support outside Queensland it was dissolved in 1914 when its main supporter, the Amalgamated Workers Union merged with the Australian Workers' Union. In 1887 William Shand, aide-de-camp to the Queensland Governor Anthony Musgrave, was sharply critical of the fanciful promises made to immigrant workers to make their fortune in a so-called workers paradise, when in fact poorer workers lived in wooden shanties cobbled together from old biscuit boxes and wine cases. Shand was even more alarmed at how the growing trade union movement was drafting new arrivals into unions, these labour organisations already having had some success in hiking up wages and blocking non-union (scab) labour. At this time, 1877, there were 2,500 union members registered under the Queensland Trade Union Act. By 1890 this number had ballooned more than eight-fold to 21,500. Even Liberals were caught up in the excitement. In 1889 Samuel Walter Griffith, barrister and 9th Premier of Queensland, after being defeated by the conservative Thomas McIlwraith in 1888, wrote radical articles advocating state intervention to curb capitalism, redistribute wealth, protect the weak and enforce the rule of freedom. Griffith's radical reformer phase was short lived however, as in 1890 he suddenly betrayed his radical friends and became Premier again at the head of an unlikely alliance with McIlwraith, forming the so-called "Griffilwraith" government. Also on the political front, Thomas Glassey became Australia's first Labour parliamentarian, representing Ipswich coalminers. He was joined in 1890 by John Plumper Hoolan. Early industrial action had international support, with the British Seamen's Union backing the Queensland Shearers Union to victory in the Jondaryan dispute, by blocking transport and handling of Jondaryan wool bales. The Brisbane Worker newspaper was established in 1890 by the ALF under the editorship of William Lane, who remained in the post until 1892. This was a time of prolonged and bitter industrial disputes, with the first of the great Australian strikes in the 1890s: the 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute, followed by the 1891 Shearers' strike, and the 1894 Shearers strike. A Labour Council had formed again by 1903, but in 1911 all affiliates transferred to the ALF. In January 1914 the ALF itself effectively dissolved, as many of its affiliates had been swallowed by the Australian Workers' Union. A new organisation called the Brisbane Industrial Council was formed midyear. Other inter-union organisations included the Eight Hours Union and the Brisbane Trades Hall Board, responsible for managing Brisbane