Miller's parents took him to the
Port Philip District (later known as Victoria), at the age of six weeks. They lived first at
Port Fairy, and then moved to the
Ballarat goldfields where Miller was apprenticed to a joiner. Miller's father was himself a carpenter. Miller would work at his trade throughout his life, as a contractor where possible to avoid having to work under a master, although he is also reported as having turned his hand to a variety of bush labour. At the age of 15, Miller took part in the
Eureka Rebellion – an uprising at Ballarat by self-employed miners, who were opposed to the policies of an authoritarian
British colonial regime in Victoria. During the rebellion, he was involved in hand-to-hand fighting against members of the British
40th Regiment. Although the rebellion failed, it contributed to the introduction of democracy in Australia. Miller married in Ballarat at the age of twenty and shortly afterwards moved to Melbourne. He was early exposed to
Chartist ideas which were influential in Ballarat at the time, and also early adopted his lifelong atheism. The building trades, to which Miller belonged, were at the forefront of early Victorian unionism. His political career involved working with the unions and the
Australian Labor Party, but he maintained a disillusioned view of political parties and structures, moving within the radical spectrum. He was a founding member of the
Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886. He appears to have moved to Perth in 1897, the end of an economic boom in the state, a period of political reformations and larger scale social change. The Western Australian branch of the anarchist and socialist international movement, the
Industrial Workers of the World, was founded by his friend Westwood and could accommodate his views. His membership in the later illegal organisation (the IWW - or 'Wobblies') brought about imprisonment and conviction in
Perth, when he participated in the campaign opposing
conscription. Tried along with a group of other men, his advanced age of over 80 made him perhaps one of the oldest to have been convicted on this charge. Many of his friends and colleagues were to assist in his defence, including
Annie Westbrook and
Willem Siebenhaar (sacked and consequently charged), and this high-profile case was to have a significant impact on the socialist and union movements and to the conscription debate. Miller was released after serving a few weeks of his sentence as the Judge had offered Miller, and another defendant, Sawtell, two years imprisonment or to be
bound over for the same period to 'be of good behaviour and to keep the peace.' Miller was re-arrested in 1917 in Sydney at the age of 84 and sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour at Long Bay Gaol on the charge of belonging to an unlawful association. His Sydney arrest was apparently because he broke his bond. In his last years he remained committed to theories of socialist society emerging in the youthful nation. Bitter post war divisions existed in Australia at that time, yet harassment by the media and suppression by conservative governments of political opposition did not dissuade Miller from promoting his revolutionary aims. He was buried at
Karrakatta Cemetery, with the mourners singing the
Red Flag at his funeral on 17 November 1920. Some critics and left wing historians have identified Miller as a hero for later communist or socialist causes in Australia. Certainly he was very non-sectarian in his activism. However the poet,
Harry Hooton, claimed that Miller unambiguously identified as an
anarchist, and Miller's friend and fellow Wobbly Annie Westbrook in her obituary also states this; == See also ==