No matter where you are in the world please join us via Zoom on Saturday 18th October 2025 at 11am BST for our latest #engleseabrookchapelandmuseum Heritage Talk.

Joseph Cook, who left Silverdale “to better himself” in the colonies, was extraordinarily successful. He arrived in Australia as a miner in the 1880s and became a trade union leader in New South Wales; in the 1990s he became the leader of Australia’s first political Labour Party; in the first decade of the Twentieth Century he was the leader of Australia’s first national Liberal (Conservative) Party; and then, from 1913-1914, the Prime Minister of Australia. He closed his career as Australia’s High Commissioner in London in the post-war years, followed by twenty years of retirement in Sydney. Brought up in very poor circumstances as a typical miner’s boy in Staffordshire, he died in Australia knighted and a rich man.

Because of his change of political allegiance from radical to conservative, and – perhaps because of his commitment to temperance – he has generally received an unfavourable appraisal in Australia. This documentary is more sympathetic to Cook and reassesses his achievements. It also casts light on those many thousands of emigrants from Great Britain who went to Australia seeking a more secure future than they could hope for in post-industrial revolution Britain. It also features information on the many descendants of those ‘transported’ to the country to service prison sentences from the English courts.

The documentary film is illustrated with film footage from the Australian National Archive with special permission and Staffordshire Film Archive’s own resources.

RAY JOHNSON MBE is an independent filmmaker, actor, and writer, and Emeritus Professor of Film Heritage and Documentary at Staffordshire University. He is Director of the Staffordshire Film Archive, a Director of the Media Archive for Central England and former Director of Screen West Midlands. Ray’s documentaries have been widely broadcast and he continues to supply archive film material to television. His theatre work includes the West End, regional Rep and touring, the Edinburgh Festival (with a Fringe First award) and the 1995 Royal Variety Performance. Ray is Vice President and Chair of the Arnold Bennett Society, a Trustee of Claybody Theatre, a Fellow of the Film and Video Institute and a long-service member of Equity.

The event is free. Everyone is welcome. The Zoom details are as follows:
https://zoom.us/j/97575019759?pwd=aLPvCqvtrbfGpRxgtTbnxoxrH3upO0.1
Meeting ID: 975 7501 9759
Passcode: 964250