The phrase, ‘United we stand: Divided we fall’ was adopted as the motto of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association of Australasia (AMA) which formed in Silverton in January 1886. Meetings were held that week across the diggings at Silverton, Daydream, Purnamoota and Broken Hill. Their eleven point agenda included fair wages, compensation for work-related injuries and illnesses, an eight hour day and a weekly recreation day. It would take the next thirty four years of struggle to achieve these conditions. The crucible of their success lay in the industrial strike action taken in 1909.