David Andrade

Who was David Andrade?

David Andrade was an Australian anarchist.

In May 1886, David Andrade, his brother Will and half a dozen others formed the Melbourne Anarchist Club, the first anarchist organization in Australia. Andrade became the MAC secretary and one of its main propagandists.

The MAC produced the journal Honesty. In a news agency at Brunswick, now an inner suburb of Melbourne, and later in Liberty Hall, Russell St. Melbourne the brothers operated the first anarchist book shops in Australia.

Andrade's main works include Money: a study of the currency question, Our Social System, An Anarchist Plan of Campaign, and The Melbourne Riots and how Harry Holdfast and his Friends Emancipated the Workers.

In the early 1890s, Andrade was the secretary of the Unemployed Workers Association.

Andrade explains, "We are ruled by a lot of robbers. Our legislators are more degraded than a person who abuses a woman or a child and I have no confidence in them."

Andrade was burnt out in the disastrous 1898 fires. He appears to have been financially ruined by this. In 1903, he was committed to the Yarra Bend Asylum and died in 1928 at the Ballarat Mental Asylum.

Andrade adds, "Socialism is a matter of justice.