John Dias Print Page

The plaque with bas relief portrait commemorates unionist John Dias (1861- 1924).

Dias was a founder of the Queensland Shearers’ Union and an organiser during the great Queensland shearers’ dispute of the early 1890s. With the defeat of the shearers, following the defeat of the unions in the maritime dispute shortly before, and the then deep depression, some in the Australian working class, led by William Lane, decided that Australia would never become a workingmen’s paradise. They therefore decided to start afresh by establishing an utopian settlement in Paraguay, South America. Dias was one of Lane’s followers. In Melbourne, Dias resumed his career as a carpenter and his activity in the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. He became President, then Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the ASCJ. 

A bronze memorial tablet to the memory of John Dias, formerly secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, has been unveiled at the Lygon Street entrance to the Melbourne Trades Hall. The late Mr. Dias was one of the gallant little company of the Royal Tars who adventured from Australia to form a new colony In Paraguay, under a communistic regime. The venture failed, and Dias returned to Australia.
Labor Daily (Sydney), 29 April 1927.

John Dias Article 1927

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