were not simply defending tradition. They were asserting a collective identity against the emerging regime of profit, discipline and surveillance. This pattern was not unique to England. Across Europe, communal labour structures were destroyed by capitalist agriculture and centralising states. The Highland Clearances in Scotland removed entire communities in the service of profit. As communities were uprooted, they carried with them memories of shared land and collective struggle. Many of the workers who later filled the factories of Manchester and mines of Lancashire in England had grown up in villages shaped by communal labour. By the 19th century, as industrial capitalism replaced feudal agriculture, these older forms of collective life re-emerged in a new form — the trade union. Born in the factories, docks and mines of the industrial age, unions were the organisational answer to the violence of enclosure and brutality of waged labour. They gave structure to resistance. They offered protection, education and a political vision. They also laid the foundation for socialism, not as abstract theory, but as the political expression of collective labour. In 1886, in Chicago in the US, trade unionism and May Day converged. Thousands of workers, many immigrants, struck for an eight-hour day, an idea that had been fought for by unions around the world. Police opened fire. Bombs exploded. Several organisers, including anarchists and trade unionists, were arrested, subjected to show trials and executed. Their real offence was to insist life could not be reduced to production. Their sacrifice gave May Day its global significance. From Chicago, the idea of May Day as a worker's day spread. In the cities of Europe and across the colonial world — in the ports of Buenos Aires, the shipyards of Algiers, the railways of Bengal and the mines of Southern Africa, workers took up the red flag. May Day became the people's holiday. And the unions carried it forward. The structures of industrial discipline, surveillance, debt and dispossession were exported to the colonies. In Kenya, the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 dispossessed African farmers. In South Africa, the 1913 Land Act confined blacks to 7% of the land, creating a permanent reserve of cheap labour. In India, through land taxation and forced salt production, millions were pushed into bonded and wage labour. In these sites, it was organised labour, often informal, often banned, often led by women, that kept resistance alive. Trade unions were never only about wages. In colonial contexts, they were schools of political education, spaces of interracial and gendered solidarity and the first institutional vehicles for anti-colonial nationalism. From the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union in 1920s South Africa to the All-India Trade Union Congress, unions linked workplace demands and national liberation. Women were central to these struggles. They led strikes in textile mills, organised pass law protests and held together union structures while being denied equal rights. In Nigeria, the Aba Women's War of 1929 was an anti-tax revolt and an assertion of collective labour rights. In South Africa, domestic worker unions, long ignored by mainstream federations, challenged the boundaries of who was considered a worker. May Day, as marked in these struggles, was more than symbolic. It was a day of action, of stayaways, of underground meetings, of pamphlets distributed at dawn. In apartheid South Africa, May Day was used to build mass defiance. In Brazil, under dictatorship, unions became the centre of opposition. These were not marginal organisations; they were often the most coherent vehicles for working-class democracy. Socialism, in these contexts, was not imported from Europe. It emerged from collective struggle, from the need to imagine a world beyond hunger wages, broken bodies and landlessness. The union became the workshop of socialist politics. Not the only one, but perhaps the most enduring. Trade unions did not only negotiate wages. They fundamentally changed how society worked. The weekend, the eight-hour day, paid maternity leave, sick leave, pensions, public holidays, workplace safety standards, unemployment insurance were not gifts from the state. They were fought for — carried on the backs of workers who risked everything to be treated as human beings, not tools. They humanised work. The union meeting became a school for working-class politics. It was where domestic workers learned about rights, where migrant workers found solidarity and where women began to insist gendered labour was also political. In South Africa, unions helped lead the charge against apartheid. In Brazil, union militancy helped dismantle the military regime. In Senegal, Zambia and India, unions seeded the base of anti-colonial nationalism. The red flag crossed oceans because of shared material conditions; dispossession, exploitation and the refusal to accept them. In its most radical form, May Day has always cut against the grain of narrow nationalism and patriarchal unionism. It insists that to be free, we must undo the systems that bind race, class and gender into the machinery of exploitation. In South Africa, the story of May Day is tied to the resistance of the working class. From the multiracial organising of the Industrial Commercial Workers Union to the strikes of the Seventies, to the formation of powerful trade union federations, 1 May remains one of the clearest markers of working-class memory and a call to rebuild what has been weakened. Today, many unions are embattled; hollowed out by bureaucracy, division and state, NGO and donor capture. But even now, in informal settlements and on farms, in warehouses and taxi ranks, workers are organising. They are demanding the union form meet them where they are. That it adapts, renews and fights again. May Day reminds us that workers built this world. That even in an era of surveillance, platforms and precariousness, the struggle for dignity, time and solidarity continues. As we mark this May Day, we must renew our support for the trade union movement. Despite its limitations, it remains the most effective vehicle we have for building organised resistance to the violence of capitalism. It must adapt to the realities of informal work, climate collapse and platform extraction; but it must not be abandoned. It is in the union that we find the tools of solidarity, the infrastructure of struggle, and the ability to act collectively in a world that isolates and fragments us. Vashna Jagarnath is a historian, political risk and DEI consultant, labour expert, pan-African and South Asian political analyst and curriculum specialist.
Perth Now
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Aussie comedian to take on challenging Kokoda Track hike
Australian comedian Merrick Watts is just days away from embarking on a hike along the gruelling Kokoda Track — a 96-kilometre journey through Papua New Guinea's mountainous jungle — to raise funds for special forces veterans and their families. The SAS star will be joined by a team of Australians who will retrace the footsteps of WWII Diggers who fought against Japanese forces in one of the most pivotal campaigns in the nation's military history. For the group, it's more than a physical challenge — it's a mission to shine a light on the ongoing hardships many veterans and their families face long after their service ends. Every year, around 5,000 veterans leave the Australian Defence Force, and many struggle with the transition to civilian life. Mental health issues, financial hardship, and limited access to urgent support remain critical issues. If you'd like to view this content, please adjust your . To find out more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Guide. According to the Department of Veterans' Affairs, more than 30% of contemporary veterans report high levels of psychological distress, and suicide rates among ex-serving personnel remain significantly higher than the national average. The funds raised from the trek will support the Commando Welfare Trust, a charity established in 2010 to provide a perpetual safety net for Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) soldiers, veterans, and their families. The Trust offers emergency relief and long-term financial assistance where government systems fall short. In the past 12 months alone, the Commando Welfare Trust has delivered more than $1 million in direct aid, covering essentials like school fees, urgent medical treatments, emergency accommodation, and mortgage payments — including support for a veteran who was left paralysed after service. Donate to Merrick's fundraiser here.
The Age
25-04-2025
- The Age
A year ago it was a ‘national crisis'. Now it struggles to get a mention
Today we commemorate the thousands of countrymen and countrywomen who have given their lives or served in the nation's armed forces. It is 80 years since World War II ended, 60 years next Tuesday since Robert Menzies announced he would send an Australian battalion to Vietnam, and 110 years today since the Diggers went ashore at what would become known as Anzac Cove. Every year, Herald reporters and photographers aim to bring you lesser-known stories that encapsulate the Anzac spirit of endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour and mateship. This year, Julie Power writes on the moving story of two best friends, Sid and Ted, who grew up in Sydney's west, only to be taken by the Japanese and sent to Sandakan. Tim Barlass tells us about Gwenda Garde, now 102, who helped hunt Japanese submarines as a teenager from a hut outside Canberra. Michael Ruffles and Kate Geraghty have spoken to the last Australian air force pilot who departed Vietnam 50 years ago today – five days before the fall of Saigon. And European correspondent Rob Harris takes us to the Cotswolds, where a small English village still remembers the few hundred young Australians who left an impression in 1918. Anzac Day comes at the end of a week that has included the Easter break, the ongoing federal election campaign and the passing of Pope Francis. Amid these events, two other stories have stuck with me: the alleged murders of Thi Kim Tran and Audrey Griffin. The deaths of these women mustn't be overshadowed or forgotten. Throughout the week, more horrific details emerged about Tran's brutal killing last Thursday, when she was kidnapped from inside her Bankstown home by masked men who forced her into a black SUV at gunpoint before she was murdered and set alight. Police say she was an innocent victim after her husband allegedly stole drugs from the organised crime network he allegedly worked for. No arrests have been made over her death. On Monday, 53-year-old Adrian Noel Torrens was arrested over the murder of 19-year-old Griffin. The teenager had been enjoying a night out on the Central Coast with friends before leaving to join the navy when Torrens, whom she did not know, allegedly murdered her on her walk home on March 23. 'She had the world at her feet,' her mother Kathleen Kirby told the Herald hours after Torrens was charged with her daughter's murder. Torrens was found dead in his jail cell on Thursday evening. Police say there were no suspicious circumstances. Details about his violent past have now been revealed. Crime and justice reporter Amber Schultz wrote a powerful opinion piece on the deaths of Tran and Griffin, and how women are forced to keep virtual watch on one another while on a night out or meeting someone. 'Most of it comes from a place of love and curiosity, to help us picture the scene when our friends retell the story in vivid detail later. But another part of us asks for the details because we know we may need them if our friend fails to respond to that ever-important text,' Schultz wrote.
