AustLit

Tom Beasley was an Australian Labor Party organiser on the Western Australian goldfields from 1900 until 1902. He resigned from the ALP in 1902 after being bitterly attacked by the party for advocating the unionising of foreign miners. After breaking with the Labor movement he settled in the Murchison town of Cue and returned to his trade as a watchmaker. He left the goldfields in 1906 to earn his living in Sydney. Beasley was well-known as a writer of topical verse. For the Sun newspaper in Sydney he wrote verse under the name of Solomon Gay.