NEW BRITANNIA:

© Alan James

With warmest thanks to Denis for his friendly encouragement and his many suggestions.

Preface

 Robert Hughes is an art critic born in Australia in 1938. As a critic he is outstanding in terms of both his original vision and his elegant style. His social commentary, however, is sometimes far more a product of his generation than are his writings on art.

 In 1993 Hughes reminisced about his early education, and in doing so he expressed an attitude to Australia’s British heritage that is now held by most Australian intellectuals of about his own age. He wrote:

       ‘One of the more disagreeable moments of my education was having to stand up and speak extempore in Latin for four minutes, before other schoolboys and our Jesuit teacher, on Horace’s famous tag, Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt – “those who cross the sea change the sky above them, but not their souls.” I resented this, not only because my Latin was poor, but because the idea struck me as wrong – the utterance of a self-satisfied Roman, impervious to the rest of the world. Hegemonic Horace.

         ‘But most Australians were on his side. The motto of Sydney University expressed contentment with the colonial bind: Sidere mans eadem mutato, another version of Horace’s imperial thought – “the same mind under changed skies.” 

      ‘Our education would prepare us to be little Englishmen and Englishwomen, though with nasal accents. We would not be accepted as such by the English themselves: we were not up to that. No poem written by an Australian was going to make its way into the anthologies of English verse – our national fate was to read those anthologies, never to contribute to them. It seemed natural to us that our head of state, with constitutional power to depose any democratically elected Australian prime minister, should be a young English-woman who lived 14,000 miles away. What native-born Australian could possibly be as worth looking up to as this Queen? Our Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, last of the true Australian imperialists, said we were “the Queen’s men,” “British to the boot-heels.” When asked what his dream of felicity would be on leaving politics, he unhesitatingly replied, “A book-lined cottage in Kent.” 

      ‘In those days we had a small, 95 percent white, Anglo-Irish society, in whose public schools you could learn Latin but not Italian, ancient but not modern Greek. What we learned of the world in school came through the great tradition (and I use the word without irony) of English letters and English history. We were taught little Australian history. Of the world’s great religions other than Christianity – Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam – we were as perfectly ignorant as a row of cats looking at a TV set; or would have been, if Australia had had television in 1955, which, luckily, it did not. I didn’t meet a Jew until I got to University, and you can imagine the line the Jesuits took on the Spanish Inquisition and the policies of Ferdinand and Isabella. I didn’t even know what an Episcopalian was. Not until my late teens did I have a conversation with an Australian Aborigine, and it was short. There were no Aboriginal students, let alone teachers, at Sydney University. The original colonists of Australia – whose ancestors had walked and paddled there, across the string of islands that lay between “our” continent and Asia, around 30,000 B.C. – were completely unknown to us city whites, and their history and culture fell into a box marked “anthropology,” meaning the study of exotics with whom one had nothing in common, and whose culture had nothing of value to contribute to ours. Thinking so was our subliminal way of warding off the suspicion that ours had contributed nothing but misery and death to theirs.’ ¹

Hughes has succeeded here in capturing not just the thoughts, shallow as they are, of the most influential strand within his generation. He also expresses perfectly the sneering tone and the smug self-satisfaction with which this elite dismisses its own caricatured version of the British – and mostly English – origin of Australia’s traditional culture.

Robert Hughes is a writer of international distinction. He has been the art critic of Time magazine since he moved to America in 1970. Yet there is nothing in this brief extract that hasn’t been expressed over and over again (and often better) by lesser-known opinion-formers – by journalists, academics, politicians, teachers, and other members of the new elites. Hughes’ achievement in this extract is to have drawn together in four short paragraphs most of the Anglophobic touchstones that allow members of the vocal Anglophobic minority in Australia to identify one another.

These people are like the fans of some film or TV program who endlessly quote to each other the same treasured lines, and who seem to find that these lines grow more portentous the more often they are repeated. Theirs is a cult-like activity, in three ways. First, the boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are clearly drawn. Second, members of the in-group constantly reinforce each other as the sole bearers of sweetness, light and “progress”. Third, the world beyond the cult is portrayed as – at one and the same time – comical to the point of derision; ignorant, vicious and evil; bigoted and stupid; and so dangerous that the enlightened brethren must be ever vigilant lest they be overwhelmed by the vastly greater number of comical, vicious and bigoted fools outside their cult.

On that last point, at least, members of the currently dominant Anglophobic elite in Australia are correct. The majority of the population resents the social views of people like Robert Hughes. As it was in his own schooldays, so it is now: most Australians are still on the side of Horace, not Hughes.

The problem is that although the majority of Australians (who have probably given very little thought to either Horace or Hughes) are opposed to the cult of Anglophobia, the Australian majority has been marginalised. These Australians have been dispossessed and deliberately excluded from nearly all venues of cultural discussion – from academia to talk-back radio, from broadsheet newspapers to tabloids, from directing films to discussing current affairs in the school staff-room, from mainstream cultural organisations to internet newsgroups. As we shall see, to speak up for Horace and against Hughes in any of those forums can lead to a wide range of negative sanctions – beginning with social ostracism.

This book will examine the rise, decline, and possible conclusion of the series of social and cultural experiments that constituted Anglo-Australia. Before doing so, however, it may be interesting to return to the Robert Hughes extract with which we began, and to ask a simple question: How would those people who are excluded from participation in, and criticism of, the currently dominant intellectual fashion in Australia respond to Hughes, if they were able to do so?

To start with, they would possibly feel envious that Hughes had the good fortune to attend a school where Latin was even taught. In the 1950s most Australian children attended government schools staffed by teachers who generally would not be qualified to set foot in a classroom today. Latin appeared on the curriculum of only a handful of very selective schools. Hughes’ whingeing about his “poor Latin” is, of course, a form of snobbery, since few students of his era could aspire to any Latin at all.

Second, ordinary Australians would immediately sense something false in Hughes’ quarrel with Horace. After all, although Hughes has not lived in Australia for four decades, he still calls himself an Australian, which rather bears out Horace’s line: “Those who cross the seas change the sky above them, but not their souls”.

As to the petulant sneer about “little Englishmen and Englishwomen”, some would ask why he chose the adjective “little”. Why not “diaspora Englishmen”, or “bronzed Englishmen” or even just “better Englishmen”? After all, these expressions, and many other similarly positive ones, have been used for over a century to convey the traditional self-image of Anglo-Australians. 

“Nasal accents”? Once again, Hughes is parading his own rather dated class-consciousness. The majority of Australians today feel no sense of inferiority on account of their accents, “nasal” or otherwise, just as few people from the varying regions of England are ashamed of their own local and time-sanctioned way of speaking.

Most of the Australian majority probably wouldn’t know or care whether Australian poems appear in anthologies of English verse. A few would know – as does Hughes himself – that Australian poets have always gained recognition in Britain, starting with Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70), whose bust can be viewed in Westminster Abbey. Henry Lawson also gained some recognition at the turn of the twentieth century; poets like Kenneth Slessor, Robert Fitzgerald and Judith Wright certainly did so in the middle of that century; and Les Murray does so today. Even a fictitious Australian poet, “Ern Malley”, a spoof on Dylan Thomas and his followers, caused more than ripples in the poetic circles of England in the 1940s. In 1965 A. D. Hope won the Arts Council of Great Britain Award for Literature. As The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature ² affirms: “By the nineteen sixties, this [Australian] literature was being studied, not only in Britain, but in many other countries.”

It is true that Australia’s constitution sets aside “reserve powers” that can be exercised, in the case of national emergencies, by our Governor General – who is nominally the Queen’s representative. No British monarch has ever exercised these powers, and none ever would. At a Federal level they have been used only once in Australia’s history. In 1975 they were invoked to resolve a serious constitutional crisis – by a Governor General who was born in the working-class suburb of Balmain in Sydney, Australia. And according to the Queen’s private secretary at that time, the Queen was not only not consulted by the Governor General, but she would probably have disapproved of his action. ³ So much for Hughes’ quip about the Queen being “Our head of state, with constitutional power to dismiss any democratically elected Australian prime minister …”

The thrust of Robert Hughes’ rhetoric should be obvious by now. He selectively uses half-truths to disparage Australia’s British heritage. Sadly, half-truths can be more damaging than outright lies. At least lies are more easily exposed. 

Another example of Hughes’ half-truths comes in his statement that during his school days “we had a small, 95 percent white, Anglo-Irish society”. Yes, Australians were probably “95 percent white” at that time, but it is hard to see how their society could be called “Anglo-Irish”. The phrase suggests that something like half of the white population came from Ireland. This is completely wrong. For instance, according to Australian government statistics, in 1961, the year before Hughes dropped out of Sydney University, 718,345 Australians had been born in the UK while 37,057 had been born in Ireland. (As we shall see later, these figures require further analysis, but they are not untypical of any of the official census years since 1861.) The overwhelming majority of the British-born in 1961, 556,478, were from England. The Irish-born equalled just over 6.6% of the English-born at the time Hughes was discussing – and, significantly, they amounted to less than 28% of the Scottish-born. 

There is little point in continuing to analyse most of Hughes’ remaining sneers against Australia’s British heritage. They tend to follow the same pattern. 

But one interesting statement – which goes to the heart of Hughes’ credibility – is his claim that: “There were no Aboriginal students, let alone teachers, at Sydney University”. Actually, there were. The late Charles Perkins, a very well-known Aboriginal activist, was born in 1936, only two years before Robert Hughes. Perkins graduated from Sydney University in 1966. He was therefore presumably enrolled at Sydney University at some stage during Hughes’ time there. (It is interesting to note that Perkins, the Aborigine, graduated in 1966. Hughes, the drop-out, gained his first degree, an honorary Doctor of Letters, from Melbourne University in 1995.) 

Clearly, Hughes’ recollections of his schooldays and of his time at Sydney University have been warped by a political agenda. Had he wished to meet an Australian Aborigine at Sydney he could have sought out Charles Perkins – but it seems he chose not to; and he falsely implies that the predominantly Anglo-Australia that existed in his undergraduate days deliberately excluded Aborigines, when clearly it didn’t.

Like most of the intellectual elite dominating public debate in Australia, it is obvious that Robert Hughes prefers an Anglophobic agenda to a factual account of Australia’s traditional culture. Tragically, he is not alone in that respect.

A national culture that was once extremely proud of its mainly English origins has degenerated to the point that ordinary Australians dare not or cannot speak up for their Anglo-Saxon heritage. That is one theme of this short book. The political and intellectual ramifications of the current marginalisation of traditional Australian values forms another strand. It will also be necessary for us to gaze into the crystal ball in order to survey the various directions that Australia – along with every other nation founded predominantly by Anglo-Saxons – might take in the near future. 

Before we finish our survey, it will be interesting to look at the besieged self-identity of Anglo-Australians. They still make up, by far, the largest single component in the Australian population. How they react to the psychological assault being waged against them will determine whether Australia is still culturally recognisable in a generation or two. Although perhaps few people outside Australia would notice the passing of its traditional cultural identity, the same forces that are threatening to destroy it are operating in all the nations founded by Anglo-Saxons – not least in America, and in England itself. Australia can therefore be seen as a microcosm in which social trends threatening the cultural core of all the “English-speaking nations” are perhaps most easily studied.

On the surface, traditional Anglo-Australia appears to be lost. Whether that must be so is one theme of this book. What the result will mean for Anglo-Australians is another. But perhaps the main theme, threaded between the lines, is what lessons “Anglos” around the world can learn from Australia’s cultural experiment. 

This study is therefore dedicated to all people of Anglo-Saxon and related origin, wherever they may live.

1.            Culture of Complaint: the fraying of America, Robert Hughes, Oxford University Press, 1993

2.            The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, George Sampson, Cambridge University Press, 1972

3.            “Queen did not approve dismissal of Whitlam”, by Paul Kelly, The Weekend Australian, March 10-11, 2001, p. 1

Chapter 1: Paving the way

I am he

Who paved the way,

That you might walk

At your ease today;

I was the conscript

Sent to hell

To make in the desert

The living well;

I bore the heat,

I blazed the track –

Furrowed and bloody

Upon my back.

I split the rock;

I felled the tree:

The nation was -

Because of me!

(from Old Botany Bay, by Dame Mary Gilmore.)

Visitors to some of the older cities in Australia are often surprised to come across pockets of intact Georgian architecture tucked within the more renowned areas of Victorian-era housing stock. The simple elegance of these buildings is a jolting contrast to the banal modern suburbs sprawling out for miles beyond them. Quietly, and without fuss or pretension, they might remind the educated tourist of the days of Goldsmith, Cowper, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Wedgwood.

Yet these buildings are the legacy of a different, but no less remarkable, aspect of Georgian England. They are a reminder of perhaps the most signal social experiment ever undertaken by the English nation. This experiment was the foundation of a new colony, using as raw material the petty criminals who were at that time straining the British penal system to bursting point.

The banishment of convicts had been practised in Elizabethan times, although it was not until an act of Charles II in 1680 that the term “transportation” was used. Up to the time of the American War of Independence, convicted criminals were transported to the North American colonies as a benign alternative to capital punishment. There they were sold as indentured labourers. It was a form of slavery that disposed of criminals and largely recovered the costs involved.

But British society in Georgian times was undergoing rapid changes. The population was growing at an astounding rate. In just twenty years, from 1750 to 1770, the population of London doubled, largely through natural increase. The land clearances and other changes during the agrarian revolution also led many people to drift into the cities to find work. Furthermore, changes in the way industry was conducted left many people behind, abandoned to a life of gruelling poverty. The result was a surge in the crime rate.

Honest citizens looked at the slums of London and other teeming cities and saw, not their unfortunate countrymen who had been displaced by social change, but almost another nation altogether – a nation of petty thieves, receivers, pickpockets, beggars, burglars, sly gin-sellers, forgers, informers and gin-soaked prostitutes. As there were in those days no police in anything like the modern sense, the law-abiding citizens, those who had kept their heads above the waves of social change, felt threatened and besieged. Not surprisingly, they feared that a violent criminal class was welling up from below. They demanded protection.

One possible response the authorities could have made was to increase the severity of punishment as a deterrent. Yet as the great jurist Sir William Blackstone remarked in 1769, 160 different offences were already punishable by hanging. These included picking pockets, stealing a letter, and begging in public by soldiers and sailors. By this stage almost forty people a year were being hanged in London and the surrounding counties alone. The deterrent effect of public executions was clearly not working.

The gaols were so full of criminals that they could accommodate no more. Rented ships and rotting old hulks were pressed into service as temporary prisons. Soon these were also overcrowded, and with a combination of inadequate rations and primitive hygiene they became breeding grounds for disease.

Clearly, England needed somewhere to store her ever-growing number of prisoners. Yet transportation to America had ceased with the American War of Independence. Some new initiative was needed to relieve the burden on the prison system. So in 1782, as an experiment, 300 convicts were transported to West Africa. Over half of them died. Africa was consequently abandoned as a possible destination for transportees.

In 1770, Captain James Cook had surveyed the eastern seaboard of what was to become Australia, claiming it in the name of George III. His reports on this new British possession were favourable, and in 1785 a committee of the House of Commons discussed the possibility of transporting convicts to New South Wales. By 1787 the King’s Speech baldly announced the government’s intention of “transporting a number of convicts in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols”.

The “First Fleet” to carry convicts to New South Wales set sail on 13 May 1787 under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. It was made up of two warships, six transports and three storeships. On board were about 750 convicts – a quarter of them women, thirteen of whom had been permitted to bring with them their youngest children – and about 550 free colonists including sailors, officers, four companies of marines, and wives and children.

The plan was that on landfall in New South Wales Captain Phillip was to be proclaimed governor of a military colony. The convicts were expected to build houses and barracks, to plough and farm the land, and to raise livestock. In effect, the idea was that they were to be turned from slum-dwelling thieves and malcontents into sturdy peasant farmers. The marines were there solely to control the convicts. (Since their musket balls had apparently not been loaded with their other armaments, they were perhaps lucky that the convicts attempted only two rather half-hearted mutinies during the voyage.)

The First Fleet arrived in early 1788. By the 26^th of January a suitable site had been chosen, and the Union Flag was formally unfurled. Phillip named the fledgling settlement Sydney in honour of the home secretary, Viscount Sydney. Phillip wrote that Sydney harbour was “the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security”. It is clear from this comment that he had a much grander vision of Sydney’s future role in the Empire than as a mere gulag for the “criminal classes”.

On the 6^th of February the female convicts were brought ashore. What immediately ensued sounds like a good-tempered orgy. According to one of the surgeons: “The men convicts got to them [the women] very soon after they landed, and it is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night … The scene which presented itself at this time and during the greater part of the night, beggars every description; some swearing, others quarrelling, others singing …” All this occurred during a violent thunderstorm, in which lightning killed six sheep and a pig!

After an eight-month voyage, travelling half way around the earth, only forty lives had been lost. Perhaps the convicts were justified in celebrating. Phillip was proclaimed Governor the next morning, to the accompaniment of marine drums and fifes. He used the official occasion to lecture the convicts on their previous night’s debauch, threatened severe discipline for any future misdeeds, explained that they must work if they wished to eat, but promised that they would not be over-worked.

Phillip’s failure to punish the orgiasts reflected his general forbearance. For his entire term as Governor, his military rule was mostly benevolent – and extremely so in comparison with other places of distant exile for European criminals. The convicts retained certain rights as British subjects. For instance, a marine named Thomas Bramwell was sentenced to 200 lashes for striking a convict woman, Elizabeth Needham, (who was later granted 40 acres of land when her sentence expired). This is not to say that convict women were free from physical and especially sexual abuse, but even so, 200 lashes was a hefty punishment for Bramwell’s offence. Remarkably, during the period of near-famine that set in toward the end of 1788, all men received equal rations, regardless of whether they were free or convicted. (Women received two thirds of the male ration, since few of them worked.) Governor Phillip also firmly believed that once convicts’ sentences had expired they were to be treated as if the slate had been wiped entirely clean.

On some issues Phillip refused to compromise. He detested male homosexuality, and feared that the sexual imbalance of the new colony might promote behaviour of that sort. His proposed solution was to further exile any sodomites to New Zealand, and he expressed the hope that there they would be eaten by the Maoris.

Also, using his powers as Governor, Phillip flatly rejected Lord Sydney’s suggestion that women from Pacific islands such as “… the Friendly Islands, New Caledonia, Etc” be enslaved to redress the sexual imbalance. Instead, he demanded that more British convict women be sent out. Although the colony would probably have failed under a lesser man than Phillip, this was in a sense his most important single decision. Because of his refusal to import Pacific Island women, the majority of Australia’s population is still descended from the British Isles. If Phillip had yielded to Lord Sydney’s proposal, the population of the colony would have become largely of mixed race within a few generations. (As we shall see, the development of Australia would then have taken a completely different direction, which in turn would have had major effects on world history.)

In due course a Second Fleet arrived, and a Third, and the little colony midwifed by Governor Phillip eventually prospered. Subsidiary colonies were then founded elsewhere in what is now Australia, mainly where good natural harbours could be found.

Governor Arthur Phillip set sail back to England in December 1792. He had served his nation in an exemplary way. It is doubtful that anyone else could have supervised the establishment of a colony that would so amply repay England for its foresight in appointing him. Phillip died at Bath in 1814, holding the rank of vice-admiral.

It is now time to return to those he left behind in New South Wales. The marine officers were not initially eligible for land grants, as it was felt that gentlemen would not choose to stay on, riskily trying to farm remote properties at the end of the earth. Australian historians have therefore done little quantitative research on the fate of the officers. The marines were eligible for land grants, but again the research is in its early stages.

As far as the convicts are concerned, eventually a total of 24,960 women and 132,308 men were transported to Australia. In their attitudes to this small tributary of the great river of migrants to Australia, historians have generally followed a series of changing paradigms.

For most of the nineteenth century, the so-called “convict stain” on Australia’s origins deterred any serious investigation. The convicts, it was felt, were best forgotten. The men were regarded as brutal thugs and murderers (even though murder was a hanging offence), and the women as wanton prostitutes (even though prostitution was not an offence that was punishable by transportation). Australians who could trace their origins to a transported ancestor tended to leave this skeleton firmly locked in the ancestral closet.

Then, from about the 1890s, a revisionist approach set in. The convicts were now regarded as victims of a terrible class system, and the triviality of their crimes was contrasted with the institutionalised criminality of the aristocracy. By 1921, the English-born historian G. A. Wood pointedly asked a meeting of the Royal Historical Society: “… did any convict family ever live in New South Wales more disreputable in respect to personal morality than the royal family of England?” As a result of this paradigm revision by the elites, finding and boasting about a convict ancestor became for a while a popular pastime among educated Australians. There was some validity in this revisionism. After all, from the beginning many convicts had been transported for crimes that would probably warrant a reprimand in modern courtrooms. On the First Fleet alone, there were many people like John Barry, a 19 year-old who was transported for seven years for stealing three pairs of stockings, or James Bradley, Elizabeth Thackery and others, transported for stealing a single handkerchief.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the attitudes of historians had swung back toward those of the nineteenth century. New information and new historical methods seemed for a while to confirm that the convicts had indeed been brutal and debauched.

Then, with the beginning of the information revolution, the convict indents became widely available. It was now possible to computerise quantitative historical analysis. By this stage feminism was becoming a dominant paradigm among historians, and feminist historians leapt at the opportunity to revise the previous assessment of women convicts. In one sense this was fortuitous. Regardless of ideology, a close study of convict women still makes sense because freed convict males were able to work their passage back to Britain on ships, but with few exceptions convict females had no option but to stay in Australia. On the other hand, in terms of absolute numbers, far more convict males than females remained in Australia. Future historians will no doubt redress the current imbalance in the approach to male and female convicts.

Of the 132,308 men transported to Australia between 1788 and 1867, the largest group sent to the first and largest convict destination, New South Wales, were English. They made up 63% of the total. Only 29% of male convicts to New South Wales were from Ireland. The rest came mostly from Scotland and Wales, with a smattering of indigenous Britons from the Orkneys to the Scilly Isles – and even a few exotic Negroes from the colonies as well as an insignificant number of Jews.

Of the 24,960 female transportees, 56% of those sent to New South Wales were from Ireland, while only 34% were from England. This needs to be placed in a broader context. Until 1840 there was a policy of not transporting Irish convicts to Van Diemen’s Land. So evidently the figures for New South Wales inflate the overall percentage of Irish transportees, both male and female. In short, most convicts transported to Australia as a whole were English. For male convicts in general, 56% were English, 23% Irish, and 4% Scottish. The origin of the remainder is unknown, but nearly all were from the British Isles.

In passing, it should be said that the Scottish transportees, many of whom were ethnic Anglo-Saxons from the Lowlands, had a reputation for being particularly vicious. This is the result of a popular misunderstanding – Scottish courts were in fact simply reluctant to transport first offenders. While most transportees from England, Ireland and Wales were first offenders, the Scottish criminals who were transported had usually been caught out more than once in criminal activity.

What, in general, were the criminal acts that merited transportation? Overwhelmingly, they involved small-scale theft. Theft of goods worth over 40 shillings was punishable by death, although the sentence could be commuted. Occasionally a kind-hearted prosecutor saved someone from the gallows by underestimating the value of the stolen goods. This seems to have happened with nineteen year-old Catherine Hart, of whose takings the prosecutor told the judge, “My Lord, I value them at 30s in order to save her life, because the wretche’s life is no value to me.” Despite these exceptions, the transported convicts were nearly all petty thieves whose typical takings were very small.

On the lists of indictments the word “stealing” occurs again and again. Domestic servants and others stole from their employers, prostitutes stole from their clients, and all kinds of people stole from friends and acquaintances. Country folk sometimes stole sheep, cows, and other livestock, but the usual targets were clothes, household items and money. This thieving was mostly opportunistic. Only a few crimes, such as highway robbery and breaking and entering, were obviously planned in advance. The transportees also included a smattering of receivers of stolen goods, swindlers and forgers. Very few offences were not associated with property, and these were mostly of a “one-off” nature. For instance, Mary Harrison, a silkwinder and prostitute aged thirty-two, was convicted of throwing acid in the face of another prostitute.

When they were not thieving, the largest single group among the male convicts had been rural labourers. Others had been sailors, carpenters, shoemakers, weavers, brickmakers, bricklayers, tailors, butchers, haymakers, farmers, blacksmiths and the like. It should be specifically mentioned here that there were several fishermen, since the claim has often been made that there was only one. (Known experienced fishermen included William Bryant and Joseph Bishop.) Furthermore, many of both the men and the women had agricultural experience. Additionally, there may have been other convicts with specialist skills who at the time of their offences were occupied in other fields.

More than half of the women had been domestic servants. The rest had held an assortment of mostly menial jobs. Fourteen were listed as “unemployed”, suggesting that they may have been prostitutes.

The average age of the convicts was twenty-seven. The largest single age group for both men and women was 16-25, and the second largest was 26-35. They had clearly been chosen partly because they were young and healthy.

Furthermore, transported convicts were more literate than the fellow-prisoners they left behind, and more literate than workers in general. For instance, only about 20% of English female transportees were illiterate, compared to over 40% of female English prisoners in general and more than 50% of their working sisters. Greater literacy probably correlated with higher intelligence.

In terms of their occupational skills, the transported convicts were largely a typical cross-section of the British working class in Georgian times, and as likely as any to make the colony a success. But in terms of their health, their age, their educational achievement and probably their intelligence, they were outstanding. The details of the selection procedure are still largely a mystery, but apart from their light-fingered habits the convicts were an elite group within their social class. Furthermore, transportation provided opportunities that would not have been available to them in England, and therefore they had a strong incentive to do well.

The military men, the sailors, the servants, the civic staff and the wives were also mostly young and healthy. The published records of the civilians are not as comprehensive as those of the convicts; but several of them, like marine private John Esty and the sensitive young lieutenant Ralph Clark, kept fluent diaries. Watkin Tench, a captain-lieutenant of the marines, became the author of two books on the settlement at Botany Bay as well as a study of the French Revolution. The civilians were self-chosen, and most of them were capable, ambitious young men furthering their careers. Several stayed on in the colony, received grants of land, and raised children.

All in all, the men and women associated with the founding of Australia were young, skilled and enterprising. It is therefore no surprise that within a short time they had established a flourishing English colony. By 1803, for instance, an astounding 25% of all emancipists in New South Wales had taken up farming.

What is at first surprising is that England made available such splendid pioneering stock. As one writer on female convicts has expressed it, “Britain’s loss of convict maids may well have been Australia’s gain”. ¹ Yet it has long been recognised that the hulks crisis was not the sole reason for establishing the settlement. Other considerations were so important that this factor should be viewed more as a catalyst. One of them was the strategic expansion of empire. We have already noted Phillip’s appreciation of the naval potential of Sydney Harbour. Access to new supplies of timber and flax (known as “naval stores”) for the fleets in India also falls under this category. Other factors were mercantile. Perhaps the most urgent of these was the whaling industry. The recently independent American whalers were becoming increasingly competitive, and if the colony could support a new southern whaling industry that would be a boon for the mother country.

For these and other reasons it was essential that the settlement should succeed. Recognising this, England made an excellent choice of colonists. In this sense it is short-sighted to argue that England’s loss was Australia’s gain. England was losing nothing. The convicts, and even more so, the civilians, were overwhelmingly English. They and their descendants, and the free settlers who followed them, thought of themselves as a special kind of Englishman or Englishwoman for the best part of the next two centuries. They were to spill their blood freely and disproportionately alongside their English comrades in military campaigns from the Boer War, through two World Wars, to the crisis in Malaya. The economy they created was vital to the British Empire. Their inventiveness, their arts and their intellectual achievements have been as much a credit to the mother nation as the colonies in Ionia once were to Athens. As we shall see, they only ceased to think of themselves as English when England herself abandoned them.

1. Oxley, D., Convict Maids, Cambridge University Press, 1996

Chapter 2: Early English Growth and Irish Rebellion

The development of the new colony would have been very different if it were not for the isolation, remoteness and vast size of the Australian continent. Imagine laying a transparent map of Australia over a same-scale map of Europe. If Sydney, on the south-east coast, is placed over Istanbul, then Perth on the west coast would be in the sea south of Ireland. The northernmost tip of Australia at Cape York would end north of St Petersburg in Russia, while Tasmania’s Hobart would be near Tobruk in Libya.

The area of Australia is 2,975,000 square miles. This is fourteen times the area of France, yet the amount of arable land in France and Australia is about the same. The only parts of the southern continent that are sustainably habitable even today are a few pockets along the coast, mainly in the east and south-east; and, a continent away, in the far south-west near Perth. In this respect Australia resembles Iceland and Greenland, except that the forbidding interior is desert rather than glacier.

Even the habitable regions are deceptive. Rainfall is unreliable. In one year there may be floods, to be followed for several years by droughts. The soil, where it exists, is thin and lacking in nutrients. The native vegetation is adapted to these hostile conditions, but the handful of mostly English colonists in the first settlement at Sydney knew nothing of these constraints. They had no idea what lay beyond the Blue Mountains to their west, and it was to be some years before explorers found a route through them. As to the nature of the interior, it was long thought that there must be a vast inland sea. In fact there had been, once; but with climatic change it had dried up thousand of years earlier. Even so, many brave men were to lose their lives in search of this marine chimera in the terrible deserts of the interior.

The first settlers in New South Wales could have had no idea of what unpleasant surprises this capricious land would spring on them from season to season, year to year. The colony survived by the skin of its teeth. By 1800 it had grown to about 5,000 souls. Up to a fifth of them were Irish, with the rest overwhelmingly English.¹ Children were being born, industry was growing, and in many respects a new England was taking shape.

By 1800, twenty free settlers had been attracted by the offer of land grants in New South Wales. These were the first of a mighty wave of immigrants that would overwhelm the descendants of both the convicts and the free colonists from the transport fleets. For the foreseeable future the new free settlers were to be predominantly English, further reducing the percentage of the population that could lay claim to Irish origins.

Almost from the beginning, Sydney was not the only colony. From March 1788 Norfolk Island, 1000 miles north-east of Sydney, had been a separate penal station, a place of further exile for recalcitrant convicts. The second settlement on the mainland was Parramatta, 25 miles west of Sydney. Originally established as a government farm, it was proclaimed a town in 1790. 72 miles north of Sydney, at the mouth of the Hunter River, coal was discovered in 1796. This area was originally named Coal River. (It is now called Newcastle.) A penal station was established there, and by 1802 Newcastle coal was being exported to India. Within just 14 years the little settlements were beginning to pay their way in the Empire.

Hobart, in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), some 700 miles south of Sydney, was founded in 1804 as another convict station. The main reasons for choosing this site were to forestall a feared French settlement, to acquire timber, to grow grain, and to establish a seal fishery ². It began with over 500 marines, convicts and free settlers. These pioneers were entirely on their own, and were soon afflicted by the near-starvation that had almost destroyed Sydney. In due course, two fifths of all the convicts sent to Australia were to disembark in Tasmania.

Despite all the early difficulties, the British population of Australia continued to grow. Free settlers had been accepted since 1792. They usually received a small land grant. By 1806 a new scheme to attract “gentlemen” was trialed. In return for investing £6,000 each in the colony, for instance, the Blaxland brothers from Kent were granted 2,000 acres and some convict servants.

By the 1820s a fifth of the population were free settlers. More were needed, especially women. The colonies began clamouring for schemes of assisted passage for free immigrants. The first ship of assisted migrants left for Australia in 1832. In 1835 the New South Wales Governor offered “bounties” of £30 to landowners and businessmen to sponsor adult migrant couples under the age of thirty, plus £5 per child; £15 for unmarried women aged 15-30; and £10 for single males as long as an equal number of females was also sponsored. Up to 3,000 people a year arrived in Australia as “Bounty” immigrants. By 1839, 27% of English emigrants were choosing Australia over America, Canada, New Zealand or elsewhere as their preferred destination.

Naturally, these incentives were not offered to anyone who felt like migrating from Britain. Young single women were especially targeted, and they had to be of good character. More women than men emigrated under the assisted passage schemes. Most were farm servants and domestics. These Englishwomen were slightly more literate than their convict counterparts who, as we have seen, were more literate than the general working class population of England. The free Irishwomen were so much more literate than their female Irish convict counterparts that they constituted a brain drain from Ireland. In either case, being self-selected migrants, they were also healthier and showed more initiative than their stay-at-home cousins.

As the British writer P. M. Cunningham was to conclude:

In no part of the world, either, is to be found a more respectable and intelligent community wherewith to associate than in the Australian colony; for few except men of intelligence and enterprise emigrate …³

Britain was losing some of the best of its working class. This applied especially to England, since English settlers dominated in all migrant categories – convicts, free settlers, officials, soldiers and wives.

The largest minority was, of course, the Irish. But Irish migrants, whether free or forced, did not form a monolithic bloc. As one writer has expressed it, “all discussion of the Irish must take into account that there were periods of high migration from Protestant Ulster … and that the Irish-born became increasingly divided between Catholic and Protestant”. ⁴ There was little love lost between the two groups. For instance, in July 1846 a riot broke out between Catholics and Orangemen, in which shots were fired and martial law proclaimed. Tempers flared again during the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit in 1867 – again shots were fired, and this time a youth was killed. By and large the Protestant settlers from Ulster were of Anglo-Saxon stock, and should therefore be deducted from the Irish total and added to the English. Most of them certainly blended in with the English majority. Furthermore, many of the Irish Catholics were also happy to be Anglicised in all but their religion, especially so once they realised that the new country offered them far more opportunity than would ever have been available to them at home. Many of them were in fact originally of English descent.

Perhaps there would have been no continuing ethnic conflict if His Majesty’s Government had not seen fit to transport a large number of Irish Catholic political dissenters after the abortive revolt in Ireland in 1798. Many of these men had committed criminal offences that definitely merited transportation, but some were transported merely for their political views. These purely political prisoners were resentful, defiant, and resolved never to be reconciled to their fate. (They were also extreme in their idealism, many having supported atrocities such as the herding of Protestant men, women and children into a barn at Scullabogue, there to be burned alive.)

To compound the problem, the Irish political transportees were not permitted to bring out with them their wives and children. Their contribution to the future Australian gene-pool was thereby reduced, but their rancour may have been calmed if they had had their families with them. As we shall see, it survived – to poison from time to time the well of Australian culture.

The ordinary Irish convicts had generally been regarded as backward and rather amusing. Many of them believed that China was about 150 miles north of Sydney, and that they could escape there and that, for some reason, they would be well-treated by the Chinese. As one of them explained to Watkin Tench, “… at a considerable distance to the northward existed a large river, which separated this country from the back part of China, and that when it should be crossed (which was practicable) they would find themselves among a copper-coloured people, who would receive and treat them kindly”. Groups of up to sixty at a time would escape from the colony, and head off to “China” armed with a crude drawing of a compass on a piece of bark – naturally, without a needle. Many perished in the bush. None reached China.

A second utopia that enthused the uneducated section of the Irish population was supposed to exist 200 miles south-west of Sydney. This place was said to be occupied by white people who enjoyed luxurious lives without having to do any work. Many more Irish escapees headed for this imaginary paradise, with the same results as those who sought to reach China. The bones of both were often found picked clean by carrion birds.

Another Irish group stole a long-boat, intending to take a more sensible sea-route to Asia. Having reached the mouth of Sydney harbour, they then proceeded to head south rather than north. When a search party caught up with them they ran away into the bush, leaving their stores behind. A settler drove them off from his farm, and the starving escapees eventually surrendered.

Yet if the general run of Irish convicts was regarded as somewhat backward people who would nevertheless blend in with the majority in due course, the political martyrs were considered a real danger. It was feared that, being far better educated, they could easily induce the more gullible of their countrymen to open rebellion. Governor Hunter, who succeeded Phillip, begged the mother country to send no more of these “horrid characters”. The next Governor, Philip King, regarded them as “the most desperate and diabolical characters”. To make matters worse, these transportees refused to work at a time when the colony was still facing the prospect of starvation.

Under the leadership of the political prisoners, far-fetched plans for a general rebellion against the government were hatched, over and over again. All were betrayed to the authorities, either by paid informers or by rebels who lost courage as the deadline for revolution drew close. Those leaders against whom evidence could be found received penalties of up to a thousand lashes, but still the plots continued.

In 1789 the motherland raised a military force called the News South Wales Corps. It comprised four companies of 67 private soldiers, each with a captain, lieutenant, ensign, sergeants, corporals and drummers. When the extent of the plans for revolt became known, it was feared that the NSW Corps might well be gravely outnumbered by murderous Irish convicts armed with makeshift pikes. Civilian militias known as Loyal Associations were therefore raised in both Parramatta and Sydney. These men were issued with uniforms, armed, and drilled by the sergeants of the NSW Corps.

The long-feared rebellion erupted at 8 o’clock in the evening of the 4^th of March, 1804. The rebel leader was Phillip Cunningham, a veteran of the 1798 uprising in Ireland. The rebels looted many farms, securing weapons, and intended to march first on Parramatta and then on to Sydney. Settlers quickly informed the authorities of these depredations. The NSW Corps and the Loyal Associations immediately assembled. The Governor declared martial law at 4 am. Two hours later he ordered Major George Johnston of the NSW Corps to apprehend the mutineers. His soldiers, split into two groups, were accompanied by armed and enraged civilians. Shortly before midday Major Johnston’s detachment had caught up with the largest group of rebels. Johnston personally arrested Cunningham. The well-drilled soldiers and their civilian supporters then opened fire on the far more numerous rebels, who fired back in disorderly fashion, then fled. The pursuit of the remaining rebels ended at 4pm, after a forced march totalling 45 miles.

This affray became known as the “Battle of Vinegar Hill”. In it the NSW Corps had shown admirable military efficiency. The radical Irish had confirmed the low reputation and the suspicion in which they were already held. Their main ringleaders were rapidly tried and hanged. Lesser rebel lights were whipped and then sent in chains to mine coal at the Hunter River. The events of March 1804 would never be repeated. The citizenry was incensed, and many offered to “take up arms” to “suppress the enemies of our Government with that alacrity becoming Englishmen”.

There were to be no other comparable Irish rebellions in Australia, but relations between the minority Irish Catholics and the vast majority of the colonists had been soured for decades to come.

1.      Macintyre, S., A Concise History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1999

2.      Until about 1834, whale and seal oil, whale bone and seal skins were the most important exports from the new colonies.

3.      Cunningham, P. M., Two Years in New South Wales, London, 1827

4.      Jupp, J. (ed.) The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, Sydney 1988

Chapter 3: The Larrikin Heritage

British officers in the First World War often complained that Australian troops were so disrespectful of authority that they could scarcely be brought to salute their superiors. Of course, there are two sides to every story. The Aussie soldiers would have seen their behaviour as entirely appropriate to a nation of independent “larrikins”. Unfortunately, as far as Imperial relations were concerned, most British officers would never have heard of that term.

According to the 1911 edition of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”, “Australia … as may be seen from the novels of Rolf Boldrewood and other writers, possesses an ample store of slang peculiar to itself, but of this larrikin is the only word that had found its way into general use in the mother country.”

The term “larrikin” first came into general Australian use in Melbourne around 1870. It was appropriated from English regional dialect. Dr Jago’s “Glossary of the Cornish Dialect” (1882) offers this definition: “Larrikins: mischievous young fellows, larkers”. Dr Jago quoted an example of the term from a Penzance newspaper: “mischievous larrikins who pull the young trees down”. Related terms, like the Yorkshire dialect verb “to larrack”, are found elsewhere in England. The fact that these young men chose to breathe new life into an obscure English word tells us something of how they perceived themselves. (Similar terms, such as hooligan or the U.S. hoodlum, were available to them, but were not adopted.)

The first people to be called larrikins in Australia were tough young city-dwelling men who gathered in rival “pushes,” or gangs. These lads were always ready for a fight; they dressed with great finesse, despised any show of the finer emotions, and spoke in a strange cant of their own. Above all, in a contemporary description from the Melbourne Punch, the larrikin was “a lad who cannot and will not bow to authority”. Their British equivalents might have been rough-cast, but the Aussie larrikins distinguished themselves as much by their attitude as by their fists.

The term “larrikin” has subsequently broadened in meaning to denote what is perceived as a leading attribute of the Australian character. The “Australian National Dictionary” gets closer to the modern sense of the word in its definition of a larrikin as “One who acts with apparently careless disregard for social or political conventions”¹. The larrikin’s disregard for conventions is, however, anything but “careless”. It is an almost studied attitude, and it is conducted with style, occasionally even with panache.

The Australian larrikin is tough, cockily defiant, contemptuous of authority, and reckless. He has a strong sense of fair play, at least when it applies to himself, and is loyal to his mates. He is no longer a purely urban character. The term “bush larrikin” appeared in print as early as 1889. The Australian actor Paul Hogan has portrayed a charming rural larrikin in his three “Crocodile Dundee” comedy films. The modern larrikin is also no longer any sort of thug. Writers, artists, musicians, even Prime Ministers, have been described as larrikins. The larrikin can even, occasionally, be a female: the word larrikiness is recorded as early as 1871. When he ventures outside of Australia the larrikin tends to metamorphose into the figure of a knockabout “innocent abroad”, as portrayed in the 1972 Australian film, “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie”. If he chooses a political career the larrikin will be labelled a “maverick”, a term which originally denoted cattle that had not been branded to show who owned them. If he can cope financially he might well become that very Australian version of an English eccentric, a “ratbag”.

Most of the larrikin’s characteristics can be traced to Australia’s human history and the unforgiving nature of its climate and geography.

Take, for instance, the larrikin’s loyalty to his mates. By 1840 the proportion of males to females in Australia was two to one. (This ratio didn’t balance out until about 1880.) The three unchanging, unpredictable constants of Australia’s climate are bushfire, drought and flood. One or another of these – and sometimes all three – ravages the southern continent every year. The only way a European society can survive them is through close co-operation among individuals. For the first hundred years of Australia’s history, this necessarily meant men co-operating closely with other men. Thus was born, of necessity, the traditional Australian male characteristic of “mateship”. For the first century of settlement it was unlikely that a man injured in defending his community against natural disasters would be lucky enough to have a woman to dress his wounds. His “mates” had to do that for him.

Today, Australians particularly revere one manifestation of this ethos in the “Royal Flying Doctor Service”. Dr John Flynn (1880-1951) observed the improvements in air transport during the First World War, and reasoned that it would be possible to set up an airborne ambulance service to service the tiny, far-flung settlements in the desert inland of the continent. He commissioned an Adelaide electrician to create a simple pedal radio, so that sick or injured people could easily signal for help. In 1928 the first call for assistance was sent out from the Hermannsburg Mission, and the flying doctor service became operational. The larrikin of the 1870s could not have foreseen how his belief in mateship would eventually lead to an aerial medical service ministering to 3 million square miles of desert.

On the other hand, if he could look back in time he might have noticed that many “larrikin” characteristics had been present from the beginning of Australia’s white history. Surprisingly, perhaps, the earliest group to exhibit larrikin traits was that band of gallant gentlemen in dashing uniforms, the officers of the New South Wales Corps.

We have already encountered Major George Johnston, the victor at Vinegar Hill. As a lieutenant of the Royal Marines, he had been the first man to step ashore at Sydney Cove. He switched to the N.S.W. Corps in 1790, at Governor Phillip’s request raising a local detachment to augment the soldiers coming out from Britain. In 1800 he was – prophetically – sent to England to be tried for breaches of the liquor laws. The trial was cancelled for lack of evidence. All of these achievements were soon to be overshadowed by Major Johnston’s role as the only successful rebel leader in Australia’s history.

The original head of the N.S.W. Corps was Major Francis Grose. An honourably wounded veteran of the American War of Independence, Grose was keen to look after the interests of his fellow-officers and men. They initially expressed their interests by purchasing the cargoes of passing ships and re-selling them on shore at exorbitant profits. They had no rivals, since it wasn’t until 1812 that the Crown sent out a significant shipment of coins. Only the Corps could offer acceptable payment, in the form of their paymaster’s bills, which could be cashed for sterling back in the mother country.

The position of paymaster in the “Rum Corps”, as they soon became known through their speculative dealings in rum, the de facto currency, was therefore commercially important. This position fell to the larger-than-life figure of Captain John Macarthur.

Major Grose acted as Governor from 1792 to 1794, between the departure of Arthur Phillip and the arrival of the next Governor, John Hunter. In 1794 Grose returned to England, and was succeeded by Lieutenant-colonel William Paterson. It was Grose and Paterson who transformed the colonial economy by tilting the economic initiative toward their fellow-soldiers in the Rum Corps.

In no British colony were military officers eligible for land grants. The general rule was that in order to be given land, an officer had first to resign his commission. Yet as early as 1788, officers in New South Wales were petitioning for land grants. In 1793 a dispatch arrived from England permitting officers to be granted land as long as it was “suitable for a bone fide settler should it ever come into the hands of such a person”. Ever one to seize the day, the genial Major Grose promptly granted much of the most fertile harbourside land to his Rum Corps officers. By 1796 these officers owned almost a third of the land under cultivation in the colony. They also had convict labourers assigned to work their farms. (They argued, incidentally, that convicts preferred to be paid for their labours with half a pint of rum a day.)

In September 1795 Governor John Hunter arrived. Another veteran of the American war, a tough naval man, Hunter was a compassionate administrator who was appalled at the way the Rum Corps’ speculative activities had inflated the price of all goods in the colony. He wasn’t to last long enough to do much about it. In 1797 a letter from the colony falsely accusing Hunter himself of speculative trading reached the Duke of Portland, the colonial secretary. Portland eventually relieved the hamstrung Governor Hunter with Philip Gidley King in September 1800.

King was a naval veteran of the American war. He promoted the nascent coal-mining, sealing and whaling industries, all of which served to encourage more trade with the colony of New South Wales. He also established the daughter colonies that were to become Hobart and Launceston. He even had a little success in cutting back the rum trade. The thorn in his side was therefore destined to be the Rum Corps.

Grose and Paterson had given their paymaster, John Macarthur, as much land as he wanted in order to experiment with wool-growing. In 1801 Macarthur seriously injured his commanding officer, William Paterson, in a duel. King wanted to court-martial Macarthur, but fearing that the Rum Corps would be loyal to their own, sent him to England for trial. The official indictment papers conveniently vanished during the voyage, and in 1805 Macarthur returned to New South Wales. He had meanwhile sold his commission, and gained from Lord Camden a promise of thousands more acres of the best grazing country in the land. He also brought with him several merino sheep from the Royal Flock at Kew to improve the Cape merinos that he had been breeding.

King opposed Lord Camden’s land grant, but Macarthur prevailed. Macarthur and his sympathisers then did everything possible to blacken King’s name. By 1806 the Governor had been replaced by William Bligh (of Bounty fame).

Bligh, another naval man, soon came into conflict with the Rum Corps. His twin aims were to break the officers’ monopoly on the rum trade and to promote the cause of small settlers. He struck immediately at the military by banning the use of rum to buy many commodities. Then, foolishly, he tried to make an example of Macarthur by charging him for some minor irregularities to do with his private ship. Macarthur was tried by six gentleman officers. During the trial he flamboyantly challenged the authority of Bligh’s Judge-advocate, who was the president of the court. The officers acquitted Macarthur. Bligh then compounded his foolishness by seeking to charge them with treason.

The acting head of the Rum Corps, George Johnston, the hero of Vinegar Hill, apologised that a recent injury rendered him unable to arrest the six officers. The next day, the 26^th of January 1808 ², Major Johnston led the Rum Corps to Government House and arrested Bligh (whom they claimed to have found hiding under a bed). Johnston made himself “Lieutenant-governor” of the provisional government, and John Macarthur became “colonial secretary” Bligh was placed under house arrest for a while, but was allowed to leave the colony a year later.

In March 1809 Macarthur and Johnston sailed for England to put their case, unsuccessfully, to the authorities. Macarthur was not prosecuted, but he stayed in England until 1817 when he was promised that he could return safely to his property of 60,000 prime acres in New South Wales. (During his absence his merino flock had been admirably managed by his wife and his nephew Hannibal – who, curiously, was to marry a daughter of Governor King.) Major Johnston was dismissed from the army but allowed to return freely to New South Wales, where he settled as a successful farmer and family man on the 2,600 acres that had been granted to him in earlier years.

The “Rum Rebellion” came to an end with the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, together with the 73^rd Regiment, in December 1809. The New South Wales Corps then officially returned to England and was disbanded. While few Australians today know more than the haziest details of the Rum Corps’ remarkable and colourful role in Australia’s history, that body has left several lasting legacies.

The first is their larrikinism. It was said above that: “The modern larrikin is stylish, tough, defiant, contemptuous of authority, and reckless. He has a strong sense of fair play, at least so far as it applies to himself, and is loyal to his mates.” All of these characteristics applied to the officers of the Rum Corps, and to none before them in Australia’s white history. In every joint military operation conducted since those far-off times, British officers have both praised and derided Australian soldiers for precisely these characteristics.

The second is their contribution to Australia’s gene-pool. 1,645 men in all served with the Rum Corps between 1790 and 1810. At any one time their serving members were equal to about 15% of the civilian male population. They were mostly recruited in England, and mostly chose to serve in Australia in order to advance their careers. It would be hard to find a more suitable pioneering stock. 422 of these men were discharged into the colony on the expiry of their period of service. A further 447 stayed on when the regiment was returned to England to be disbanded. In all, 82 officers served with the Corps. Of these, 37 settled in the colony. Both the officers and the men were wealthier than convict emancipists, and it is reasonable to suppose that they probably had larger families.

Third, their highly successful mercantile ventures, while technically corrupt, hastened the commercial development of the colony by creating a market economy in New South Wales. If the governors that they took such pleasure in antagonising and undermining had had their way, Australia would have remained for much longer a fairly dreary penal outpost dedicated to slowly turning petty thieves into yeomen. The governors did not have their way, and the early start in market economics provided by the Rum Corps has enabled Australia to play above its league economically ever since.

Fourth, their insistence on land grants to officers led to the creation of the Australian wool industry. By 1810 there were 32,000 sheep in News South Wales, and by 1814 annual exports of wool to England had grown to 35,000 lbs. The disruptions of the Napoleonic wars had almost destroyed the English wool industry, and German woolgrowers quickly cornered the rapidly growing English market for fine wool. By 1850, however, Australia was supplying English spinners and weavers with 137,000 bales of fine grade wool a year, compared to the Germans’ 30,000. For the next century it was said that “Australia rides on the sheep’s back”. This cliché refers to the fact that until the 1950s wool earned over half of Australia’s export income.

Fifth, pastoralism requires very large holdings of land. It is difficult to reconcile with small-scale farming. The dependence of the economies of the various colonies on huge sheep-runs largely shaped their social and political development, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Finally, the guaranteed supply of fine wool was vital in making Britain the workshop of the world. The mill towns of Yorkshire had a voracious appetite, and in the forty years from 1810, British wool imports increased tenfold.

When William Bligh was arrested by Major George Johnston, that dashing blond officer in a red woollen tunic, the Governor could not have foreseen the effect that the larrikin gentlemen of the Rum Corps would have on Britain’s industrial revolution – and, in consequence, on the empire. From today’s perspective, however, it is clear that both Australia and the world owe a debt to Major Johnston.

1.      The Australian National Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1988.

2.      The 26^th of February 1808 was the twentieth anniversary of British settlement in Australia. The date is now celebrated as Australia Day. The reference, however, is to settlement rather than mutiny.

Chapter 4: – Victoria: The Rebel Colony

Each of the six colonies that were to federate in 1901 had its own interesting beginning. New South Wales, Tasmania, and Queensland all started as convict settlements. Of these, we have concentrated on New South Wales, since developments there had far greater effects on the future of Australia. Western Australia began as a free settlement, but convicts were sent there to alleviate the shortage of labour, and the fleets continued to carry their human cargoes to Perth until 1867, long after the other states had ceased receiving any further convicts. South Australia was founded in 1836, and was populated entirely by free settlers.

Victoria was initially known as the “Port Phillip District” of New South Wales. In 1803 an attempt was made to settle a small group of convicts and free settlers near the present city of Melbourne. This attempt failed completely, and the colonisers were relocated to Hobart.

Whalers and sealers visited the coasts of what was to become Victoria for years before there was any permanent settlement. Their reports trickled back to the pubs of Tasmania, and it was soon common knowledge that Victoria contained much good grazing land for sheep. The only problem was that the governors in Sydney refused to allow any settlement in Victoria.

Thomas Henty was a Sussex landed gentleman who had established one of the great merino studs in England. (In fact, he had supplied John Macarthur with some of his first merinos.) In 1829 Henty sent his sons James and John to the area that is now Perth in Western Australia. There they were granted over 100,000 acres, but the land proved to be unsuitable for grazing and they lost much of their stock. They moved on to Tasmania, where their father, and their brother Edward, joined them in 1832. The Hentys then explored for good Victorian grazing land on their family ship, the Thistle, pretending to be on trading voyages. In 1833 they sailed into Portland Bay. There, behind a magnificent deep-sea harbour, they found 20,000 acres of land perfectly suited to their needs. Thomas applied to the government for a grant of this land, while Edward made ready for an illegal occupation if they were not permitted to settle. Predictably, their application was rejected. In 1834 Edward arrived at Portland with several servants, plus cows, bullocks, sows, turkeys, fowl, dogs, seed, a whale-boat and building materials. A month later the youngest of the six Henty brothers, Francis, arrived with sheep. Less than a year later Edward oversaw the first sheep shearing in Victoria, which was eventually to become the heartland of the Australian wool industry.

This settlement was an act of open defiance, and the colonial authorities later struck back at this “systematic violation of the law”, as Sir James Stephen called it, even tearing down the Henty family home and manufacturing entirely false claims that the Hentys had mistreated local Aborigines. Even so, the family persevered and prospered, to the extent that Edward went on to become a member of the Victorian parliament. Once again, the contempt for authority that has long been part of the Australian psyche was manifested not by convicts, but by free men. It is also worth noting the youthful age of these gentlemen-rebels. Of the brothers who founded their illegal settlement in 1834, Edward had been born in 1810, Stephen in 1811, Francis in 1815. 

At the time of the settlement of Portland, John Batman was a comparatively senior 33 years old. He had already had the experiences of an ordinary man’s entire lifetime. The son of a Middlesex convict transported for receiving stolen goods, John had been born in Parramatta, Australia’s second settlement. He moved to Tasmania in 1821 because of “a love affair” and took up a large leasehold farming property. A 6'6" bushman with skills superior to those of the natives, he quickly added freehold grants to his property by tracking down and apprehending a dashing-bushranger who had captured the town of Sorell and had cheekily offered a reward of twenty gallons of rum for the apprehension of the island’s governor. More grants followed when Batman rounded up several Aborigines, whom the government was trying to preserve by relocating them to an island in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. Meanwhile Batman had taken up with an escaped convict girl, perhaps with the connivance of the Governor, Plymouth-born Sir George Arthur.

Batman’s Tasmanian land was unsuitable for sheep. Somehow, probably in the waterfront pubs, he learned of the ideal grazing country around what is now the Victorian capital city of Melbourne. In any event, in 1835 Batman and several colleagues founded the Port Phillip Association, the aim of which was the private settlement of the Port Phillip District. Most of his colleagues were either employees or relatives of Governor Arthur, which suggests that Sir George may have been an active participant who hoped to extend his colonial authority across Bass Strait.

In May 1835 Batman chartered the schooner Rebecca and, with six crewmen, three white servants, and seven Aborigines who were devoted to him, he sailed into Port Phillip Bay. He explored the area, noting how few trees there were, and observing that everything was as “green as a field of wheat”. On the 6^th of June he signed a treaty with the local Aboriginal chiefs. According to this treaty, drawn up by a former attorney-general of Tasmania, Batman and his associates were to receive 600,000 acres in exchange for eight pairs of blankets, thirty handkerchiefs, one tomahawk, eighteen bead necklaces, six pounds of sugar, twelve looking glasses and “a quantity of apples”.

Leaving some of his party behind to get established, Batman returned to Tasmania. He crossed the strait again in August, bringing with him his wife, their four little girls, and his brother Henry. More ships arrived, and by just over a year the illegal settlement had grown to include 186 males, 38 females, 43 homes, 41,000 sheep and 75 horses.

In May 1836 a police magistrate arrived on behalf of New South Wales Governor Sir Richard Bourke. A proclamation was read out prohibiting settlement. In October the government’s forces arrived, including thirty privates of the 4^th Regiment. All houses were soon ordered to be pulled down, and in May 1837 the government sold off land that is now the centre of Melbourne in half-acre blocks. Batman asked to be allowed to keep at least the twenty acres that he had under cultivation. The authorities refused, and, still young but very ill, he died soon after. In 1881 a memorial was erected over Batman’s grave, with the inscription, “I have erected a monument more durable than brass: if you ask why, then look around.” By then Melbourne had become Australia’s largest city with a population of just under half a million.

Immigration, both assisted and self-funded, had already raised the Victorian population to 77,000 by 1851, the year the gold rushes began. Almost all of the new settlers were from the British Isles. The various assisted migrant schemes tried to keep the numbers of English, Scottish and Irish settlers in the same proportions as they were found in Britain and Ireland. The target, not always reached, was 70% English, 10% Scottish and 20% Irish. Something approaching these proportions also pertained among unassisted migrants. In all, “England dominated in terms of numbers” and “London and those parts most closely in touch with the capital dominated most of all”¹. The Irish potato famine of 1845-49 raised the Irish proportion of the migrant intake for a few years. Then came the gold rushes. 

Gold had been discovered as early as 1823, but the colonial authorities had no wish to exploit it. In 1849 a shepherd discovered gold in the Maryborough region of Victoria; then he panicked in the knowledge that prospecting was illegal, and consequently fled to Sydney. Would-be prospectors who descended on the region were dispersed by police. But the discovery of the rich Ophir gold-field in New South Wales attracted so many men from all the colonies that the authorities could do little. When the discovery of gold at Ballarat in Victoria brought an influx of thousands of hopeful men from all over the world a form of gold-field government had to be introduced. It was headed by a Commissioner, an Assistant-commissioner, a Clerk, and an Inspector of police. The orders of this body were enforced by mounted and foot constables, and by native (i.e. aboriginal) police. 

The supposed aim of these officials was to maintain order. To pay for this service the miners had to take out a monthly licence costing thirty shillings. Since many diggers objected to this, and others simply didn’t have the money, more than a third of them evaded the licence fee. This meant that the police spent much of their time checking the men’s licences. 

The licence system was ridiculous, but when the new Governor Sir Charles Hotham arrived in 1854 he had instructions to maintain it. He simply ordered more licence-hunts. This predictably caused more resentment, which was compounded by the poor character of the police and the general inefficiency of the administration. A series of incidents made the men more hostile, and as tempers rose Governor Hotham ordered military reinforcements to Ballarat. They arrived with fixed bayonets on 11 November 1854, and in an altercation a drummer boy was shot and killed. On the 29^th of November the diggers burnt their licences and vowed to prevent any man from being arrested. Another licence-hunt was conducted in heat-wave temperatures. The miners armed themselves and built a wooden palisade on a hill at the Eureka Lead. On the 2^nd of December about 2000 diggers assembled at this “Eureka Stockade” and raised a flag featuring the Southern Cross constellation. Most of the rebels then drifted away during the night. 

Just before dawn on the 3^rd of December the troops surrounded the stockade. The miners fired, and the soldiers fired back. There were about 150 miners inside the stockade. They were faced by 111 soldiers of the 12^th and 40^th regiments, thirty mounted troops, seventy mounted police and twenty-four foot police. The battle was over in minutes, with about thirty diggers and five soldiers being killed.

The leader of the rebels was Peter Lalor, a native of Queen’s County, Ireland. Lalor was seriously injured in the affray, but was hidden by supporters. Governor Hotham offered a reward of £200 for his arrest. Those rebels who had been captured were charged with high treason. Juries in Melbourne subsequently refused to convict them. Lalor then reappeared in public, and the police prudently left him alone. In 1855 he was elected as Member for Ballarat in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and from 1880 to 1887 he held the position of Speaker in that chamber.

These are the bare bones of the much-told tale of the Eureka Stockade. “It was a small affair, quickly over, but it soon became a symbol much larger than itself.”² So much larger, in fact, that a wide range of diverse political groups has tried to appropriate it, from communists to neo-nazis to the trade union movement. Today, people who wish to change the Australian flag, mainly because they object to the Union Jack in its corner, frequently advocate the adoption of the Eureka Flag. 

In fact, it could be argued that Eureka was a typical Victorian affair. The first three cities in Victoria were founded in direct defiance of the authorities, the juries of Melbourne refused to convict the rebels, and as we shall see the people of Melbourne would soon have no hesitation in laying siege to their own parliament. Yet for various reasons Eureka has become a politically contested event – and of all the groups competing to appropriate the Eureka myth, the most persistent has been the Australian Irish Catholic community. The essence of their claim is that the Eureka Stockade was “… in substance, the second example in Australia of concerted, armed resistance to Authority by Irishmen” ³. 

The rebel leader, Peter Lalor, was a red-haired Irishman. As far as the ethnicity of the diggers at Eureka is concerned, the proportions seem impossible to establish. It appears that the Irish made up about a sixth of the miners in the Ballarat region. They may well have made up a greater proportion of the men on the Eureka Lead, since different ethnic groups tended to congregate on different leads. They also seem to have been even more concentrated among those who actually defended the stockade. Yet their exact proportion cannot be established.

Governor Hotham blamed the affair on “the French Red Republican, the German political metaphysician, the American Lone Star Member and the British Chartist”. He did not mention the Irish at all. (The mention of the “British Chartist” no doubt refers to an identifiable English component in the rebellion, since some of the demands that the miners made were copy-book Chartism.) The writer George Meudell agreed with Hotham, denouncing Eureka as “… a comic opera rebellion staged by a lot of alien agitators who were ‘Agin the Government’”.

It is probable that the Irish played a larger role in the defence of the Eureka Stockade than in any rebellious event other than Vinegar Hill – in which they were the founding force and the overwhelming majority. It is also likely that the outright majority of the rebels at Eureka was of English ethnic origin. All that can be said with certainty is that: 

(1)   the people of Victoria, who were mainly Anglo-Saxon, sympathised with the rebels, and 

(2)   the Irish community in Australia has consistently attempted to appropriate the Eureka Stockade as an Irish rebellion against “British” (meaning English) rule, and

(3)   because the affray at Eureka is welded on to the Australian historical imagination, the persistent Irish claim on the legend has been ethnically and socially divisive. (This will be examined in later chapters.)

In the long run, a more lasting legacy of the gold rushes came from the influx of men from many different countries. As well as English, Scots and Irish, there were large groups of Americans, Germans, Poles, French, and Negroes. Most of these eventually moved on or returned to their homelands. But from 1854 the Chinese began to arrive in large numbers. By 1858 there were 40,000 of them in Victoria alone. 

The Chinese were resented for many reasons. Most importantly, they worked in gangs of a hundred or more, using mass-mining methods that won them great wealth. Also, because of their organisation they could quickly strip a lead that would otherwise have supported other miners for years. Added to this economic rivalry were cultural animosities. The Chinese were not Christians. They “babbled” incomprehensibly. They were said to be a bunch of thieves, gamblers and opium addicts. Their unsanitary habits allegedly spoiled the drinking water. They practiced unspeakable unnatural vices. With their distinctive national costume and their pigtails they were highly, and annoyingly, visible. They lived in their own special quarters, and built “joss houses” filled with “idols”. When successful they unpatriotically sent their money back to China – or what was left of that money after they had used much of it to debauch white women. They had foul diseases. Finally, if they kept arriving in their current numbers they would overwhelm the white, predominantly English, population. At least, that is how many of the other miners saw them.

By 1855 public opinion had forced the government in Melbourne to impose a poll tax of £10 on each Chinese immigrant, as well as rationing the number that could be brought in on any one ship. Undaunted, the Chinese simply landed in South Australia, near the Victorian border, and jogged across the country in single file to the Victorian gold-fields. The South Australian government responded by imposing a head tax of £10 on Chinese arrivals in November 1857. The Victorian government then imposed a residency tax of £6 per Chinese per year. 

We know now that by 1857 the tide was turning, with many Chinese miners returning home with their earnings. This was not, however, immediately obvious to the white diggers. On the 4^th of July, 1857, at Buckland River in north-eastern Victoria, seven hundred exasperated white miners attacked two thousand Chinese, burned their temple and looted and burned their camps. Many Chinese were brutally clubbed, and several drowned while trying to flee into the bush. The next day the white miners formed an Anti-Chinese League, the aim of which was to expel the Chinese from the entire Australian continent. Police reinforcements arrived on the third day and restored order. Thirteen alleged white rioters were arrested, but white juries refused to convict all but four, who were sentenced to nine months’ gaol. 

As we shall see, the riot at Buckland River was to be a major event in the campaign for the “White Australia Policy”. Its relevance to this chapter, however, is the characteristic nineteenth-century Victorian willingness to take direct action in the pursuit of what were seen to be the interests of freedom and liberty. The diggers had taken the law into their own hands in the tradition of the Henty brothers, of John Batman and his colleagues, of Peter Lalor, and of the juries who refused to convict the Eureka rebels. 

The great gold rushes in the eastern colonies petered out at the end of the 1850s. By then the pressing issue in Victoria was the future of farming. 

Most of Victoria had been “locked up” by “squatters” – men who leased huge runs of Crown Lands for a trifling annual fee. Without these abstemious, enterprising men, many of them Lowland Scots, and without the risks that they took, the great Victorian fine-wool industry could not have developed. Yet with the drying up of alluvial gold, many of the former diggers sought to turn to farming by acquiring small-holdings. Furthermore, the huge growth of the cities meant that a new type of farming was required: people in the cities could not eat or drink wool. 

The parliament, which had been established in 1855, was largely dominated by squatters and their allies, who had no intention of surrendering their power. Most acknowledged that eventually a yeomanry would have to be settled on the land, but no equitable formula for doing so could be found. By the 28^th of August 1860, the exasperated population of Melbourne had had enough. A crowd of some three thousand men gathered outside the newly-built Parliament House. Their demand was for “A Vote, a Rifle, and a Farm”. Many of them wore red ribbons, a symbol of rebellion that had been worn at Eureka. By six o’clock the entrance to Parliament was blocked by demonstrators. The police called up reinforcements. By seven-thirty the protestors had begun stoning the parliamentary building. With the politicians trapped inside, the windows of the Legislative Assembly were all broken. Policemen dropped, bleeding and unconscious, to the ground. At ten-thirty the Mayor of Melbourne read the Riot Act. The police charged the mob with batons, were beaten back, then charged again. Eventually the crowd was dispersed, although not sufficiently to prevent parliamentarians being accosted as they walked home.

In the aftermath to this riot the parliamentarians took two measures. They ordered gun-slits to be cut into the walls of Parliament House so that future rioters could safely be fired on. They also passed a Land Act so conservative that it lasted only two years. The rioting Victorians eventually achieved their demands of “A Vote, a Rifle, and a Farm”. Property and income restrictions on the vote were progressively watered down, the right to own firearms was enshrined throughout Australia until the 1990s, and the huge sheep-runs of the squatters were eventually broken up into family farms.

1.                Atkinson, A., in Jupp. J., (ed.) The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, Sydney, 1988

2.                Kiddle, Margaret, Men of Yesteryear: A Social History of the Western District of Victoria, 1834-1890, Melbourne University Press, 1961

3.                Currey, C. H., The Irish at Eureka, Sydney, 1954

Chapter 5: – Toward the “White Australia Policy”

We have already seen that the first Governor, Arthur Phillip, flatly rejected Lord Sydney’s proposal that women from the Pacific Islands should be imported to provide sexual partners for the men of New South Wales.

At the end of the 1830s the squatters of New South Wales, facing an acute shortage of labour, called for a large-scale introduction of “coolie” labour from India. The Governor of N.S.W., Sir Richard Bourke, his successor Sir George Gipps, and the Home Government all rejected the idea of bringing in migrants of what they called “an inferior and servile description”

In 1853 the Colonial Office received another proposal to import “coolies” from India. Sir James Stephen, the Under-Secretary, would have nothing to do with this idea. In his view, Indians “… would beat down the wages of the poor labouring Europeans until the poor became wholly dependent on the rich”.

As a result of these three momentous decisions the non-Aboriginal population of Australia at the time of the Chinese influx was almost entirely white by race, overwhelmingly British, and predominantly English. (The words “British” and “English” were more or less interchangeable in Australia at that time, reflecting the numerical preponderance of settlers from England and the Anglo-Saxon parts of Scotland and Ireland.)

The main result of the anti-Chinese riot at Buckland River was that Asian miners crossed the border to the New South Wales goldfields in great numbers. The same tensions soon arose between the competing racial groups, and violence was inevitable. The government of New South Wales had not provided sufficient police protection on the diggings, and in December 1860 the white diggers at Lambing Flat attacked and burnt down the Chinese quarters. Two Chinese were killed in the affray.

There were forty thousand miners on the field, with more Chinese arriving daily. On the 25^th of January 1861 the local newspaper, the Burrangong Miner, circulated a handbill announcing that:

A Public Meeting will be held on Sunday, the 27th instant, at 12 o'clock, in the vicinity of Golden Point, Lambing Flat, for the purpose of taking into consideration whether Burrangong is a European goldfield or a Chinese territory. A numerous attendance is requested.

On the appointed day a thousand white miners assembled, most of them armed. The goldfield authorities read the Riot Act. The miners postponed their meeting, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. This they did over the next few hours, led by a brass band and two people carrying Union Jacks. (A new version of the Eureka flag also appeared at Lambing Flat, bearing the words “No Chinese”.) An orator named Charles Stewart then harangued the thousands of miners, saying:

How long will the Burrangong diggings continue to be the support of thousands upon thousands of poor men, making an honest livelihood, if the Chinese are allowed to pour in upon us in countless numbers? Why, six months would see the field worked out! What then could the diggers do? Where could they go? God help the poor men who have wives and families depending on them. I will tell you what they can do. They can starve! Perhaps you would like to go and work for the squatters at six or seven shillings a week and rations. Well, that is what will happen unless we take some measures to stop this gross outrage on our rights. Then, men and fellow miners, let us assert our rights before God and man – in the clear face of day – like freeborn Britons – and prevent ourselves from being trampled to the dust like dogs. I now have pleasure in moving the following resolution. Since the government will not protect us, our wives, families and occupations, from the incursions of a race of savages, we bind ourselves, to a man, to give all Chinese two days' notice to quit the Burrangong goldfields; and in the event of their not complying with that request, we bind ourselves to take such measures as shall satisfactorily rid the mining community of the Burrangong for ever of such pests and nuisances. "

The white miners, self-identified by Stewart as “freeborn Britons”, then marched with their band and their Union Jacks on the Chinese camp. The Chinese fled, but soon returned. On the 17^th of February another racial brawl erupted, and fifteen white miners were arrested on the testimony of Chinese witnesses. The diggers responded by forming a Miners' Protective League. Their prospectus read, in part:

The incursions of a swarm of Mongolian locusts has forced us to retreat from all the other diggings in the Colony, and now we are obliged to turn at bay upon this our latest resting place … We now call upon all the miners of Burrangong, and of every other digging in the country, to become members of the Miners' Protective League – to join us in our efforts to elevate and improve the conditions of our race. 

In subsequent mass-meetings Stewart explained the miners’ feelings in these terms:

As Australians we have ample cause to hate and despise the Chinese. Descendants from glorious old England, we cannot tolerate their manners, customs or creed. By their filthy habits they have made themselves repulsive and they have contracted that awful disease called leprosy. We must rid ourselves of this barbarous race. Our feelings have been outraged. The time has come for their expulsion. 

The response of the authorities was to increase the police force on the Lambing Flat diggings to fifty troopers, backed by soldiers of the 12th Regiment. Even so, disputes arose daily between the whites and the Asians. On the 30^th of June another major riot erupted. Three rebel leaders, including Stewart, had arrest warrants issued against them. By the 14^th of July tempers had frayed once again. The British miners held another rally of perhaps six thousand men. The band played "Rule Britannia". The crowd sang along with these words:

"Rule, Britannia!

Britannia, rule the waves!

No more Chinamen allowed

In New South Wales!"

The troopers arrested the miners’ three main leaders. After reading the Riot Act, they fired on the crowd. Then they charged with sabres, slashing at the British miners who fled in leaderless panic. One victim, a digger named Lupton, died from a bullet in the chest. Ten thousand enraged diggers attended his funeral, at which one orator ominously declared:

He died, as the men of Eureka died, a martyr in the miners’ cause. By their deaths we won our miners' rights, and now our mate Lupton has died for a great cause – White Australia!

The police and soldiers, heavily outnumbered, allowed the miners’ leaders to escape. Once the authorities had departed the diggers yet again expelled the Chinese.

On Wednesday, 31st July, the armed forces of the government returned. All public meetings were banned, and eight men were arrested: a shopkeeper, a boxer, a cook, two miners, and three members of the brass band. A reward of £300 was offered for the betrayal of the three miners’ leaders. All eight men were acquitted by white juries, and the ringleaders were never surrendered to the authorities.

The cost to the government of protecting the Chinese miners from their British counterparts came to more than £28,000. New South Wales simply could not afford repeated expenses of this order, and in November 1861 it joined Victoria and South Australia in passing an act of parliament restricting Chinese immigration.

By then the gold rushes had petered out in the south-eastern states, but there were still many Chinese in residence. The rise of manufacturing did nothing to endear them to the British working class, since they were willing to work for lower wages. “White Australia!” became a rallying cry for the early trade unions in these states.

A smaller gold rush on the Palmer River in Queensland brought over three thousand Chinese hopefuls in 1875. By 1877 their numbers had grown to 17,000, compared to only 1,400 whites. In August of that year Queensland imposed a £10 poll tax on Chinese immigrants.

In November 1878 seamen in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland went on a six-week strike against the employment of Chinese crews. Anti-Chinese feeling continued to grow. In January 1881 an intercolonial conference agreed that the colonies would introduce uniform legislation to restrict Chinese immigration. This was not enough for the men of Brisbane, Queensland, who demonstrated against the Chinese in July 1887. In May 1888 the New South Wales government went further, passing a Chinese Exclusion Bill. By this stage there were 50,000 Chinese in Australia out of a total population of 2,981,677. This was too many for the white workers. In January 1888 the Intercolonial Trade Union Congress held in Brisbane demanded yet more legislation to restrict Chinese immigration.

In the next decade there was much talk of federating the six colonies. The main arguments in favour of Federation were that it would unify the predominantly “British” colonies, that it would provide better defence, that it would eliminate customs barriers between the colonies, and that it would allow continent-wide legislation for a White Australia.

Queensland, however, was in a tricky situation. From 1863 that colony had been importing South Sea Islanders (mostly Melanesians) to labour on cotton plantations and later in sugar fields. Queenslanders feared that the presence of Melanesians in their colony would cause them to be excluded from the coming Federation, so strong was the general insistence on a White Australia. Stop-start measures were therefore legislated to prevent the importation of more islanders. These laws were enough to allow Queensland to scrape into the Federation.

The Commonwealth of Australia officially came into being on 1 January 1901. On December 23 the new national government passed an Immigration Restriction Act to protect “White Australia”. Out of fear that Britain would veto any law that openly excluded people from Australia on the basis of race, a dictation test was introduced as a pretext to screen out people deemed to be racially “undesirable”. Any prospective immigrant could be tested in any European language, and failure meant exclusion. This test was based on one pioneered in the Colony of Natal, and was adopted by Australia at the urging of the British government. ¹

The new Constitution, however, gave the Commonwealth the right to pass legislation regarding any particular race. In 1903 this power was used to give Queensland sugar growers an excise rebate if they used “European” labour. In 1904 laws were passed to deport Queensland’s South Sea Islanders.²

It is important to stress that the only opposition to the Immigration Restriction Act came from those, particularly in the Labor Party, who wanted a clear-cut racial ban. The Labor leader Chris Watson claimed that using a dictation test was devious, hypocritical, and likely to fail. He explained the social basis of Labor’s concern in these terms:

With the Oriental as a rule the more he is educated, the worst man he is likely to be from our point of view … The objection I have to the mixing of the coloured people with the white people of Australia – although I admit it is to a large extent tinged with considerations of an industrial nature – lies in the main in the possibility and probability of racial contamination.

The future Labor leader, Billy Hughes, declared:

Our chief plank is, of course, a White Australia. There is no compromise about that. The industrious coloured brother has to go – and remain away.

The Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, agreed with his Loyal Opposition in principle, saying:

We are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilisation.

He quoted from Professor C. H. Pearson’s book, National Life and Character: 

We know that if national existence is sacrificed to the working of a few mines and sugar plantations, it is not the Englishman in Australia alone, but the whole civilised world that will be the losers.

The man who was to succeed Barton as Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, said:

The unity of Australia is nothing if that does not imply a united race. A united race means not only that its members can intermix, intermarry and associate without degradation on either side, but implies one inspired by the same ideas, and an aspiration towards the same ideals, of a people possessing the same general cast of character, tone of thought, the same constitutional training and traditions … Unity of race is absolutely essential to the unity of Australia. It is more, actually more in the last resort, than any other unity …

It was this real sense of racial unity that made the Commonwealth of Australia possible. Support for the new immigration policy was overwhelming among members from all political parties, as it was from the general community.

The conservatives took the view that if Royal Assent would only be given to an Act that used a devious dictation test to exclude non-white and other “undesirable” migrants, then that was better than nothing. The radicals were utterly opposed to this compromise. Future Prime Minister Billy Hughes summed up their position:

We want a White Australia – and are we to be denied it because we shall offend the Japanese or embarrass His Majesty’s ministers? I think not … I do not desire, and I do not think there are five per cent of the people of this country who desire, separation from Great Britain. But while I do not wish it, I do not fear it.

The Labor-led amendment for a direct racial ban was lost 36-31. It was a near thing. As we shall see, the warnings of the radicals about the compromise dictation test were to be proven correct.

Still, “White Australia” had apparently been achieved, and its enshrining legislation covered an entire continent. What it actually meant will be examined in the next chapter

1    Curiously, the South African law had been supported by Mahatma Gandhi. He was realistic enough to acknowledge that unlimited cheap labour would destroy white working class living standards, but sensitive enough to be offended by any law of exclusion openly based on race.

2.   In 1906 this law was amended as being too harsh, but very few descendants of the Islanders remain in Australia.

Chapter 6: – “Australia will be there”.

Rally round the banner of your country,

Take the field with brothers o’er the foam,

On land or sea, wherever you be;

Keep your eye on Germany,

But England home and beauty have no cause to fear,

Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot

No! No! No! No! No! Australia will be there

Australia will be there

(This song, written by “Skipper” Francis, a professional singer, was adopted by the first Australian Imperial Force in late 1914.)

Alfred Deakin (1856-1919) is known as “the Father of Federation”. In his day he was the finest public speaker in Australia, and without his oratorical skills the colonies may never have federated. The Australian-born son of an Englishman, he served as Prime Minister of Australia for three terms: 1903-04, 1905-08, and 1909-10.

Moonlighting as a journalist in the London Morning Post, Deakin wrote this of Federation:

It was an historic milestone for the scattered four million independent Australian Britons who are now taking their destinies into their own hands.

“Independent Australian Britons” may sound like an odd phrase today, but it expressed perfectly the way Australians saw themselves at the time of Federation. “White Australia”, by contrast, did not. Here and there were to be found a few Scandinavians, Germans, and other migrants from the Continent. They were generally respected, but there was little suggestion that more of them should be particularly invited to migrate. All Australians, however, were legally British. There was no separate Australian citizenship or passport. Australians were subjects of the Queen, and they were proud of that. Lavish Queen Victoria memorials, financed by public subscription, were erected in many Australian cities on the death of the Empress.

In addition, Australians now formed an “independent” branch of that sceptred race of Britons who “never, ever, ever shall be slaves”. Australia was seen as a new land in which what were thought to be the worst aspects of the “mother country” could be discarded, while the best aspects of “Home” could develop unfettered by any remnants of feudalism. For instance, even before Federation, women could vote in South Australia and Western Australia. Federation provided the opportunity to extend suffrage to women throughout the Commonwealth, and this was achieved in 1902.

Finally, they were “Australians”. This meant that they were both British subjects and British by descent, forming a unique part of the Empire, with a distinct regional identity forged by an interaction between their own historical experiences and the influences of geography and climate. Innumerable documents from this period exude an optimism that in Australia, at last, the enlightened destiny of the “British” peoples could be developed to a higher level. Many writers of that era also believed that in the harsh crucible of Australia a physically superior branch of the “British race” was being created.

“Independent Australian Britons”: Alfred Deakin’s phrase was perfectly chosen. That was how Australians saw themselves at the time of Federation. There was no contradiction between the three words. There was room for different stresses, however. According to the astute Sir Keith Hancock:

Among the Australians pride of race counted for more than love of country … Defining themselves as ‘independent Australian Britons’ they believed each word essential and exact, but laid most stress upon the last.

Today we might wish to delve a little deeper into two of those terms.

The new Commonwealth of Australia was not entirely “independent”. Britain was not interested in vetoing Australian initiatives in most areas, but Imperial interests were important, and Britain couldn’t approve of radical and larrikin Australians “rocking the boat”. This lack of independence, however, suited Australia’s own interests, since such a small group of British settlers could only safely occupy and freely develop an entire continent under the umbrella of the British Empire and with the protection of the Royal Navy.

The term “Britons” is seldom used today, largely because it contains numerous ambiguities. Let us therefore try to be more precise about the ethnicity of the Australian people in 1901, the year of Federation in Australia. The census conducted in that year yields a breakdown of the United Kingdom-born population of Australia. The UK-born totalled 679,159 people. Of these, 58% were recorded as English-born. 27% were from “Ireland”, although in that census year the “Irish” figure included people from Ulster. Finally, 15% were from Scotland. We can use this breakdown of the UK-born population of Australia in 1901 as a basis for estimating the ethnic proportions in the general population only if we bear in mind the fact that the Irish-born presence in Australia peaked from 1870 to 1900 (just before the census), and also if we bear in mind the fact that people from Ulster were not recorded separately until the census of 1954.

In short, then, the “Irish” figures given above are inflated. In addition, the “English” figures are significantly lower than in other comparable census years. It is therefore likely that in terms of ethnic origin the Australian population in 1901 approximately echoed the regional proportions that pertained in the United Kingdom at that time. Furthermore, by 1901, many Australians of Irish descent had assimilated so seamlessly into the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture that their origins had been forgotten. They were, to all intents, “English”.

Another way of assessing the nature of the Australian population around the time of Federation is through the words of contemporary observers and participants.

According to James Anthony Froude, who visited in 1885:

There is not in Melbourne, there is not anywhere in Australia, the slightest symptom of a separate provincial originality either formed or forming. In thought and manners, as in speech and pronunciation, they are pure English and nothing else. There is more provincialism by far in Exeter or York than in Melbourne or Sydney.

That may have been true in the Australian social circles that Froude encountered, although one suspects some exaggeration. Nevertheless, his statement that Australians were “pure English and nothing else” emphasises the part of the British Isles to which most Australians looked.

On the other hand, there were locally-born writers, especially within the circle of The Bulletin magazine, who consciously tried to foster the sense of a specifically Australian identity. They laid their primary emphasis on race, feeling that only the white race could create in Australia a new and superior Australian identity. The Bulletin’s original slogan was “Australia for the White Man”. Nothing British – apart from the “race” itself – was sacred to the disrespectful and larrikin Bulletin. In 1901, for instance, it attacked Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies. Royal assent had been refused to a Queensland Act banning coloured labour. The Bulletin wrote:

If Judas Chamberlain can find a black, or brown, or yellow race in Asia or Africa, that has as high a standard of civilisation and intelligence as the whites, as brave, as sturdy, as good nation-making material, and that can intermarry with the whites without the mixed progeny showing signs of deterioration, that race is welcome in Australia regardless of colour.

This sentiment was bluntly echoed in the second plank of the original Federal Labor party platform (24 January 1900): “2. Total exclusion of coloured and other undesirable races.” Yet on closer examination, this wording is even more revealing. Australians at the time referred to “black” and “brown” and “yellow” and “white” races. Blacks and browns and yellows were all described as “coloured”. But the Labor Party wished to exclude “coloured and other undesirable races”. Clearly, then, some sections of the “white” race were considered “undesirable”. The closer that “whites” were to British, and particularly English, standards, the more “desirable” they were.

Thus, when the “Great White Fleet” of the USA steamed into Sydney Harbour in August 1908, the city went wild. Surviving photographs show Sydneysiders clambering on top of tram-cars and every other elevation to greet their powerful Anglo-Saxon visitors (and potential protectors should Australia be invaded). A local writer, Joe Slater, penned this welcome:

There’s a grand and noble fleet that we’re called upon to greet

And welcoming to Australia’s sunny shore.

From the mighty USA they are sailing on their way:

A hearty cheer awaits them I am sure.

When they reach our sunny land we’ll extend a friendly hand

And treat them all as brothers taut and true,

For when all is said and done as a race we all are one,

All descended from the old red, white and blue.

With all these overlapping strands of identity, perhaps we can get a firmer grasp of where Australians’ loyalties lay – and therefore of how they saw themselves – by observing their actions.

In 1885, the British general Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum. Several monuments were eventually built in Australia to commemorate his service to the Empire. More importantly, perhaps, as soon as the news of his death reached Australia a voluntary expeditionary force was raised to avenge his death. As 770 volunteers sailed from Sydney’s Circular Quay, two out of every three Sydneysiders are said to have come out to cheer them. The volunteers marched under a banner reading: “Be copy now to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war. Henry II”. Australians clearly saw themselves as the heirs of Henry II – and Shakespeare. (The Sudan affair was more or less over by the time the Australians arrived, but that was largely a consequence of travel times in the nineteenth century.)

War in South Africa between the Boers and the Empire raged from 1899-1902. At this time Australia was enduring its worst drought since British settlement. It was also suffering an outburst of bubonic plague. Furthermore, most Australian minds were focused on Federation. Still, many young Australian men felt the ties of kinship with the men from “Home” The first troops of volunteers left from Melbourne and Sydney on 28 October 1899. It is estimated that 300,000 Sydneysiders stood in the rain to cheer off the first NSW contingent.

These young Australian soldiers were generally perceived to be tall, fit and strong. The open country over which the Anglo-Boer war was fought, with hit and run raids across the veldt, required mounted cavalry; and the Colonials could ride and shoot and “rough it” just as well as the Boers.

The Anglo-Boer War brought out the various and enduring characteristics of Australian soldiers. One Boer opponent wrote: “They were the only troops who could scout into our lines at night and kill our sentries while capturing and killing our scouts. Our men openly admitted that the Australians were more formidable opponents and far more dangerous than any British troops.” On the other side of the scale, two Australians were sentenced to death for criticising British officers. The sentences of these young men who had pushed the limits of larrikin behaviour were commuted, but not so the death sentences imposed on two more Australians for allegedly murdering Boer prisoners. (They claimed to have been acting under British orders. One of them, an English-born occasional poet who wrote for The Bulletin, characteristically called to the firing squad: “Shoot straight, you bastards. Don’t make a mess of it.”)

Figures from different sources vary, but Australia sent a total of about 16,000 volunteer troops to fight for the Empire in South Africa, plus perhaps 4,000 civilian volunteers, including doctors and nurses. Of these, 251 soldiers were killed in action, 267 died of disease, and 882 were wounded. Six Victoria Crosses were awarded, all to medical personnel. On the South African gravestones of many who fell are still discernible the words: “For King and Empire”. Memorials to the fallen were erected all over Australia. The Bathurst memorial in New South Wales, the only one personally unveiled by Lord Kitchener, was erected “In memory of those who gave their lives for the Empire”.

While Australians were still giving their lives in South Africa, the Boxer Rebellion broke out in China. Yet more enthusiastic volunteers were sent, this time from Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, in August 1900. The actual fighting was over by the time they arrived, but they were able to do some policing and guard duties, and some looting. None were injured. Six, though, died of illnesses contracted in defence of the Empire. The Australian contribution to the Boxer Rebellion may be a minor footnote in history, but it sheds much light both on how Australians perceived themselves and on how they were seen by others. In the middle of drought, plague, the South African war and the turmoil of Federation, young Australians were still offering their lives in the service of what was seen then as the world-wide “British” cause.

The senior British naval officer in China addressed the Australian volunteers in these terms:

I have never seen a finer body of men, clean and smart-looking. Our country is fortunate to have so many staid and disciplined men willing to volunteer for active service. Remember, you are doing good work for Queen and Country. They call you the Australian contingent. A very good name; but remember, we regard you as the British contingent from Australia.

His terminology reflects the blurred concepts of civic and ethnic nationality that were common a century ago, when, to be fair to all the participants, they overlapped much more than they do today.

Still, the Australians of that time assuredly knew what he meant. “Queen and Country” was shorthand for the Anglo-Saxon diaspora (and its ethnic allies such as the Anglicised Irish and the problematic Americans), largely united in the one Empire under the one monarch.

This ability to refer in muted terms to what has been called “the crimson thread of kinship” ¹ still prevailed in 1914, when the mother country was facing yet another war. The soon-to-be Prime Minister of Australia, Andrew Fisher, exhorted Australians to:

Turn your eyes to the European situation and give the kindest feeling to the mother country at this time … All, I am sure, will regret the critical position existing at the present time, and pray that a disastrous war may be averted. But should the worst happen after everything has been done that honour will permit, Australians will stand beside our own to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling.

To us, today, the key words in Fisher’s speech are “Australians will stand by our own”. No Australian at that time needed to have these words translated.

The military dependence of Australia on Britain at the outbreak of the 1914-18 War was quite straightforward. Without the protection of the Royal Navy, in particular, Australia was defenceless against any future invasion from Asia. Germany posed no direct threat to Australia, but a German victory would probably have led to the scrapping or at least reduction of the Royal Navy. In the general fervour of racial solidarity and Imperial loyalty that accompanied the outbreak of the First World War, many Australians who volunteered to serve may not have realised it, but they were fighting for the survival of their own nation-state.

H. L. Wilkinson explained this clearly in 1930:

People in Australia fear that their immigration restriction legislation will some day – near or far distant – be challenged, and that this challenge will be supported by a number of the nations of the world, if not by the League of Nations itself. They also fear that this challenge, when made, will not be resisted by other partners of the British Commonwealth of Nations, either politically or by military and naval assistance. Of selfish motives at the back of Australia’s enthusiastic participation in the Great War the principal was that based on the hope, and expectations, that the help given to Great Britain and the Allies would be reciprocated by both political and military support, if and when this challenge to its immigration policy should be made. ²

In any event, the closest German colony to Australia in WW1 was in New Guinea, with its capital at Rabaul. The German war effort in the Pacific was co-ordinated from the radio station in Rabaul. German colliers there fuelled German warships, and these in turn evaded British naval vessels, on direct instructions from Rabaul. Accordingly, Australian troops landed in New Guinea in September 1914. They overcame the native New Guinean troops commanded by the Germans, and the German governor of the colony surrendered. From that moment German ships in the Pacific were largely uncoordinated and therefore ineffectual.

In 1915 Russia, an ally of Britain and therefore of Australia, was stalled in its military drive against Turkey in the area south of the Caucasus. Russia appealed to Britain to create a diversion that would force Turkish troops to withdraw from the Russian front lines. The obvious place to attack was the Gallipoli Peninsula, on the sea-approach to the Turkish capital. The nearest available colonial troops happened to be the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (called “Anzacs”), and in April 1915 the Anzacs, together with the British 29^th Division, the Royal Naval Division, and a French division, landed at Gallipoli under the cover of British naval gunfire. The Turkish defenders were well dug in, and could not be dislodged from the heights above Gallipoli. Yet 8,709 Australians, 2,701 New Zealanders, 21,255 British and 10,000 French soldiers died in the attempt. Many more Turks were killed, 86,692 by their own estimate, “and their troops seldom fought so well again” in the words of Australia’s official war historian, C. E. W. Bean. By December 1915 the allied troops had been evacuated. The campaign at Gallipoli was lost, but the Turkish resistance had been fatally wounded.

The Turks were subsequently beaten by the Anzacs at Romani (August 1916), Maghdaba (December 1916), and Rafa (January 1917), forcing them to retreat to Palestine. The remaining Turkish defenders in that region crumbled in September 1918. Damascus was their last stand, and on October 30 1918, the Australian Light Horse were the first troops to enter that city, effectively taking Turkey out of the war. They had done exactly what Imperial Russia had requested.

Australian (and New Zealand) troops were then posted to France in 1916. They had a series of significant victories against the Germans, and played a major role in many battles, including Amiens, which Ludendorff believed was the battle that lost Germany the war. The Australians were the first to seize the Hindenburg Outpost Line. Then, together with two American divisions, they smashed through the Hindenburg Line itself.

It has been estimated that the battle-hardened Australian troops on the Western Front caused the war to end six months earlier than it would otherwise have ended. They made up only 9.5% of the 53 Allied divisions, but they occupied 21.5% of German-held land and captured 23% of German prisoners. Furthermore, these troops pioneered the strategy that was to become known later as the “blitzkrieg”, especially at the July 1918 battle of Le Hamel which was won in a mere 93 minutes. ³ (The decisive impact of the Anzac troops in shortening the destructiveness of WW1 may have had a huge impact in reducing the numbers of lives lost in the closing stages by the major Northern European and Atlantic combatants.)

Australia, with a population of under five million, committed 332,000 men and women to the First World War. 59,342 were killed and 152,171 wounded. Their casualty rate was 64.8% - the highest among the Allied nations. 63 of them won VCs – making up 11% of all VCs issued during the war. All of the Australian soldiers and nurses were volunteers. If they were asked why they chose to serve, many would have replied “for King and country”. Some would have said they were defending the Empire, as indeed the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne proclaims. A few might have reasoned that they were defending Australia. Some might even have extolled “civilisation”. All of these answers would be justifiable, and (given the way that words were used then) there is no conflict between them.

Certainly, Prime Minister William Morris Hughes had no doubt that the war had been fought in Australia’s own interests when he declared:

Let our watchword be ‘Australia’, and, as our splendid boys have fought for it and saved it, let us all live and work for it.

An interesting footnote to the Great War was the campaign in North Russia. In June 1918 the North Russian Expeditionary Force (NREF) was sent to train White Russian troops. The NREF included three Australian officers and six sergeants. Three of these men had previously served at Gallipoli. One of them, Captain Allan Brown, was killed in July 1918 when his White Russian battalion mutinied and slaughtered its officers. The situation was untenable, and so in 1919 the North Russian Relief Force was sent in to evacuate the men of the NREF. It contained soldiers from every British Army regiment, as well as from all of the Dominions. Between 100 and 120 Australians volunteered. In August 1918 the NRRF attacked and defeated the 6^th Red Army. Archangel was evacuated in September and Murmansk in October, effectively completing the successful mission. Two VCs were awarded in this campaign, both of them to Australians.

Hardly any Australians today have even heard of the role played by Australian troops in the fight against communism in North Russia. Numerically they were insignificant, but to have won the only two VCs suggests that they fought above their weight. At any rate, even in this most far-flung and forgotten campaign, Australian soldiers once again lived up to their boast that wherever Britain might be in peril, “Australia will be there”.

Nor was there any hesitation on the third of September 1939. An hour after Britain declared war on Germany, the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, announced that it was his “melancholy duty” to inform his countrymen that Australia was also at war. “If Great Britain is at war,” he declared, then “Australia was a belligerent country”. The reason was straightforward: “There never was any doubt as to where Great Britain stood, and neither is there any doubt that where Great Britain stands there stand the people of the entire British world.”

A second Australian Imperial Force was immediately raised, and it was destined to acquit itself as well as the first. Australians inflicted the first serious victories over General Rommel in North Africa (Tobruk, April to May 1941), and they were the first to win a land battle against the Japanese (Milne Bay, August-September 1942). In all, 33,000 Australian troops were to die in the Second World War.

Australian and British troops were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in further conflicts – most recently in East Timor and Afghanistan. Yet the Second World War was a massive turning point in relations between the United Kingdom and the mainly Anglo-Saxons of the “British” diaspora in the Southern Hemisphere. The full details have not yet emerged, but recent historical investigations indicate that although Australia’s loyalty to the world-wide “British” cause was relatively unabated, its automatic loyalty to Downing Street as the leader of that cause could no longer be taken for granted.

Back in 1938, when war seemed imminent, Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Munich agreement. As late as August 1939 he argued that the Germans and the British (by which term we must remember that he included the Australians) “have more in common than not, and the things we argue about are mere froth on the surface”. He told Chamberlain that Australia did not see the problems between Germany and Poland as “intrinsically worth a war”. Even in his declaration of war Menzies pleaded: “May God in His mercy and compassion grant that the world may soon be delivered from this agony”. He also added, in a clear message to both London and Berlin, that “… it was hardly possible to think that such lunacy had broken out”.

Menzies, who was fervently “British”, clearly had misgivings as to whether the interests of “the people of the entire British world” were necessarily best served by the policies coming from London.

By 1939 Australia had a very clear perception of its geopolitical place in the world. As Menzies himself said in that year: “What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north”. Expansionist Japan was the most powerful nation to the north, and therefore Australia was likely to be a Japanese target. All that stood in the way was the Royal Navy, and in particular the massive naval base at Singapore. (This base turned out to have inadequate defence against attack from the north, and in fact it was to collapse before the Japanese onslaught in February 1942.)

Menzies felt that Australia’s future could only be secured within the British Empire. Therefore the future of the Empire was of primary importance to him. Yet Churchill was clearly prepared to risk the very existence of the Empire in a total war with Germany. The war would result, given Churchill’s attitudes, in either total victory over Germany or, depending on how the dice rolled, the total destruction of the Empire. To Menzies, and most of the other Dominion leaders, this was unacceptable risk-taking.

There was at that time a serious peace lobby in London, led by such men as David Lloyd George, Lord Beaverbrook, Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, and the military theorist Liddell Hart. Additionally, many public figures were in favour of peace – people such as John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndyke and George Bernard Shaw. In early 1941, Robert Menzies staked everything on what he considered to be the defence of the empire – against Churchill. He flew to London “to wrest the British Ministership from Churchill’s grasp and rescue the Empire from apparent disaster”, in the words of one of his biographers. This was not as hopeless or Quixotic a task as it might seem from today’s perspective. There was no legal reason why Menzies could not have become Prime Minister of Britain – and thereby have ended the war on honourable terms before it fragmented the Empire. The British Dominion Ministers mostly supported Menzies. The peace lobby in London championed him as their saviour.

The full story cannot be given here ⁴. In short, though, Churchill outwitted Menzies, who returned to Australia crushed, writing privately of a “sick feeling of repugnance and apprehension” about returning to a country that would be forever changed by the disintegration of the British Empire.

The next Prime Minister, Labor’s John Curtin, also quarrelled with Churchill. As the Japanese threat to Australia became more direct, Curtin demanded the repatriation of Australian troops from the Middle East in order to defend their own shores. On 27 December 1941, Curtin made one of the most famous speeches in Australia’s political history. The military background was that the fall of Singapore had deprived Australia of its forward defence in Asia. Furthermore, valiant as its sailors might be, the Royal Navy could do little to counter the very real Japanese threat to Australia. Churchill was insisting that Australian troops should be deployed wherever he personally decreed – regardless of the vulnerability of Australia, whose small population could not, unaided, defend itself from the Japanese. In short, the Anglo-Saxon Australians needed a powerful Anglo-Saxon ally – and by that stage they did not feel that they had one in Winston Churchill.

The visit to Sydney of the American White Fleet, back in 1908, was still remembered in 1941. The United States was perceived in Australia as a major Anglo-Saxon world power. With Australia feeling abandoned and even betrayed by Churchill, Prime Minister Curtin announced in December 1941 that:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom

Curtin had been given no choice. If Australia were to survive the Japanese assault then its Prime Minister had to shop around for a reliable ally – and given Churchill’s all-out gamble with the Empire, there was only one alternative ally available.

Curtin’s speech signified a realistic but tragic turning point in the relationship between Australia and the UK. Ever since the Sudan affair in 1885, Australians had always vowed that, whenever the Empire was threatened, “Australia will be there”. They had died in droves in honour of this promise. Under Churchill’s leadership, however, the Empire was widely perceived as being prepared to abandon Australia. ⁵

In early 1942, Prime Minister Curtin had warned Britain that he would regard it as an “inexcusable betrayal” if Singapore were not adequately defended. It was not, and he described its subsequent fall as “Australia’s Dunkirk”. In the same year Australia finally adopted the unpopular Statute of Westminster – to which we will return later. The Australian Broadcasting Commission started playing “Advance Australia Fair” before its news bulletins instead of “The British Grenadiers”. Finally, Australian troops were placed under the command of the U.S. commander, Douglas MacArthur.

Nothing in the relationship between Australia and Britain would ever be the same again.

We have come a long way from 1901, the year of Federation, but we have seen through the actions of ordinary Australians and the words of their leaders that Australians clearly thought of themselves as part of the “British world” – and we will see that they did so for many years after Britain itself had officially ditched that concept.

Now we must revisit in the next few chapters some earlier generations of Australians to see what role they had expected to play in that “British world”.

1.      This phrase seems to have been coined by the great campaigner for Australian Federation, Sir Henry Parkes. In 1890 he told the first Federation Conference: “The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all. Even the native-born Australians are Britons, as much as the men born within the cities of London and Glasgow."

2.      Wilkinson, H. L., The World’s Population Problems and a White Australia, London, 1930.

3.      After this victory King George V drove directly to the battlefield and there knighted the Australian general, making him the last British subject to be knighted in battle.

4.      The best exposition so far is Menzies and Churchill at War: A Revealing Account of the 1941 Struggle for Power, by David Day, Simon & Schuster, 2001, 271 pp.

5.      Australia, though, had no intention of abandoning the Empire. In his message of December 29, 1941, Curtin stressed that: “There is no part of the empire more steadfast in loyalty to the British way of living and British institutions than Australia. Our loyalty to his majesty the king goes to the very core of our national life. It is part of our being … I do not consider Australia a segment of the British Empire. It is an organic part of the whole structure. But I do not put Australia in the position of a colony. Australia is a dominion.”

Chapter 7: – This other Eden

As early as 1797 it was suggested that Australia might take the cultural baton from an ailing mother country. Sir Joseph Banks, who had sailed with Cook, wrote in that year to Governor Hunter: “Who knows but that England may revive in New South Wales when it has sunk in Europe”.

From the 1820s to the 1850s, the most outstanding political figure in Australia was William Charles Wentworth. He was born on Norfolk Island, the son of a surgeon who had sailed out on the Second Fleet. A tall, powerful, commanding man, Wentworth was one of the exploration party that found a path across the Blue Mountains, thereby opening up the interior of New South Wales for settlement. Three years later he went to England to successfully study law. In 1823 his poem Australasia was runner-up for the Chancellor’s Medal of the University of Cambridge. This is the poem’s conclusion:

And, oh Britannia! Should’st thou cease to ride

Despotic Empress of old Ocean’s tide; –

Should thy tam’d Lion – spent his former might –

No longer roar, the terror of the fight: –

Should e’er arrive that dark, disastrous hour,

When, bow’d by luxury, thou yield’st to pow’r;

When thou, no longer freest of the free,

To some proud victor bend’st the vanquish’d knee; –

May all thy glories in another sphere

Relume, and shine more brightly still than here;

May this – thy last-born INFANT – then arise,

To glad thy heart, and greet thy PARENT eyes;

And AUSTRALASIA ¹ float, with flag unfurl’d,

A new BRITANNIA in another world!

Remember that this poem was written in 1823. The years around this date were ones of great crises in England, even though they have been forgotten by most Australians. To understand the mood and the assumptions of Wentworth’s poem, though, we need to briefly revisit some of the calamitous events of that period.

• In 1819, 50,000 artisans assembled in Manchester to petition parliament for political and social reform. Mounted hussars charged the demonstrators, and many were crushed. This incident is known as the “Peterloo Massacre”.
• 1820 was the year of the “Cato Street Conspiracy”, in which twenty-five men plotted to murder all the Cabinet Ministers while they dined at Lord Harrowby’s. One of the men betrayed his fellow-accomplices and several of the conspirators were arrested, with five of them being hanged. This plot caused serious alarm and was likened at the time to Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot.
• In 1824 Britain sent a military force against the Ashantees, a West African tribe. The British soldiers, including their leader, Sir Charles Macarthy, were destroyed.
• 1825 saw the “Great Money Panic” in England. Between sixty and seventy banks were unable to repay their creditors. The poor were the worst hit, and riots ensued with much smashing of machinery, particularly power-looms. The panic was only averted by the government coining 150,000 sovereigns a day.
• In the same year there was a political crisis in Ireland, as a result of which Daniel O’Connell’s “Catholic Association” was suppressed by an Act of the English parliament.
• In 1828 O’Connell was elected member for Clare. As a Roman Catholic he was ineligible to take his seat, but the fear was that in subsequent elections almost every county in Ireland would deliberately elect ineligible Roman Catholics.
• In 1829 the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, believed that a civil war was almost inevitable. Declaring that he “would lay down his life if civil war could be avoided”, he forced the Lords to accept a Bill allowing Roman Catholics to be admitted to parliament.
• In 1831, amid the agitation within England for political reform, the King dissolved parliament. Fierce riots ensued, particularly in Nottingham, Derby and Bristol, and revolution seemed imminent.

In short, Britain was in serious trouble at about the time of Wentworth’s poem. The possibility of a civil war between England and Ireland was serious enough to alarm Wellington, the “Iron Duke”. The English economy was perilous. Unemployed English workers were being mown down by mounted troops. People were plotting to murder the entire Cabinet. The first steps toward outright revolution had actually been taken. (In Bristol the rioters stormed the prisons and released their inmates.) And to cap it all, British troops could be cut to shreds by a primitive African tribe.

This is the context in which Wentworth hoped that, should Britain fail to survive her various problems, a New Britannia would arise in the Southern Hemisphere. Wentworth seems to have envisaged Australia and New Zealand as sanctuaries in which British culture would survive any future collapse of its home base. Clearly, though, he meant something more than this. If there were a real possibility that the mutual culture could collapse within the British Isles, then a colonial version of this culture in the Antipodes would only succeed if certain negative aspects of it were dumped. In other words, the “New Britannia” would have to improve on the traditional culture of the British Isles.

Although Wentworth may not have pursued his logic this far, the idea of a new and better Britannia destined to take shape in Australia was to become a common theme among social theorists for the rest of the century.

According to the Australian historian Alan Serle, this view was also common among ordinary Australians during the gold rush period:

They took immense pride in their creation of ‘another England’, and assumed it was the virtue of British institutions which had made such success possible. These migrants probably felt less than in most other periods that Britain was a country which had no place for them, and where social injustice prevailed. But there was still a widespread determination to make a better England. ²

This sentiment was not confined to Australia, either. The British poet Andrew Lang touched on these themes in at least two different poems:

But what your fathers were – you are

       In lands the fathers never knew,

       Neath skies of alien sign and star

You rally to the English war;

Your hearts are English, kind and true.

                     (from “Advance Australia: On the offer of help from the Australians after the fall of Khartoum”.)

Britannia, when thy hearth’s a-cold,

       When o’er thy grave has grown the moss,

Still Rule Australia shall be trolled

       In islands of the Southern Cross!

                     (from “Ballade of the Southern Cross”)

In the arts, which were largely to reflect these themes, the greatest innovations began in the 1880s. It is therefore convenient that the magazine The Bulletin was founded in 1880. It was a national weekly, with a circulation of 80,000 copies, many of which, especially in the bush, were passed from reader to reader – its rural popularity earning it the affectionate name of the “bushman’s Bible”. (In passing, we should note what these figures imply about the standard of literacy and education among the Australian rural working class of that time.)

The Bulletin was strident, populist, modern, larrikin, funny, and remarkably well-written – especially considering that its readers contributed most of its articles. It launched or nurtured the careers of many writers who were to become famous in Australian letters. The best known of this circle outside Australia are probably A. B. Paterson, a balladist who wrote the words of Waltzing Matilda, and Henry Lawson, probably Australia’s first writer of serious international stature.

The most enduring effect of The Bulletin, however, was the creation of a national myth about Australians and Australianness. Let the magazine briefly speak for itself here, in extracts from an 1887 editorial:

By the term Australian we mean not only those who have been merely born in Australia. All white men who come to these shores …and who leave behind them the memory of class-distinctions and the religious differences of the old world … all men who leave the tyrant-ridden lands of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are Australians … who leave their fatherland because they cannot swallow the worm-eaten lie of the divine right of kings to murder peasants, are Australians by instinct …

Many of the unstated assumptions underlying Wentworth’s vision of a New Britannia are trumpeted shrilly in these extracts. Australia was to become a new land of liberty and harmony, its culture based on only the best aspects of the old world – as defined by The Bulletin. And to some extent The Bulletin embodied many of the democratic qualities it espoused. As the critic A. A. Phillips wrote:

It was a strikingly original school of writing; indeed it might have been a revolutionary school … For the first time for centuries, Anglo-Saxon writing had broken out of the cage of the middle-class attitude. Dickens, Hardy and Brett Harte had, it is true, written sympathetically and knowledgeably of the unpossessing, but they had written for a middle-class audience. They were the guides who conducted their middle-class audience on a Cook's Tour of the lower orders. But to Lawson and Furphy, it was the middle-classes who were the foreigners – and they the often jingoistic nationalists of the poor. They wrote of the people, for the people and from the people. In that task almost their only predecessors later than Bunyan were Burns and Mark Twain – and neither had the full courage of his convictions. ³

In painting, the impetus came from the “Heidelberg School”, made up of the Melbourne-based artists Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder. Strongly influenced by French Impressionism, although not themselves impressionists, these four men completely changed the way Australians perceived the bush. To the rural poor, the bush had been a desolate, constantly threatening environment, a place of alienation ⁴. To the rural capitalists it was a place for economic exploitation. To the English “new-chum” it seemed dreary and monotonous, with straggly trees and painfully harsh light. Yet the Heidelberg School made the glaring light acceptable and, through their new use of both colour and certain technical aspects of composition, made the bush not just accessible but arcadian. Where there are human figures in this art they are idealised, as if to show the improving effects of hard work and a healthy environment on good English stock. Even though their paintings sometimes evoked potentially threatening events, such as children being lost in the bush, the Heidelberg School artists were following an English arcadian tradition. The difference is that their bush was another Eden altogether, at the opposite extreme to the created landscape of rural Britain. The bush of the Heidelberg School is a setting so pristine that it is timeless, peopled (sparsely) by fine-looking men and women happily going about their nation-building tasks without a hint of industrial exploitation or class distinction.

Reproductions of the paintings of the Heidelberg School have hung in innumerable Australian classrooms, libraries, public halls and private houses ever since, and have defined the way Australians see the bush. The “bush” of the Heidelberg School is the “bush” that most Australians recognise and value. As a result, these works continue to reinforce the myth that all Australians are, deep down, hard-working, independent Anglo-Saxon bushmen.

The revolution in sculpture was to affect not just Australian perceptions, but also those in the homeland. Here we will confine our brief glance to the most successful Australian sculptor of this era. Bertram Mackennal had studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne with fellow students Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. As a boy his talent was precocious, but the scale of the Australian economy meant that sculptural commissions were scarce, so in 1882 he left for London. There he was influenced by both Rodin and the English “New Sculptors”, especially Alfred Gilbert, and he began submitting works to the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon.

In 1894 he offered to the Royal Academy perhaps his greatest achievement, an art nouveau bronze version of Circe. The enchantress is depicted as a life-size naked woman striking an imperious pose with her arms stretched out before her. Mackennal’s Circe placed the selection committee in a bind: they recognised the brilliance of the sculpture, but its frank sexuality went well beyond anything they had previously accepted. Furthermore, the intricate swirling plinth of the statue depicted Circe’s bestialised victims in a manner that was far too forthright for the Academy. Eventually they worked out a compromise. The statue could be shown, but only if the base were covered to protect the public from corruption. Naturally, this decision caused a sensation, the Academy was ridiculed, and Mackennal’s fame was ensured.

The Australian who changed the British concept of what was sexually acceptable in sculpture went on to be knighted in 1922, and eventually to become a member of the same Royal Academy that he had brought into ridicule. He was to be the first in a long line of Australian artists and writers to scandalise British official taste with his sexual frankness. ⁵

Architecture provides us with even more valuable clues about a society’s aspirations, tastes and affinities than do literature, painting or sculpture, if only because everyone needs to be housed. Australian architecture largely followed British trends until the 1890s, when the search for an Australian vernacular led to a style of house that prevailed until the First World War. Originally known as the “Queen Anne” style, and now usually referred to as “Edwardian” or “Federation”, it utilised red bricks, Marseilles tiles, painted timber work, and extreme asymmetry, particularly in the roof lines. Naturally, its English influences were many, but in its combination of features and its development of them it was unlike anything being built in England. As with literature, painting and sculpture, a distinctive new style of architecture had evolved in the New Britannia.

If music lagged behind the developments in other art forms, it was to receive a jolt in 1901. In that year a young Australian pianist named Percy Grainger arrived in London and performed to great critical acclaim. Taken up by a wealthy socialite twice his age who demanded that he sleep with her, Grainger was soon introduced to all the prominent musicians of the Imperial capital, and even to Queen Alexandra.

Grainger was a pianist of genius, but he was far more than that. He was also a pioneer recorder of folk songs and – most importantly – one of the major and most original composers of the twentieth century. It has been claimed that “Everything he said, wrote, or did was different from what anyone had said, written or done before” ⁶ and yet to Grainger, part larrikin, part innocent abroad, it was all very straightforward. He regarded himself primarily as an Anglo-Saxon Australian, and this was the identity he sought to disclose in his compositions. For instance, of his Marching Song of Democracy (1916) he wrote that he:

Felt a keen longing to play my part in the creation of music that should reflect the easy-going, happy-go-lucky, yet robust hopefulness and the undisciplined individualistic energy of the athletic out-of-door Anglo-Saxon newer nations …

Grainger believed that a renaissance of Anglo-Saxon (allied with Scandinavian) music was at hand, and he was determined to hasten its coming. To this end he performed strenuously all over the world, always trying to work in to his concerts pieces by young composers of the appropriate ethnic background – which he referred to variously as Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, and “Blue-Eyed”. Thus, his 1928 wedding, performed at the Hollywood Bowl before an audience of perhaps 23,000 people, was part of a three-day series of concerts described by his biographer as “orgiastic riots of Nordicness”. They included, for instance, Howard Hanson’s Nordic Symphony Op. 21, and Grainger’s own wedding present to his wife, the wistful To a Nordic Princess.

Grainger’s campaign for a renaissance of Anglo-Saxon music – led by an athletic young Anglo-Saxon from the colonies – was partly successful, in that some of his proteges are well known today, as are some of the works that he rescued from oblivion.

 Unfortunately, Grainger’s eccentric personal life overshadowed the recognition of his genius during the middle years of the 20^th century. Until two or three decades ago he was probably better known to the general public for his sexual adventurism, of which he was characteristically open and proud, than for his music.

Meanwhile, outside the arts, the New Britannia was becoming known for its social and political experimentation. We have already seen that women were given the vote in 1902. The Australian method of secret voting was admired around the world as “The Australian Ballot”. In Victoria, the “eight-hour day” had been achieved for some workers as early as 1856. In 1874 the Victorian government extended it to all its employees, and private industries began to follow suit. By the 1890s it was standard throughout Australia.

The new Federal Government passed a “Conciliation and Arbitration Act” in 1904, establishing a court to settle industrial disputes – one of the most significant laws in Australian history, with social and economic consequences that went far beyond its apparently restricted scope. Its aim was to “ameliorate conflict between capital and labour”, and to this end it established a basic wage in 1908. In the same year the “Invalid and Old Age Pensioner Act” was passed, providing a safety net for the most vulnerable members of the society. It paid double the value of the British pension. In 1911 the Federal Government established the Commonwealth Bank, a community-owned national bank that was later to be crucial in raising money for Australia’s commitment to the First World War. In 1912 the “Maternity Allowances Act” paid a “baby bonus” on the birth of each child, with no means test. In the same year the “Commonwealth Workmen’s Compensation Act” established insurance and compensation for government employees injured at work.

This list of new, progressive laws is already extensive and needs no further development here. It was paralleled by the creation of maternity benefits, crêches and kindergartens, and nursing services. By 1910 the Australian infant mortality rate was 71.7 per thousand, compared to 105 in Britain. The point is that in the years immediately following Federation, Australia was a leading force in social innovation. New Britannia was taking its duties seriously, passing laws to protect its sceptred race that were to be copied by other Anglo-Saxon states around the world in the ensuing years. It would be fair to say that Australia was consciously applying itself to the task of creating a socially minded Anglo-Saxon utopia.

As Charles Henry Pearson wrote in his very influential National Life and Character: 

When some of our Australian institutions, manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, are incorporated into English law, when we find the eight hours system, free and secular education, a divorce bill or marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, supported by Australian precedents in English discussion, do not let us flatter ourselves that we are the originators of something new and unthought of. We are only giving body and form to English aspirations; and we are more English in the modern sense than England, because we have carried England without some of its outworn medieval institutions into the life of a new continent. ⁷

Finally, we need to ask: what of the race itself? Was it showing signs of being somehow eugenically improved, as many writers claimed? The term “the Coming Race” was frequently applied to the genetic stock that many believed was evolving in the Australian social cauldron. In Henry Lawson’s words, its typical member was “tall and freckled and sandy”.

As to whether any such transformation was really occurring, all that can be said with certainty is that modern Australian academic historians have avoided investigating this subject. Yet we have seen that the Australian contingent at the Boer War was generally perceived to be tall, fit and strong. That may well be true, but it may only indicate that their cousins who were short, unfit and weak tended not to volunteer.

Still, of the Australian troops serving in the First World War, the British poet John Masefield wrote:

The Anzacs were the finest body of young men ever brought together in modern times. For physical beauty and nobility of bearing, they surpassed any man I have ever seen; they walked and looked like kings in old poems and reminded me of the Shakespearian line: ‘Baited like eagles having lately bathed’. ⁸

The English novelist and critic, Charles Edward Montague concurred, writing of:

Dominion battalions of men strikingly taller, stronger, handsomer, prouder, firmer in nerve, better schooled, more boldly interested in life, quicker to take means to an end and to parry and counter any new blow of circumstance, men who had learned already to look at our men with the curious, half-pitying look of a higher, happier caste at a lower.” ⁹

Another British writer, Compton Mackenzie, enthused that:

There was not one of those glorious young men I saw that day who might not himself have been Ajax or Diomed, Hector or Achilles. Their almost complete nudity, their tallness and majestic simplicity of line, their rose-brown flesh burnt by the sun and purged of all grossness by the ordeal through which they were passing, all these united to create something as near to absolute beauty as I shall hope ever to see in this world.  ¹⁰

Against these testimonies we must bear in mind once again that the Australians were all volunteers. Furthermore, there is evidence that men with even negligible health problems were rejected by the Australian Imperial Force. It is clear that only the very best of the nation was on display in the Middle East and on the Western Front. On the other hand, four other issues need to be considered. First, many young men who were rejected by the AIF were subsequently accepted into British regiments. Second, the British authorities were alarmed at the poor physical quality of so many young men who tried to enlist, while there is no hint of any such alarm in Australia. Third, according to John Masefield’s precisely-chosen words, the Australian “body of young men” surpassed “any man I have ever seen”. If we are to accept his statement, then we have to take literally his claim that many or most of the Anzacs were better physical specimens than “any man” Masefield had “ever seen”. (If that was indeed the case, then the Anzacs must have rivalled the Athenian expedition that sailed for Sicily in 415 BCE.) Fourth, as we have seen, the military record of the Anzacs was extraordinarily distinguished.

Taking all of these factors into account, it is tempting to believe that the best soldiers that Australia could enlist to defend the Empire in 1914 were in fact physically superior to the best that the mother country could raise. Sadly, for reasons that will become apparent in later chapters, no modern Australian historian would dare to investigate the surviving records in order to resolve this question.

1.      The term “Australasia” was used to refer to Australia and New Zealand. It was felt that the two colonies would eventually unite into one state, provisionally called “Australasia”, and there is still provision for that union in Australia’s 1901 Constitution.

2.      Serle, G., The Golden Age, Melbourne, 1963

3.      Cited in Serle, G., The Creative Spirit in Australia: A Cultural Essay, Heinemann, 1987

4.      Exemplified in Henry Lawson’s influential short story, The Drover’s Wife

5.      Older readers may recall the trial of the magazine Oz in London in 1966

6.      Scholes, P., The Oxford Companion to Music, OUP, 1980 edition

7.      Pearson, C.H., National Life and Character, London, 1893

8.      Masefield, J., Gallipoli, London, 1924

9.      Montague, C.E., Disenchantment, London, 1929

10.   Mackenzie, C., Gallipoli Memories, Cassell & Co, 1929

Chapter 8: – Educating “Independent Australian Britons”

“On the one hand, Australians were belligerently proud of their country. On the other, they were taught that their heritage was British. England was commonly referred to as ‘Home’. English history, and English literature, were taught in schools …”

                     - Don Dunstan, former Premier of South Australia

In 1901 the Education Department of Victoria gazetted an oath of allegiance to be recited weekly by all primary school students in that State. ¹ Through to the 1970s, at Monday morning assemblies children across the State would line up in neat ranks, listen respectfully to the playing of God Save the Queen (King), salute the Australian flag with the Union Jack in its corner, and pledge:

I love God and my country; I honour the flag; I will serve the King (Queen), and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the laws.

The Education Department clearly had strong views about the civic education of the children in its care, and these views were not limited to imperialistic ceremonies every Monday morning. Between 1928 and 1930 the Department produced an in-house graded series of school readers. There were eight books in all, one for each of the eight years that children then spent in primary school. These books, known collectively as “The Victorian Readers” were issued to students until the late 1960s. They were so popular that a boxed facsimile reprint issued in 1986 quickly sold out and a second edition was required within three years. In the cover-note on the box were these words:

And what of their contents? The young readers would have found material that depicted a society of well-defined social and cultural patterns: a country proud of its achievements and optimistic of its future, firmly linked to Britain, unashamedly nationalistic – one-quarter of the contents was required to be Australian – and with a clearly enunciated morality.

Here again we catch an echo of Alfred Deakin’s “Independent Australian Britons”. Yet if we delve a little deeper into the pages of the “Readers” we can gain an even better understanding of how Australians were taught to see themselves from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The “First Book” has large print and is very much an introduction to reading. Interspersed among its phonetic exercises are English nursery rhymes such as “Hickory Dickory Dock”.

The “Second Book” plunges the children into a world of oak and holly trees, fairies, elves, trolls and brownies, billy goats gruff, robins and thrushes, unmistakably English lanes, English proverbs, and – remarkably – poems by the likes of Christina Rossetti and Kenneth Graham. Much of this world would probably be imaginatively unfamiliar to most Australian children of the same age today. The children of the thirties were less likely to have seen a robin, a thrush, a holly tree or a shire lane, yet they were being inaugurated into a wider Anglo-Saxon world beyond their own sunburnt paddocks.

The “Third Book”, aimed at children aged about seven, includes poems by Swinburne, Keats, Hogg, Stevenson, Tennyson and Christina Rossetti.

The next in the series keeps up the earlier themes. An interesting inclusion is Coleridge’s lyric, “What the birds say”, with its unfamiliar linnet, thrush and lark. While the “Readers” gloss difficult words, these three apparently needed no explanation. The children are given the whole of “The Wreck of the Hesperus” There is also a delightful short biography of General Gordon, which helpfully informs the youngsters that “The people throughout the whole British Empire were very sorry when they heard of his death”.

The level of the “Fifth Book”, for children aged about nine, can be gauged from the fact that it contains Shakespeare’s description of Queen Mab (“She comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone…”) It continues both the Australian and the Imperial themes of the earlier readers. It is hard to imagine what the children would have made of Burns’ “My Heart’s in the Highlands” (“my heart is not here”!), but at least they could take consolation from A. B. Paterson’s poem, “The Old Australian Ways”, with its reassurance that:

The narrow ways of English folk

       Are not for such as we;

They bear the long-accustomed yolk

       Of staid conservancy:

But all our roads are new and strange,

       And through our blood there runs

The vagabonding love of change

That drove us westward of the range

       And westward of the suns.

The “Sixth Book” seems to aim to make the children citizens not just of the Empire, but of the western cultural world, introducing paraphrases of Homer, Schiller, Cicero, Cervantes, Hans Anderson, Voltaire, and Tolstoy. There are, predictably, stirring imperial verses like Cowper’s “Boadicea” and Whittier’s “The Pipes of Lucknow”, but perhaps the most intriguing feature is the poems chosen to begin and end the collection.

The first is “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar, an Australian-born poet. This opens:

The love of field and coppice,

       Of green and shaded lanes,

Of ordered woods and gardens,

       Is running in your veins;

Strong love of grey-blue distance,

       Brown streams, and soft, dim skies, –

I know, but cannot share it;

       My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

       A land of sweeping plains,

Of rugged mountain ranges,

       Of droughts and flooding rains;

I love her far horizons,

       I love her jewelled sea,

Her beauty, and her terror –

       The wide brown land for me!

This poem, which continues for another four stanzas, is still beloved by many Australians. The words of the second stanza are often suggested as the basis for a new national anthem. When this subject is raised on talk-back radio there is always a caller who points out to the usually jingoistic hosts that Mackellar was aware that the love of English scenery is also “in our veins”.

The other “bookend” is a largely forgotten work by another Australian poet, Roderic Quinn. It is an extract from “The House of the Commonwealth”, a poem celebrating Australian Federation. In view of the light that it sheds on the Australian self-image the extract deserves to be quoted in full:

We sent a word across the sea that said,

       “The house is finished and the doors are wide,

              Come, enter in.

A stately house it is, with tables spread

       Where men in liberty and love abide

              With hearts akin.

“Behold, how high our hands have lifted it!

       The soil it stands upon is pure and sweet

              As are our skies.

Our title-deeds in holy sweat are writ,

       Not red, accusing blood; and ’neath our feet

              No foeman lies.”

And England, Mother England, leans her face

       Upon her hand, and feels her blood burn young

              At what she sees:

The image here of that fair strength and grace

       That made her feared and loved and sought and sung

              Through centuries.

In case the young readers missed the point of this poem, they were posed a series of questions:

Notice the leading thought in each stanza, the message to England, the brief description of the House, the effect on the mother country. Examine them carefully and see how the finer part of Australia is exalted above the baser. Have we or can we have a stately house where men in liberty and love abide with hearts akin? Is it true that it has been built by holy toil, and not by conquest? Is it true that what has been best in the history of Britain lives renewed in this southern land? If so, what are our duties as citizens?

In the “Seventh Book” the tone is perhaps set by an extract from Harold Begbie’s “Britons Beyond the Seas”. Here are the two central stanzas:

Loved, you are loved, O England,

       And ever that love endures;

But we must have younger visions

       And mightier dreams than yours;

Cleaner Londons and wider fields,

       And a statelier bridge to span

The gulf which severs the rich and poor

       In the brotherly ranks of Man.

Yet, with the bolder vision,

       We cleave to you, look to you still

That you gather our scattered toil, and bind

       Our strength in a single will,

That you build with us out of the coasts of the earth,

       A realm, a race, and a rede

That shall govern the peace of the world, and serve

The humblest state in her need.

The general tenor of the civic education of young Australians from the 1930s to the 1960s has, I hope, been established through these extracts. The “Eighth Book” was actually the first to be issued. It contained a preface addressed “To the Teacher”, which explained to classroom teachers across the State the purpose of the series:

The main aim of the committee that made the selections for it was to obtain such as possessed literary merit, and were suitable as regards the average standard of attainment of the grade or form for which the book was intended. The young readers were to begin at home, to be taken in imagination to various parts of the Empire, to Europe, and to the United States of America, and thus gain a knowledge of their rich heritage and acquire a well-founded pride of race. The inculcation of sound morality was always to be kept in view, and support given to the creation of a feeling against international strife and to the implanting of a desire for world-wide toleration.

These were the views on which three generations of Australian children ² cut their reading teeth. All of today’s middle-aged and elderly Australians grew up bathed in an intellectual climate that assured them of the glory of their British heritage – and promised them that they were destined to exceed the achievements of the Home Country. At the same time, their duty was to remind England of the highest moral responsibilities of Empire.

It is not at all surprising, given this type of education, that the future Prime Minister, Robert Menzies should say on his first visit to England in 1935: “At last we are in England. Our journey to Mecca has ended, and our minds abandoned to those reflections which can so strangely (unless you remember our traditions and upbringing) move the soul of those who go ‘home’ to a land they have never seen …”

This sentiment was an integral part of the Australian self-image when Australia was in many ways a nation at the peak of its confidence and power. We shall shortly see how easily and quickly it was undermined.

1.                A similar oath was used in other States.

2.                The “Victorian Readers” exemplified the moral, civic and national aspirations that were standard during this period in all the Australian States.

Chapter 9: – Before the storm

The idea of “Imperial Preference” in trade was suggested as early as the 1890s. Its aim was to facilitate trade within the Empire and the Dominions through the imposition of tariffs on non-Imperial trade.

Little came of it until 1903, when Joseph Chamberlain, formerly colonial secretary, made a major speech proposing that duties be imposed on corn, meat, dairy produce and manufactured goods imported from “foreign” countries – those outside the Empire. His aim was to bind the Empire together with economic ties, creating a self-contained trading unit that would lead eventually to Imperial Federation. His Conservative Party lost the next election, so all that came immediately of the debate was the inauguration of “Empire Day” (May 24, Queen Victoria’s birthday) as a symbol of Imperial unity. ¹

Australia then introduced a tariff that was preferential toward British goods, giving the British products a 5% advantage over their competitors. This was increased to 12% in 1921. Britain also introduced small imperial preferences for wine, sugar and dried fruits. The British government proposed to increase these limited imperial preferences in 1923, but then lost office.

Three decades after Chamberlain’s suggestion the world situation was very different.

First, the 1931 Statute of Westminster had affirmed that the Dominions were “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate to one another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”.

Under this definition, Imperial Federation was no longer a likely possibility. Australia accordingly refused to ratify the Statute; and in fact did not do so until 1942, by which time the ideal of a federated Empire could clearly never be revived.

Second, the world was now in the grip of the Great Depression. Australia was hit particularly hard. In the previous decade more foreign investment had flooded into the country than in the previous fifty years. In addition, Australia was still repaying Britain about £100 million borrowed to equip, provision and supply the troops it had contributed to the First World War. Britain was in no position to offer debt relief, having herself borrowed £850 million from the US to finance her war effort. As Jack Lang, Premier of New South Wales tersely expressed it: “Wall Street put the screws on London. London applied the clamps on Australia.”

The Depression destroyed Australia’s export markets for primary produce. The interest bill on the war loan and on foreign investments was all but unpayable. Businesses, large and small, were crashing daily. The major cities were ringed with soup kitchens. Many thousands were forced to sleep in parks and railway stations. Shops were shuttered and offices were empty.

The money power of Wall Street had gone too far, and in reaction the British nations met in Ottawa in 1932 to free themselves from the wheel of international exchange. The time had come for Chamberlain’s old idea of Imperial Preferences. They were adopted at the Ottowa Imperial Economic Conference in order to insulate the British world from the dominance of Wall Street. It might have seemed that Britain and the Dominions had never been closer. This tightening of the familial links was not just symbolic: trade within the Empire increased markedly after Ottowa, much to the distress of Wall Street.

For Australia, however, the links were not close enough. One way to strengthen them was through further British migration

Readers will recall that in the early colonial days land was granted to civil servants, gentleman settlers, soldiers and emancipated convicts. That system changed in 1831. After 1831, land was not granted but sold, and for the next half century the proceeds were nearly all used to subsidise British migration to Australia.

Between the wars, however, the stream of British migrants, assisted or otherwise, was beginning to dry up. In the 1920s more than four migrants still arrived from Britain for every single non-British migrant. Yet between 1930 and 1936 more Europeans than British settled in Australia. (The largest single group was the Italians.) These migrants were referred to officially as “white aliens”.

Australians were alarmed by these trends, and there was a great and ongoing public debate over immigration during these two decades. As a result, restrictions were increasingly imposed on non-British immigration. From the 1920s strict quotas were imposed on Albanians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Estonians, Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Poles and Yugoslavs. From 1931, European migrants without a guarantor in Australia had to bring with them £500 in “landing money”, a requirement designed to deter Southern and Eastern European migrants.

1934 was a remarkable year in terms of the immigration debate. On the Australia Day weekend, in the remote mining town of Kalgoorlie, a customer died after being thrown out of a pub by an Italian barman. Massive race riots ensured, with “old Australians” hunting Italian and Yugoslav migrants out of their boarding houses and pubs. Two more deaths occurred, and damages were estimated at £100,000.

British child migrant schemes had some success during this period, but the reluctance of British adults to migrate to Australia led to a review of the system in 1936. In that year the Australian government again granted assisted passages to British migrants. It also waived the landing money requirement for particularly “desirable” European migrants – “desirable” being a euphemism for Scandinavians.

In 1939 a new rule was introduced, forcing continental Europeans wishing to migrate to Australia to supply photographs. These were used to assess their skin colour and, especially, to weed out applicants who looked Jewish – based on the argument that keeping out Jews would prevent anti-Semitism from developing in Australia.

Despite all these measures, the Australian public was still alarmed at the level of non-British migration. The government, fearing an electoral backlash, responded in many ways, some effective and some symbolic. For example, from 1938 the landing money for continental Europeans was set at £200, but for Jews it was increased to £1,000, and subsequently to £3,000.

It needs to be emphasised that measures like these were enacted in response to loudly expressed concern from the Australian public. To the average Australian in the 1930s the most desirable migrants were English and Scottish, followed by others from the rest of the British Isles, and Scandinavians. A very small number of Southern Europeans was seen as an inconvenience that could be tolerated if necessary, but Eastern Europeans were considered to be unacceptable.

The 1930s was to be the last decade in which the views of the Australian public on this subject would be heeded by their government. The right of the community to determine its future ethnic composition was to be swept away in the carnage of World War II. Never again, as we shall see, would Australians be able to assert their desire to remain a British nation.

Not all was well, however, in Australia’s relations with Britain and the Empire.

At the Paris peace conference following the Great War the Australian Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes, behaved in an extraordinary manner for the leader of such a small country. When U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked how a country of five million could pit its will against the 1200 million allegedly represented at the conference, Hughes pointedly replied that he spoke for Australia’s 60,000 dead. He attacked America for proposing a new era of free trade, and for its dream of international settlements being effected through the League of Nations.

The Covenant of that new organisation was to have contained a declaration of racial equality. Since this would have undermined the White Australia Policy, Hughes successfully opposed it. Although he was present in Paris as the leader of an independent state, he felt that his main task was to retain Britain’s commitment to the Empire – the body that so greatly amplified Hughes’ and Australia’s voice. Australia didn’t need just the Royal Navy – it needed the moral and political support of the Empire itself. And Hughes received exactly that, albeit reluctantly. He insisted that Australia must retain control of the former German colony of New Guinea, and a special form of mandated territory status was eventually drafted by Britain to satisfy his demand. He even gained direct access to the British government (rather than working through the Colonial Office) in order to ensure greater Australian participation in Imperial affairs.

Australia wanted closer ties; Canada, South Africa and later Ireland wanted looser ones. Which way was Britain to turn? Australia was appeased somewhat by the increasing visits of members of the royal family. The Prince of Wales came in 1920, the Yorks opened the new national capital, Canberra, in 1927, the Gloucesters visited in 1934. On these occasions the pomp and circumstance of Empire was apparently upheld and reinforced.

In 1930, however, the Australian Prime Minister clashed directly with his King. The Prime Minister was James Henry Scullin. The King was George V, who as the Duke of York had opened the first Australian federal Parliament in Melbourne in 1901. The occasion was the retirement of the Australian Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven.

Traditionally, the new Governor-General would have been suggested to the King by the Dominions Office. But at the 1926 Imperial Conference Lord Balfour drafted a formula which appeared to give power to the Dominions in this and other matters.

Scullin’s preferred choice for Governor-General was the Australian-born Sir Isaac Isaacs. Whitehall opposed this choice, and urged the King to take a strong stand. Matters came to a head on November 29, 1930, when Scullin had an audience with the King. What happened then is recorded in the royal diary:

Received Mr. Scullin and he told me he wished to appoint Sir Isaac Isaacs as the new Governor-General of Australia. He argued with me for some time, and with great reluctance I had to approve the appointment.

The Empire was showing signs of fraying. It was perhaps ironic that the new Governor-General was a more committed imperialist, and probably more actively pro-British, than many of those who had preceded him.

Two years later another event occurred that tested the relationship in a uniquely Australian way. Australians prided themselves on their general health, and therefore they placed an almost mythical emphasis on Australian sporting prowess. Sporting heroes were adored for their grace and courage. During the 1932-3 Test cricket series played in Australia, the English team developed a method of bowling directly at the batsmen; mainly, it was believed, to curb the influence of the brilliant Donald Bradman. There was an immediate howl of anger. The Australian Cricket Board of Control cabled the Marylebone Cricket Club to protest that this “bodyline” technique was “unsportmanlike”. The issue was raised in the British and Australian parliaments. Many claimed that the controversy was endangering the Imperial relationship. The visiting captain, D. R. Jardine, was villainised as an archetypal arrogant Englishman, and Bradman, already a popular hero, achieved the Australian sporting equivalent of canonisation.

That there was also a fear of civil disorder in the wake of the Great War is evident from the formation in New South Wales in 1920 of a “King and Empire Alliance” – the proto-fascist organisation alluded to in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Kangaroo. Its less well-known Melbourne equivalent, the “White Guard”, was led initially by General Sir Brudenell White. The Depression seems to have intensified middle class fears of a proletarian uprising. By 1930 in New South Wales the King and Empire Alliance had evolved into the “New Guard”, a military-style organisation of perhaps 50,000 men who proclaimed “unswerving loyalty” to King and Empire and who may have planned to kidnap the New South Wales Premier. (These were largely secret organisations, so the evidence is murky.) In the same year a rumour swept Victoria that “communists” had taken over Sydney and were marching on Melbourne. Farmers and country businessmen, members of the White Guard, spent the night arming themselves and digging trenches to fend off the red hordes. So well-prepared was the defence that one of the secret army’s senior members, police commissioner Thomas Blamey (later Field Marshall Sir Thomas Blamey), was forced to denounce the rumour in order to conceal the efficient preparations of the White Guard.

Communism was never popular enough to mount a challenge to the King, the Empire, or Anglo-Australia. Some of the more militant Irish Catholics in Australia were to do just that, although they prudently limited themselves, in the main, to symbolic attacks.

The history of the Irish in Australia has been traced in hundreds of books, and thousands of articles and theses. Each author presents a different view, and the overall picture is confusing. We are concerned here only with the Irish relationship to Anglo-Australia, but even so there are ambiguities and unanswered questions.

To start with, we do not know what percentage of the Australian population is, or was at any given time, of Irish origin.

We saw in Chapter 4 that the various nineteenth century assisted migrant schemes tried to keep the numbers of English, Scottish and Irish settlers in the same proportions as they were found in Britain and Ireland. The target, not always reached, was 70% English, 10% Scottish and 20% Irish. This is significant, since from 1892 onwards the number of Irish-born people settling in Australia each year has averaged less than a thousand. Clearly, most Australians of Irish descent must trace their ancestry back to the nineteenth century.

We have also seen that the Irish were not a monocultural group, and that fights between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants could – and did – cost lives.

Unfortunately, migration figures cannot give us a reliable estimate of the percentage of the Australian population that is of Irish ethnicity. Differential birth-rates and differential rates of return might skew the graph in any direction.

Another approach to the problem would be to survey the Australian people and ask them about their ethnicity. In the 1980s the four-yearly Australian Census for the first time did just that. The results were remarkable. Australia’s leading demographer, Dr Charles Price, calculated that, according to census responses, at the time of the 1988 Bicentennial 17.24% of Australian residents were of Irish origin and 43.92% were of English origin.

Dr Price’s extrapolation of the Irish figure is too high, and his figure for the English is too low. In brief, an extraordinary growth of Irish consciousness in Australia has led to many people exaggerating any small Irish component that may form part of a somewhat mixed ancestry, often to downgrade a predominantly English background, and even to fabricate an Irish ancestry that exists only in their fantasies. (People in the last group are often derided as “Plastic Paddies”.)

It has been estimated that shortly after World War II, before the floodgates of non-British migrants were fully open, about one in five Australians were Roman Catholics. Obviously not all of these were of Irish origin. Perhaps the most visible minority of Australian Catholics by then would have been Italians, but it should not be forgotten that small but significant numbers of migrants from the British mainland were also Catholics.

Naturally, some people of Irish Catholic origin would have lapsed or converted over the generations, but this may well have been balanced by a fact that is peculiar to the Irish Catholic immigrant experience. During the heyday of that migration, in the nineteenth century, the majority of Irish Catholic migrants were young single women who found employment in Australia as domestic servants. Pressure was often placed on their suitors to convert to Catholicism, and then again on the suitors of their children, and so on, until by the post-war period a child registered as a Roman Catholic might well have had one single female Irish Catholic ancestor three or more generations earlier. Such a child might then be one-eighth – or less – of Irish Catholic heritage. Therefore the Roman Catholic census figures cannot be taken as an accurate reflection of the Irish Catholic proportion of the Australian population even in the immediate post-war period, before the value of any such statistics was drowned in the post-war migrant flood.

As a working hypothesis, it is reasonable to suppose that the English, Irish and Scottish percentages in the Australian population roughly reflect their proportions in the British Isles. In the year that Dr Price came up with the figures which he derived from questionable census returns, 1988, about 74% of the Australian population was said to be of British Isles origin. Therefore we can guess that something like 52% of the Australian population was at that time of English origin, about 7% was derived from Scotland, and about 15% was of Irish heritage. Up to a fifth of the Irish may have been from Northern Ireland, giving an approximate Irish Catholic figure of about 12%, or slightly more.

Whatever the merit of these figures, there is little doubt that the Irish in Australia generally did well for themselves. By the time of Federation Irish Catholics were wealthy enough to have built an extensive network of their own private schools, colleges, convents, churches and cathedrals. They even boasted that St Patrick’s Cathedral, proclaimed in 1897, was taller than all but four of the historic cathedrals of England. They had their own recreational and devotional guilds, provident societies, literary societies and sporting clubs – but mainly by choice, rather than as a result of any general exclusion from Anglo-Australia. There were arguments between the colonial governments and the Catholic Church over control of education, but these could be – and eventually were – resolved.

The most significant incident affecting the acceptance of the Irish Catholic minority in the second half of the nineteenth century occurred in 1868. Fenian atrocities in Ireland had been in the news, and Irish gatherings were widely viewed with suspicion. Things would have settled down, no doubt, but on 12 March Henry James O’Farrell shot the visiting Duke of Edinburgh. O’Farrell was Irish-born, had studied for the priesthood, and claimed to be a Fenian. O’Farrell was executed and the furious anti-Irish reaction of the patriotic majority died down after a few years. Henry Parkes, who was to become the most prominent champion of Federation, expressed the broader community’s sense of betrayal:

Have these people come to mingle with us – to assist in forming one common Australian people? Is it not the case that they bring with them the memory of their Irish wrongs, and reproduce amongst us their seditious agitations charged with senseless insults to the nationality of England? ²

Extreme anti-Irish feeling flared up again after the murder of the Irish Secretary, Lord Cavendish, and his Under-Secretary in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1882, but once again little but insults came of it.

Each first generation of Irish Catholic migrants may have brought out with them a more or less intense hostility toward England, but this usually dissipated fairly quickly. The English they encountered in Australia were not oppressors. There were few barriers to Irish advancement other than in banking and commerce, and in fact many Irish Catholics found themselves a haven in the public services, especially in local government.

Furthermore, Australia was a brilliant model of successful “home rule”, a status to which Ireland itself was clearly heading, thus confirming that the Empire was not necessarily oppressive. As even the Irish Home Rule leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, observed:

We can show that disaffection has disappeared in all the greater colonies; that while the Irishman who goes to the United States carries with him a burning hatred of English rule … the Irishman coming from the same village … who goes out to one of the colonies of Canada or … of Australia, and finds there a different system of English rule to that which he has become accustomed at home, becomes to a great extent a loyal strength and prop to the community amongst whom his lot has been cast . ³

That may have remained the case in Australia if it hadn’t been for a few recalcitrant Irish community leaders.

St Patrick’s Day parades in Australia began in the 1850s. These were initially genial affairs, non-political and non-sectarian, with the general flavour of extended pub crawls. By the 1880s, though, they had developed into political demonstrations for Home Rule in Ireland. Then, with the disgrace and death of Parnell, Archbishop Moran played down the political side, involving the colonial governor in St Patrick’s Day marches and stressing their religious dimension. Nevertheless, colonial agitation for Irish Home Rule continued, as did progress toward this goal in the mother parliament.

During the Great War Irishmen fought with distinction alongside English, Scottish, Welsh and Dominion troops. They were second to none in courage, and often took pride in their service to the Empire. Then came the doomed rebellion of Easter 1916. In Australia, the Irish-born Cardinal Danniel Mannix stood by the executed Irish rebels. The radical Mannix soon became a vocal leader of the Irish community, drawing enormous crowds to his speeches. His followers, widely called “Sinn Feiners”, played a large role in defeating Australia’s two conscription referendums in 1916 and 1917. The young Mannix was an Irish triumphalist, a radical socialist, an Anglophobe and an almost compulsive disparager of the ideals of Empire. (Alfred Deakin’s son-in-law is said to have claimed that Mannix opposed conscription solely because he wanted to see Protestant volunteers killed in action so that Irish Catholics could marry their sisters – a claim included here only to illustrate the depth of hostility that Mannix drew upon himself and his followers.)

When the accounts of Bolshevik atrocities in Russia reached Australia, Mannix cast doubt on them and argued that, in any case, the English had behaved badly in Ireland. This attempt to establish an equivalence of guilt was typical of his strident style. In his 1918 St Patrick’s Day march, Sinn Fein banners were prominent, and Mannix snubbed the playing of the National Anthem. Under Mannix’s leadership defiant Irishmen were soon to sing “God Save Ireland” instead of “God Save the King”. More Sinn Fein banners were carried in the 1919 march. Mannix was obviously determined to cock a snook at Anglo-Australia. The Prime Minister believed that this turbulent priest was actually a member of Sinn Fein, and considered deporting him.

Even the Vatican rebuked Mannix’s political grand-standing, which was once again provoking white-hot hatred of the Irish. In 1918 loyalists packed the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne to sing patriotic songs including “Rule Britannia” and “The British Grenadiers”. The authority given to Mannix by his supporters was foolish, since he was probably responsible for more Irish Catholic workers being sacked than any other man in Australia’s history. Yet even when he was out of the country his followers imitated his follies. After a law was passed to enforce the carrying of the Union Jack at any public procession, the 1921 St Patrick’s Day organisers mocked the majority by paying a shambling old drunk, who happened to have been born in England, to carry the flag.

The civil war following the establishment of the Irish Free State added another layer to the attitudes of the Irish Catholics in Australia. It further divided their loyalties, and tended to frustrate their pride in ethnic identity by confirming the general suspicion that the Irish were, after all, scarcely capable of governing themselves. Furthermore, people of Irish Catholic origin were bettering themselves financially and beginning to drift out of the cramped inner suburbs of the major cities, where they had traditionally been highly influenced and easily organised by their parish priests and the local branches of their organisations. Three of every four Catholic priests at that time were Irish-born, and some of their native-born colleagues openly criticised them for their detestation of all things English.

Most of the Catholic clergy soon turned away from the militant Irishness of a few years earlier, but not so the still-influential Mannix. In 1923 he welcomed two republican envoys from Ireland. The general clergy gave them the cold shoulder, and the government deported them. A new law was passed requiring British citizens coming to Australia to take an oath of allegiance. Not surprisingly, one of the first to be deported under this provision was another Irish priest who was a protégé of Mannix.

Mannix was still at it in 1935, when the State of Victoria celebrated its centenary. The Duke of Gloucester was the guest of honour. He arrived on 18 October, and The Argus newspaper estimated that half a million Melburnians turned out to welcome him. “It was a remarkable personal tribute to his Royal Highness,” argued The Argus, “and not less moving as a demonstration of loyalty to the throne.” On 11 November, 300,000 people watched as the Duke dedicated Melbourne’s newly completed Shrine of Remembrance. The Centenary Air Race from London to Melbourne, beginning on 20 October, was a highlight of the celebrations and is now recognised as the greatest in the history of aviation. Yet rather than joining in all this general jubilation, on 2 December Mannix organised his own sideshow, a “National Eucharistic Congress”, for which he brought out Cardinal MacRory, the Papal Legate. Given the enormous harm that he had done their cause, it is astounding that an estimated 500,000 Irish Catholics attended.

There were probably as many reasons for this enduring strain of Irish separatism as there have been Irish in Australia. Yet there seem to be some common elements. In a monumental study of the Irish in Australia, one historian made this suggestion:

The American Irish had an easier task: they could blame the Famine and make lives from the legacy of hate. Perhaps the Australian Irish could also delude themselves they had to leave. But, however managed, they needed to construct another sense of home. By and large they failed. Australia defeated them, and they defeated themselves.

In extenuation it should not be forgotten that the Irish had been trained by centuries of British rule to blame others, and to look outside themselves for solutions to their problems. ⁴

What could be called the “Mannix tradition” continued to estrange some Irish Catholics from Anglo-Australia until Mannix’s eventual passing from the scene. Meanwhile, let us pause to sum up the main stresses that were visible in Australia during the inter-war years. In addition to the problem of numbers of Irish Catholics as yet not fully assimilated, the Empire was beginning to unwind when most Australians would have preferred it to federate; the growth of secret armies attested to the fears of the middle classes; Japan was becoming an expansionist threat to the north; migration from Britain was drying up; and the Prime Minister of the most loyal part of the Empire had been forced into a face-to-face argument with his ill-advised King – all of this played out against a background of post-war debt, and then the Depression.

Even so, these were the years when Australia was probably at its most powerful, behind the shield of Empire. It was also perhaps more unified than it would ever again be. The fundamentals for future prosperity appeared to be in place, despite the immediate economic challenges. A distinctive Australian culture was well established. Most of all, Australians knew exactly who and what they were, and were happy with their self-image. Much of this was to start unravelling within a few years.

1.                Empire Day came with a patriotic catechism of “facts and figures to educate children” in the ideal of Empire. The Victorian School Paper commented that as a result of the introduction of Empire Day, “the children of Great Britain and Greater Britain (the ‘Dominions beyond the seas’) will be reminded of the empire in which every one of them has a share”. Significantly, most Irish Catholic schools refused to honour Empire Day. Cardinal Moran of Sydney changed it to “Australia Day”; St Mary’s Cathedral showed what this meant by flying the flags of Australia and Ireland, rather than the Australian flag and the Union Jack.

2.                Parkes, H., Irish Immigration, Sydney, 1869

3.                Lyons, F.S.L., Charles Stewart Parnell, Fontana, 1978

4.                O’Farrell, Patrick, The Irish in Australia, NSW University Press, 1986

Chapter 10: – Australia pays its way

Before we turn to examine the sustained attack on Anglo-Australia that has built up enormous momentum over recent years, we need to establish one thing: Can it be confidently asserted that the world would have been a lesser place if Australia had never been settled by British, and primarily English, migrants?

We have seen that Australian troops influenced the course of military history. History, though, is often just a matter for politicians and political ideologues to argue over. We have seen hints that a healthier race was perhaps developing in Australia around the time of Federation, but these will be no more than hints until Australian historians feel free to investigate this topic. Finally, we have seen that Australian artistic culture was, from a relatively early date, not only self-confident in its local sphere but also influential on the Anglo-Saxon world stage.

But is there any way to show, unequivocally, that the human condition would be diminished if Captain Cook had never claimed Australia for King George III? To answer this question we must look to Australia's contributions in science and technology. For many people this is a “dry” subject, so our overview will be brief.

Twelve men who are primarily associated with Australia have won Nobel Prizes. These are:

Sir William Henry Bragg, OM KBE FRS, born in Cumberland, UK, on 2/7/1862. Sir William shared the Nobel Prize for physics with his son Lawrence in 1915. The prize was awarded for their use of X-rays as an instrument revealing the way in which crystals are built.

Sir (William) Lawrence Bragg, CH OBE MC FRS, son of the above, born in Adelaide, Australia, 31/3/1890.

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet OM AK KBE FRS FAA, born in Traralgon, Victoria, on 3/9/1899. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1960 for his discovery of the cellular basis of immunology.

Sir John Warcup Cornforth AC CBE FRS FAA FRCS FRACI, born in Sydney, 1/9/1917. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1975 "for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions".

Peter Charles Doherty AC FRS FAA, born in Oxley, Queensland, on 15/10/1940. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1996 for his discoveries in the area of viral pathogenesis and immunity.

Sir John Carew Eccles AC FRS FAA, born in Melbourne on 27/1/1911. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1963 for his discoveries in neurophysiology.

Baron (Howard Walter) Florey OM FRS FAA, born in Adelaide on 24/9/1898. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1945 for his discovery of the antibiotic properties of penicillin. This discovery has subsequently saved untold millions of lives around the world.

Sir Bernard Katz FRS FAA, born in Leipzig on 26/3/1911. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1970 for his neuromuscular research.

Sir Robert Robinson OM FRS FAA, born in Chesterfield, UK, on 13/9/1886. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1947 "for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids" – which led to the discovery of anti-malarial drugs, and again saved millions of lives.

Patrick Victor Martindale White, born in London on 18/5/1912. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. White took great pleasure in the hostile reactions to his works in his adopted homeland, and was particularly gleeful about one newspaper headline describing him as “Australia's most Unreadable Novelist”.

Barry J. Marshall & J. Robin Warren, both Australians, born in 1951 & 1937 respectively, awarded in 1995 for their "discovery of the bacterium Heliobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease". 

In the year of Federation, 1901, very few Australians would have predicted that a hundred years later all but one of their Nobel Laureates would be scientists. Very few contemporary Australians would be able to list more than three of the names above, and the only one that many even among the educated classes would be able to supply is Patrick White – a little-read author best known for the controversies that his writings created.

It is therefore most unlikely that people beyond Australia’s shores would identify Australia with science or technology. Yet it is in precisely these fields that the nation has had probably its greatest, and certainly its most beneficial, effect on the world.

The foundations for this success were laid early, and deliberately. Sydney University was founded in 1850. Melbourne University was incorporated in 1853 – a mere eighteen years after John Batman’s settlement. (Melbourne was the first to teach medicine, in 1862, and to admit women, in 1881.)

Both Melbourne and Sydney therefore pre-date all but a handful of British Universities. Clearly, their founding fathers expected the New Britannia to match the mother country in learning. But side by side with this academic tradition, which nourished the research leading to Nobel Prizes, there was to develop a very New World culture of “backyard” tinkerers in technology. In their own way, these men have changed human history for the better almost as much as the eminent Nobel Laureates.

One of the most significant of these was James Harrison, a Scottish immigrant to Geelong, Victoria, a printer and journalist who dabbled in refrigeration experiments. Working in a cave on the banks of the main river flowing through his adopted city, Harrison eventually produced refrigerators that were shown at the International Exhibition of 1861. These were the first refrigerators ever developed to the marketing stage, and their basic principles are followed today. Harrison also pioneered the deep-freezing of entire carcases.

In 1867 The Times lamented the contrast between the abundance of food in Australia and the shortages in Britain, calling it a “cruel reproach to modern science”. This problem should have been resolved in 1873, when Harrison first attempted to ship refrigerated meat to Britain. Unfortunately the machinery broke down during the voyage, and the meat was of course spoiled. In 1880, though, the Strathleven arrived in London with some perfectly preserved Australian meat, and Harrison was vindicated.

It is hard to emphasise how much this man’s discovery has changed our world. A prominent Australian historian has stated that:

Refrigerated ships raised the standard of living in millions of European homes and provided a new source of wealth to thousands of Australian farmers and pastoralists. Few innovations in the nineteenth century did more to improve health in one part of the world and to relieve waste in another. ¹

Yet that is by no means the only outcome of Harrison’s discovery. By finally divorcing the production and consumption of food, it made possible the vast conurbations of our time. Readers who doubt that this is a benefit might reflect that stores of frozen food protect all of us against possible famine, and vastly increase the range of food that is available to us year-round at low cost. To that must be added the convenience of the domestic refrigerator and air conditioner. Furthermore, refrigeration is involved in the production of plastics, gas, therapeutic drugs, clothes, colour publications, some types of surgery, aspects of in-vitro fertilisation, and in fact in almost every way by which we relate to our current technological culture.

Sadly, given his monumental contribution to humanity’s capacity for progress, James Harrison died in reduced circumstances in Geelong in 1893. His story is an archetypal instance of the failure of Australians to make an economic success of their inventions. (Usually this was due to the lack of local capital in such a small domestic market for research, development and promotion.)

Most Australian inventions have been responses to local needs, and therefore some of those that are best known locally are of little interest to the rest of the world. A surprisingly large list could be compiled, however, of inventions that have benefited all of humanity – although seldom to the extent of Harrison’s refrigeration and deep-freezing techniques. The following list is by no means comprehensive:

In 1838 the New South Wales government introduced envelopes that were embossed to show that postage had been pre-paid. Prior to this innovation, the recipient had to pay postal costs on delivery. Although the embossed envelope was later superseded by the use of postage stamps, this small innovation in remote Sydney led to the postal system that we use today all over the world.

John Ridley introduced the first mechanical wheat-stripper in 1843. This horse-drawn machine beat the heads off wheat stalks, then held them in a special “comb”. Before this invention wheat had been cut by hand with a sickle, then tied up in stooks to dry for threshing. Ridley’s stripper was quickly adopted overseas, particularly in America, where it dramatically reduced harvesting times and costs. The world may have benefited greatly from his invention, but sadly, Ridley did not – he had failed to patent it.

One Australian who did not repeat Ridley’s error was Walter Hume. In 1910 he began creating concrete pipes that were much stronger than any that had previously been cast. His technique was to spin the wet concrete in a mould. The concrete thus packed tighter and excess water was spun out, creating the most durable concrete pipe. Hume pipes, and other spin-offs, are now used around the world for drainage and sewage systems.

In 1905 Anthony Mitchell, an Australian engineer, invented the tilt-pad thrust bearing. This device greatly improved the efficiency of rotating shafts like those that drive ship propellers. Mitchell’s invention was a revolutionary development for marine engines, producing much less wear and greater fuel efficiency. His patent had lapsed, however, before the industry adopted his bearing as standard.

Seven years later a 16 year-old engineering apprentice named Cliff Howard invented the rotary hoe. By the mid-1920s he had refined his prototype and begun manufacturing it in large numbers. The benefits of his rotary hoes in improving topsoil were such that they were eventually sold in over a hundred countries.

In 1933 a farmer’s wife wrote to Ford Australia suggesting that they design a vehicle that could be used to “drive to church on Sunday and carry pigs to market on Mondays”. The chief body engineer of the local Ford subsidiary, a man named Lewis Brandt, then designed the “utility”. A car/truck hybrid, it had a coupé cabin in front of a buckboard rear section. The design was so popular, initially with farmers, that it has been reproduced in the millions all over the world.

Until the 1950s there was no effective vaccine for poliomyelitis. This condition commonly affected the victim’s respiratory muscles, leading to breathing failure and then paralysis or death. In 1929 an American invented the predecessor of the modern iron lung, which takes over the function of the breathing muscles. The American machine was large, cumbersome and expensive, so only a few hospitals had them. In 1938 a South Australian, Edward Both, invented a cheap, portable respirator. It was taken up internationally and saved the lives of many thousands, mainly children.

We have seen that Howard Florey won the Nobel Prize in 1945 for discovering the antibiotic use of penicillin. During the war his team at Cambridge University manufactured limited quantities of penicillin for military use. Batch-production on a large scale was not possible until 1944, when the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne developed the first efficient mass-production technology. This CSL technique gave the civilians of the world their first access to antibiotics, thus again saving millions of lives.

Few Australian inventions have had such an impact. Many have simply made life much easier. For instance, mothers who use collapsible strollers can thank Harold Cornish, who introduced his “Stowar stroller” in 1948.

Many people with lawns to maintain would shudder at the thought of keeping them trimmed with the old, heavy hand mowers. Mervin Richardson’s son was doing just that in 1952, for pocket money, when his father thought there must be a better way. Richardson came up with the idea of a lightweight, inexpensive, motorised rotary mower that could be raised and lowered to cut grass to variable lengths. By the late 1950s his company, Victa, was manufacturing one of these new mowers every minute. Improvements have since been made to Richardson’s original model, but it is still the prototype of the ubiquitous modern rotary mower.

Castors have been used under furniture for centuries, but until 1945 they were less “steerable” than a decrepit supermarket trolley. Then George Shepherd came up with the idea of tilting the castor so that it could be steered. Shepherd castors are now produced worldwide, under licence. They are the standard ones seen today under domestic, industrial and commercial furniture.

Modern people who need to wear spectacles certainly would not appreciate the weight and fragility of the old “glasses”. For the safety, light weight and scratch resistance of modern spectacles they can thank an Australian company, Sola Optical, which in 1960 developed the first plastic spectacle lenses with acceptable optical properties. Sola went on to become the world’s largest supplier of plastic lenses, joining the rather thin ranks of Australian inventors who have retained control of their intellectual property.

Another is the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which was established by an Act of Parliament in 1920. Of its many successful innovations, perhaps the one to achieve greatest international success is the atomic absorption spectrophotometer, developed in 1954 in Melbourne. The spectrophotometer uses light to analyse the different metals present in many solids and liquids, and has been widely used for chemical analysis in medicine, mining, pollution monitoring, agriculture and food processing.

Film-buffs have good reason to be grateful to Eric Miller. In the 1950s he developed a camera mount that for the first time allowed film and television cameras to tilt and pan simultaneously. This invention revolutionised camera techniques, allowing the smooth camera work that is missing in older films.

People who live in areas where water conservation is necessary will be familiar with the dual-flush toilet cistern, which allows the user to select a full flush of 9 litres or a half flush of 4.5 litres. The dual-flush cistern was developed by the Australian company Caroma, in 1980.

Most environmentally conscious people who meticulously sort their recyclables for the rubbish collection would probably not be aware that the technology for recycling old PVC into new PVC bottles was developed in 1991 by the Melbourne plastics company, Peteron Plastics.

Mothers who benefit from ultrasound images of their babies, and medical patients who receive ultrasound images of their internal organs, are beneficiaries of the “Octoson ultrasonic scanner”. This was invented by the Ultrasonics Institute in Sydney, and first introduced there in 1976.

Other medical patients who require sustained release drugs, particularly cancer sufferers, have reason to thank Australia’s largest pharmaceuticals company, F H Faulding & Co. In the late 1970s they discovered the technology that is now used for the sustained release of drugs.

People who are too profoundly hearing-impaired to benefit from conventional hearing aids have been given a second chance at hearing by the Cochlear “bionic ear”. At the time of writing over 30,000 people have been fitted with this Australian invention.

The list of Australian innovations that have been taken up by the rest of the world could be expanded at great length. It would include the black box flight recorder, which has improved aviation safety; the “pop-top” can opening mechanism; computerised traffic light changes to increase traffic flow; the wine cask, wave-piercing catamarans; the world’s most advanced automotive power-steering mechanism; and many others.

By now, though, the point should have been made. In the fields of science and technology, the world would be a less healthy, convenient and attractive place if the British government had not decided to settle a few hundred British convicts at Sydney Cove in 1788.

To much of the outside world Australia probably seems like a resource-based nation reliant on commodity exports. While it is true that coal, gold, crude and refined petroleum, iron-ore, aluminium, alumina, wheat, meat, and wool remain its biggest income earners, Australia’s biotechnology, telecommunications and multimedia industries are emerging at a rate that promises to maintain the small nation’s remarkable tradition of scientific and technological innovation.

1.      Blainey, G., The Tyranny of Distance, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966.

Chapter 11: – After World War Two: the undermining of White Australia

Australia introduced television in 1956, just in time for the Melbourne Olympic games. A year later, viewers saw a long, patriotic advertisement from the Immigration Department. In it Chips Rafferty, the iconic Australian actor of his era, addresses his viewers directly, telling them, “I want to talk to you about immigration, particularly immigration from the United Kingdom.” He explains that committees are being formed in every district of Australia in order to “Bring out a Briton”. The commercial features footage of good-looking, healthy people coming down the gangplanks of migrant ships, and shows three English families outside attractive homes in Sydney. It ends with a charming shot of a pretty blonde English mother waving her immaculately dressed children off to school, with Rafferty enthusing: “These are the people we want – and the more of them, the better! These are the kids, eager to grow up as Australians, in this great land of ours.” The concluding logo is an outline of Australia containing the words “BRING OUT A BRITON”.¹

This extraordinary advertisement can be seen as a centrepiece of Australia’s response to the near-disaster of WW2. For context, we need to go back a few years.

The British naval base at Singapore was supposed to be Australia’s military shield. Britain had promised to protect the base with a fleet, but because of the war in Europe only a cruiser and an aircraft carrier could be spared, and these were tragically sunk by the Japanese. On 15 February 1942 the British command at Singapore surrendered. 16,000 Australian troops stationed at Singapore became POWs.

Four days later, 242 Japanese bombers attacked the northern Australian city of Darwin, killing at least 233 people and sinking eight ships. The Japanese bombed Darwin and other northern Australian towns a further fifty times over the next twenty months. On the last night of February, 1942, the Japanese sank the Australian cruiser Perth, with the loss of 350 men. At the end of May, 1942, Japanese mini-submarines entered Sydney Harbour and attacked the barracks ship Kuttabul. By late July the Japanese had landed in New Guinea and begun to force the Australian defenders back.

In this dire emergency the Australians had no option but to look to America. Describing the fall of Singapore as “Australia’s Dunkirk”, Prime Minister Chifley at last adopted the 1931 Statute of Westminster and placed Australian troops under the command of American general Douglas MacArthur. From Australia’s point of view this was a matter of necessity; the Americans merely regarded Australia as a convenient base from which to pursue their own war strategy.

As the Japanese were slowly repelled, and preparations for the coming peace began to take place, Australia had to face the fact that its place in the political world had changed. Menzies’ fear had proven to be correct: Churchill had gambled the British Empire – and lost it. American finance was to dominate the post-war world, to the extent that today the sun never sets on the Wall Street empire.

The subsequent Bretton Woods conference created two instruments to achieve the goals of finance capitalism, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Dunbarton Oaks and San Francisco conferences set up a third: the United Nations.

Australia’s external affairs minister, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, had some limited success in disguising the domination of the U.N. by the major powers, and was elected to its presidency in 1948. The Australian delegation had feared that under the draft UN charter “such matters as migration policy would have become subject to the jurisdiction of the Security Council immediately an aggressor threatened to use force”. They were later able to report to parliament that:

The Minister for External Affairs took the opportunity during the discussion to make clear that the clause as finally adopted is a recognition, among other things, that the decision of any nation as to such internal matters as migration cannot become the subject of any action by the United Nations. The only possible ground for intervention by the Security Council will be to prevent a breach of the peace or to suppress aggression. After weeks of negotiation the object of the original amendment which the Australian Delegation filed was finally and completely achieved.

The second session of the United Nations, in 1947, effectively dismantled the Imperial Preferences system created at Ottawa in 1932 by adopting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This Agreement prohibited the raising of any existing preferences, which were then eroded by inflation. ¹ This was an assault on the economic bonds of the “British” nations, and, some have argued, deliberately so. It is certainly interesting that an amendment in 1965 exempted “developing” countries from being reciprocally bound.

The Empire was effectively gone, but the old imperial sentiment remained – at least from Australia’s side. Both during and after the war Australians gladly sent parcels of “Food for Britain”. In 1947 Australia gave Britain £A25 million to help its balance of payments. Petrol rationing, though unpopular, was reintroduced after the war specifically to prop up sterling against the US dollar. The dominant Prime Minister of the post-war period, Robert Menzies, declared himself “British to the boot-heels”, allowed Britain to test atomic weapons off the coast of Western Australia and in the South Australian desert, and supported the Royal Navy’s defiance of the US Sixth Fleet during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Australia had survived the war because of the American involvement. After the war, however, the Americans were sparing with their military technology and intelligence information. Australia was now isolated, an economically rich British nation, small in population and without the means to defend itself in terms of the technology of those times. Many called for large-scale immigration, warning that Australia must “populate or perish”. The government also argued that immigration was also required “to stimulate economic development and prosperity”.

In 1944 an interdepartmental committee on immigration was set up, chaired by the secretary of the Department of External Affairs. It unequivocally resolved that migrants from the United Kingdom were the first priority. According to its chairman, this was essential to “the preservation of the country”. If migrants of “British stock” could not be induced in sufficient numbers, Scandinavians would be acceptable. Furthermore, if there were still insufficient desirable migrants, the committee resolved that the Netherlands, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia should be approached to fill the gap.

The architect of the post-war immigration program, Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell, told Australians that “… without immigration the future of the Australia we know will be both uneasy and brief.” He announced that the massive new immigration program rested on two basic policies. First, the number of immigrants arriving in any single year would not exceed 1% of the existing population. Second, British migrants were the highest priority. In Calwell’s own words, “… for every foreign migrant there will be ten people from the United Kingdom”. With this goal in mind, the British and Australian governments organised both free and assisted passages to qualified British applicants who wished to settle in Australia. Many chose to leave their war-weary homeland. Over a million new British settlers arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1973.

The British government, however, reduced its expenditure on the assisted passage schemes in 1950, and ended it entirely in 1972. Australia continued a reduced scheme of assisted passage until 1981. A measure of the desirability of British migrants over foreign migrants is the preferential treatment the former received when they arrived in Australia. They were given special hostel arrangements. Unlike “alien” migrants, there were no restrictions on their movements. After 1948, when Australian citizenship was introduced, they could apply for this after only one year’s residence. They could vote in elections without having to acquire citizenship. They received preferential treatment when applying to join the Australian military.

Australia clearly did everything it could to keep the British tide flowing to its shores.

Despite all these inducements there were never enough British migrants for Australia’s needs. Calwell therefore had to look elsewhere. In 1947 he visited European refugee camps, mainly housing people from the areas that had been taken from Germany by the Soviet Union, and he declared that these people constituted “splendid human material”. These “displaced persons” had far more pressing reasons to migrate to Australia than the British, and as a result 59% of migrants from 1947 to 1973 were non-British.

The European refugees were not welcomed by a vocal part of the general Australian public, which derided them as “Reffos”. Despite Calwell’s assurance that they were “splendid human material”, government propaganda was deceptive, publicly welcoming them as “New Australians” while simultaneously placing the most “British”-looking of them in the foreground in newsreel films and photographs.

At least, many thought, the “Reffos” were white, and could be expected to assimilate to the Anglo-Australian way of life in time. The same applied to the “Wogs”, the “Dagoes”, and the “Eyeties” that followed them. The White Australia Policy seemed to be still firmly in place, unquestioned on either side of parliament, and considered to be inviolable by the population at large. Yet White Australia was by this stage almost as vulnerable as Anglo-Australia.

The 1901 Immigration Act had always contained the potentially fatal flaw of reliance on a Dictation Test. In 1934 one of the delegates to a communist-sponsored “Peace Congress” was a Czech national, Egon Kisch. He was denied entry to Australia, but literally jumped ship in Melbourne and broke his leg. The Commonwealth then tried to use the Dictation Test to expel him. Since Kisch was fluent in several European languages, the test was given in Scottish Gaelic. Kisch failed, and was sentenced to six months jail, to be followed by deportation. On appeal, the Australian High Court ruled, curiously, that Gaelic was not a language in terms of the Act. Kisch was freed, and the Immigration Act was brought into disrepute.

What seems remarkable now is that Australia did not act immediately to remedy this deficiency. There is little doubt that a referendum to amend the Constitution so as to exclude “non-white and other ‘undesirable’ migrants” would have succeeded. Following the 1931 Statute of Westminster, Britain could not have over-ruled any such constitutional change. It would then have been much harder to whittle down the clearly expressed wish of British Australians to remain just that through court decisions or administrative changes. Yet this did not happen.

The reason that it didn’t was certainly not any change in governmental or public attitude. On Japan’s entry into World War II the Labor wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, told parliament and the Australian people that:

Our laws have proclaimed the principle of White Australia. We did not intend that to be and it never was an affront to other races. It was devised for economic and sound humane reasons. It was not challenged for 40 years. We intend to maintain that principle, because we know it to be desirable. If we were to depart from it we should do so only as a result of free consent, not because the principle was sought to be overthrown by armed aggression.

Perhaps the human tendency to complacency explains why nothing was done after the Egon Kisch affair. In the same decade, the 1930s, a few Chinese market gardeners, laundry-owners and café proprietors were allowed to bring other Chinese into Australia to work for them for a certain period. Chinese businessmen could also bring out their dependants. The number of Asians given these “Certificates of Exemption” was minuscule by later standards – not alarming at all to the general population.

At any event, the war opened up more loopholes in Australia’s immigration policy.

To start with, a number of Asian refugees from the Japanese aggression had been allowed to stay in Australia for the duration of the war. Most complied with the conditions on which they had been accepted, and accordingly returned home after Japan’s surrender. Some refused to comply. The Labor Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell, tried to deport them. This led to howls of protest in the anti-Labor mass media. The High Court ruled against some of the deportations. Labor passed a “Wartime Refugees Removal Act” to solve the problem, but lost office before this could be implemented. The new anti-Labor government allowed about eight hundred of the non-compliant refugees to stay.

Then, after its surrender in August 1945, Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies. Australian troops played a significant part in this occupation. Inevitably, some soldiers married Japanese women. Another understandable exception was made, and these Japanese war-brides were allowed into Australia.

In 1956 Menzies assured his countrymen that these minor relaxations of the policy were in fact “evidence of our determination to maintain our traditional immigration policy”. From today’s perspective it is hard to discern any logic in his statement. The Kisch fiasco, the Chinese laundrymen and market gardeners, the odd Asian dependant now and again, the non-compliant refugees, the Japanese wives, a High Court decision here, an administrative decision there … in trickles and spurts like these the traditional policy was being whittled down. Two years after Menzies’ assurance the Dictation Test was dropped from the Immigration Act.

More was to come. For the first time since Federation there was now a small but elite group of people who openly advocated watering down the policy. These included some Protestant church leaders, the Communist Party, and the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix. Their calls for change were later taken up by various “Associations for Immigration Reform”, and by the “Immigration Reform Group” which we will meet again later in this chapter.

Probably the greatest threat to what had become known as the “traditional policy” came from within the Department of Immigration itself. The methods used to effect change from within were furtive, dishonest and utterly undemocratic. Departmental Secretaries were to mislead their Ministers, Ministers were to mislead Parliament, and Parliament was to mislead the electorate. A central figure in this internal scheming seems to have been Sir Peter Heydon, a man who deserves more historical attention than he has received to date.

Heydon’s background was in the Department of External Affairs. In 1955 he was made Australian High Commissioner to India. It seems that he was the wrong man for the job. Journalists in Asia, and especially in India, often criticised Australian officials regarding the White Australia Policy. When Indian journalists turned their questioning on Heydon he was soon cabling his Minister, whingeing about the pressure placed on him by having to defend the traditional policy. Whether he was disloyal to his government’s policy, or he simply could not take the pressure, will presumably be resolved by future biographers.

Either way, it seems strange that in 1961 he was appointed Secretary of the Department of Immigration. Or perhaps not entirely so, since in 1949 an earlier Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Heyes, had spoken to Asian representatives in Canberra about “prospective flexibility in Australia’s immigration policy” – a prospect that would have appalled his Minister, Arthur Calwell. ³

Heydon wasted little time recruiting newly graduated officers, effectively stacking his Department with people who were disloyal to the government’s policy.

In 1963 Heydon gained a new Minister, Hubert Opperman, a popular bicyclist who was easily influenced by the Sir Humphrey Appleby of his Department, but who was largely ineffectual.

In 1964 Heydon was given an interview with the Prime Minister, Menzies, who bluntly told him that any proposed changes to the traditional policy would need to result in "fewer or better” Chinese, rather than more. Two years later Menzies retired.

On 2 March 1966 Opperman presented to the Cabinet Heydon’s gradualist proposals to further water down the traditional policy. Cabinet approved. Fearing a public outcry, Opperman told the Parliament that his government was not “departing from the fundamental principles” of the traditional policy. A gullible or compliant Labor Opposition accepted “… the assurance given by the Minister that there is to be no departure from the accepted and established principles of our immigration policy”.

Opperman left the Ministry in December 1966. His replacement was Billy Snedden. Snedden had obviously been well briefed on the radical aims, but not the gradualist tactics, required by Heydon. He immediately came up with a plan to import Asian women as domestic servants – a category of worker that was almost unknown in Australia at that time. Heydon had to hose down Snedden’s enthusiasm, pointing out that neither the trade unions nor the general public would have a bar of his proposal.

The main change to the traditional policy under Snedden related to the period of residence required before citizenship could be sought. Twelve years earlier, the rules had been relaxed so that non-Europeans who had lived in Australia for fifteen years were allowed to apply for citizenship. In 1964 Heydon had complained to his Prime Minister that this was discriminatory, since Europeans had to wait for only five years. Menzies’ reported answer was laconic: “Good thing too – right sort of discrimination”.⁴ Yet in the same year, non-Europeans with temporary entry permits were allowed to bring their close relatives with them.

Under Snedden’s Ministry non-Europeans were allowed to apply for citizenship after a mere five years’ residence. Yet despite all these slow, cumulative changes, Snedden told Parliament that his was “… certainly not a policy which is directed towards the creation of a multi-racial society”.

In November 1969 Snedden was replaced as Immigration Minister by Phillip Lynch. Another crisis ensued almost immediately. In 1970 a British citizen who had been born in Jamaica threatened to take Australia to the British Race Relations Board because Australia had refused him an assisted passage on the ground that he was black. In 1971 Britain threatened to end the Assisted Passage Scheme over this issue. Heydon suggested to Lynch that the racial restrictions on assisted passages should be dumped. Lynch naively took Heydon’s proposal to Cabinet, which bluntly turned it down.

The researcher who has so far been most prominent in placing Sir Peter Heydon under the historical microscope, Sean Brawley, had this to say:

The earliest reforms helped create an environment sympathetic to and expectant of change … The reforms which established the precedents that ended the policy came not from cabinet or the government more generally, but from the Department of Immigration. With the government reluctant to make changes for fear of stirring electorally damaging local opposition, the Department’s changes are even more noteworthy. ⁴

While Heydon and his hand-picked supporters in the Department were free to scheme for the gradual and irreversible changes they desired, they were in no position to openly advocate these changes in public. This task was largely left to a few academics who formed groups to advocate what they called “reform”. Of these groups the one that has left most trace is the Immigration Reform Group founded by Kenneth Rivett and others in 1959.

Initially, in Rivett’s own words:

We came to the conclusion that Australia, for an experimental period of three to five years, should allow 1500 non-Europeans to settle annually and should permit many of those who were here on a temporary basis to remain.

This suggestion was published in 1962. By 1975 the I.R.G.’s demands had grown by leaps and bounds:

Australia’s intake of non-Europeans and part-Europeans should rise … to, say, 20,000 a year. ⁵

Two things should be noted about this group.

First, their 1975 book lists “the members of the Immigration Reform Group” as being Kenneth Rivett an economics lecturer at the University of NSW; Christine Inglis, an education lecturer at the University of Sydney; Fiona Mackie, a sociology tutor at LaTrobe University; Audrey Rennison, a lecturer in social work at the University of NSW; Alan Ward, a history lecturer at LaTrobe University; and R. J. Beveridge, John Darbyshire, K. A. Faulkes, J. A. C. Mackie, and Cyril Manuel, none of whose occupations are listed. In other words, as recently as 1975, a minimum of five and a maximum of ten academics in all of Australia could be drawn to the most prominent organisation openly advocating change to Australia’s ethnic composition. Yet these five or ten, no doubt quietly supported by many others, were the spearhead of an academic presence in the nexus with Immigration Department officers, church leaders, the High Court, and some politicians, to deny, by stealth, the wishes of the Australian majority.

Second, the IRG’s gradualist tactics precisely echoed those of Sir Peter Heydon. Both took great care not to frighten the Australian public – Heydon to the extent of dressing down his over-enthusiastic Minister. The aim was always to push for a little more, and then more still. The reason that their demand ballooned from 1500 non-Europeans in 1962 to 20,000 in 1975 is that their earlier aim had already been reached – and surpassed. According to IRG figures, 3,418 non-European or part-European people had been admitted in 1966, 5,591 in 1967, 7,381 in 1968, 9410 in 1969, 9,055 in 1970 and 9,666 in 1971. For people like the IRG members, though, enough was never enough.

Of course, the politicians could have resisted these changes. They were never likely to. In 1965 the Australian Labor Party deleted all reference to “White Australia” from its party platform. As to the conservative side of politics, in 1971 Prime Minister John Gorton told the Australian Alumni Association of Singapore:

I think if we build up gradually inside Australia a proportion of people who are not of white skin, then as that is gradually done, so there will be a complete lack of consciousness of difference between the races. And if this can be done as I think it can, then that may provide the world with the first truly multi-racial society with no tension of any kind possible between any of the races within it. At any rate, this is our ideal. ⁶

Gorton was deposed as Prime Minister in 1971 and replaced by William McMahon. The following year McMahon’s Minister for Customs, Donald Chipp, said that he hoped Australia would be a multi-racial society by the 1980s. Gorton declared “complete support” for Chipp’s views, saying he “found it difficult to believe newspaper reports that some Cabinet Ministers resented Mr Chipp’s comments in favour of coloured immigration”.

This was the year of a Federal election. McMahon was asked whether he thought the electorate would be concerned that Labor would open the floodgates to Asian immigration. His answer was “Yes, I do.” He then cynically warned that the opposition’s immigration policy would steadily alter the ethnic identity of Australia and “erode its predominantly European character” – which was precisely what he had endorsed when his own Minister had advocated it!

The ensuing Labor government, under Gough Whitlam, in fact cut back heavily on immigration from all sources. His successor, Malcolm Fraser, took the total numbers back up again, allowed boatloads of Vietnamese illegal immigrants to find sanctuary in Australia, and linked the ideas of immigration and multiculturalism in the hope that this would deliver ethnic votes to the conservatives. The next Labor government then cut back on skilled migrants, stressing family reunions and refugees, which meant that the proportion of Asians in the total rose dramatically. In 1992, 20,000 Chinese students in Australia were granted permanent residence following the 1989 political turmoil in China. The multiplier effect of family reunion policies is such that the immigration minister of that time, Gerry Hand, predicted that under family reunion immigration regulations these 20,000 students could potentially lead to 300,000 of their family members settling in Australia by the year 2000. ⁷

We have glanced at the roles of the Immigration Department, some academic lobbyists, the High Court, churchmen and politicians in whittling away at traditional Australia by changing the ethnic base of the population of the continent. The media, which largely went along with or enthusiastically supported these changes, will feature in later chapters. The people whose voice we have not yet heard are the ordinary Australians, the vast majority of the population, whose will was being thwarted by the elites.

In fact it is hard to hear their voice for a simple reason: they were never even consulted, much less given a choice. To say this is not to excuse their acquiescence. They could have insisted that their views were heeded. Many did so, through letters-to-the-editor, petitions, and other protest venues, but the vast majority chose to do and say nothing that could possibly have an effective outcome. Of course, they grumbled to one another in private – at home, in the pubs and cafes, across the backyard fence. Their inability to articulate their concerns was not due to political persecution, since at that time there were few sanctions on free speech.

The major political parties obviously conducted their own opinion polls, and presumably these found that rank and file Australians – the voters – did not want Australia to cease to be a white – and especially Anglo-Saxon – nation. Otherwise it would be hard to explain the repeated public denials by politicians that anything like this would ever happen.

The opinion polls that have been published can be difficult to compare with one another, since they use significantly different wording. However Dr Katharine Betts, a sociologist at Melbourne’s Swinburne University, has found eleven published polls that she believes are comparable.

In 1961, just four years after the Chips Rafferty “Bring out a Briton” advertisement, 43% thought that there were too few migrants, while only 16% thought there were too many. In 1964 the equivalent figures were 30% and 21%. In 1967 they were 36% and 18%. In 1968, 19% and 26%. In 1970, 12% and 38%. In 1971, 11% and 53%. In 1977, 14% and 43%. In 1981, 11% and 45%. In 1984, 4% and 62%. In 1988, 8% and 68%. In 1990, 8 % and 65%. ⁸

In short, when it seemed that every effort was being made to encourage British migration, only 16% opposed the migration system. By the time that four out of every ten migrants were Asian, 65% were opposed.

Or, with the understandably different emphasis of an insider:

In recent years opposition to the level of Asian immigration, including the entry of Indo-Chinese refugees, has been no greater than opposition to the level of immigration generally. People who oppose the one generally opposed the other. ⁹

It makes little difference. One way or another, it cannot be denied that as the British component of the migration program was whittled away, public support for that program dwindled in proportion.

In subsequent chapters we shall see how the Anglo-Saxon majority was affected by these changes and how they reacted.

Meanwhile, let us briefly note that Britain herself had been drawing away from Australia throughout this period. The initial and greatest betrayal had been Churchill’s decision to place a higher priority on the defeat of Germany than on the preservation of the Empire. From this one choice was to flow so much else that tore at the self-image of Australians. For instance, the Australian historian Clive Turnbull has summed up the local reaction to Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community:

It appeared to these Australians, in the words of the severest critics, that Australia and the other Dominions were being “sold down the river”. … disillusionment became total for many people, to whom it seemed that Britain, obsessed by her own troubles, was determined to go her own way. The idea of Empire, or even Commonwealth, perished not at the periphery, but at the centre. ¹⁰

Shortly afterwards, when the most loyal of the old Dominion stock visited what had so long been called “Home” they were humiliatingly forced to line up in the “aliens” queue at Heathrow airport. There they watched people from the EU, many of whom had recently been on the other side in a bitter war, passing through unquestioned. It was as if a lover who had previously handed over a copy of the front door key had suddenly changed the locks. Changes like these helped make “old Australians” inarticulate in the face of the social transformation that was to come.

1.   The film included segments of advertisements called “My Dad’s taking me to Australia”. These were produced in four versions: one each for London, Manchester, Belfast and The Netherlands – a clear indication of Australia’s immigration preferences.

1.      Readers may find the original list of signatory countries interesting. They were: the Commonwealth of Australia, the Kingdom of Belgium, the United States of Brazil, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, the Republic of Chile, the Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Czechoslovak Republic, the French Republic, India, Lebanon, the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Norway, Pakistan, Southern Rhodesia, Syria, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. 

2.      Woodard, G., Macmahon Ball’s Goodwill Mission to Asia, 1948, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol 49 No 1, May 1995, cited in McCormack, D., The Grand Plan: Asianisation of Australia – Race, Place, and Power, paper presented at the 20^th Anniversary Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Inc., 8-11 July, 1996.

3.      Brawley, S., The Department of Immigration and Abolition of the ‘White Australia’ Policy Reflected Through the Private Diaries of Sir Peter Heydon, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol 41 No 3, 1995.

4.      Rivett, K., (ed), Australia and the Non-White Migrant, Melbourne University Press, 1975. It should be noted that the cover blurb suggests this book was intended as “… essential reading for courses in Australian universities, other tertiary institutions and secondary schools”. 

5.      Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1971.

6.      7.30 Report program, 16 May 1992.

7.      Betts, K., “The Politics of Growth”, in Smith, J. W., Immigration, Population and Sustainable Environments: The Limits to Australia’s Growth, Flinders Press, 1991.

8.      Groot, M., “Immigrants and Immigration, Evidence and Argument from the polls”, in Committee to Advise on Australia’s Immigration Policies, 1998.

9.      Turnbull, C., A Concise History of Australia, London, 1965.

Chapter 12: Multiculturalism versus Australia

“Abjuring a civilization means abjuring civilization itself.”

Hal Porter, Australian author, in The Actors: An Image of the New Japan

Australians used to boast that they had created a classless society. This was not completely true, but Australia came closer to this ideal than most other nations. From 1904 onward the conflicting class interests of labour and capital were largely mediated by the Commonwealth, through its Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. Among other things the Court ruled on disputes, set industry awards, set a national basic wage, and indexed this to cost of living increases. In addition to the power of the Court, Australia’s largely homogeneous population allowed the formation of a strong and unified trade union movement.

As a result, conditions for labour in Australia were objectively better than in most other advanced nations. Class mobility was also pronounced. Men could rise to the position of Prime Minister from backgrounds such as coal mining (Andrew Fisher and Sir Joseph Cook), knife grinding (William Hughes), serving in shops (James Scullin), and engine driving (Ben Chifley).

The class compromises that allowed these achievements were part of what Australians saw as their national character. Everyone, they thought, was entitled to a decent basic standard of living. The social safety net included pensions, insurances and government-supplied housing, so that except for the period of the Depression there was little absolute poverty, and even that was largely self-induced – through alcoholism or some other self-destructive behaviour. The sick, the disabled and the incompetent were looked after, and the rest, of whatever class background, mostly respected the slogan of “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”.

By the 1960s almost all Australian families owned a car, and most could realistically expect eventually to own their own home, typically on a quarter-acre block, once their mortgage was paid off. Yet by the 1960s the external conditions that had allowed Australia to enjoy its isolated experiment in a benevolent form of socialism had changed radically. The Empire that had provided a defence framework allowing Australia to forge its own culture had vanished. Now, and for the same defence reasons, Australia was tied to the United States. That effectively meant that Australia had to become a junior partner in US economic imperialism – and at the same time to become an object of it.

At first, though, Australians thought they could just continue their old policy of buying military insurance with a ready supply of loyal troops. Australian soldiers were accordingly rushed to Korea in 1950 to support the US-led United Nations mission. 320 Australians died, and their 3^rd Battalion received a US Presidential Citation for bravery. From 1965 to 1972, Australia dutifully sent troops to assist America in Vietnam. 494 were killed. Australia has also sent at least token forces to other American-led military actions, such as the Gulf War and even Afghanistan, whenever it has been necessary to cloak American strategic and foreign policy interests in a guise of international co-operation.

It soon became apparent, however, that the new entanglement in the greenback empire would require far more sacrifices than were required in the old days when Australia had helped colour the map of the world in pink. We have already seen that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade destroyed the tariff barriers behind which Australians had sought to create a fair and just society. Worse was to come.

Twenty years after the defeat of Germany and Japan, American-based multinational companies had grown to dominate the world economy. Cold War considerations dictated that the most suitable vector for further US economic expansion was the Asia-Pacific region. To this end, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were expected to become junior allies in facilitating Wall Street investment in the region.

But the old Australia was not economically suited to the role of regional deputy sheriff to Wall Street. The traditional Australian class compromises were, from the viewpoint of any American MBA, “inefficient”. To be made “efficient”, the Australian economy would have to be recast in terms of complete labour capitulation to capital. This was the first price to be paid in Australia’s contribution to what Dr Henry Kaufman has called “the Americanisation of finance”.

Capitalist “efficiency” has no time for quaint anomalies like a small nation that sees some quaint cultural virtue in the fact that a pipe-smoking former locomotive-driver can aspire to be Prime Minister, or that a productive worker who is down on his or her luck will be looked after by the community.

In short, the post-war imperial alliance that Australia had entered would have no hesitation in turning back the clock to the laissez-faire economic policies which, in Georgian England, had required the settlement of New South Wales in the first place, partly in order to clear out England’s surplus prison population.

The new imperialism was re-branded as “globalisation” to appeal to the information age. In this newly deregulated economic order Australian companies shed thousands of jobs in the name of “efficiency”. Many relocated their production to Asia. The rapidly and constantly devaluing Australian dollar then made these same companies appropriate take-over targets for US based multinationals.

Back in the days of the British Empire, Australia was not afraid to stand up to Britain. Its prime minister could even argue with, and get the better of, his king. No such leeway existed after Australia became part of the Wall Street economic empire. Only one example is needed to lay bare how the system works. In 1986 Paul Keating was Australia’s Treasurer. In that year Keating reversed two major fiscal policies. No convincing explanation was given at the time. Years later, Keating’s biographer gained access to his personal papers and the truth at last came out. The story is neatly summarised by historian Humphrey McQueen:

… New York bankers were unhappy with Canberra’s imposition of a 15 per cent witholding tax on profits and a limit of 50 per cent on real-estate purchases by foreigners. Dealers drove the Australian dollar down from 63 to 57.3 cents against the US currency. On 25 July 1986 came a phone call from Salomon Brothers in New York stressing how difficult it had become for them to support the Australian currency. US investors, the messenger spelt out, wanted to cut their losses and run. Keating knew to give in. He abandoned his regulations without a parliamentary debate or vote. ¹

Yet Australia’s cultural elites clearly favoured Australia becoming an economic colony of Wall Street, with the massive social changes that this would necessarily entail. They faced a simple marketing problem: how to sell their proposed new world economic order to the voters and to the still relatively powerful trade unions.

The trade unions objected when the 1970s Fraser government allowed several boatloads of Vietnamese illegal migrants to settle in Australia. It was difficult, though, for them to find a high moral ground in the face of the natural human tendency to sympathise with people who have suffered a great deal. Besides, the Vietnamese numbers were small, and many felt that they had shown great initiative and even bravery in risking such a long voyage.

In 1972 the “White Australia Policy” was officially abolished. The numbers of Asians coming to Australia really blew out in the 1980s under successive Labor governments. Tens of thousands were arriving every year, year after year, as part of the legal immigration program, and any knowledgeable unionist could have predicted that so many people with negligible marketable skills and no history of organised labour would inevitably drive down wages and working conditions over time. Yet the traditionally close political and economic links between the unions and the Australian Labor Party muted any criticism of the Labor government’s policy. Furthermore, the unions were no longer as powerful as they had once been. (In 1990, for instance, the commercial airlines pilots took industrial action, which Prime Minister Hawke ended by calling in airforce pilots and – significantly – poaching pilots from U.S. airlines.)

By this time immigration was firmly linked with a new ideology named “multiculturalism”. The Fraser conservative government had introduced this policy in the 1970s in the hope of appealing to ethnic voting blocks, and it has been continued by successive governments ever since. The meaning of the term, which was imported from Canada, has never been clear. At its most benevolent it is an encouragement for recently arrived migrants to take pride in their diverse ethnic backgrounds – particularly with regard to national costumes, ethnic foods and the like. At other times it is used as a synonym for “multiracialism”. For instance, the apologists for multiculturalism often proclaim that Australia is multicultural because it contains people from 160-odd different nations. These usages, though somewhat patronising in one case and semantically confused in the other, are not necessarily particularly divisive. Unfortunately, as we shall see, the term multiculturalism can be used to cover very hostile and divisive motives.

From an early period the multicultural industry functioned as a lever to prise apart working class, and particularly trade union, solidarity. The first generation of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds (“NESBs”) traditionally found themselves in low-status manufacturing jobs. Many of the second generation acquired an education or achieved business success and thereby made a transition to petty bourgeois status. From 1973 onwards many of these people were recruited into the Commonwealth’s Immigration Advisory Committee, or the Migrant Task Forces set up in that year in each of the states, or in the numerous other multicultural industry bodies that have come into existence since that time.

From this position they rapidly became the official mediators between governments at all levels and the NESB migrant populations – not least in terms of the allocation of government resources. Having thus been co-opted from a working class background, it was now in their interests to claim that ethnicity rather than class was the main factor in social relations. In this way the Anglo-Saxon trade union movement was further weakened by the multicultural ideology. As far as the “official” migrant spokesmen were concerned, class interests were totally subordinated to ethnic identity

Whether these spokesmen really represented many NESB migrants is questionable, but governments showed little interest in consulting with any migrants other than those who had been co-opted into the bureaucracies or who presented themselves as the leaders of representative ethnic organisations – mostly seeking hand-outs. This ideological emphasis on ethnicity has had at least one ironic side effect, in that people of NESB heritage are often far more free to criticise multiculturalism and Asianisation than are “old Australians”. (For instance, a caller to talk-back radio with a heavy accent will usually be allowed express a more heretical viewpoint than any “old Australian” caller.)

Very few working class “old Australians” use the term multiculturalism. It is normally heard from the lips of politicians, academics, people in the media, public servants, teachers, business leaders and the like – in short, the elites. To these people it has almost religious connotations, so that anyone who criticises what is, after all, merely a government policy is immediately castigated as stupid and uneducated at best, or possibly downright evil. As one future Labor Prime Minister was to say as early as 1968:

An isolationist society is essentially a conservative society. An isolationist Australia would be rich, selfish, greedy, racialist and reactionary ... There is already in this community deep strains of intolerance, bigotry, racialism, illiberalism, authoritarianism and conformism. Those sociological bacteria would undoubtedly breed rapidly in the hot-house atmosphere of isolationism … We must strive constantly to devise new ways of integrating this country with its Asian neighbours. ²

He was clear and unambiguous. Anyone who supported Australia’s traditional immigration policy or traditional culture – or in his own chosen dichotomy, anyone who preferred Australian isolationism to globalism – was an intolerant, greedy, racist, selfish, illiberal, bigoted authoritarian conformist, and something like a sociological bacterium. This was the line that the media and the elites were to follow, almost without exception, from the late 1960s through to the present time. Any suggestion of disagreement with the dominant orthodoxies led to an inquisition to determine whether the heretic was bad or merely mad. If the heretical statement was made publicly, it was subject to a dog-pack trial by media. If it was made by a child at school, he or she would be coached in the correct dogma by the school’s Equal Opportunities Officer. Many “old Australians” absorbed the incessant multicultural propaganda of the elites, so that if the heretical remark were made in the workplace, colleagues who had previously been friendly would sometimes verbally reproach or even ostracise the “offender”. If all else failed, the offender might be dragged before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, the various State Ethnic Affairs Commissions and State Ethnic Community Councils and State Anti-Discrimination Tribunals.

In this way criticism of multiculturalism, and by extension non-British immigration, was stifled. The elites were aware that both of these policies were unpopular with the general public, but they argued that this was evidence that Australians were “racist”, another taboo word, and that they therefore had to be “educated” to accept the new order of things. The public had no voice and no choice – all the major political parties offered the same basic policies, the churches seemed to be more interested in transforming Australia than in saving Australians’ souls, the trade union movement had been emasculated, and almost to a man the media acted as the multiculturalists’ inquisition.

Strangely enough, it was an impeccably establishment figure who first spoke up for the majority. In 1984 one of Australia’s most eminent historians, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, criticised the level of Asian migration, warning that it would lead to social problems. The elites immediately closed ranks against Blainey. Former colleagues snubbed him as if he were a medieval leper. Many members of his own university signed a declaration condemning his views. One collective of junior historians wrote a book suggesting that he was professionally incompetent. Blainey was visibly shattered by the furious chorus of denunciation.

The Blainey affair served as a warning. Not even an eminent and immensely popular historian was exempt from the consequences of expressing heretical views on Asianisation or multiculturalism. No other prominent academics have subsequently dared to challenge these taboos even to the rather limited extent that Blainey did in 1984.

Four years later the leader of the federal parliamentary opposition hinted that, if elected, his party would cut down on the numbers of Asians arriving annually in Australia, and maybe drop the ideology of multiculturalism. The media erupted in a feeding frenzy, and before the next election could be held John Howard had predictably been deposed as opposition leader by a coup within his own party. ³

In 1988 Howard was widely accused of “playing the race card”. It is an interesting expression. The elites know, through polling, that most Australian voters (including many NESB migrants) want their country to remain a fundamentally white and preferably Anglo-Saxon society. ⁴ To “play the race card” apparently means to offer a policy on the nation’s genetic and cultural future that is regarded as an “ace” or “trump” by the general population. Not that the general population has been in any position to assert its own view of what constitutes a trump. Quite the opposite. They, and their traditional culture, have been systematically vilified.

Next, in 1991, a Canberra economist named Stephen Rimmer estimated that multiculturalism was costing Australia $7.2 billion a year. By then the response of the ethnic lobby was well-honed. The foundation chairman of the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission, Paolo Totaro, retorted that multiculturalism was worth whatever it cost. Then, with breathtaking arrogance, he added: “You cannot put dollars and cents on it. It’s the benefit of feeling more secure that you live in a civilised society”. The implication was obvious – Australia was not “civilised” until large numbers of non-British migrants arrived!

As soon as multiculturalism began to claim that immigrants from all over the world had “enriched” Australia, the onus fell on the multiculturalists to justify their claims. Since there are negative aspects to almost every national or ethnic culture, it was risky to try to specify just how any particular NESB ethnic group had “enriched” Australia. For every claimed advantage, a critic of multiculturalism could just as easily raise several more cultural traits that most Australians would find abhorrent. For instance, a migrant from a non-traditional source country might be able to draw the attention of Australians to some charming folk songs from the homeland. That music might, however, be just one thread of a cultural tradition that is, say, misogynist to the point of mutilating women or has scant regard for law and order in any Western sense.

Therefore instead of specifically praising the new ethnic subcultures, it was much safer to denigrate the traditional mainstream Australian culture. Rather than explain how any new ethnic group had “enriched” Australia, the new propaganda line was that Australia had been such a cultural wasteland that anything new and different was, ipso facto, an improvement.

There had always been members of the elite groups who claimed to find Australia a cultural wilderness. Their anthem might well have been a poem by A. D. Hope, which characterised the nation as a land:

Without songs, architecture, history:

The emotions and superstitions of younger lands.

Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,

The river of her immense stupidity

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.

In them at last the ultimate men arrive

Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,

A type who will inhabit the dying earth.

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,

Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state

Where second-hand Europeans pullulate

Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

One poem does not a revolution make. I have quoted Hope because his view of Australians as “second-hand Europeans”, timidly pullulating (and note in passing the un-Wordsworthian elitism in his choice of word!) has been widely adopted among the elites.

Some aspects of this negative view have been shared by a considerable number of Australian intellectuals, especially by expatriates like John Pilger, Robert Hughes and Germaine Greer. The most widely-disseminated expression of this attitude was probably Donald Horne’s 1964 book, The Lucky Country. According to Horne:

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise. A nation more concerned with styles of life than with achievement has managed to achieve what may be the most evenly prosperous society in the world …

It is usually impossible to conduct in Australia the kind of conversation that would be immediately acceptable among intellectuals in Europe, or New York …

Intellectual life exists but it is still fugitive. Emergent and uncomfortable, it has no established relation to practical life …

There is nothing particularly Australian in the fact of intellectuals being at odds with their own national culture. George Orwell once wrote that: “In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution from horse-racing to suet puddings”. In a less sniggering way, Socrates, Alcibiades, Critias, Plato and Xenophon were all disaffected with and critical of classical Athens. Perhaps there is at times, particularly in frontier nations like Australia, a natural tension between high culture and popular or folk culture that pushes some intellectuals into disparaging the latter. After all, if popular society ignores the intellectual, he is likely to respond by cutting himself off from that society.

Be that as it may, in Australia the multiculturalists’ criticism of the traditional culture took what was perhaps a novel form. In place of the rational if misguided despair of Hope, the sniggering of Orwell’s intellectuals, or the breath-taking treason of Alcibiades, the multiculturalists resorted to the most ludicrous of lies.

Prior to large-scale NESB migration, or so they claimed over and over again, Australia “had no culture”. The culture that the multiculturalists denied Australia had ever had was not, it transpired, its proud military tradition. Nor was it the scientific culture that had been recognised at the highest international level. Nor the achievements of Australian writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, film makers and performing artists. Nor the egalitarian popular culture that saw rich and poor alike sitting and standing together at sporting stadiums around the nation watching Australia’s unique form of football or other sporting events. ⁵ No, these Australian achievements were never mentioned in the endless multiculturalist propaganda. What Australia had so disastrously lacked that it had to be transformed by the elites for its own good was – “international” food!

It may seem bizarre, but it is true. The overwhelming criticism of traditional Australia in multicultural discourse is that “old Australians” mostly ate traditional Australian food. The pre-multiracial period is therefore routinely derided as the “chops and three veg” days, and this expression is usually accompanied by a declaration of relief that those times have passed. You couldn’t get a cappuccino, the multiculturalists claim, “before the Italians came” – conveniently forgetting that there is no difficulty in getting a decent cappuccino in Japan, where there is no Italian community. Equally, before “the Italians” came, according to the propaganda, the only pasta that Australians knew of was tinned spaghetti – once again forgetting that macaroni cheese, for instance, has been cooked in England (and therefore subsequently in Australia) since at least the reign of Richard II.

One could go on at length, disproving these absurd claims, but it would be more effort than it is worth. Suffice it to say that if traditional Australian cuisine was in any way deficient, there was still no need to flood the country with non-British migrants to solve the problem. A widely distributed cookbook would have done the trick.

Yet in reality there were many such cookbooks, and they make for revealing reading. One such is the Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook, published in 1970, when readers of the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine were almost entirely of British Isles descent and had a traditionally Anglo-Australian taste in food. We can therefore learn from its pages what types of food typical Australian housewives were really cooking at that time. Let us take one chapter at random, “Fish”. This section contains recipes for Sole Véronique, Sole and Asparagus with Wine Sauce, Trout in Butter Sauce with Almonds, Bream Meuniére, Bream Bonne Femme, Fish Fillets Florentine, Butter-Fried Bream, Sautéed Mullet with Capers, Grilled Mullet, Baked Minted Mullet, Sole Bercy, Baked Snapper, Fish Mornay, Escabache, Gefilte Fish, Salmon Mousse, Salmon Croquettes, Grilled Tuna, Haddock Kedgeree, Sweet and Sour Fish, Indian Curried Fish, Fish Cocktail, Poisson Cru, Fish Roe, Herring in Sherry Pickle, and Ragout of Octopus. Not exactly a boring or unvaried list, and that’s even before the chapter moves on to shellfish! Moreover there is no shortage of cookbooks with similarly wide variety published all over Australia going back to at least the beginning of the twentieth century and probably earlier.

Clearly, then, the claim that Australian cuisine before multiracialism was a matter of “chops and three veg” is a lie. (A stupid one at that, since meat and a variety of vegetables is both nutritious and cooked, in one form or another, almost everywhere in the world.) Yet it is precisely this lie that the multiculturalists whip out with a flourish when anyone expresses a fondness for the “old Australian” culture.

It has been necessary to spend so much time on what should be a trivial matter because of the extent of propaganda in modern Australia about international food. Readers with no experience of Australia may have difficulty in understanding quite how deeply this issue has penetrated – and how insulted many Australians are that such a superficial argument is used to support sweeping and irreversible changes to their society.

Here is just one sad example. At their annual fetes, many primary schools have, among the general trash and treasure stalls and the entertainments, a multicultural food stall. At the primary school attended by the present writer’s children, that stall is known grandly as the “International Food Court”, and it is heavily promoted in the weeks leading up to the fete. Parents from non English-speaking backgrounds are asked to prepare and donate a dish that is common in their own culture. These have to be exotic; and traditional Australian and British Isles foods are clearly unwelcome. (Chinese Prawn Omelets would be fine, but Sussex Prawn and Mushroom Pies would be problematic.) Most of the dishes on offer are actually quite attractive and tasty – as you would expect, since people around the world share a common interest in making whatever food is available to them as palatable as possible.

The message that the children get from all this is perhaps rather mixed, but some part of it must surely be that traditional Australian and British food is inferior. As the “old Australian” children grow up and are “taught” about the supposedly bad old days of “chops and three veg” the message will become clearer. Their ancestors couldn’t even cook a decent meal, much less run a country.

Sadly, this crude propaganda technique works, particularly when it is used to silence any questioning of the supposed benefits of multiculturalism. It is most frequently used in this way on talk-back radio programs. A caller might phone in to discuss, say, ethnic crime gangs. The host will then usually try to demean the caller’s contribution by inferring that he or she is a “racist”. “No, I’m not a racist, but …” is the typical response, followed by a statement to the effect that the latest ethnic crime atrocity was unheard of twenty or thirty years ago. “Thirty years ago!” sneers the host, “I remember those days. Chops and three veg! Australians couldn’t even cook! It’s because of these people that we can even get something decent to eat today. And you don’t want them here? Well, I don’t want you on this program. Next caller please!”

We will see in future chapters that although this obsession with food is central to multicultural propaganda, it is perhaps the least of traditional Australia’s problems. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the irony of the multiculturalists’ almost pornographic obsession with ethnic foods is that the greatest foreign penetration of the Australian food market over the period in question has been by “politically incorrect” American fast-food outlets like McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

1.      McQueen, H., Temper Democratic: How exceptional is Australia?, Wakefield Press, 1998. Note that fifteen years later Australia was still taking economic orders from the US expressed in similar terms. In August 2001 the US acting Consul General in Perth, Marshall F. Atkins, warned: “The US Government is concerned that it would become difficult to recommend Australia as a favourable destination for US investment funds” if a particular decision about Australia’s largest gas pipeline, from Dampier to Bunbury, went ahead. See “Australia a risky bet, says US Consul” in The Weekend Australian, August 25-26, 2001.

2.      Whitlam, G., Beyond Vietnam – Australia’s Regional Responsibility, in a seminar conducted by the Australian Institute of International Affairs at Townsville, 20 July 1968. 

3.      Mr Howard hung on within his Liberal Party, tenaciously saw out his opponents, and eventually became Prime Minister. 

4.      On 25 May 1993, former Prime Minister Robert Hawke was reported in the (Melbourne) Herald Sun as follows: “ … the major parties had reached an implicit pact to keep immigration off the political agenda. He said that for most of the post-war period the parties had maintained bipartisan support for immigration in the face of public opposition. He also stated that there are no other issues on which the major political parties have been prepared to act in this way … to advance the national interest ahead of where they believed the electorate to be.”

5.      Australian Rules Football encapsulates in some ways the “old Australian” ethos. In each team there are roles for tall players, short players, fast ones, slow tough ones, pure athletes, and just about anything in between. It has accordingly been played at the highest level by people from all walks of life, from labourers and garbage collectors and wharfies to architects and Rhodes scholars and company directors.

Chapter 13: - Multiculturalism versus the foundations of Australia – the aboriginal issue

The aboriginal issue looms over all Australian public discourse like a storm cloud threatening to deluge any manifestation of Anglo-Australian culture, at any time, anywhere in Australia. A single short chapter like this could not possibly chart the many different facets of this cloud, and we are therefore only concerned here with its main impact on Anglo-Australians.

It is probably fair to say that the average Australian knows little about Aborigines. This lack of knowledge has led to the ready acceptance of many urban myths, which further complicate discussion. Therefore, before the issue can be properly discussed it needs to be de-mythologised, at least in part.

First of all, Aborigines are not native to Australia. The Latin expression ab origine means “from the beginning”, and its application to the people who inhabited Australia at the time of European contact seems to imply that they had been in the same continent “from the beginning”. Accordingly, it is not unusual to hear Australians say that their land is “a nation of immigrants” – and then to qualify this statement by adding “except for the Aborigines”. They should instead say “including the Aborigines”, since these people too were immigrants, crossing to Australia from South East Asia at some prehistoric time. Something similar applies to the word “indigenous” as applied to Aborigines. “Indigenous” means “native to” a particular place – in the way that macadamia nuts are indigenous to Queensland. Aborigines are not “native to” Australia in this sense, just as the modern Japanese are not historically “native to” Japan. Aborigines were migrants to the continent.

Unfortunately, it is not yet known when the Aborigines arrived in Australia. Most archaeologists today tentatively date the first arrival of humans in the continent to somewhere between about forty and sixty thousand years ago. There is some evidence that it could have occurred much earlier than that. Any firmer dating will depend on future discoveries.

A second but intertwined problem is that most Australians refer to all humans who were in the continent prior to Europeans as “Aborigines”. Yet the archaeological evidence suggests that in remote times some human inhabitants of Australia did not at all resemble the people whom the first Europeans encountered. The population represented by the skeletal discoveries at Kow Swamp, for instance, was far more archaic than modern Aborigines, while the Lake Munro people were far more gracile. It is feasible that these were quite separate branches of humanity who died out for one reason or another, and it is equally feasible that they made some genetic contribution to the modern Aboriginal population. As new technologies become available it may be possible to resolve these issues, assuming that the political climate permits an open investigation. All that is known at present is that the earliest skeletal remains that can be classified with modern Aborigines are much more recent than both the Kow Swamp and Lake Munro peoples.

From these two foundation myths many others have arisen. They are nearly all based on generalisations by white Australians who still see Aborigines as “others” and therefore feel free to project upon these people their own desires, longings and fears, much as Rousseau did with his blank-canvas figure of the “noble savage”. To be fair, it should be pointed out that very few Australians have had much close contact with Aborigines. This is because most Aborigines live in the far north of Australia, where there are comparatively few white Australians. Furthermore, even in the major cities, Aborigines are mostly clustered in a few suburbs, such as Redfern in Sydney. On the other hand, to stereotype Aborigines in a Rousseauian manner is to deny them their essential humanity. White Australians who have grown up with aboriginal neighbours know that, as with any other human group, they are all individuals. Some are snarling “activists”. Some are respected figures in their local communities – whether white or tribal. Many have self-induced health problems through poor diet and substance abuse, while others are brilliant athletes. There is a crime problem among young aboriginal males, in particular, but no doubt the majority of Aborigines just want to get on with their lives like most other people anywhere on earth.

All of this might seem obvious to someone living in Aberdeen or Atlanta. In Australia, however, it is often forgotten. Aborigines tend to be lumped together in the white imagination, and then stereotyped as if they all have the same needs, aspirations and lifetime experiences.

The resulting caricature is based on myths. Here are some more of the mythic stereotypes that currently stand in the way of a resolution of the aboriginal issue in contemporary Australia – together with some corrective facts:

The myth of custodianship: In pre-European times, it is often said, the Aborigines had a unique custodial relationship with their land. They were ecologically minded, unlike the British settlers who subsequently over-exploited the continent’s natural resources out of ignorance, or greed, or both.

In fact the first humans in Australia, whoever they were, seem to have wiped out most of the megafauna by about 35,000 years ago, either by hunting them to extinction or by modifying the climate such that they could not survive. Furthermore, the dependence of both the first Australians, and the historical Aborigines, on resource-management by the large-scale use of fire changed the prevailing vegetation across most of the continent from rainforest to fire-promoting sclerophyll species. The already thin soil, now bared, was eroded and washed away. The combination of impoverished soils and sclerophyll plants in turn led to lack of water transpiration, so that the rainfall belt in the northern part of the continent retreated much closer to the northern coastline. The desert then spread north, following the retreating rains. In contrast to these massive changes wrought by Australia’s pre-European migrants, twenty-three native mammal species have become extinct since European settlement. Given that the population has multiplied thirty or forty times in this latter period, the European record is not as bad as it can be made to seem. ¹

The myth of a peaceful lifestyle: Pre-European Aborigines are often believed to have lived a peaceful, gentle, almost idyllic lifestyle. This harmony was allegedly shattered by the intrusion of British settlers who deliberately killed large numbers of Aborigines.

In fact, the highest estimate of Aborigines killed by whites in the nineteenth century is twenty thousand. Commenting on aboriginal tribal violence before British settlement, eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that:

To reach an equally long death toll in the 18^th century, one in every 600 Aborigines would have had to die during warfare in a typical year. Evidence I have gathered – of Aboriginal fighting in traditional times – suggests tentatively that such a death rate was not impossible. Even a death rate twice as heavy was possible. ²

In other words, prior to European settlement, Aborigines were perhaps killing 20,000 to 40,000 of their own in tribal warfare every century. That this death-toll could be achieved using stone-age weapons indicates just how violent and aggressive the various Aboriginal “tribes” really were. They didn’t need to learn brutality from British settlers.

The myth of European diseases: According to this myth the British brought with them an arsenal of diseases to which the healthy Aborigines had no immunity and to which they succumbed in large numbers. The worst of these was smallpox. Meanwhile, and this is a vital part of the equation, the Aborigines carried no reservoir of diseases that could have deterred the British.

It is true that the Aborigines suffered massive smallpox epidemics in 1770 and 1830, and their population was perhaps reduced by about half each time. However, smallpox seems to have been introduced by Macassan traders from Sulawesi in Indonesia, who visited northern Australia every year to harvest the seafood known as bêche-de-mer, and who mixed and mated with the Aborigines. ³ Tuberculosis, leprosy and malaria were also probably brought by the Macassan traders. Malaria then foiled every early British attempt to settle in the far north of Australia, but the Aborigines of the north had built up an immunity over many years. Before European settlement, Aborigines had various other diseases of their own, including Granuloma of the Pudenda, ⁴ as well as diseases presumably caught from dingoes – such as treponema and hydatids. ⁵ They were far from disease-free.

The myth of invasion: The British “invaded” Australia in 1788, and waged an aggressive war against the native population. The Aborigines have been oppressed ever since.

The pattern of British settlement actually varied from region to region and from time to time. So, too, did the Aboriginal response. The British in Tasmania, for instance, were soon regarded as invaders, and before long that colony was in a state of virtual civil war. On the other hand, the settlement of coastal Victoria was peaceful.

In Portland, for example, Henty’s settlers were sufficiently respected by the local Aborigines to be asked to mediate in native disputes. On one occasion word was sent to Stephen Henty that a local chief was starving a tribesman to death. The Hentys immediately rode out to the native camp and provided the dying man with his last food. 

 Seven years after the settlement of Portland, George Robinson was ordered by the colonial administration to “open a friendly communication (in person) with the Tribes of Aboriginal Natives of the Western District”. With only three companions, carrying no guns or weapons of any kind, he spent five months travelling 2,500 miles to open up “friendly communication with all the tribes of the Western District”. If the Aborigines had had any reason to resent British settlers, Robinson’s party would not have survived. 

 An even greater tolerance prevailed in Heywood, a few miles north of Portland and the earliest permanent inland settlement in Victoria. By 1855 cricket was sufficiently well established in the town for records to have survived. These records reveal that:

… from its very beginning the Aborigines were incorporated in the game … old Johnnie Mullah and Billy Carter, the elder, were wizards at cricket … There were also Billy Wallaby, Johnnie Dutton, Albert White, Ernest Newbourne, Seurtwine McDuff, Angus and Jack King (descendants of King Billy). ⁷

Clearly, in this case relations between the aboriginal and the settler populations were very cordial. To portray all the early British settlers as oppressive invaders and all the Aborigines as dispossessed victims is to simplify and generalise the historical record to the point of racist stereotyping – of both groups. (To say this is, of course, not to deny that individuals from both groups committed terrible atrocities from time to time.)

Melbourne was unique in that it was settled following a formal treaty between Batman and the local Aborigines. Although the treaty was later declared invalid by the authorities, both signatories generally stuck to it. Furthermore, the Aborigines clearly had some concept of land ownership: they granted a large area of land around the Barrabool Hills (near Geelong) to William Buckley, a former escaped convict who had lived with them. John Batman was very sympathetic toward Aborigines, having grown up with aboriginal friends in Sydney. Eleven followed him to Tasmania, where he prevailed on Governor Arthur to make land grants to two of them, Johnny Crook and Pigeon. Within a year of his settlement at Melbourne, joined by most of his Sydney aboriginal friends, Batman was serving 120 local Aborigines daily food rations, an act of care far beyond what was required by the treaty.

The myth of Aboriginal deaths in custody. This myth is a late twentieth century variant of the previous one. It insists that Aborigines die in police cells and prisons, of both natural causes and suicide, at a much higher per capita rate than the white population. This is allegedly due to gross negligence on the part of the authorities, reflecting white hostility or indifference to Aborigines.

The reality is that in 1988 a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that the per capita mortality rate of Aborigines in custody was in fact less than that of non-Aborigines. Because this was a “politically incorrect” finding it was buried in an appendix to the report, and consequently most Australians are reminded only of the allegation rather than its refutation – by a Royal Commission that was highly sympathetic to the Aboriginal community. ⁸

The myth of collective Aboriginality: This myth underpins most of the others already mentioned by insinuating that there is, or was, a culture that was common to all Aborigines. This view is perhaps typified by a quote from the white Australian poet Rex Ingamells:

… to ensure imaginative truth our writers and painters must become hard-working students of aboriginal culture, something initially far-removed from the engaging and controlling factors of European life.

To recognise the fallacy of this view it is only necessary to recall the immense variety of “European life” in recent times. Even at the level closest to Aboriginal subsistence, for example, there was very little in common between the islanders of St Kilda (evacuated in 1930), peasants from the most backward villages of the Carpathians, or reindeer-herders in Finland. People everywhere are individuals, and similar economic conditions do not generate similar cultural responses.

To return to the Aborigines themselves, at the time of British settlement about 200 different native languages were spoken. Although each had a vocabulary of only about 10,000 words, and none seems to have contained any precise numbers beyond “one” “two” and “many”, they were different languages, not just dialects. This is reflected in deep grammatical differences. Thus most of them were inflected on an ergative basis (like Basque), but some were not inflected at all. ⁹

There were also 600 or so distinct “tribes”. No-one knows what the total population was before European settlement, but half a million would seem to be an absolute upper limit in terms of the carrying capacity of the continent at a stone age level of technology. The highest possible average size of a “tribe” was therefore just over 800, and most likely the true figure would be lower. These small groups were in general very zealous in protecting their own domains, and we have already noted Professor Blainey’s estimate that their tendency to inter-tribal violence was such that 20,000 to 40,000 may have been killed per century. Most groups roamed over huge distances for sustenance, while a few led a far more sedentary existence, appear to have constructed fish traps in rivers, and may even occasionally have built semi-permanent houses. The different tribes occupied habitats ranging from desert to tropical rainforest to alpine regions to coastal plains – and everything in between. Some wore almost no clothes, while the coastal tribes of Victoria wore magnificent possum-fur capes. Some could make seaworthy boats, while others had never seen the ocean.

Given their extremely low population density in a continent over thirty times the size of the United Kingdom, and bearing in mind their isolation, their linguistic diversity, their tribal fragmentation and their very different lifestyles, there was clearly no such thing as a common aboriginal culture in anything but the vaguest sense. Yet today romantic whites and aboriginal activists are united in asserting that there was a common aboriginal culture prior to British settlement. This effectively denies the innate humanity of Aborigines, who, like all other peoples, responded to their own individual circumstances with varying degrees of initiative and innovation – and varying degrees of success.

We have examined a few common myths (to which many others could be added) solely in order to dispel them. True understanding has to be based on facts, not falsehoods. We have also seen that these myths consistently de-humanise Aborigines by portraying them as an undifferentiated mass, rather than as unique individuals who are capable of responding to life’s challenges in a bewildering variety of ways.

Now we need to turn specifically to the implications for Anglo-Australia of these different myths.

One property that they all share is that they act, deliberately or otherwise, to demonise the British settlers who created the modern nation-state known as Australia. Let’s briefly review how the various falsities we have already noted contribute to this Anglophobic theme. The myth that Aborigines are “indigenous” to Australia carries with it the implication that later migrants, British and otherwise, are interlopers. The myth that all occupants of the continent prior to European settlement were “Aborigines” reinforces this implication. The myth that Aborigines were “custodians of the land” falsely implies that British settlers were rapacious exploiters who couldn’t care less about ecological and sustainability issues. The idyllic lifestyle myth falsely portrays the British settlers as genocidal murderers of a peaceful people who, inexplicably and despite all the available evidence, had no way of fighting back. The “diseased Europeans” myth portrays British settlers as a bunch of unwashed “Typhoid Marys” and totally ignores the fact that Aborigines also had an arsenal of diseases to which British settlers had little or no previous exposure. The invasion myth once again implies that the British were genocidal invaders, and further suggests that both the British and the Aborigines were so diminished as human beings that they couldn’t come up with local solutions to local initial contact problems. The “deaths in custody” myth simply updates the false allegation of British genocidal intentions.

To sum up, all of these myths demonise the British founders of Australia, and most of them also de-humanise, although no doubt inadvertently, the earlier Aboriginal migrant population.

These false portrayals serve the multiculturalists’ use of “wedge politics” in several ways.

First, since the Aborigines are uniformly depicted as dispossessed victims, it can be argued that to afford them special treatment and privileges is merely a fair way of making up for past injustices – real or imaginary. Thus, although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations currently own over 14% of the Australian land-mass, their views and even consent increasingly have to be sought when other Australians seek to develop their own freehold land. Equally, since Aborigines are under-represented in the Public Service, special quotas have been set aside for them. Although the recently abolished Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander Commission received a budget of a billion dollars a year, many other schemes of special assistance have also been made available exclusively to Aborigines, from health services to legal aid to special home loan schemes, available from an assortment of Commonwealth and State bodies.

Some of these forms of assistance have been more gallingly racist than others. For instance, until recently there were two schemes of support for students from low-income families. The one for aboriginal students was called Abstudy while the one for all other students was called Austudy. Abstudy offered a range of allowances that were not available to Austudy students. Furthermore, the amount of assistance was much higher for aboriginal students. For instance, if the parents’ combined income was $35,000, and if the student was over 18 and living away from home, in 1996 Austudy paid $138 per fortnight compared to Abstudy’s $256.70.

According to census figures, in the twenty years from 1971 the aboriginal population grew from 115,953 to 265,460. This cannot be accounted for by natural increase. Clearly the greatest factor in this unprecedented growth has to be that many people began identifying themselves as Aborigines when they had not done so previously. Some of these people would be spouses of Aborigines who had taken on aboriginal culture. Others would be people of mixed blood who saw a favourable tide shifting toward the aboriginal part of their heritage. Unfortunately, others would have no quantifiable claim to aboriginality at all – just a good nose for a ticket on the gravy train. Since it is politically incorrect to investigate claims of aboriginality ¹⁰, there are some people of Anglo-Saxon appearance in Australia today who are not just passengers on the gravy train, but in a few cases its drivers. On the very rare occasions when their bona fides are questioned they are able to use an apparently standardised line of response. “Don’t confuse my appearance with my ethnicity!” they chide the questioner, after which further questions never seem to arise.

Given all this, it is understandable that many Australians are frustrated at the special treatment Aborigines receive. In the land of the “fair go”, some are clearly getting a much fairer go than others, and on racial grounds. To make matters worse, despite thirty-odd years of massive financial and other support to the aboriginal sector, most Aborigines seem to be no better off. In general, their health, income, educational level, crime rate and premature deaths have scarcely been ameliorated at all. Where, many ask (but mostly in private), has all the money gone?

If a malicious government had sought to drive a wedge between the aboriginal and broader Australian communities, it could scarcely have come up with more suitable policies than those that have in fact been adopted. (The few mentioned above are merely representative.) Yet the multiculturalist elites have taken the matter even further. From newspapers, television and radio, from sermons, conferences and speeches, the elites have demanded that Australians in general, and the Prime Minister in particular, should say “Sorry” to Aborigines. Only a foolhardy soul would dare to ask precisely what it is that Australians should be “sorry” for. To go further than this, and to suggest that since nearly all Aborigines avail themselves of a Western lifestyle they might in turn say “Thank you”, would be professional suicide. To suggest that Aborigines themselves might also say “Sorry” for the British settlers they killed might well be to invite physical violence.

So, in a climate of fear and intimidation, most Australians have simply kept quiet while the elites have held “Sorry Days”, have organised “Sorry marches”, have opened “Sorry books” and invited everyone to sign them. The current Prime Minister has indicated that he personally regrets injustices done to Aborigines in the past, but he has resolutely refused to formally apologise – seemingly for fear of legal compensation claims.

The response of most “old Australians” could be gauged at the “Centenary of Federation” ceremony in Melbourne in May 2001. Something like a quarter of a million spectators turned out to watch the long procession of floats. These were mostly funded by the State government, and endorsed by that authority. The very first in line was an aboriginal float, on which Aborigines claiming to be descended from the tribes around Melbourne at the time of European settlement burned eucalypt leaves and blew the smoke around, ostensibly to purify the ceremony and to give symbolic permission for Australians to be present on this soil. Now, the smell of burning gum leaves is very familiar to most “old Australians”. It often evokes memories of campfires at dusk in the bush. To experience this scent used against them, when it is so often associated with thoughts of childhood and family, clearly disconcerted most of the audience. A bewildered and rather sullen silence fell on the crowd. Applause was extremely limited. Then float after float passed by, extolling the contributions to Australia of any number of different NESB migrant groups. At last a procession came into sight that embodied what the audience clearly recognised as part of their own experience of Australia. These were the “Mountain Cattlemen” – 600 mounted stockmen (and women) wearing Akubra hats, Drizabone coats, and R. M. Williams boots, cracking stockwhips as they thundered past. The repressed mood of the audience was immediately broken, and the applause for the cattlemen was rapturous. (This anecdote is included here to give readers some feeling of the general mood in Australia in recent times.)

Clearly, the aboriginal issue has not only split the aboriginal and broader Australian communities, although that is a tragedy in itself. It has also increased the gulf between the white elites and the white majority. The elites fling terms of abuse such as “uneducated”, “xenophobic” and “rednecks” at the masses, who in turn rail against the “chattering classes”, the “Chardonnay socialists” and the “commentariat”. This mutual hostility is likely to get worse, because the longer the elites persist in refusing to take responsibility for the inevitable failure of their flawed policies, the greater grows their need to find and denounce “racist” scapegoats for their failure.

Sadly, we have not yet exhausted the social divisions that have been opened up by the cynical abuse of the aboriginal issue by multiculturalist elites.

Migrants of NESB background have clearly benefited from the British settlement of Australia. If that involved aboriginal dispossession, or even genocide as is sometimes claimed, then every migrant since 1788 is enjoying the fruits of that action and implicitly endorsing it. Yet given the opprobrium heaped on the original settlers by the elites, it is natural that many of the more recent migrants should seek to exculpate themselves from the course of Australian history. And so they have. Since multicultural propaganda insists that the British are the villains throughout Australian history, since the British were undeniably the pioneers of the modern state of Australia, and since the very roots of the nation are supposedly tainted by the aboriginal issue, NESB migrants often (but not always) figuratively shrug their shoulders and imply: “It’s nothing to do with us. Blame it on the British”.

This response may lack logic, but it is no less successful for that. It is therefore hardly surprising that many others who can get away with a similar gambit will do so, even though it may not be to their credit. Accordingly, some of the Australian elites who can trace or claim some Irish Catholic ancestry, however slight, get away with arguing that their forebears were as oppressed as any Aborigine by “the British”. Descendants of British convicts can say much the same thing. In a similar way, the huge group of post-war English migrants can, and sometimes do, argue that their own ancestors were also oppressed by the political and economic system in Britain at the time of Australian settlement.

The most shameful response of all has come from those Australians who are descended from the majority of the early free settlers. Very few are prepared to stand up for their ancestors’ attempt to create a better England, a “New Britannia”, in Australia. We have seen in previous chapters that this goal was at least partly successful, but very few descendants of the founding population dare to affirm this fact. One of the main weapons keeping them silent and defenceless is the aboriginal issue. Yet that issue cannot be resolved unless and until it is politically acceptable freely to interrogate the history of both aboriginal and British Australia. If British Australians cannot do so without fear or intimidation, then race relations in Australia will continue to degenerate.

Finally, the very legitimacy of Australia as a nation is being seriously undermined. At the time of British settlement international law stipulated two legal ways in which new colonies could come into existence. These were physical conquest and settlement. If settlement could be peacefully negotiated with the leaders of the local residents, so much the better, but if there were no recognisable or acknowledged local leaders with whom to negotiate then the settlement could proceed on that basis. In New South Wales and elsewhere there were no such leaders and settlement was accordingly based on the legal principle of terra nullius. ¹¹ In Victoria, as we have seen, there were such local leaders, and Batman concluded a treaty with them, although Governor Bourke in Sydney proclaimed that any such contract was “void and of no effect”.

Regardless of more recent historical debates, one way or another the colonies were all settled in accordance with the accepted international laws of the time. Yet the moral basis of British settlement is now under constant attack from the elites. Most historians, teachers, politicians, church leaders, journalists and other opinion-formers are united in presenting British settlement as something for which white Australians should feel shame and guilt. ¹² Thus, Justices Mary Gaudron and William Deane declared that the “dispossession” of the Aborigines was “the darkest aspect” of Australia’s past and it has left a legacy of “unutterable shame”. The fact that Sir William Deane went on to become Governor-General of Australia illustrates the degree of alienation of Australia’s elites from their history and from ordinary Australians. At no earlier period could a man who so clearly despised the foundation of Australia have been appointed to the highest position in the land. Yet far from questioning his fitness for office, the elites made him out to be a man of saintly compassion.

There is nothing unreasonable in showing compassion toward aboriginal Australia. The Aborigines are the only ethnic group in the continent with a non-derivative culture, and it is a tragedy that many (but by no means all) Aborigines lead less than ideal lives. In a wealthy society appropriate help should be directed to all individuals who need it. The problem is that, by fanning the flames of the aboriginal issue for the cynical purpose of wedge politics, the elites are making things worse for everyone but themselves.

1.      see Flannery, T., The Future Eaters: An ecological history of the Australasian lands and people, Reed Books, 1994.

2.      Blainey, G., A Land Half Won, Macmillan, 1980.

3.      Campbell, J., “Smallpox in Aboriginal Australia 1829-31”, Historical Studies, V. 20, 1983.

4.      Franklin, Black and White Australians, Heineman, 1976.

5.      Broom, R., “Swift end to 50,000 years of good health”, The Age, 10 November 1984. 

6.      Critchett, J., “Meeting the Aborigines: Western District of Victoria 1841”, in Australia Felix: The Chap Wurrung and Major Mitchell, Dunkeld, 1987.

7.      Savill, V., Dear Friends, Heywood, Portland, 1976.

8.      Waller, K., “Let’s dispel some myths about Aboriginal deaths in custody”, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 1992.

9.      Dixon, R. M. W., The languages of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1980.

10.   Just how far political correctness extends in these matters is shown by a case in the 1990s when a proposed island development in South Australia was halted after a few local aboriginal women claimed that the island had sacred significance to them. An explanation of their grievance was submitted to the Federal Minister, but since it concerned “secret women’s business”, and since he was a white male, the minister declined to read it. Despite having no informed idea even of what the objection was about, he ruled against the development anyway!

11.   Terra nullius was concisely defined as “territory hitherto not occupied by a recognised ruler” in the 1924 case of Privy Council in Vajesingje v Secretary of State for India.

12.   A handful of dissident historians has labelled this the “black arm-band” school of Australian history. The majority of historians sneer back that any dissenting viewpoint is a “white blind-fold” approach.

Chapter 14: - Multiculturalism versus British migrants

The words “Pom” and “Pommy” have long been common in Australian speech. They refer to British people, and more particularly to English people. They are used indiscriminately to refer both to British people living in Britain and to British people living in Australia (even if naturalised). No-one seems to know the origin of the terms. The folkloric etymology is that they hark back to the days of transportation, when convicts were allegedly known as “Prisoners Of Mother England”. The evidence for this is scant. A more likely explanation is that the term arose from a process of rhyming slang, thus “immigrant” suggested “jimmygrant”, which then became “pomegranate”, thence “pommy” which was shortened to “pom”. The pomegranate component has also been explained as referring to the red, sunburnt faces of new immigrants. There is some evidence for this derivation, but it is hard to see how its meaning could have spread to include British people who had not emigrated. Another theory, advanced by B T Harper of Dongara, Western Australia, is that the term derives from “Prison Orderly Man”. Mr Harper explains:

POMs were recruited from the most obsequious of the meanest and cruellest prisoners and they happily applied the lash to their unfortunate fellows at the whim of their guards. The guards themselves, though also quite happy to lash prisoners, despised the Poms almost as much as the convicts did. ¹

Whatever the reality, the word Pom seems not to have been in general use until the First World War, when Australians applied it to English soldiers. For the next fifty or so years the word was used in a spirit of intra-family rivalry.

We have noted at length that Australians traditionally regarded themselves as Britons. Let’s add a little more supporting evidence. On 15 August 1914, the Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, said:

Our duty is quite clear – to gird up our loins and remember that we are Britons.

Similarly, the Prime Minister in office at the outbreak of WW2, Robert Menzies, proclaimed:

It is not a matter of vague honour and glory, but a matter of existence itself. Every hope for the future of our children and those after them is bound up in the existence of a free British community in this country, and if we are to be free and British we must awake at once to the danger of disintegration which confronts us.

His successor, John Curtin, in 1944 told the British Parliament:

We are a British community in the South Seas and we regard ourselves as the trustees for the British way of life in a part of the world where it is of the utmost significance … that there should be in the Antipodes a people and a territory corresponding in purpose and in outlook … to the Motherland itself.

In their own eyes Australians were unequivocally British, so the word Pom usually had no more malice in it than those slightly disparaging private nicknames sometimes used between brothers who would otherwise fight fiercely to defend each other against outsiders. That it was not particularly offensive is shown by the fact that many English migrants were happy to refer to themselves as “Poms”.

Yet by the 1970s, with the rise of multiculturalism, the word was beginning to take on a derogatory connotation. It was also more frequently yoked to another negative, as in “whingeing Poms” and “Pommy bastards”.

We have seen that the logic of multiculturalism required the systematic disparagement of traditional Australia. To take this process to its conclusion, it was necessary to disparage the parent culture and its bearers. That meant both British people in Britain and first-generation British migrants in Australia – of which there were just over a million. Australian films perhaps led the way. Here are some examples:

“The Adventures of Barry McKenzie” (1972) is an amusing comedy, although many of its jokes would be probably lost on a non-Australian audience. It concerns a young Australian travelling in England. He is a well-meaning innocent abroad, and the film sympathises with him. All the English/British people he encounters are exploitative or disgusting. These include the grasping landlord who tricks the hero into stuffing pound notes into the electricity meter, the vicious psychopath dressed up as a hippy, the hippy chick who uses her feminine charms to manipulate him, and the middle aged, middle class man who dresses as a schoolboy and wants to be birched by him.

This characterisation of the English as sexual perverts is continued in another Australian classic made in the following year, “Alvin Purple”. For instance, a judge with an emphatically English accent asks of the pornographic films he is being shown as evidence, “How does one … uh … hire such things?”

“Breaker Morant” (1979) is about Australian volunteers in the Boer War. Readers have already encountered the eponymous hero, in Chapter 6 above. Morant and his friend are shown as young idealists who are singled out as expendable colonials by a corrupt British military legal system in desperate need of someone to take the flak for war crimes. The Australians are uncomplicated victims, while the British are devious back-stabbers. Morant goes to his death in a spirit of Aussie larrikin defiance. The fact that the real Morant migrated from England to Australia at the age of nineteen is not indicated by the heavy Australian accent of the lead actor.

In “Gallipoli” (1981) we enter the realm of pure propaganda. Heroic young Australian troops are squandered by the incompetent British/English military. It is from this film that many younger Australians have imbibed the mistaken idea that effete English officers sipped tea on the beach away from the action while brave Aussies got on with the task of fighting the Turks. There is no indication in this film that British deaths outnumbered those of Australians by a ratio of 2.44 to 1.

“Romper Stomper” is a film about vicious racist neo-nazi skinheads in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Their leader, portrayed by a young, up-coming Russell Crowe, has an understated but generic British accent that is reinforced by a Union Jack “patch” on his overcoat. The audience is meant to think that he gets his due desserts when he is killed by his side-kick while – and this is meant to be highly symbolic and satisfying – uncomprehending Asian tourists take snap-shots of the murder.

“Braveheart” is directed by its lead actor, Mel Gibson, who had previously starred in “Gallipoli”. An intrepid Scottish freedom fighter takes on the strength of a brutally imperialist England. Every Englishman in this film is despicable, from Edward I (portrayed as a psychopathic and homophobic murderer), to the English ordinary soldiers who like nothing better than to brutally rape innocent Scottish girls.

“The Patriot”(2000) is an historical epic set in the US during the war of independence. Like “Braveheart” it again stars Mel Gibson as a resistance leader fighting the English. Also like “Braveheart” it portrays the English as arrogant, swinish and practically subhuman. For instance, in one scene Colonel Tavington locks men, women and children in a church and then burns it down. Tavington was a real historical figure, and historians have affirmed that he did no such thing.

In modern Australian cinema, bit-part Anglophobic roles are even more common. For instance, in the otherwise impressive “My Brilliant Career”, a 1979 adaptation of a classical Australian novel by Miles Franklin, the headstrong Aussie heroine is wooed by a ludicrous and pompous English migrant. Naturally, or so the film implies, she has nothing but scorn for advances from someone of that background.

This stereotyping applies equally in television, even children’s television. There is only room here for one example. The Australian children’s TV show, “The Genie From Down Under”, has been watched by millions in 20 different countries, praised for its scriptwriting and production values, and nominated for many awards. It tells the tale of two lovable Aussie genies locked in a battle with a wicked English girl – a manipulative teenage aristocrat. (Its co-ordinator and screen-writer, one Esben Storm, has compared his product to the literary genius of Oscar Wilde. The difference is that when Oscar included nasty stereotypes, he invariably subverted them. There is a huge chasm between Oscar’s genius and Storm’s snide racism.)

Cheap Anglophobic racism of this nature goes on day after day, year after year, in film and fiction, radio and television, in music, on stage and in the papers.

In the April 1998 issue of the newsletter of the British Council, Australia, Jim Potts presented a selection of newspaper clippings from 1993-1996 to illustrate the attitude of some Australian reporters when it comes to Britain and the British. Here are a few of his examples:

• THE END OF GREAT BRITAIN .... Everywhere there is a clearly discernible atmosphere of decay, a palpable feeling that something is rotten in the State. Travelling the length and breadth of the country he once revered as home, a distinguished Australian reporter sadly finds it slipping back to 19th-century standards and no longer able to call itself great. Philip Knightley, The Australian Magazine, 2-3 April 1994. 
• I have boarded the plane in London, and it is always a relief to escape from that filthy city of thieves, upper and lower class. Padraic McGuinness, The Australian Magazine, 9-10 July 1994. 
• We should take heed of the lessons of Britain's demise. Alex Millmow, Centre for Policy Research, Canberra, The Australian, 9-1 0 April 1994. 
• BRITANNIA ON THE ROCKS ... Once the undisputed ruler of the waves, Britain is gripped by a deep social and economic malaise, writes Peter Ellingsen. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 1994. 
• YELLOW PRESS AN INDICATION OF BRITAIN'S DEMISE ... The truth is that Britain has a revolting yellow press and Australia does not simply because the Brits like it that way and we don't ... In short, don't blame the British press for anti-Australianism – blame the British. Padraic McGuinness, The Weekend Australian, 1993. 
• We are not talking about changing the name of Queensland or burning copies of Shakespeare on the pitch of Sydney Cricket Ground. Tom Keneally, The Australian, 1 October 1993 
• The unexciting truth is that by and large Britons really don't think much about Australia at all. John Huxley, SMH, 13 September 1993. 
• Now in this post-colonial era I am aware it is unfashionable to say anything remotely complimentary about the Brits ... My fear now is that as the republican debate gathers momentum, we shall be subjected to unprecedented levels of Pom-bashing ... We have drawn from many sources. Let us applaud and cherish the contributions of the minorities without denigrating the contribution of the majority. Barry Cohen, The Australian 2.5 May 1993. 
• I wonder how many Australians feel like I do - wanting a republic but despising the anglophobia that presaged the present campaign - the mean-mindedness of the whingeing about, and distortion of, what went on in Singapore 50 years ago? G.E. Gell, SMH, 7 March 1993. 
• It is time to cast her away, and let England sail off into the sunset, with irrelevance her destiny. Matthew Beatty, Weekend Australian, 1 May 1993. 
• New audiences, particularly republican- minded Australians who view the prospect of a spiritual renaissance in British art with less enthusiasm (and belief) than one in Siberia, simply won't bother with it. Joan Kerr (a book review of Peter Fuller's Modern British Painters, SMH, 19 June 1993). 
• Professor Kerr has provided a perfect cocktail of provincialism and Political Correctness. The book is subtitled Reflections on British Art, yet Peter is criticised for not writing about Australian topics ... I’m also bemused by the suggestion that ‘republican- minded Australians’ won’t bother with the book, as though ‘republican-minded’ means ‘small-minded and xenophobic, uninterested in anything but Australia’. My definition of ‘republican’ would be completely the opposite. John McDonald, SMH, 1993. 
• OUR POWS BETRAYED BY BRITS: PM ... His comments are sure to cause controversy in Britain. Last year, when he claimed that Britain had concentrated solely on its survival and abandoned Australia during the fall of Singapore in World War II, British newspapers, politicians and historians declared it an outrageous insult to British soldiers who had fought and died in Asia. Tony Wright, SMH, 24 April 1993. 
• TEACHERS URGED TO PUSH INVASION LINE ... The NSW Teachers Federation is urging its members to ban the teaching of any Australian history or social science subject which fails to acknowledge that Australia was invaded by the British in 1788. Carolyn Jones, The Weekend Australian, 25-26 June 1994. 
• BRITISH, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED: While Australia has begun to anchor its identity as a multicultural republic in Asia, Britain is adrift, in economic decline and despairing at finding a role in the new world order. (Photo Caption: ‘Cruel Britannia .... one of the thousands of homeless people on the streets of London’) Peter Ellingsen, SMH, 18 September 1993. 
• Successful British cinema and television is set safely in the past, where most English wish they and the rest of the world could still live. In contrast, internationally successful Australian films tend to celebrate the present or play with the future. Ross Langford, The Independent Monthly, Dec 1994/Jan 1995. 
• The English are stuck gazing at their reflection in the mirror of the past and that says something about how they feel about the complex modern world. They have trouble dealing with it, especially when a country they are used to patronising, such as Australia, is suddenly making good wine, great contemporary films, and wins at A-grade international diplomatic contests, such as snatching the Olympics. Ross Langford, The Independent Monthly, Dec 1994/Jan 1995. 
• Given that there is hardly an Australian left who believes that the interests and culture of Australia, and the interests and culture of the United Kingdom, coincide, it is interesting that we continue to go along with the situation. Tom Keneally, SMH, 15 June 1996. 

In 1990 the Victorian government announced its intention to replace 85 place-names in the Grampian ranges with Aboriginal titles, allegedly to increase tourism in the area. Colin Howard, a law professor at Melbourne University, commented perceptively:

The not-very-subtle implication in the present case is that Aboriginal place names are something to be proud of, but Australian place names of British origin are not. … It is an insult to British Australians to abolish part of their traditions in return for a supposed commercial benefit (of which, incidentally, there is absolutely no evidence). ²

Similar Anglophobic attitudes are found in music, both rock and classical. The popular rock group Midnight Oil, for instance, had a hit song called Truganini, which included the line: “I see a Union Jack in flames – let it burn”. In rock music Anglophobia is usually similarly crude and direct. Its effect on other musical forms is more subtle. James Koehne traced the influence of the English pastoral tradition and composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams on Australian music up to the second half of the last century. After that time, he argued, this tradition became associated with guilt:

The associations of pastoralism and nostalgia which it evokes – or provokes – make us suspect that this is not something we can embrace. We could be excused for feeling that we should reject Vaughan Williams’ music, on the grounds of its being English and/or bucolic. ³

Notice here the use of the slash. Clearly, it would be enough for Vaughan Williams’ music to be merely English, not necessarily bucolic, for it to be rejected.

Multicultural orthodoxy in modern Australia insists that no ethnic or national or racial groups should be vilified or lampooned. The two exceptions to this fundamental taboo are the English/British and those whose ancestors were English/British. These exceptions have become so ingrained in public discourse that otherwise fair-minded people engage in the most grotesque put-downs without a moment’s thought. Thus, on Neil Mitchell’s immensely popular radio talk-back show on 3AW on 27 April 1990, he spoke about Gallipoli and rightly stressed the high number of British casualties. Then he quipped that “… some would argue this is a good thing”. A “good thing” that over 21,000 British soldiers were killed? It may have been a throwaway line, but it is typical. Neither Mitchell nor any of his colleagues would dream of saying the same thing about the Turkish casualties.

It was in this climate that one of the strangest Anglophobic slurs of the decade occurred.

In a doorstop interview on 10 October 1996, the Federal Minister for Health and Family Services, Dr Michael Wooldridge, was asked about a TB scare at a Melbourne hospital. The questioner asked: “What do you say about comments that it has a lot to do with our high rate of migration?” Dr Wooldridge replied: “Well, one of the highest numbers of cases of TB in Australia comes from British migrants, so it is not country-specific. I think the highest is from migrants from South East Asia, the next highest number is migrants from Britain.” 

As Minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge had a very special responsibility to provide accurate information about health matters. His word carried some weight, and if he chose to single out one particular migrant community as a source of communicable (and legally notifiable) disease he should have taken particular care to ensure that his statement was accurate. TB is an increasing problem Australia, as it is in other countries with large migration programs – such as the United States, where outbreaks of multi-drug resistant TB are alarming health officials. 

In such a sensitive climate, to falsely single out any one group in the community and defame them as constituting a pool of disease was at best reckless. To make such accusations when the true facts were easily available and showed the statement to be utterly false was incompetent, and worse. It had the potential to do enormous damage to community relations 

To make matters even worse, within a few days former Queensland Senator Bill O’Chee stated: “In fact the group of people who present with the highest incidence of TB are people from the UK”. 

In fact, British migrants have one of the lowest rates of TB of all community groups. The official publication, Surveillance of Notifiable Infectious Diseases in Victoria, 1995, showed that at the time of Dr Wooldridge’s remarks the highest rate of TB infection occurred among those born in Vietnam, followed by those born in Australia, then the Philippines, China, India, Timor, Yugoslavia, Italy, and lastly UK/Ireland and the former USSR. (People from countries labelled as “Other” had about the same rate of infection as the Vietnamese.)

Therefore what Dr Wooldridge said was completely untrue, and constituted one of the most serious vilifications that the British community in Australia has experienced in recent years.

British migrants and community representatives quickly made the true facts available to the Minister and the Senator and asked them, in the public interest, to retract this disgraceful slur. The pair angrily refused to either retract or apologise, even after the true figures were published in the daily newspapers. The Prime Minister did nothing to discipline his Minister. Yet if any other ethnic community had been defamed in this way the elites would have clamoured for political heads to roll.

This complete lack of sensitivity in defaming British people extends to politicians at all levels. “Filthy Poms” was a headline that featured in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph over the 2000/2001 new year period. In the ensuing article the mayor of Waverley, Paul Pearce, was reported to have claimed that British people are mostly responsible for litter on Bondi beach. “I don’t want to go into a Pommie bash because I don't think they’re alone on that,” the mayor was reported to have said, “but there are a lot down on Bondi and they probably contribute a fair amount of it.” Not content with this reasoning, the Waverley mayor added “I’d be surprised if it’s locals”. 

Although there are also lots of Japanese at Bondi, the mayor felt they were definitely not the culprits. Lucky, that. After all, a headline proclaiming that “Filthy Japs” were polluting Bondi would be as unprintable as one asserting that “Filthy blacks” were polluting Redfern (Sydney’s main Aboriginal suburb), or “Filthy fags” polluting Oxford Street (the iconic gay venue in Sydney). But when it comes to vilifying the British community, it seems that any slur is acceptable. 

Furthermore, it is apparently good for ratings. Steve Price, until recently a broadcaster on Melbourne radio station 3AW, is perhaps the closest thing that Australia has to a U.S.-style radio “shock jock”. On 7 May 2001 he presented an extraordinary talk-back show. Its content was not so different from many other similar programs. What was extraordinary was that its sole purpose seemed to be to encourage callers to make Anglophobic statements.

The discussion meandered at times into esoteric sporting topics, but here are some of the “highlights”. (To save space, some repetition has been omitted, but some has been retained to convey the tone.)

            Good afternoon. Welcome to a new week on drive. Federation Week in Melbourne, when Australia’s celebration of what it has been and what it is now reaches a climax with a five-hour re-enactment of the first sitting of Federal parliament this Wednesday. I’ll be there for some of that. 96961278 is our number. Give us a call between now and six. Let’s know what’s on your mind. Something a little different to start today. I want to get your opinion as we enter this reflective week, a week chock-a-block full of history. I want to get your opinion on our English cousins, our Pommy ancestors perched away there on the other side of the world. A British TV documentary team from Channel 4 is in Australia putting together a documentary that will screen in the UK next month as a lead-in to the coverage of the Ashes cricket tour by Australia. ‘Don’t mention the Ashes’ is the title. It will look at the long-standing rivalry between Australia and England and will feature people like Barry Humphreys, Ian Botham, Clive James, Bob Hawke and even Andrew Denton. What I’d like this afternoon, now, is your view, and bear in mind your voice could be used on TV in the UK, your view on the Poms even if you are yourself a Pom, you may have a view on their place in the world today. Many times I’ve said on this program we Australians are in danger of overtaking the Poms when it comes to whingeing about their problems, but I confess English people are still probably the world champions, and it seems particularly those who choose to settle here in Australia are pretty good at it, but that’s about all they’re good at. Mention the Ashes and really they might as well tell us to stay home and not waste our time. The series is headed again for a one-sided victory for Australia and again we’ll retain that little urn that the Poms won’t even let leave Lords. You have to wonder just how it’s been possible for England to get so bad at sport so quickly. Asked to nominate an English sporting hero you scratch your head. Maybe the mean and nasty Nick Faldo, or that chinless wonder Tim Henman, but that’s about it. They seem to be a country permanently in decline, ruled over by a dysfunctional royal family that not even the Poms have any respect for any longer. I just wonder why poor old Ronny Biggs wanted to go home when he could have died in Rio. 96961278. What do you think of the Poms, how do we compare, should our multi-cultural mix now allow us to shake off those colonial shackles, do the Poms even matter any more? And the challenge out there for anyone: would you actually choose to go and live in England rather than live here in Australia? 96961278 for a chance for you to stick it up the Poms on their own TV doco.

Phil in Alphington. Go ahead Phil.

Phil: Yes, Hi, how yer going Steve. Um, my Dad’s a Pom, or was, he died only oh, a little while ago, and, um, he could not stand the whingeing Poms. He said if they can’t, you know, if they can’t hack it, why do they play us?

When did he come here?

Um, aw, about 1948, 1949.

Did he strike you as being a whinger himself?

At times, yes, but um, but not when it came to … he was not a sportsman, as such, but when it came to, you know, them losing.

Why are they so bad at sport?

Because they don’t like losing, I think.

Don’t like losing? I think what happens, Phil, is that they don’t, they don’t go to school and they don’t play sport. Robert in North Fitzroy, hullo.

Robert: Good day, Steve. Ah, I’m just ringing up in regards to what you were saying about the English earlier, and I have to disagree with yer on, and agree with yer on, some aspects. Ah, I went to the Ashes, ah, test a few years ago where they beat us on the MCG in a very good close contest, but most …

Gee, you’re going back a bit!

Well what happened was, they seemed to be coming into that period, remember when Mike Gatting was sacked, and they said that there were false allegations that he was with a pro, and also too cricket, cricket’s more on a conservative …

So they’re too busy worrying about drugs and prostitutes and taking money from bookies than they are about playing the actual game?

Yeah, they are, but I wouldn’t say the general English supporter, and I found that at the cricket that time, wasn’t really whingeing. They knew that we were better than them and they knew that we were a better sporting ...

But you’re talking about that crowd that follow, what’re they called, the Barmy Army with their shaved heads and BO and bad dress.

No, I wouldn’t say they were all BO. I met some quite interesting people amongst the, ah, Barmy Army, and I’m a physio meself, and I met a few people that were actually quite …

Would you go and live there? If you could afford it? Not that we can, seeing we’re from a Third World country and we, the dollar buys you nothing.

Oh, well I’d go there for a holiday but I don’t know about livin’ there, no.

Huh huh huh! Thank you Robert. Amy, in Warranwood, hullo.

Amy: Yes hi, I’m ringing up, um, to say I’m actually, I was born in England. Um, I’ve been living here since I was two years old.

How old are you now, Amy?

I’m nineteen.

Yep.

And I just wanted to say that I find it really really annoying that there is this constant kind of bitching and whingeing about Engl, um, English people, and I find it really hard to grasp here as an, as being an English, of English descent …

Have you ever copped it from being a Pom? No-one would, er, with your accent, no-one would know.

No, um, well, it, I, I was wearing my England soccer shirt one day and you get constant [indecipherable], however as soon as people realise that you are, or you comment on being English they go ‘No you’re not, you’re Australian’, but I just, I find it …

What don’t you like, the stereotyping?

Yeah, and I don’t think, er, you’re not allowed to be of your English descent. Um, if you are, and you’re proud of it, they take the micky out of you. But you’re allowed to be of, of other backgrounds, which I, I …

So there’s a bit of reverse racism there where you can’t have a crack at someone for being, er, Asian, or for being Italian or Greek but you can have a crack at someone for being a Pom?

Yeah, I think, I really do think that’s true, and, it shouldn’t happen either way.

All right, thanks Amy. Mick, in Doncaster. Go ahead Mick.

Mick [in heavy Irish accent]: Oh, Steve, just a quick one. Listen, with this accent, well it’s not about politics, it’s um, …

Huh huh huh. This will be good. What do you think of the Poms, Mick?

Mick, Oh, we’ll leave that aside, Steve, it’s um …

Not worth talking about?

Oh, it’s worth talking about but I’ll raise a lot of points, but, um …

Do you think Australians are more Irish or English?

I think, um, they’re wanting more Irish because I think the Irish just take it all in their stride, you know, they, they laugh at their own as well, they’re the ones that are cracking the jokes …

Yeah, look I think Australians like to think of themselves as more Irish because it’s more romantic.

Oh, yeah, I think you’re right. When you, when you have a little bit of a dig like they all do, and it’s only a dig in fun, um I find, yeah, that not the majority of them but most of them …

You are better drinkers, Mick. Let’s face it. Fifteen minutes past five. Brian in Kensington. Hello. Go ahead, Brian.

Brian: Yes, Steve, er, this cricket. One of the problems with it is, in England it’s the old school tie. If you don’t go to a public school you haven’t got a hope. I’ve played with Alan Knott, the ex-English, er, wicket-keeper …

So it’s that class structure thing?

It is, yeah, it is.

So you came from a working class background and you felt that you were just excluded.

That’s right, yeah. The normal working class hasn’t got a hope of getting in first class cricket in England, unless you can really suck up to somebody.

Good on you, Brian, thanks. Steve in Bayswater North. Hello Steve.

Steve: Good day mate, how are you. Yeah, I just want to agree with that last caller. I’ve had friends who just came back from England after living there for two years and the sporting over there is unreal, it’s so class-orientated, and they’ve got nothing after work, they all go to the pub after work, that’s what their whole life is. Work, drink, and that’s it. They’ve got no domestic sort of sport like we do here.

What about soccer, surely that’s ah …

That is their only working class sport over there.

But the working class can’t afford to go, can they?

Nah, not these days, like I’ve got a friend that I wanted them to get me some stuff from Leeds. You can’t get tickets to the games, you can’t get nothing. Unless you’re a member over there, and that’s usually the higher classes, you just can’t get a hope.

So what does your average 18 to 25 year-old bloke do after work? Go to the pub?

Yeah, that’s the age group of my friends that were over there, they were 25 and that’s what they did. After work they went to the pub. They did it every night and that’s all they did on the weekend, and there’s no domestic sport like we have here. Like over here me mate, he plays basketball three nights a week and he plays his footy and cricket on the weekends. Over there there’s nothin’.

All right, Steve, thanks. Laurie in Ivanhoe. Hello Laurie.

Laurie: Steve, hi. Er, just wanted to comment. I’m, er, Australian born, lived in England for a short time. The English, er, aren’t a bad race of people but they could learn a lot from us in respect to multi-culturalism. I, er, sensed an underlying racism right across the board there, um, particularly with the, the numerous number of nations that …

Well they can’t, they don’t seem to me to be able to cope with the numbers of Pakistanis there.

Well they actually, er, I was described as a Pakistani, I’m of Italian descent, and, er, I could just feel the, um, the underlying racism, er

You felt an uglier side of it than perhaps here, I mean I …

Oh very much so, yeah.

I mean we often, er, talk here about whether, er, the races are treated equally in Australia but you’re right, it’s nowhere near as  … there’s a, there’s a genuine violence in some parts of England that you just feel looks pretty ugly. Would you live there?

Er, no, I’d go for a holiday, er, look I actually think it’s quite a beautiful country. A little bit cold, but um, certainly go for a holiday but never live there.

Right, name me one Pommy sporting champion. Current.

Ummm ...

Exactly.

Can’t think of one.

No. All I could come up with was that dreadful Nick Faldo who’s just a rude pig and er …

Stephen Redgrave, I mean I have to say he’s …

Yep, no doubt. John in Doncaster at 19 past 4. Hello John.

John: Yeah, um, if you hate the English that much why do you people like living in English-style homes and English-style suburbs?

How do you know what sort of house I live in?

Oh, in the area you live in it’s typically English.

Where do I live?

Oh, inner south east, I guess.

No. [laughs] I don’t.

Well, anywhere around there?

Well you, you came out here, you mob, and you built houses …

I was born here.

You built houses so that the snow would roll off the roof in a country where it’s bloomin’ desert.

Most Australians live in English-style homes. They can’t design their own kind.

We were forced to by the people who settled this country.

You can’t think of anything.

What are you talking about?

Well, look around.

Look at the modern architecture, it’s got nothing to do with …

Where?

Oh, you must, you must drive around blind.

No I don’t.

What sort of house do you live in, John?

Er, contemporary style.

Contemporary style! You can’t even say the word. 19 past four. Jason in Coburg, hello.

Jason [Mediterranean accent, probably fake]: Good day, Steve, mate, I would like to go and live in England.

You would? Why?

I’m short, fat, ugly and stupid. I can’t get a woman in Australia. But in England I would be an Adonis.

[chuckling] Please, Jason, tell me you’re joking. You are joking, aren’t you?

No mate, look I am ugly, I’m stupid, but I’ve been checking out those English blokes. I’m better than them. They’re all horrible little spotty grey people, aw it’s disgusting. Mate, the women over there would flock to me. An’ I mean, they’re a bunch, they’re not very attractive women, I’ll give you that, but they’re women.

Oh hang on. What about Liz Hurley?

Ah mate, you’re kiddin’ yerself aren’t ya?

Well, I mean, she’s not my type, but a lot of blokes’d … What about Ginger Spice?

Yeah, wonderful, anorexic, ugly, siliconed, get her outta here.

Princess Anne? I’m trying to get your type!

Isn’t it, isn’t she a horse?

Diana! I know she’s dead, but …

Yeah, well, I’m desperate but not quite that desperate mate. Dead women, no.

Thank you Jason [chuckling], ah, we’re gonna get in trouble here. Greg in Hawthorn, hello.

Greg: Steve, how you going? Um, just turned the radio on and you were knocking the Poms. I know they can’t get it right at the best of times, but …

Oh, they’re pretty hopeless, aren’t they?

But what about Timmy Henman, the tennis player?

He’s a chinless wonder who threatens but never delivers.

Oh but he’s generally, he’s trying, he’s having a go. He’s the only one for the Poms who is having a go. You can’t say that for the cricketers, can yer.

No cricketers, er, their soccer team to me, and you know how I hate soccer, seems to be full of Italians, Dutch people or Australians. Or South Americans. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of English … men … who actually still play.

Yeah, it’s the same for the motorcycle industry. No, no motorcycle stars over there either.

They’ve got an F1 driver, Jensen Button, he’s now done his arm and is not gonna drive this time apparently.

Yeah, bad weather and cups of tea, that about sums it up.

Thanks Greg. Tony in Thomastown, although I must say that I actually quite like, quite like, England. Hello Tony.

Tony: Yes Steve, well talking about these, ah, English women, I’ve been married to a beautiful one now for fifteen years, I’ve got a couple of lovely kids.

Well she’d hate this conversation.

Right, yeah, she’s not very happy, neither are her parents, cos they’ve listened to you every night. Now I’d just like to say something. My father-in-law came out here thirty five years ago with nothing, held the same job with Ansett until he retired two years ago …

Was he one of the two-bob tourists?

Um, no mate, he come out here, he did it hard, you know they started off living in a camp in Broadmeadows there somewhere, but, um, he’s always worked hard and he loves Australia, he follows St Kilda, and he barracks for Australia in cricket.

He’s given the Poms the flick himself!

He has, mate, and I’ve been to the cricket with him, I mean they’re his second side mate, he follows Australia. So, they’re not all the same, mate, and I could not ask for a better set of inlaws.

Good on you Tony. Thank you. George, in Mt Waverley. Hello George.

George: Hi there Steve, how are you? Um, I’m just ringing because I lived over in London for four years, came back six months ago, and I thought it was a great place, everything about it mate.

Did you get paid in pounds?

I did.

Cos that’s the only way you could live there.

Well, you’re right, but it doesn’t make it a bad place.

No, no, and look, I’ve been there dozens of times, and I actually very much enjoy going there, but I couldn’t live there. Tell me about, er, the middle of January beginning of February at about 3.30 in the afternoon.

Oh, it’s dark.

Exactly!

It’s dark, but the same …

And wet.

Well it is, but once again, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, because I found that the atmosphere, and the environment that I was in, was fantastic; and I didn’t catch the entire thread, but I don’t agree that people go to the pub every night after work. I was, or the circles that I was involved in, I after work would play tennis, I’d play Aussie Rules football over there …

What!

I played rugby … There’s an Aussie Rules football competition over there.

Oh, okay. Well, appreciate the call, George. Thank you, David in Glenhuntly, hello.

David: Yes, I’m wondering what, why you have a problem with English people and also Collingwood supporters.

I have a big, much bigger problem with Collingwood supporters than English people.

Mmm. Now, could you tell me why English and why Collingwood supporters?

Oh the English people these days are just such under-achievers. I mean, they’re sitting there in a crumbling empire wondering where to go. Wendy, from Mt Waverley, hello.

Wendy [Heavy English accent]: Hello Steve, this is Wendy.

I know that. Your name’s on the screen.

Okay, right, I just want to say to you, when anyone rings up about any other …

Are you English, are you?

I am English and I’m proud of it.

Good on you.

And yes, I would love to live in England six months of the year and six months in Australia because I love Australia.

Which six months?

In the summer, in England, but what I’d like to …

That’s hardly fair, is it?

Can I just speak? You say that everybody’s racist. When they ring up to you, they say that, when we ring up and speak about Asian people or any other nationality we’re not allowed to have a word in as we’re racists, but the English, you’re just total racist against them.

I am?

You are. You are total racist, and if they’re not, so unimportant, why the hell are you speaking about them on the radio?

So you’re the classic whingeing Pom.

I’m not a whingeing Pom.

You can hear it. Your voice is wound up.

I’m a naturalised Australian but I’ll tell you what, there’s only one problem. All the people like you they should bloody ship back to Ireland where you seem to love the people so much.

Huh! I don’t have …

You’re just causing trouble. The English people are the most patient people …

Wendy! My surname’s Price and it’s Welsh, not Irish.

Shut up and let me speak.

You shut up and nick off.

Shut up, you’re a pig, you’re a racist pig

Go back to England.

You’re a racist pig

Go back to England where ya belong.

I wish I could cos they’re better than you.

Shirley from Chadstone, thanks for being patient.

Shirley [Heavy Welsh accent]: Hi Steve, how are you? Now there are plenty of pretty girls in England and Wales, but they’re a bit pale because of the weather you see, they ...

Pale?

Pale, yes, pale, white, they have not too much sun, but in a few weeks time the British Lions will be out here, you know the rugby players, and I just wondered how you’d like about three of them to flatten you for your racist comments against …

Racist comments …

Against the Brits, yes, Steve.

Someone tried to suggest I’m Irish. You can tell by my surname, Shirley, if you’re Welsh, where I come from.

Absolutely. I know that. I know that. But I think you are hard on the Brits. I’ve often thought that before. But there are plenty of pretty girls there as you well know. You know that. Don’t you?

We-ell …

Yeah, that’s right. I think you’re provocative and sometimes perverse.

Perverse?

Yeah.

Thank you Shirley. Billy from Bendigo. Hello.

Billy [Heavy Scottish accent]: Good day, Steve. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. The opportunity to tell you about these people. I’ve lived close to them as you might know. But they’re a divided society. They’ve got their establishment and they’ve got their classes. They can’t fight their own battles. They used Scotsmen, Welsh, Irish and Australians as cannon fodder during the wars. They’re just awful. And as for architecture, um, as an a, a student of Australian history I might add, when they built Government House in New South Wales, the first thing they put around it was a bloody verandah. [Chuckles] Why does our friend think we don’t have architecture here?

[Chuckling] Exactly, Bill.

There you go! Oh, I love it!

Thank you Billy, we, ah, enjoyed your contribution. 

Can anyone believe that this program would have been allowed to go to air if its subject had been any group other than the English?

Steve Price can be dismissed as a ratings-chaser, but the fact is that this sort of mindless abuse goes on practically all the time in the contemporary Australian media. It would serve no purpose to pile on further examples. Instead I have tried to find one that sums it up.

TV Week is a massively popular guide to what’s on television. Unlike Steve Price it has no reason to court controversy. On 17 August 1996 a reader playfully asked the editor: “… perhaps you could tell me why all men do not wear cravats and top hats, ride horses, call women ma’am and bow to us gallantly, like the characters in Pride and Prejudice? Do you not think they ought?” To this the editor replied: “No, I do not think they ought. I can do without a world chock full of sniffling, handkerchief-up-the-sleeve, foppish, Pommy nancy boys”. Imagine if the question had referred to some film from the third world. It goes without saying that the editor would not have described the relevant ethnic group as “greasy, rag-on-the-head, gabbling, Wog goat fanciers”.

A few ordinary “old Australians” go along with the Anglophobic elites in gleefully denigrating all things British. (So do many, but not all, NESB migrants.) The majority, however, can see through the divide-and-rule strategy of multiculturalism, as can be seen from the following incident.

Phillip Knightley is one of those expatriate Australians who occasionally pop up in the news to tell Aussies what they ought to be doing and thinking. On 4 July 2000, Knightley, who had lived and worked in London for decades, had an “Opinion” article published in The Australian newspaper. His subject was something to do with the relationship between Britain and Australia. (It’s hard to say quite what, as he rambled too much to be certain.)

Among his meandering thoughts he claimed that “Britain is a nervous nation heavy with melancholy, its head turned to the past”, whereas by contrast Australia is a “confident, optimistic country looking to its future”. As a result, he wrote, Australia is full of “exciting” people while Britain is full of “boring” people.

Knightley obviously believes (or hopes?) that Britain and Australia have drifted apart, and as a symbol of this “estrangement” (his word) he evoked the rather tedious issue of Aussies having to line up in the non-EU queue at Heathrow. He also delved a little bit deeper than this terrible injustice, and put Britain down as a geriatric country that can no longer manufacture anything other than military arms.

What was interesting about this is that two days later The Australian published a range of readers’ responses to Knightley’s article – and every correspondent rubbished his claims. Given that that time The Australian was arguably the most anti-British newspaper Down Under, that is significant. It indicates that ordinary Aussies can still see through the endless media propaganda against Britain that often spills over against migrants from the British Isles. There is certainly no doubt that if The Australian had received a single letter from an Anglophobe it would have been published. But no, every single correspondent was positive. Here are a few choice quotes: 

“There’s a past between our two countries and a bloodline link for many. Why reject it or deny it? Let it run and let’s coexist as two independent nations. Neither side needs chips on the shoulder like Mr Knightley’s.” Matthew Rayden, McMahon’s Point, NSW

"Although I hold no brief to apologise for the British, Phillip Knightley’s article is another exercise in ‘Pommy bashing’ which does no service to this country and reflects poorly on his grasp of reality.” Don Cooper, Ballingup, WA. 

“Mr Knightley’s suggestion that we possess exciting, adventurous people and Britain has dull and boring ones is a snapshot taken from the wrong end of the telescope. Compare Tony Blair with our own John Howard. I leave it to your readers to decide who is the boring one. Personally, I find boring people comfortable.” Val Wake, Port Macquarie, NSW. 

“As long as Australians like Phillip Knightley feel the need to voice derogatory comparisons with Britain and its people we can never say that we are ‘over the Poms’. His expressed opinion is surely more indicative of a backwards-looking ex-colonial with acute Anglophobia rather than someone looking to the future with confidence and optimism.” Julian and Fay Bielewicz, Kippa-Ring, Qld .

“On his basic gripe, which seems to be that Aussies have to stand in the non-EU queue at Heathrow, I can say that when Mum came here in 1990 she got to stand in the same queue as anyone else at Tullamarine, but only after having to trek up to Australia House in London to get her visa in person. Now though, you can get one on the phone, but funnily enough to go on holiday to the UK Aussies have never needed one. Both countries are wonderful.” Ian Crossan, Keilor Park, Vic

Knightley, Pilger, Greer, Hughes, and lesser-lights in the multiculturalist firmament like Steve Price, are vastly outnumbered by ordinary Australians, who are still proud of what Matthew Rayden called “the bloodline link”. Yet in face of the near-unanimity of opinion leaders in the media, it has been very difficult for public opposition to make any headway. The history of that opposition will be traced in a later chapter.

In summary, anti-English bias dominates in the Australian media, but it is both superficial and artificial, and the general public has never swallowed it.

1.      In private correspondence.

2.      Howard, C., “Calling the Grampians Bad Names”, The Herald, 28 May 1990.

3.      Koehne, J., “Guilty rapture”, The Australian Magazine, 18 April 1996.

Chapter 15: - Institutionalised racism

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”

                            Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.

Multicultural discourse insists that, since all ethnic groups are equal in ability, differential social outcomes can only be the consequence of some form of racial discrimination. Thus if one ethnic group is over-represented in, say, welfare fraud figures, this is not because that particular group is more prone to fraud. It is rather a consequence of fraud investigators having a negative, “racist” attitude toward that group and consequently pursuing them more diligently. 

Equally, if a particular group is under-represented on some measure of success – such as, say, company directorships – then the reason can only be that the under-represented group in question is being consciously or unconsciously excluded. If that discrimination has been exercised consciously by individuals, then it is regarded as a clear-cut case of “racism”. If no individuals can be shown to have broken any of Australia’s strict race laws so as to deliberately exclude people of a particular ethnic group, then the cause must be “institutionalised racism”. Either way, unequal outcomes for different ethnic groups are regarded as a result of racism of one sort or another.

In 1996 a study from Monash University reported on a massive distortion in different community rates of participation in higher education. The national study, conducted by lan Dobson, Dr Bob Birrell and Virginia Rapson, was so alarming that its principal finding needs to be printed in bold type: 

People from China, Vietnam, Korea and Eastern Europe were twice as likely as people from English-speaking backgrounds to be studying at Australian universities.

The study appeared in the March 1996 issue of the demographic journal, People and Place. It concluded that people who spoke Korean at home had the highest university participation rates (32.6%), followed by Chinese (26.41%), and Vietnamese (24.91%). By contrast, the national average for people of 18 to 27-years attending university was a mere 12.7%. 

The study particularly noted the success of Vietnamese speakers. Unlike the Chinese, they had a high proportion (44%) of people from low socio-economic backgrounds. (So according to traditional elite thinking, the Vietnamese community would therefore need extra help to perform at just the average level.) 

“The Vietnamese speakers appear to embody all the social and economic characteristics which have prompted equity planners to classify NESB people as a disadvantaged group”, the report said. (For readers still gagging on multicultural jargon, “NESB” stands for people of Non English- Speaking Background, while “Equity planners” are government employees concerned with altering the rules to improve the success or participation of supposedly disadvantaged groups.)

Many students of British origin or descent, along with their parents and grandparents, have long suspected that there is no level playing field in the Australian education system. Most find that at almost every stage in the process there is one twist or another that favours the so-called “disadvantaged” social or ethnic groups. Many of these twists are merely the result of excessive “political correctness”, and therefore could easily be removed. For example, if a squabble breaks out in the playground between an Anglo and a NESB child, the Anglo will inevitably be interrogated by a teacher to ascertain whether his or her motives were “racist”. The same teacher will not assume that the NESB child was motivated by racism. Equally, any suggestion of cultural “insensitivity” on the part of an Anglo child will result in a pedagogic grilling, whereas there will seldom be any negative sanctions for a NESB child who evidences the same attitudes in reverse.

The lack of emphasis on sport and physical education in Australian schools over the last few decades also works against children of “old Australian” background. Not everyone can excel in sport, so for PC reasons sporting prowess receives little praise at school. (This writer knows of one case in which four Anglo teenagers from a local government school, who had had no coaching of any kind, were the fastest in the entire State in their 4x100 relay, but this success was not even noted in the school newsletter.) Yet sport is a large part of traditional Australian culture, and the recent unwillingness of teachers to praise sporting prowess can alienate some Anglo children from other parts of the school’s curriculum.

While these and other hurdles for Anglo students may have been erected by people with good intentions, their presence reflects how students of British or “old Australian” origin are being discriminated against. The evidence is not just anecdotal. The Monash study showed that Anglo students are massively disadvantaged in the higher education system, to the extent that they are only participating at half the rate of Vietnamese students. 

Some of the anti-Anglo discrimination in Australia’s education system is clearly a result of institutional racism. Specifically, the system actively discriminates against students of British origin or descent. One of the most insidious forms that this discrimination takes is the skewing of the compound “ENTER scores” (university entrance criteria) to favour languages other than English. One way or another this affects every student seeking higher education. 

About forty foreign languages are now accepted as subjects in the final year of Australian secondary education. There are three problems associated with this. 

First, it is obvious that a native speaker of any of these languages has a massive advantage over an Anglo student trying to learn it from scratch in a family of non-native speakers. That is why the highest marks in, say, Greek and Italian nearly always go to students of Greek and Italian background. 

The second problem is that it is relatively easy for native speakers of a foreign language to achieve perfect or near-perfect scores in languages other than English. (By contrast, it is very difficult to achieve a near-perfect score in, say, history or art or literature.) 

Third, whatever the raw score, it is then “scaled up” (see below), so that it is worth more than an identical score in most other subjects. As Professor Alan Gilbert, vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, was quoted as saying in the Melbourne Herald Sun (22 February 1996) the university entrance procedures “…favoured languages other than English, which were more highly rated.”

All of this artificially raises the overall ENTER score of “ethnic” students, making it easier for them to gain entry to the university or other tertiary course of their choice. It is therefore little wonder that students from an English speaking background are massively under-represented in Australian higher education. 

These problems have been officially recognised with regard to Chinese, one of eight languages that have been selected as national-priority languages for schools. The Board of Studies in Victoria has conceded that Chinese students studying their own native language have an armchair ride to top marks. The “solution” has been to split the subject into two courses. Native speakers would study a course for those of “Chinese Background”, while non-native speakers would study “Chinese as a second language”.

Fair enough, in principle. But a report in the Melbourne Herald Sun (“Language worry”, 1 April 1997) suggested that it was not fair at all. Up to 65% of students taking “Chinese as a second language” in fact studied Chinese as their first language overseas. Anglo students were therefore still competing with native speakers of this language. The published list of those who scored the top marks in this subject in 1996 confirmed this by showing that Chinese names still predominated, as they do today.

The change introduced by the Victorian Board of Studies was largely cosmetic. It was not enforced. The change still wouldn’t work even if it were properly enforced. Many children born in Australia to NESB parents grow up effectively bilingual, even though English might be their official “first language”. Even those who only formally take up their parents’ language in secondary school usually have the massive advantage of having heard that language spoken in the home all their lives, acquiring familiarity with its rhythms, intonations and sound-patterns. 

The Herald Sun article quoted Mal Pritchard, head of languages at Melbourne Grammar, as recognising that there is no level playing field in Australian education. Mr Pritchard apparently “believes there should be three courses: one for native English speakers with no background in Chinese; a second for those with some Chinese background; and a third for those fluent in Chinese”. Even then, human nature being what it is, many Asian students would simply downplay the extent of their NESB background. And it still wouldn’t address these same problems as they apply in most of the 30-plus other languages studied at the pre-university level. 

Moreover, it is a fact that many non-Anglo students have an almost native grasp of English. Yet their classification as being of NESB background often allows them to take their English examinations in a much easier subject called “English as a Second Language”, in which achieving the all-important near-perfect scores is much easier for those with talent. Obviously this soft option is not available to students of “old Australian” background. 

Another anomaly is that traditional Australian culture has always favoured a well-rounded education. Some sense of history, of literature, of art, and so on, has always been considered necessary to a truly educated person. It has always been expected that a lawyer, for instance, should have at least a working knowledge of the Western literary canon, or to have at least a rudimentary mental map of Western culture and history. Yet an Anglo child studying such subjects in the final years of secondary school will be penalised, since these subjects are “scaled down”. The degree of scaling varies from year to year, but as an example, in 1998 a minimal pass mark of 20 in Art was scaled down to 16 while the same score of 20 in Japanese was scaled up to 30. Almost double!

None of this is meant to imply that there is necessarily a deliberate attempt within the education system to exclude students of traditional Australian background. Yet that is the ultimate tendency of many current trends and policies. It should be remembered that people from China, Vietnam, Korea and Eastern Europe are twice as likely as people from English-speaking backgrounds to be studying at Australian universities. We need to ask why this is the case. Unless one wishes to argue that the NESB students are culturally or intellectually superior to Anglo students, the answer can only lie in a form of institutionalised racism that is based on rulings and practices that discriminate against traditional Australian students.

We have looked at some of these discriminatory procedures. Here is another: 

For funding purposes there are effectively two classes of university students, those who pay their fees in full and up-front, and those who take a government loan that is to be repaid once they have graduated and established an earning capacity. Most of those who take the loan are “old Australian” students who cannot afford the other option. Most of those who opt to be “full fee-paying” are NESB students, many of whom are only in Australia for the purpose of tertiary study. The problem is that the relevant ENTER score is different dependant on whether the student takes a loan or elects to pay up-front. For instance, to study Law at the prestigious University of Melbourne requires an ENTER score of 99.3 for students taking a loan, but this is reduced to 95 for “full fee-paying” students. Since there are only a given number of student places, many better-qualified Anglo students are not accepted by the university, while their less-qualified foreign (and Australian-born) fee-paying classmates find it much easier to gain admission.

These examples of institutionalised discrimination in the Australian education system go a long way toward explaining why people from China, Vietnam, Korea and Eastern Europe are twice as likely as people from English-speaking backgrounds to be studying at Australian universities. 

The situation almost as bad in terms of ethnic representation in Australian crime rates, and the victimisation that traditional Australians suffer as a consequence.

The police are aware that some community groups are either more or less likely than others to participate in different types of crime. Here, for example, are some of the Victoria Police Crime Statistics reported in the newspapers in 1996. (The figures are for annual charges per 10,000 head of population.)

There is no reason why these figures from Victoria should be very much out of line with trends in other states. They can therefore be taken as representative. 

There are, however, some problems with this table. Not all serious crimes are listed, and not all ethnic groups. The figure for the Australian-born includes all offenders born in Australia, regardless of their ethnic origin. Similarly, New Zealand migrants include large numbers of Maoris and Pacific Islanders. Nevertheless, it is clear from the table that different types of crime are more common in some ethnic communities than in others. This, however, is something that the secular clerisy of multiculturalism refuses to accept – and their refusal is causing further harm to Anglo-Australians.

The table also does not list the ethnic backgrounds of victims, but it contains at least one crime that does not discriminate in its victims: burglary. A burglar does not care whose house he or she is robbing. Most burglars in Australia are drug addicts seeking to support their habit, and the victim in such cases is targeted solely on the ground of expediency. Since the majority of Australians are of Anglo background, it follows that these people form the majority of victims of burglary. From the table above we can see that in per capita terms an Anglo-Australian is over seven times more likely to be burgled by a Vietnamese migrant than by a British migrant, in per capita terms. 

This logical conclusion is anathema to multicultural rhetoric. After all, any perceived advantage of having a Vietnamese restaurant in every shopping strip is likely to be outweighed in the minds of traditional Australians by the fact that their homes are now far more likely to be burgled than if no Vietnamese had ever come to Australia. The elites have therefore gone to ludicrous lengths to hose down any public perception of a linkage between certain types of crime and identifiable ethnic groups. One response has been to denounce anyone who raises this issue as being a “racist”. A far more sinister response has been to try to censor the information that the police can release when they are seeking public assistance in solving crimes. The racial or ethnic appearance of a criminal might be one of the few clues that the police have, but they are under extreme pressure not to say, for example, that the suspected burglar is of “South-East Asian appearance”. Obviously this hampers their ability to protect the community.

Just how serious this attempted cover-up can be became a major issue in August 2001. The NSW police revealed that in less than a year more than fifty white girls had been gang-raped in Sydney by young Lebanese men. All the victims were “Caucasian” (which in modern Australian usage means of Anglo appearance) and all the rapists were of Lebanese origin. Furthermore, there was evidence that some of the Anglo victims had been subjected to racial taunts by their Lebanese rapists. It would seem to have been a straightforward, although disgusting, crime-wave – not unlike the “rape camps” that were allegedly established as part of the process of “ethnic cleansing” in the recent Balkan Wars. It soon became apparent, though, that the NSW police were under pressure to downplay the racial aspect of these crimes. 

The article that brought them to the attention of Australians outside Sydney appeared in The Weekend Australian of 18-19 August, 2001 ¹. Since it conveys the constraining pressure that the police, the journalists and even the politicians clearly felt, it deserves to be quoted in full:

Rape menace from the melting pot
By Martin Chulov

 WE’VE GOT A LIVE ONE HERE. The text message flashes simultaneously to 10 mobile phones. Minutes later a follow-up message relays to a gang of youths where their next victim is being held. A terrified young girl’s nightmare is about to become unfathomably worse. During the past 11 months, the same sort of scenario has been played out more than 50 times across the south-west of Sydney; a girl is enticed by one or two men, whose cohorts joined them and then each brutally raped her.

But these rapes have had an added, more sinister, element. As well as being motivated by a power lust they have a specific racial component.

Most, if not all, have been perpetrated by men from the same cultural and religious backgrounds.

And in every case the victim was a Caucasian, aged between 13 and 18.

The pattern has become, according to NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan, a new and shocking phenomenon that is probably without precedent in Australian criminology.

“I’ve never come across something quite like this before,” Mr Ryan said yesterday. “Where a particular, clearly defined cultural group of attackers attack a very clearly defined cultural group of victims.”

Despite the fierce resistance to ethnic profiling from within Muslim and Arabic-speaking communities, NSW Premier Bob Carr insists that there should be no “paroxysm of political correctness here”.

“The public wants evidence-based policing,” Mr Carr said earlier this year.

Since last September a team of NSW police – called Strikeforce Sayda – has been working on a series of assaults that have emerged as one of the most confronting issues faced by police anywhere in Australia.

By about Christmas they realised that a high number of rapes in and around the suburbs of Bankstown, Guildford, Greenacre and Homebush Bay were not random. Many of the victims endured racial taunts during their ordeals. Others were left in no doubt as to why they had been targeted.

“We’d had about three before the alarm bells really began to ring,” Mr Ryan said. “There was some concern locally ... but of course you don’t know you have a pattern until a pattern emerges.”

Four offenders have admitted to a large number of sex crimes and will be sentenced this week in the NSW District Court.

But the attacks have continued.

“The offences were so horrific that people didn’t want to talk about it,” Mr Ryan said. “And it wasn’t until we got other information that we were able to track down victims that hadn't come forward.

"We just don’t know how many people have been involved in this, how many victims we have.”

So concerned have some levels of the police service and NSW Government become, that there are real fears that what has happened over the past year could become culturally entrenched – an explosive situation that might take decades to come to terms with.

“It would be preferable if this was an aberration,” Mr Ryan said. “If we saw this as becoming a regular feature I think we will have a very serious problem in this part of the city and we could see a backlash for example, which could be disastrous for multicultural harmony.”

Already, police have heard anecdotally of racial slurs being hurled during the past week by Caucasian men at Middle-Eastern people – the generic term used by police to describe each of the 22 communities of Arabic-speaking people in Sydney’s southwest.

However, there are growing fears that to leave the description that broad acts as a potential slur on all people of Middle-Eastern backgrounds. The Australian understands that the alleged group of offenders is predominately drawn from a non-representative small pool of renegade Muslim youths who are either Lebanese-born, or Lebanese Australians.

Vice-president of the NSW-based Lebanese Muslim Association, Keysar Trad, said the public’s perception was that crime was only committed by one particular group and his community was being victimised.

“The message is out there, if you’re a victim, then the perpetrator of the crime must be of Middle-Eastern appearance,” he said.

“I don’t know why somebody has done this malicious attack on the community; we’re getting threatening calls on a daily basis.”

Mr Ryan declined to identify the attackers by ethnic background. “We don’t want to thereafter blacken the name of the ethnic group,” he said. “But it’s difficult to reconcile the need to say who is doing something and why we’re looking for this group of people, and the need to protect the community from backlash or unfairly branding everyone. It is an invidious position.”

Tony Stewart, the state MP for Bankstown, said that since the extent of the phenomenon was made public three weeks ago, about eight women each day had called or visited his electoral office wanting to know how to protect themselves from rapists.

Mr Stewart believes that despite the racial orientation of the attacks, the race of the victims may instead be a by-product of the offenders wanting to avoid being identified within their own community.

He called for parents and community and Muslim leaders to take a more vigorous interest in the welfare of youths in the area. “In the local Arabic-speaking community I think it’s very hard to get the message through,” Mr Stewart said.

Police have several theories about motives for the attacks, including a desire to racially subvert another group.

However, the only theory Mr Ryan would be drawn on was the possibility that the attacks could have been a prerequisite for gang membership. “There was a suggestion at one time that it might have been initiation to a gang, acceptance to a gang, that an individual had to go out and find the woman and bring her back to other members of the gang,” he said.

But the offenders charged so far are not believed to be part of a structured gang that is involved in any other sort of criminal activity. They are predominantly groups of youths who live in a common area and socialise together.

They are never without their mobile phones, which in most of the 50 documented cases have been used to rally gang rapists to where a victim was being held.

“We have come across this in a number of cases, where individuals are pulled up by police they immediately hit the send button on pre-programmed numbers and within minutes all friends, relatives, mates and chums descend on that location,” Mr Ryan said.

The method has in all cases been the same. The attackers win the trust of the girls, in some cases at parties, but more often in public places – in one instance a bus stop and in two others a public park.

The nightmare for two 16-year-olds started at Beverly Hills train station on September 5 last year. A car containing five males pulled up and forced them inside. They were taken to a home, terrorised at knifepoint and sexually assaulted.

“We’re just going to have some fun tonight,” one of the offenders said according to facts tendered recently before a pre-sentencing hearing.

Mr Ryan said the tension in the city’s west was to some extent a by-product of Sydney’s huge recent immigration.

“All we have to do is look at history. The other largest migrations in the world were prior to and at the turn of the century in the United States when the world sent their poor, their dispossessed and their politically threatened (there).” he said.

“This is the largest immigrant population of (mixed) races in the world. It’s going to be extraordinarily difficult to settle that melting pot down.”

Additional reporting by Ian Gerard

Note that the vice-president of the NSW-based Lebanese Muslim Association, Keysar Trad, complained that the public’s perception was that crime was only committed by one particular group and his community was being victimised. The fact is that the particular crime was only committed by youths of Lebanese origin. Remember his lament: “I don’t know why somebody has done this malicious attack on the community …” Yet no-one had “done” any attack on the Lebanese community – police and journalists had merely relayed some of the most salient facts of the case. And the facts were that some members of the Lebanese community had perpetrated disgraceful and disgusting attacks on some of the most vulnerable members of the traditional Australian community – seemingly for racial reasons.

In the immediate aftermath of this article, many “spokesmen” for the local Muslim community went into similar denial. Halla Marbani, Secretary of the Australian Arabic Council, objected to the fact that that the offenders were reported as having belonged to “Lebanese gangs”, claiming that this “… serves to malign entire communities …” (One wonders how it would be reported if criminal gangs of young Anglo-Australians were ever caught systematically pack-raping Arab girls in Lebanon.) Syed Atiq Ul Hassan, President of Pakistan Community Services, Bankstown, NSW, wrote that “The criminals don’t have any religion or race” (had he interviewed them?) and went on to imply that it was all the fault of the NSW government: “… the NSW Government must assign more police and detectives on the road and at sensitive places, especially at the girls’ schools, to provide security to the people.” 

Senior Muslim spiritual leader Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly said the rapes were a failure of Australian culture, not Lebanese culture, and implied that the girls were “asking for it” by wearing Australian-style clothing. 

As the first three rapists proceeded through the legal system, it became obvious that the victims had been let down at every stage. The court system did not protect them because the plea-bargaining system led to a watering down of the disgraceful facts. For instance, the mother of one of the victims said the girls were racially taunted and were told: “You deserve it because you’re an Australian”. This was omitted from the evidence presented to the judge. The judge herself failed them, handing down such lenient sentences that the rapists were free to walk out of prison within four years. The media failed them by dwelling on the sensitivities of ethnic community spokesmen rather than on the hours of racially-motivated degradation the victims endured. Perhaps their only safety in future might be to follow Sheik Al Hilaly’s advice and wear all-enveloping Muslim clothes.

It is easy to sympathise with these victims, but there are many other groups of traditional Australians against which multiculturalism systematically discriminates. For instance, there is now a wide range of programs of “affirmative action” set up to overcome perceived disadvantages arising from ethnicity or gender. These assume that victims are always NESB-ethnic and/or female. Thus a computer specialist from Hyderabad working at an Australian university has instant and often tax-funded support if certain things go wrong in his life. Meanwhile a mechanic from Liverpool working in the depressed industrial suburbs is entirely on his own.

In modern Australia an employer who discriminates in favour of an Anglo-Australian will face prosecution, but jobs can be set aside for people from certain ethnic backgrounds. This works in two ways. First, the job might be said to require a particular ethnicity for reasons of cultural sensitivity. Thus it is quite common for universities, for instance, which usually pride themselves on being “equal opportunity employers”, to state openly that “aboriginality” is a necessary qualification for some positions. Second, in some areas of employment there is an acknowledged push to have a blend of employees ethnically representative of the “multicultural” community. This has long been obvious in government employment, where it serves a dual purpose in both placing non-whites in high profile jobs and at the same time decreasing their over-dependence on social security. Whatever the reasoning behind these ethnic set-asides, the fact remains that people of British Isles descent are discriminated against in ways for which they have no redress.

The Australian Tax Office, the courts, the schools and many government departments are all particularly sympathetic and helpful to people of a NESB background. No such sympathy extends to educationally disadvantaged Anglo-Australians who are presumed, often falsely, to understand the rules. Thus the necessarily intricate taxation return of an Anglo tradesman may well be beyond his ability to complete correctly, but any errors will generally be treated as deliberate, while his NESB counterpart will receive assistance.

Nor, increasingly, can Anglo-Australians criticise the system that is rapidly turning all but those Anglos who are themselves part of the elite into second-class citizens. For instance, the government provides funding to assist NESB migrant organisations to maintain their communities’ separate identities. It also delivers separate ethnic services of many kinds. No such funding is available specifically for Anglo-Australians who may wish to preserve their own culture. 

The problem is that to criticise special ethnic funding is, according to multicultural rhetoric, tantamount to wanting ethnic migrants to assimilate into the mainstream culture. That is said to deny the “unique contribution” they make to Australia by keeping up their old traditions, and therefore by extension to be offensive to ethnic migrants. If anyone purporting to speak on behalf of a particular ethnic group then claims to have been offended by the statement it is deemed to have in law been offensive, regardless of intent. The Anglo-Australian might then be prosecuted under the various commonwealth and state acts that are designed to curtail racial discrimination or vilification. These acts are in turn a minefield, because they are usually administered by a tribunal or commission of people appointed because of their “sensitivity” to ethnic concerns. The fear is that they will interpret words, actions, arguments in ways that a jury would not. Few ordinary Australians have the financial resources to mount a proper legal defence on such a slippery playing field.

Two other aspects of this problem should be mentioned. First, the various laws typically allow for certain exemptions. These apply to people like journalists, artists, comedians and academics – members of the cultural elites, and the very people who would be least likely to challenge the system. 

Second, while the laws and regulations appear to be impartially worded, and therefore to protect all community groups, they accord no protection to the majority. For example, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal stipulates that radio and TV stations must not broadcast a program which is likely to perpetuate hatred against, or which gratuitously vilifies, a person or group on the basis of ethnicity, nationality or race. Equally, most major newspapers and magazines have agreed that belittling people by reference to their race, nationality, colour or country of origin is a “breach of ethical standards”. Readers need only recall the previous chapter to realise that these high-sounding ideals count for nothing when the opportunity arises to vilify British people and Australians of British origin. 

For the multiculturalists, no less than for Humpty Dumpty, words mean what they choose them to mean – neither more nor less.

1. The story first appeared in the Sydney Sun Herald on 29 July 2001. It did not break nationally until 18 August 2001. This delay reflects the reluctance of the elite decision-makers to inform the Australian public of any adverse consequences of multiculturalism.

Chapter 16: - Symbols

In order to possess what you do not possess

You must go by the way of dispossession

            - T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

In the 1950s and 60s every motion picture shown in an Australian cinema was preceded by a short film of a young and attractive Queen Elizabeth on horseback, reviewing the troops. As the opening bars of the national anthem were struck, the audience rose as one and stood in respectful silence. There was no legal or other compulsion to do this. It was merely the custom. On the rare occasion when someone failed to stand to attention, the rest of the audience made no secret of their hostility, but condemnation was seldom required. The national anthem in those days was, of course, “God Save the Queen”.

It has already been noted that every Monday morning assembly in government schools in those days time involved the school community saluting the flag and pledging “to serve the Queen”. The flag, of course, contained a Union Jack in its top left corner, as did those of New Zealand and Canada. The Queen was the symbolic head of state of all these “British” nations, representing the “crimson thread of kinship”. Her portrait hung in scout halls, police stations, school halls, council chambers, courtrooms and other governmental buildings, reminding Australians that the legitimacy of their institutions was based on English common law. Many of the most prestigious professional organisations included the prefix “Royal” in their names. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal Australian Planning Institute, for instance, all proclaimed by their titles that their professionalism and ethics had earned the royal recognition and imprimatur. Australian children were born and treated in hospitals with names like the Royal Women’s Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital.

The Imperial system of weights and measures still prevailed. The currency was a matter of pounds, shillings and pence. Bathroom scales were calibrated in stones and pounds. The weight of new-born children was recorded in pounds and ounces. Thermometers measured degrees in Fahrenheit. Petrol was sold by the gallon, milk by the pint or quart. Pharmacists measured out their medicines in grains, drams and ounces. Horse races involved distances specified in furlongs and miles. A cricket pitch was one chain in length, and primary school children knew that a chain was equal to 22 yards, or 4 poles, (or rods or perches). Land was measured in poles, roods and acres. Wheat was sold in bushels. Houses were advertised for sale as comprising a certain number of “squares”, each of which was 100 square feet. Sports journalists reported the height of athletes in feet and inches, and police used the same measures to describe suspects.

In short, in most of their day-to-day activities, Australians were reminded of their links to other “British” nations around the world (including the United States), and consequently of the length of their cultural history. Even at the most vernacular level it was obvious that Australian history did not begin in 1788, but was just a delta of an ancient historical river that began before most of the Anglo-Saxons ever migrated across the English Channel from the region of modern Denmark to Britain.

All of these symbols were as traditionally Australian as anything could be. Generations of Australians had grown up with them. Yet due to the importance that the elites attach to symbols most of them were soon to be overturned, one after the other. The elites have acted on the principle that to destroy a symbol is to deal a death blow to the reality for which it once stood.

The first to go was the currency of pounds, shillings and pence. At the time of his retirement in 1966 Sir Robert Menzies, soon to be made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, had served an uninterrupted term of sixteen years as Prime Minister. Most voters evidently trusted him. He was seen by almost all Australians as extremely pro-British, although he had also committed Australian troops to the American war in Vietnam. Both the U.K. and the U.S., Australia’s principal allies, at that time used traditional weights and measures, and Britain still had pounds, shillings and pence. Yet for some reason that has never been adequately explained, the Menzies government announced that Australia was to adopt a metric system.

At first the new currency to replace the old ten shilling note was to be called the “royal”. This was the name of a forgotten English gold coin, equal to one and a half “angels”, but in Menzies’ time the word would have carried implications of loyalty to the monarch. Since the Australian majority was then intensely loyal, this would not have been anomalous. However, after a trip to the U.S., Menzies announced that most Australians preferred the term dollar. They had not been consulted, but the dollar was what they got.

Then the other weights and measures changed, often in a bewildering way. The old foot, which any schoolchild could estimate adequately, became 30.479 centimetres. A gallon became 4.546 litres. A square foot became 9.29 square decimetres. The results of the change were often bizarre. It became illegal to import into the country, or to sell, rulers calibrated only in British Linear Measures. Yet Australia’s entire building stock had been constructed using precisely these measures. Building workers were therefore suddenly expected to cope with completely unfamiliar measures. Carpenters replacing floorboards, for instance, now had to convert the eighteen inches between joists into 457.182 millimetres. Sometimes entirely new, and often ludicrous, jobs were created by the conversion. For example, since the nation’s railway stock could not be instantly replaced, grain continued to arrive at ports in wagons designed in terms of imperial measures. Since all government records now had to be kept in metric figures, someone had to convert the imperial measure of the grain to metric, then scrupulously destroy the old records. Finally, the new metric figures had to be re-converted back to imperial for much of the export market! 

In the 1970s, portraits of the Queen began to vanish from council chambers and other public places. There were occasional objections from the public, but usually the removal was done quietly and few people noticed the change. Then the “ER” sign, standing for Elizabeth Regina, was removed from mail posting boxes – again, presumably, giving someone a new and unnecessary job.

Also in the 1970s the national anthem was changed from “God Save the Queen”. On this issue the public was actually given a say. In a poll they endorsed “Advance Australia Fair”, although with such lack of enthusiasm that most Australians even today don’t know the words. Part of the (albeit lukewarm) acceptance of this song may have been due to its second and third verses, which were dropped when it became the official anthem. For the record, here is the full, original version:

ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR

Australia’s sons let us rejoice

For we are young and free

With golden soil and wealth for toil

Our home is girt by sea.

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts

Of beauty rich and rare

In history’s page

Let every stage

Advance Australia Fair

CHORUS:

In joyful strains then let us sing

Advance Australia Fair

When gallant Cook from Albion sailed

To trace wide oceans o’er

True British courage bore him on

Till he landed on our shore

Then here he raised Old England’s flag

The standard of the brave

“With all her faults, we love her still

Britannia rules the wave”.

REPEAT CHORUS

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross

We’ll toil with heart and hands

To make our youthful Commonwealth

Renowned of all the lands

For loyal sons beyond the seas

We’ve boundless plains to share:

With courage let us all combine

To advance Australia Fair.

REPEAT CHORUS

The importance that the elites attach to symbols has already been mentioned. They must have been delighted that an emasculated version of such a pro-British song was accepted as the new national anthem. Not only had they managed to get rid of “God Save the Queen”; they had also neutralised a song that might otherwise have served as a focus of defiance by the Anglo-Australian majority.

The 1970s also saw the scrapping in Australia of the Imperial honours system. A few nineteenth century figures, most notably William Wentworth ¹, had advocated a local Australian honours system with hereditary rights, but this idea had been ridiculed as leading to a “bunyip aristocracy” (the bunyip being a mythical and humorous Australian animal). Generations of academics, journalists and teachers had since scoffed at this apparently preposterous idea, but there were no sniggering references to a “bunyip aristocracy” when the Order of Australia was introduced to replace the British Imperial honours of the past.

It was a busy decade for the elites, who were hell-bent on scrapping as many as possible of the old symbols and the symbolic links with which Australians were familiar. One of these was the right of final legal appeal to the British Privy Council. In practice there were few such appeals, but the Privy Council had been in theory the supreme judicial authority of the Empire, and therefore of Australia. Australians had sensibly retained the right of appeal to this body as a potential counterbalance to any governmental stacking of the local courts with political sympathisers. This typical Aussie pragmatism counted for nothing in the rush to unravel the “old Australia” and the right of appeal was accordingly abolished.

In the 1980s an emerging lobby to change the flag and to abolish the monarchy became prominent. Although these issues were supposedly separate, there was a large overlap in the personnel running the two campaigns, and it would be fair to say that most people who supported one of these changes also supported the other. Conversely, most people who opposed either of these changes also opposed the other. The old sectarian problem of Irish Catholics also surfaced yet again, with people whose surnames indicated some degree of Irish Catholic background being disproportionately prominent in the movement for change.

In 1988 Australia celebrated two hundred years of British settlement. There were spectacular fireworks displays, and all sorts of other apparently patriotic activities across the continent, but some very sour currents were also rising to the surface.

Aboriginal activists, for example, complained that they had nothing to celebrate. They said that Australia Day, the 26^th of January, was for them “Invasion Day”. In the prevailing climate of political correctness it would have seemed churlish at best, racist at worst, to suggest that Aborigines as a whole, and particularly aboriginal women, had perhaps benefited from British settlement. Prudently, most “old Australians” maintained a discreet silence.

The other big issue of the year, however, inflamed many passions. A descendant of a prominent colonial Australian family proposed to re-enact the coming of the First Fleet, using whatever surviving and appropriate sailing ships were available. The Prime Minister, Robert Hawke, peevishly refused to have a bar of this proposal, and was perceived by the electorate to be placing every possible obstacle in its way. The public dug in its collective heel, and the First Fleet re-enactment went ahead as a private venture. When it arrived in Australia the majority rapturously celebrated not just their bi-centenary but also this rare victory over the elites.

By the 1990s the big issue was republicanism. A cabal of the rich and powerful argued that the office of the Queen of Australia should be abolished, mainly (or so it seemed from their arguments) because as a “mature” and independent nation Australia should have “its own head of state”. By this they meant that all reference to the monarchy should be removed from Australia’s constitution, with the Queen’s position to be replaced by a republican head of state who would either be appointed by parliament or directly elected. The opposition to this proposed change was led, not by monarchists who supported the institution embodied by the current Queen, but by a group called “Australians for Constitutional Monarchy”. These people argued principally that if the Queen of Australia had in law any residual powers it was better that she should retain them. At least she would never use them, whereas to entrust any such powers to a politician might be to court disaster.

Any proposal for a change to Australia’s constitution has to be placed before all voters in the form of a referendum. To be successful a referendum must pass two hurdles. It requires the support of a majority of voters across Australia, and also the support of more than half the voters in more than half the states. (The second provision is designed to protect the rights of people living in states with smaller populations – essentially, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.) After extensive public consultation the referendum was duly put. In yet another example of the larrikin pragmatism of traditional Australian culture, the majority of voters in every state rejected the proposal – a far greater number than could have been delivered by genuine monarchists.

The republican elites were comprehensively defeated by the Australian majority in November 1999, but since then they have continued their advocacy of a republic in the print and electronic media with scarcely a pause for breath. They have signalled clearly that they will not let the matter rest. The fact that Australia is still a monarchy fills them what they call “shame”, and they have derided the Prime Minister, who fulfilled his constitutional responsibilities by allowing the public to vote in a referendum, as the “man who broke the nation’s heart”.

The elites will of course continue their campaign to remove the Queen from the Australian Constitution. The fact that in half a century the Queen has never intervened in Australian politics, and indeed has only ever visited the country on a handful of royal tours, shows that their objection is largely based on symbolism – which is also why they derisively refer to her as “the Queen of England”, when she is also legally the Queen of Australia. In short, the Queen is for them an irritating reminder that independent Australia has a British past.

The symbol of traditional Australia to which they most object is, of course, the national flag. Or, to be more precise, it is the fact that the flag still includes the Union Jack that fills them with exaggerated outrage and “shame”. Their opposition to the flag is based solely on its permanent reminder that Australia has always been a “British” nation. Sometimes the elites address this directly in their propaganda, arguing that the Union Jack is “irrelevant” or even “offensive” now that Australia is a “multicultural” nation. More often, though, they simply obfuscate and lie.

The most common obfuscation is that foreigners might confuse Australia’s flag with those of other nations and states. The flags of New Zealand, Fiji and various other legislatures, even including the U.S. state of Hawaii, have a Union Jack in the same position; and, so it is claimed, ignorant outsiders might not know which nation or state has won an international sporting event when one of these supposedly confusing flags is unfurled. Most Australians shrug off this argument. After all, they say, why should Australians relinquish the symbols that remind them of who they are and where they come from simply because some dunce in Dubai or Dahomey cannot recognise the Australian national flag? It would be just as senseless to change the name of the country merely because some foreigners might occasionally confuse it with Austria.

As far as blatant lies are concerned, the critics sometimes attempt to claim that the Australian flag in its present form is not the flag under which Australian troops fought in the major twentieth century wars. Of course it was, and war veterans and their representatives routinely point out that this claim is untrue. Furthermore, the “offensive” part, the Union Jack, is the actual flag under which Australians served and died in nineteenth century conflicts.

What these high-profile members of the community know only too well is that the Union Jack on the flag binds modern Australians to their ancestors and their rich heritage down through the centuries. To remove it would be to truncate Australia’s history, to break the chain of cultural and historical heritage that stretches back beyond Federation, beyond the original convict settlements, and even beyond the royal proclamation of 1606 that established the first Union Jack as the national flag of Great Britain.

That, of course, is the aim. If the symbols of the flow of culture from one generation to another can be reviled, disposed of and eventually forgotten, the task of cultural transmission will be made much harder. Sooner or later the majority of the population will have little knowledge or understanding of the achievements of their ancestors. They will then be easily proletarianised. As Arnold Toynbee wrote:

The true hallmark of the proletarian is neither poverty nor humble birth but a consciousness – and the resentment which this consciousness inspires – of being disinherited from his ancestral place in Society and being unwanted in a community which is his rightful home; and this subjective proletarianism is not incompatible with the possession of material assets. 

Once they are reduced to this state the Australian people will be more easily governed, and of course the elites intend to be the permanent governing class.

1. The reader met Wentworth in Chapter 7.
2. The effects of this change were also sometimes very subtle, eroding the common literary heritage that Australia shared with other English-speaking nations. For instance, it would be barbaric to substitute the pedantic word “kilometres” for the homely “miles” in a context like this verse from A E Housman:

Oh, when I was in love with you,

Then I was clean and brave

And miles around the wonder grew

How well I did behave.

Chapter 17: - The Anglo-Australian response

I have pictured long in the land I love what that land I love might be,

Where the Darling rises from Queensland rains and the floods rush out to the sea.

And is it our fate to wake too late to the truth that we have been blind,

With a foreign foe at our harbour-gate and a blazing drought behind?

Henry Lawson, Men We Might Have Been

Most Anglo-Australians are defiantly proud of their traditional culture and its achievements. This pride can be observed in many spheres of activity. In sport, for example, millions of fans each year attend games of Australian Rules Football, whereas soccer, seen as a game for “ethnics”, attracts derisory attendances. Similarly, the American game of baseball has never taken on, while the English game of cricket is followed – and played – passionately. In terms of history, replicas of ships that were important in Australia’s early history, like Captain Cook’s Endeavour, attract many thousands of eager visitors. Every year more and more people attend Anzac Day memorial services at dawn, and every year more Australians make the commemorative trek to Gallipoli. Even in their television viewing they glory in their national achievements. Probably the two most successful local mini-series of recent years have been Australians at War, a patriotic military history of Australia, and A Long Way to the Top, a history of Australia’s very successful rock music industry – a program which, incidentally, stressed the fact that the industry was largely founded by young English migrants in the 1960s.

It has proven particularly difficult for Australians to translate this popular loyalty to traditional culture into the political sphere. The main reason has been that on most issues the major political parties are about as different as Coke and Pepsi, whereas most Australians would prefer a drink that is actually nourishing. Bipartisanship has prevented their aspirations from being reflected in the mainstream of politics over recent decades, and it is therefore not surprising that they have looked elsewhere in their search for a voice.

One obvious choice would be to support a small political party, but that strategy has its inbuilt problems. Any party that is outside the mainstream can be represented as being “extremist”, whether it is nominally of the left or the right. That label is in itself enough to frighten off many potential supporters and voters. Furthermore, small parties are almost invariably starved of funds and therefore have to rely disproportionately on volunteers who often have limited skills. A few of these volunteers will inevitably be of such low calibre that they may well bring disrepute to the party. The mainstream media will usually be hostile, so it is very difficult for a small party to propagate its message. Usually its leaders will have little professional experience of politics, and therefore at least in terms of image will find themselves struggling against their professional rivals who can afford slick minders and image-managers. For these and many other reasons the resort to a minor party is often an invitation to be led astray by a Pied Piper. Yet in the face of Australia’s bipartisan political “closed shop” it is not surprising that many people loyal to the traditional culture have followed this path.

Sadly, it need not have been so. The 1966 change that led to the demise of the White Australia Policy was achieved only by deception. The then-opposition Labor Party sought and obtained from the Minister assurances that the change was merely administrative. In particular, the Minister specifically promised that rich Asians would not be able to buy entry to Australia and that there would be no large-scale entry of Asians in general. Many Labor parliamentarians spoke in favour of the traditional policy, pointing out that it had allowed Australia to avoid the problems of multiracial countries such as the UK, the USA, South Africa, Malaya, Fiji and others. Some went even further. Charles Jones said, “I am opposed completely and unreservedly to any migration other than European migration.” Frank Stewart pointed out that it is not a sin “to be white or … for a white nation to want to retain a predominantly white population”.

Clearly, the traditional policy was alive and well in the hearts of many serving members of parliament within the living memory of most Australians – and most current politicians. One who remained vocal in his opposition to Asianisation was Graeme Campbell, an old-style Labor member for Australia’s largest electorate, Kalgoorlie. His increasing criticism of the elites and their agenda finally became so trenchant that he was disendorsed by his own party in 1995. His support in the community was such that he was immediately re-elected as an independent. In 1996 he formed his own political party called “Australia First”.

This new organisation was supported by many people who had previously been involved with other political parties and groups. One such was a minor party called Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI), which advocated a policy of zero net immigration. Despite a lack of funding and scant media attention, AAFI had achieved some impressive results. As one journalist summarised its record:

For at least 10 years, there has been a solid core of voters unhappy with changes in Australian society. Since as far back as 1991, when an Australians Against Further Immigration candidate secured 6.8 per cent at a by-election in the Liberal-held seat of Menzies in eastern Melbourne, what is now known as the Hansonite element has figured in national politics. At a series of by-elections in safe Liberal and Labor seats throughout the early 1990s, AAFI candidates picked up between 6 per cent and 14 per cent. ¹

Momentum seemed to be building toward a new force in Australian politics. Graeme Campbell was an articulate and knowledgeable politician, with many years of parliamentary experience. At a rally held on Australia Day, 1996, in a packed town hall in the Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg, he was greeted as a saviour by the enthusiastic audience. Later that year some Australian tourists were massacred by an apparently crazy gunman in Tasmania. Federal legislation was then introduced to ban automatic and semi-automatic guns. Reputable gun-owners objected, depicting the ban as a draconian response to a one-off event, and held rallies around the country. The largest was in Melbourne on 1 June 1996, at which a crowd of 70,000 was addressed by Graeme Campbell. His profile, and his support, were both rising.

It seemed possible that the “solid core of voters unhappy with changes in Australian society” had at last found a politically experienced leader. Yet by a strange quirk of timing another significant event of 1996 was the election to federal parliament of a Queensland woman destined to become far better known than Campbell: Pauline Hanson. A fish and chip shop owner, her only previous political experience had been service of less than one year on her local council. She was endorsed by the Liberal Party to stand in a safe Labor federal electorate. Her electoral prospects were therefore minimal until, shortly before the election date, she wrote a letter to her local paper advocating that special rights for Aborigines should be withdrawn so that Australians “might start to work together as one”. Hanson’s rival candidates in the election sought to discredit her by expressing moral outrage, and a massive and disproportionate media frenzy then erupted. Hanson was disendorsed by the Liberal Party, but it was too late to remove her endorsement from the ballot paper. In a blaze of free media publicity she was depicted as the embodiment of everything the elites hated in traditional Australia. She therefore romped into parliament, achieving the largest anti-Labor swing anywhere in Australia at that election.

She was then cold-shouldered by every other member of parliament except Graeme Campbell, who procured her an experienced political adviser. With this man’s help Hanson was able, by September 1996, to make her maiden speech. In it she said, among other things:

I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin.

The media storm, which had scarcely abated since Hanson first became known, now doubled. For the next two years she was on the front pages of newspapers around the country day after day, she was as often as not the lead item on electronic news bulletins, the guest on an endless round of current affairs programs and radio talk-back shows. Public opinion polls appeared to show strong and increasing support for Hanson, and also provided the grist for hundreds of journalists to provide their own “analyses” of her allegedly surprising popularity. Others wrote, sometimes darkly and often hysterically, of the “dark forces” she was “encouraging”.

The hype given to her by the media was so excessive that readers who were not in Australia at the time would find it difficult to imagine. Not since the Gulf War of 1990 had a single issue dominated the media to this extent. Yet Hanson herself didn’t merit a fraction of the attention she received. Her election had been something of a fluke, owing partly to the incorrect ballot paper mentioned above. She was obviously limited both politically and intellectually. Having left school at the age of fifteen, her lack of education showed in her ungrammatical and sometimes incoherent answers to questions. She had no detailed political policies. The adviser supplied by Graeme Campbell has since revealed that he could seldom persuade her to read even simple briefing notes. Despite, or maybe because of, all these disabilities, the media built her up as the leader and spokesperson of all those who were disaffected with the agenda of the elites.

This certainly suited the elite interests in at least two ways. First, those people who still held to the values of traditional Australia, the values of every Prime Minister up to the late 1960s, could be portrayed as followers of an inarticulate bumpkin from the “redneck state” of Queensland. Second, the blaze of publicity for Hanson took the wind out of the sails of Graeme Campbell’s Australia First party. Campbell, who could hold his own in debate with the sharpest journalist or commentator, conveniently disappeared from the media – while a few journalists who obviously felt sorry for Hanson began to treat her with a kindliness they would normally reserve for an unfortunate invalid.

New events spaced at expedient intervals allowed the media to keep Pauline Hanson in the public notice. For instance, in 1997 an anonymous supporter wrote a book called Pauline Hanson: The Truth. Since it was copyrighted to Hanson herself, it appeared to be written by her. Since Hanson clearly lacked the education to write a properly referenced book, its real authorship became the focus of weeks of media speculation. With all this free publicity the book should have been one of Australia’s all-time best sellers, and therefore have made a huge contribution to Hanson’s political war-chest. Yet when confronted with some of the statements it contained, Hanson was unable to defend a work that she had perhaps never read. It was consequently withdrawn from sale.

The extreme Left also played their part in boosting Hanson’s profile. Her public political meetings were boycotted by screaming anarchists and communists. Those who wished to hear for themselves what she had to say had to run a gauntlet to enter the hall and were violently abused, spat on and pelted with urine-filled balloons. In Melbourne, an elderly man who was not even a Hanson supporter was so severely bashed trying to attend one of her meetings that he had to be hospitalised.

Every new development led to a further blitz of media publicity. One Jewish community newspaper somehow obtained a list of members of Hanson’s new political party, called One Nation, and published their names under the heading “Gotcha!” Comments on the propriety of this action then filled opinion columns for weeks.

In all, Pauline Hanson was the second most talked about person on Australian radio and television in 1997-8, according to the media monitoring group Rehame. As a result of all this media boosting, at the Queensland state election in 1998 Hanson’s One Nation party won just under 23% of the primary vote. In the wake of this stunning result the utter incompetence of her leadership soon became apparent. Acrimonious debates quickly erupted within her party. Serious questions arose about funding and the fate of donations. The party was deregistered by the Queensland electoral authorities because of an amateurish bungle in its original registration, then subsequently re-registered. Things were rapidly falling apart. Prominent members one after another either resigned or were expelled. By December 1999 not one of the One Nation representatives elected to the Queensland parliament less than two years earlier was still a party member.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party was now apparently a spent force. The many people who had invested their time, money and hopes in this media creation had been left shorter in purse and spirit. Worse still, in the 1999 federal election One Nation stood a candidate in Kalgoorlie against Graeme Campbell. This split the vote of traditional Australians, and Campbell consequently lost office to his Liberal Party opponent. The upshot was that the views and aspirations of the Australian majority were no longer represented in federal parliament – at least, not openly.

Yet the resentment Australians felt at the way their country had been transformed by the elites – and at the sneering contempt that the elites showered on the majority – continued to grow. The first opportunity to flaunt this resentment was the referendum on Australia’s becoming a republic. We have seen that a majority of voters in every Australian state voted to retain the constitutional monarchy. This outcome had almost nothing to do with any remaining public loyalty to the incumbent of Buckingham Palace, and little more to do with legal or constitutional arguments. The leaders of the traditionalist cause skilfully drove home the fact that the proposed republic was an obsession of the reviled elites. They also cleverly highlighted divisions within the elites themselves on the precise form that their republic should take. Then the fact emerged that a well-known and much-disliked merchant banker was a major contributor to the coffers of the republicans, to the tune of millions of dollars. The referendum was held in a mood of almost tribal hostility. This was reflected in the most successful slogan coined by the traditionalists: “Say no to the politicians’ republic!”

The referendum result was more than a symbolic victory for the majority. Almost without exception the media had preached the need for Australia to become a republic. They had been backed by a chorus of prominent clergymen, cultural figures, actors and other celebrities, even athletes. In short, the elites had closed ranks on this issue, and utilised every form of influence to obtain a “Yes” vote. That they were so thoroughly snubbed demonstrated just how disgruntled the majority had become.

One man who must have considered the implications of this display of Anglo-Australian resentment was the then-Prime Minister, John Howard. During the referendum campaign he had presented himself as being, on balance, in favour of the traditional constitutional arrangement. Nevertheless, he had discharged his duties in an impartial manner and had not sought to use the influence of his high office to sway the vote. (For instance, he allowed high-profile ministers in his government to express support for the republican proposal.)

Readers may recall that in 1988, when he was Leader of the Opposition, Howard had expressed some reservations about the impact of massive Asian immigration on the social fabric of Australia. Howled down by the media, he had quickly disowned his expressed opinion. A decade later, and now Prime Minister, he may have noted that the Australian majority was able – indeed happy – to vote against the orchestrated agenda of the elites.

By 2001 John Howard was nearing the end of his second term of office as Prime Minister. Third terms are very rare in Australian politics. The Howard government was easily portrayed as tired, and the published opinion polls suggested that its defeat was almost inevitable. Then an incident arose that fell into Howard’s hands. A boatload of self-proclaimed refugees from the Middle East arrived in Australian waters, via predominantly Muslim Indonesia. They demanded to be allowed to settle in Australia. Howard took a tough stance, had the illegal immigrants detained by the military, and sent many of them to the independent Pacific micro-nation of Nauru to have their stories checked. The result was probably better than Howard could have hoped for. From trailing in the polls, the Howard Liberal government briefly shot to a lead of being preferred by 60% of voters, as compared to 30% support for the Labor opposition.

Whatever Howard’s thinking may have been in the early stages of this “boat people” crisis, it quickly became obvious that the Anglo-Australian majority was so “unhappy with changes in Australian society” that even a token gesture in defence of the traditional Anglo culture might determine the result of an election.

The Australian majority may not have spoken yet, but at least they have demonstrated that they are still the majority – and that a mainstream politician can appeal to them over the heads of the elites and still be heeded. Since Australia is at least a nominal democracy, the cause of the majority is not yet lost.

1. Carney, Shaun, “Who is the real John Howard?”, The Age, 10 March 2001

Chapter 18: - Prospects and perspectives

Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much,

And speak the truth that no man may believe.

Tennyson, Tiresias

Readers have by now encountered the term “elites” many times, and could be excused for wishing that it had been defined earlier. To do so, however, would have been to interrupt the flow of what has been, so far, a straightforward narrative of certain aspects of the Australian historical experience. We have now reached the point where some degree of sociological analysis is required. ¹

The Australian sociologist W D Rubinstein has argued that “in most societies” the echelons of the “top elite” number “about 1,000 people”. These people include:

The President or Prime Minister and the Cabinet, the major opposition figures, the most important (or possibly all) members of the national legislature, the high court, the chairmen or managing directors of the largest business enterprises, the heads of the major trade unions, leading civil servants, media and communication leaders and editors, major religious leaders and spokesmen for the most influential lobbying and interest groups. It also encompasses a nation’s 200-300 wealthiest men and women, the presidents or vice-chancellors of the leading colleges and universities, the most distinguished scientists and thinkers and the most important opinion-makers, however defined. ¹

Members of this elite group talk mostly to other members. They read the same “quality” publications, from which they derive intellectual justification for the suite of views that they already largely share. They can and do disagree among themselves on certain issues, but any dissident views beyond these minor areas of permitted debate are dismissed by the protégés of this “top elite” as heretical and are reviled by the use of words like “extremist”, “odious”, “unacceptable”, “divisive”, “populist”, “racist” and “repugnant”.

And there are many such protégés. For every single major media proprietor in the “top elites”, for instance, there are thousands of editors and sub-editors, journalists and broadcasters, commentators, cartoonists, photographers, switchboard operators, camera operators, marketing staff, layout people, IT experts and all the other staff necessary to produce successful newspapers, magazines, books, radio stations, television stations and the like.

The views of the very few members of what Rubinstein called the “top elites” trickle down to all the other members of this much broader elite. The employees can think whatever they like, but they know that to express dissident opinions is to put at risk further promotion, at least, and perhaps even to incur some stronger form of negative sanction. Far more importantly, though, any ambitious young journalist or broadcaster can anticipate what views s/he is expected to promote, and then advance them with sufficient ardour to be deemed worthy of promotion. They obey their master’s voice even when he is not speaking. In short, the top elites have power over those further down the chain – to the extent that the broader elites appear to believe in the power of those above them and, if necessary, modify their behaviour accordingly.

It must be conceded that this power is largely latent. A few journalists have been penalised for expressing deviant views, but this is rarely required. The fact is that the elites are intellectually cohesive to a remarkable extent, and to an even greater extent share common political aims, values and norms. Thus, all the major newspapers employ one or two journalists who apparently dissent from the prevailing political mood – token conservatives, usually – yet they justify their dissent over this or that issue by appealing to the prevailing norms of the elites. For example, in 2001 Australia was confronted with the problem of boatload after boatload of self-proclaimed “refugees” from the Middle East arriving in Australian waters and seeking sanctuary. The media was generally sympathetic to these people, while the Australian majority was generally hostile. The token “dissenting” journalists expressed their hostility by raising questions of security (the boat people had mostly destroyed their identification papers, and therefore might be terrorists); or of support for UN processes (the boat people were “jumping the queue” of more patient refugees who were awaiting due processing); or of support for law and order (for all that was known about them, the boat people might well be terrible criminals); or of support for family values (the boat people were risking their children’s lives, and in once case actually sank their own boat in protest when apprehended by the Royal Australian Navy). Not one of the token dissenting journalists appealed to the formerly prevailing value of social cohesion which had, for most of the nation’s history, been summed up in the phrase “White Australia”. It was safe to disagree over policy, but only by appealing to aspects of the dominant ideology.

While we have looked so far only at the sphere of the media, it is much the same story in all the other realms of public life that take their lead from Rubinstein’s “top elites”. Whether they are clergymen, public servants, business executives, teachers, union officials, or have any other public role, people in the subordinate ranks of the elites can enthusiastically support the dominant ideology, or exploit the dissonances between the norms of that ideology to express a guarded criticism – or else they can stay silent.

Clearly, then, the elites form what has often been called a “class”. This term, as used here, refers to a social stratum sharing similar economic, political and cultural essential characteristics, and having broadly the same social position.

It is unlikely that most of the elites perceive themselves in class terms – at least, most of the time. After all, Australia is a relatively egalitarian society in which the idea of class conflict has never really taken root. Upward social mobility within a generation is common, social classes are far less crystallised than in the UK or even the USA (with its permanent underclass), and downward social mobility was until recently comparatively difficult to achieve.

There is, however, a feeling of “consciousness of kind”. Individual members of the elites recognise each other by modes of behaviour that reflect the dominant ideology and practices of their group. They don’t feel particularly inferior to their superiors in the class hierarchy because, apart from the factor of remuneration, there is little to separate an opportunistic journalist from a media magnate like Rupert Murdoch or Kerrie Packer. And although this remunerative gap may be large, even the most avaricious journalist enjoys a relatively comfortable lifestyle in comparison to those lower in the social hierarchy.

Absolute poverty is still rare in Australia, and the elites tend to express sympathy for those who subside into the small but growing underclass. Yet the elites are exquisitely attuned to register, reject and ridicule most manifestations of working class origin. This was very obvious during the period of Pauline Hanson’s media ascendancy. At the beginning of her maiden speech as a newly-elected independent member of parliament she said:

I come here not as a polished politician but as a woman who has had her fair share of life’s knocks. My view on issues is based on commonsense, and my experience as a mother of four children, as a sole parent, and as a businesswoman running a fish and chip shop.

In these few words she ably distanced herself from the elites, thereby gaining considerable sympathy from the majority. As far as the elites themselves were concerned, though, it wouldn’t have mattered what words she chose. Her flat nasal accent, her preference for loud clothes, her obvious lack of education, were all class indicators, and were all mercilessly mocked. Perhaps her most famous media gaffe occurred when a journalist used the term “xenophobia”. Hanson, clearly unfamiliar with this word, said through clenched teeth: “Please explain!” The elites were highly amused. Her electorate was called Oxley, and she was gleefully dubbed “the Oxley Moron”.

Political analysts noted that the highest support for Hanson’s One Nation party came from electorates that were predominantly white; outer suburban, rural or regional; and lower than average in terms of educational attainment and family income. It was therefore easy to depict people who shared her concerns as ignorant racist under-achievers, people who wouldn’t know how to order a latté in the trendy inner suburbs of the big cities. Of course, they could just as easily have been described as working class people who were acting more or less rationally in their own class interests. Hanson’s opposition to the dismantling of tariffs on imports, for instance, was arguably in the interest of what in earlier times was often called the productive class.

Still, few of her natural constituency saw themselves as participating in a class struggle. For many reasons they had little class consciousness. Predominantly, they associated any such class identification as a “socialist” concept, and most of them were opposed to anything they regarded as socialist. An additional few aspired to join the elites, while others had accepted the norms of the elites in a classical display of Marx’s “false consciousness” – manipulated opinion as an ideological means to secure the assent of the oppressed. Even so, a million Australians cast their votes for Hanson’s One Nation party in 1998. Since few could have regarded Hanson as a charismatic or even competent leader, a large percentage of these people were presumably lodging a deliberate protest vote. (That avenue has now closed, following the implosion of the One Nation party.)

Before we can consider what might happen in the future we need to consider some of the changes that have occurred in Australia since its traditional culture was overturned.

The most prominent of these changes is perhaps the increasing gap between rich and poor. On this subject an anecdote may be more revealing than any table of statistics. Until the last few years, caravan parks in Australia were places where tourists could pull in their caravans for the night, connect to a power source, have a hot shower, and exchange yarns and information – before driving off again the next morning. Only eccentrics or dysfunctional people actually lived in caravans. Now there are permanent encampments of people whose only home is a jacked-up caravan. Even though these people may be employed, their low wages make it hard for them to save for the deposit on a house. In America such people are sometimes called “trailer trash”. In Australia they are seldom acknowledged and their sites are discreetly tucked away off main roads.

The lowering (and in some cases abolition) of tariffs on imports has destroyed many of Australia’s manufacturing industries. It is close to impossible for an Australian company producing, say, footwear, to compete with the minimal wages and sweatshop conditions of its Asian competitors. Many thousands of low-skill jobs have therefore been lost. Few retrenched middle-aged overlockers, factory hands or machinists are capable of joining the knowledge economy, and therefore while the poor are becoming poorer their numbers are also swelling.

Furthermore, they are becoming disillusioned and embittered. Welfare dependency, substance abuse, boredom and petty crime are so entrenched in parts of Australia that Melbourne’s “elite” broadsheet newspaper, The Age, branded one large Victorian country town “feral city”. The nation’s youth suicide rate, particularly among Anglo males, is said to be one of the highest in the world, although directly comparable figures are hard to obtain. These are just some of the human costs of the elitist agenda.

In addition, Australia used to be a highly consensual society, in which the overwhelming majority of people shared a distinct set of values from which they deduced moral assumptions about the correct way to behave. As de Toqueville wrote:

A society can exist only when a great number of men consider a great number of things from the same point of view; when they hold the same opinions on a great many subjects; when the same occurrences suggest the same thoughts and impressions to their minds.

That is an adequate description of how things used to be in Australia. It is no longer valid. Today the elites share common definitions of the social situation, which legitimise their behaviour and confer moral acceptance within their group. Yet theirs are not the values of traditional Australians. The growing ranks of the non-elite increasingly act as if they see these values as mere justifications of privilege advanced by the dominant group for its own purposes. For example, political polling reports a mood of disillusionment, cynicism and anger in the electorate, often coupled with a “desire to punish” any and all incumbent politicians.

The social cracks continue to widen. Despite all the wooing of “ethnic” migrants in the name of multiculturalism, despite all the pork-barrelling, with government grants to almost every ethnic organisation imaginable, many ethnic migrants reject the values and the agenda of the elites. It was not a coincidence that Pauline Hanson’s main political adviser was of Italian origin. (When queried by an affronted media on this point he explained with a laugh that he had been “de-wogged”.) Public opinion polls show large segments of the NESB migrant population opposed to further Asianisation. On this subject the Anglos are clearly the least outspoken. No Anglo head of a federal government department would say, as did the aboriginal leader and department head, Charles Perkins, that:

Every third face in the street is Asian … I’m upset about the number of Indo-Chinese refugees driving cars and walking about in the streets … We can’t solve the Asian over-population problem by inviting them here … The humanitarian aspect of the boat-people is all bullshit … Who cares if I’m called racist?

The only Anglos likely to express such views openly would be those with no social status left to lose.

As the cracks widen and the elites lose their authority they increasingly resort to coercion. Every Australian state and territory now has laws against racial vilification, racial discrimination, and incitement to racial hatred, as does the Commonwealth. Perhaps it was because of these wide-ranging laws with their severe penalties that Charles Perkins did not repeat his anti-Asian diatribe. The important point is that these rules were not required when nearly all Australians came from the same background and therefore shared the same values. The imposition of the elite’s agenda has destroyed the old consensus, but it has also caused the elites to lose authority. This has led to a state of “power deflation”, in which elitist goals can only be achieved by an increasing resort to power – in this case, legal sanction.

Any such situation is endemically revolutionary. How the elites will respond probably depends on how disposable their values are. If they are really determined to stick to their agenda in full, they can attempt to transform Australian society into a far more effective social organisation, as compared to the easy-going, tolerant and often larrikin society that it has always been – more like something along the lines of Brave New World. Since this would lead, at least initially, to a massive further loss of authority, the elites are more likely to make the occasional dramatic concession to the majority’s wishes while advancing the rest of their agenda as quietly as possible. There are already early signs of this happening. In response to the 2001 boat people crisis the government took a tough (and popular) stance against illegals; yet the same government had been furtively increasing the number of legal Asian immigrants for several years.

Finally, we need to ask how traditional Australians are likely to react. Any successful attempt to re-establish the old value system or to establish a new one would require the majority to recognise that they are now at least culturally, if not yet politically, effectively an oppressed class. It would help if they also recognised that they are economically exploited ³. Finally, they would have to come together in a capable organisation, conscious that this must be done while they are still the majority of the population and still vital to national production. In short, they would need to develop a strong class consciousness, and to do so soon. (The example of the recent past suggests that there is little likelihood of this happening.) If this first hurdle could be overcome they would next have to accept that they were involved in a serious political struggle aimed at the capture, by peaceful or other means, of the mechanisms of the state. The current elites have of course done just that, but the present majority appear to lack the will and the ability to emulate them.

An oppositional intelligentsia may possibly emerge through the universities. The current generation of Anglo students is the first to find itself a minority in many university faculties, schools and departments. These young people see their schoolfellows disadvantaged by the university admissions process, see graduates of their own kind passed over in terms of quotas, see foreign students successfully buying their way into university places despite having inferior qualifications, and see their own hereditary culture being trashed at the universities themselves in dismissive terms ranging from “dead white males” to “genocidal British settlers”. They have also come into sufficient contact with the hypocrisy and arrogance of the elites to be disillusioned with the dominant ideology. Perhaps a significant number will be sufficiently radicalised by these experiences to provide future intellectual leadership for the Australian workers.

Herbert Marcuse famously argued that false consciousness was so prevalent in the United States that little short of a massive external shock could bring about a radical transvaluation of the dominant values in that country. While the present author would agree with Marcuse on little else, this analysis is probably applicable to contemporary Australia. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 led to a noticeable reassertion of traditional Western values – not enough to effect any major change, but enough to indicate that a sense of Australia’s Western, and specifically Anglo-Saxon, heritage is not yet dead. Perhaps a far greater external shock might achieve much more.

Disappointingly, perhaps, that is as far as we can go in this chapter. The bitter gift of Cassandra or Tiresias is withheld from us, and we may only watch with everyone else as future developments unfold.

1    Since this book is intended for general readers, we will try to avoid most of the technical analysis that gives sociological theory its precision. Any readers who wish to pursue these matters further are encouraged to explore the works of Hobbes, Marx, Weber, Parsons, Marcuse, Dahrendorf and others who have addressed the question of how social order is sustained.

2     Rubinstein, W.D., The Left, the Right and the Jews, Croom Helm Ltd, 1982.

3     For instance, the average wage earner pays a much higher percentage of income in taxes than people in more lucrative careers, due to inability to afford tax-efficient investments. Furthermore, we have seen how this regressive taxation is subsequently used against the majority – in the multicultural industry, in the institutionalised racism that pervades tertiary education, in the massive re-distribution of income to Aborigines, and so on.

Postscript

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings

Shakespeare, Richard II

Garrett Hardin is Professor of Human Ecology at the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus. He is the author of the well-known and highly influential work The Tragedy of the Commons. In 1991 he wrote:

       Popular anthropology came along with its dogma that all cultures are equally good, equally valuable. To say otherwise was to be narrow-minded and prejudiced, to be guilty of the sin of ethnocentrism. In time, a sort of Marxist Hegelian dialectic took charge of our thinking: ethnocentrism was replaced by what we can only call ethnofugalism ¹ – a romantic flight away from our own culture. That which was foreign and strange, particularly if persecuted, became the ideal. Black became beautiful, and prolonged bilingual education replaced naturalization.... Idealistic religious groups, claiming loyalty to a higher power than the nation, openly shielded and transported illegal immigrants. 

       If two cultures compete for the same bit of turf (environment), and if one of the populations increases faster than the other, then year by year the population that is reproducing faster will increasingly outnumber the slower one. If, "other things being equal," there are advantages to being numerous, then in time the slowly reproducing population will be displaced by the fast one. This is passive genocide. It may be that no one is ever killed, but the genes of one group replace the genes of the other. That's genocide. ²

Genocide means, literally, “the extermination of a race”. And the first stage of that process has been happening for the last half century to those of us around the world whose ancestors were English, or Anglo-Saxon. In all of our older and more recent homelands our ancestral genes are being replaced by the genes of others, as a result of both large-scale immigration and the dysgenic fertility of migrants.

We all know about the huge numbers of ethnically alien migrants converging on countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, and the nations of Scandinavia and Continental Europe.

What is less well-known is the fact that once they arrive on our shores these migrants immediately begin to outbreed the host population. The “new migrant” population of Britain, for instance, is growing fifteen times faster than the indigenous population, according to a report in The Times, 1 October 2001. 

According to The Times, the minority population grew from 3.2 million to 3.7 million between 1992 and 1999, an increase of 15.6%. During that period the native British population rose by only 1%. Among the ethnic groups, the Black-African population grew by 37%, and the Bangladeshi group rose by 30%. Even the slowest-growing ethnic minority group, the Indians, increased by 4% – four times the rate of increase of the British majority.

If these trends continue it is only a matter of time before British people become a minority in their own nation. Already in Inner London, 34% of the population is currently of “new migrant” origin. 

The Times said: “American political leaders have used official predictions to pave the way for public acceptance of a more cosmopolitan nation. In 1998 President Clinton predicted that ‘a half century from now … there will be no majority race in America’. In Britain, the Government has proceeded more cautiously, fearful of accusations of inflaming racial tensions …”

It seems that there is something odd here. Most readers might well think that genocidal government policies designed to turn the indigenous English/British population into a minority would be likely to “inflame racial tensions”. But no! According to the Times article, it’s when the progress of these policies is reported that the trouble begins.

Yet the facts are being reported, and they look grim. From various articles that have appeared in mainstream publications recently, we learn that if current trends continue:

• The indigenous population of London will be a minority by the end of this decade
• The founding populations of Australia and the USA will become a minority by midway through this century. (They are already a minority in California, once the fabled home of the Beach Boys’ eulogised Anglo, blonde, leggy “California Girls”)
• The indigenous population of the UK will become a minority by the end of this century

There is nothing on the horizon likely to reverse these trends. It seems there is little will to oppose what Professor Hardin called the “passive genocide” of our people. Furthermore, the political elites and the Christian leaders in our nations actually seem to welcome the demise of our people. 

If we sit back and let the elites (and Professor Hardin’s “idealistic religious groups”) have their way, it is only a matter of time before people of English (or Anglo-Saxon) stock become extinct in countries that their ancestors founded.

As far as Australia in particular is concerned, the most optimistic estimate available is that approximately 70% of permanent residents are currently of “Anglo-Celtic” and related origin. The fertility rate of the nation as a whole is below replacement level, while the rate of the founding population is below the national average and that of many of the newer migrant groups is commensurately higher. Furthermore, Australia has the highest per capita level of immigration in the developed world, and the majority of migrants to Australia are not of “Anglo-Celtic” stock. If current trends continue, then, the founding population will become a minority in the nation it created by the middle of this century. (Leading demographer Dr Charles Price predicted in “People & Place”, Vol 4 No 4, that “Anglo-Celts” would make up only 62.2% of the Australian population by 2025, although we have probably already passed that point. If the demographic graph that he has been sketching over many years is projected beyond 2025, then “Anglo-Celts” will presumably reach minority status in Australia by about 2050.

This raises two questions.

The first is this: Will these current demographic trends continue into the foreseeable future? Obviously no-one knows. Unforeseeable events, domestic or international, may intervene. We can only deal with what is known at present. There are a few ecological critics of the policy of mass-immigration who argue that the Australian continent has a limited carrying capacity – which may already have been exceeded. If this ecological warning were heeded then immigration might be radically reduced, which would at least give the founding population a few more years of majority status. This is, however, unlikely. Powerful lobbies such as the building industry argue instead for much higher levels of immigration. The elites are also ideologically committed to mass-immigration, and are not likely to yield to any criticism. Finally, since the majority of Australians have shown almost no ability to create an effective opposition, it is logical to assume that in the absence of unforeseeable events the current trends will either continue or even become worse from the majority’s standpoint

The second question is this: If and when “Anglo-Celts” become a minority in Australia, what will happen then? The only logical answer to this question is that their percentage of the population will continue to dwindle. The new majority will probably want more of their own kind(s) to immigrate, thus strengthening their dominant position. The already disastrous birth-rate of the founding population will probably drop even further as a result of racial demoralisation. Inter-racial marriages, already common today, will almost certainly increase – in particular, financially successful non-Anglo men will no doubt seek attractive Anglo women as “trophy brides”. Following the examples of Zimbabwe and South Africa, many white Australians will probably flee to other countries, thus further reducing their percentage of the population. 

Beyond that, little can be predicted. History shows that once a native population is numerically overwhelmed by immigrants its further decline is almost inevitable, but the details of that further decline vary from place to place. It can be a gradual process, as with the almost-extinct Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan – or the hapless Kurds of the Middle East, the descendants of one of the most powerful people mentioned in the Bible, the Medes. It can involve mass-murder in a cause such as religious conversion, as was the fate of the indigenous “Kaffir” people of Afghanistan, whose culture only survives, in a tragically degraded form, among a few hundred people whose ancestors escaped to British-administered Chitral (in what is now Pakistan) in the 1890s. Perhaps more often than not, when peoples and cultures known from either history or archaeology have become extinct, many factors have played pivotal roles in their sad demise.

Let us consider just one example in some detail …

*****

In the mid-1990s a Chinese museum exhibition was installed in the “Melbourne Central” shopping complex. On display were several naturally mummified human bodies found in Xingjiang Province, China. Those who had died most recently were typically Chinese in appearance, while the earlier ones were clearly white, with Nordic faces and with blond hair on their heads and bodies. If dressed in appropriate clothes they could easily have passed as nineteenth century inhabitants of London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Dublin, Melbourne or Sydney.

A young Chinese official spoke to the audience, referring to the blond mummies as “Caucasoids”. When this author asked her precisely what she meant by that term, the official’s command of English, which had previously been very good, suddenly deteriorated dramatically. It was clear that she had been instructed not to discuss the issue

Now we know why, thanks to a very impressive piece of archeological detective work, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (Thames & Hudson, 2000). The authors of this comprehensive study are Victor Mair, the U.S. academic who first drew western journalists’ attention to the blond mummies, and J.P. Mallory whose earlier work, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, (Thames and Hudson, 1989) may be known to readers. These two scholars have done a brilliant job with the evidence that is so far available.

Here is the story. From perhaps 2,000 BCE down to historical times, white people of British or northern European appearance occupied East Central Asia. In one part of this region, the Tarim River Basin, there is scarcely any rainfall. The land here is a desert, with huge amounts of salt in the sand. Bodies buried in these arid, saline conditions mummify naturally. Some of these mummified bodies are at least as well preserved, after 4,000 years, as if they had been bottled in formaldehyde.

This region was combed over by European explorers in the period from about 1890 to 1920. Several of them encountered European-looking mummies which had often been flung around plundered graveyards by modern looters. None of the explorers had the equipment or the wherewithal to transport mummies back to European museums, and although many photos were taken, few among the general public became aware of these discoveries.

Then in 1988 an American academic, Victor Mair, visited the museum in Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang Province. A new gallery had recently opened, and it displayed some of the naturally mummified bodies found in the region. The American was particularly taken with one of them, a tall blond man who looked very like Mair’s own brother. From that moment he decided to make the West more aware of these geographically Asian Europeans. 

Prior to the modern discovery of their remains, we knew of the existence of white people in this area from a number of sources. These included written accounts from ancient Greece, Rome, India and China, paintings of blond and blue eyed people in central Asian Buddhist shrines, and a few other images showing Western facial features. 

We also had the evidence provided by the two Tocharian languages, named A and B. Documents in these dead languages first came to light in 1892, and many more have been recovered since then from the ancient oasis towns of the Tarim Basin. These two languages, presumably once very widespread, are members of the Indo-European family group, and thus related to English. (Compare, for instance, these words in Tokharian B – keu, okso, āu and suwo – with their English cognates in “cow”, “ox”, “ewe” and “sow”.) 

Curiously, Indo-European languages fall into two broad groups. The Celtic, Germanic, Greek and Italic languages all employ a hard “g” or “k” sound in words where their more easterly counterparts use a soft “j” or “z”/“s” sound. Accordingly, the Greek word gérōn, meaning an old man, is matched by Sanskrit járant. The two Tocharian languages are in this respect closer to their far-Western counterparts than to their more easterly neighbours. Thus the Latin word for “a hundred”, centum, was pronounced with an initial “k” sound, while Sanskrit had satám. The same word in Tocharian A is känt and in Tocharian B it is kante. So for some tantalising reason these languages recovered from East Central Asia show marked Western European features. 

If we wish to know what language the mummies spoke, there are basically two possibilities. One is Tocharian. The other is an eastern Iranian language such as Sogdian. It is possible that they may have spoken one language at home and another in non-domestic contexts. The eastern Iranian languages are well known to linguists, and the names of some of the peoples who spoke them will be familiar to readers, names like Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and Bactrians. Readers should not be confused by the term “Iranian”: these tribes did not look like most of the modern population of Iran. According to the Roman writer Pliny, one of these groups, the Serai, were “more than normal height, and have flaxen hair and blue eyes, and they speak in harsh tones”. (Alexander the Great married a Bactrian princess. From a purely geographical point of view Roxane was Asian, but racially and linguistically the couple were closely related.)

It is unlikely that either of these language groups was indigenous to the Tarim Basin. Iranian speakers almost certainly arrived there from West Central Asia, where their presence is historically attested. Mair and Mallory give various reasons to think that in about 2,000 BCE the Tocharian speakers arrived in the region from the North-East. If the suggested date and the direction are correct (and there is no reason to doubt it on the available evidence), then they would presumably have been offshoots of the Afanasevo culture, which flourished near the Altai Mountains from about 3,500 to 2,500 BCE. While no Afanesevo mummies have yet been discovered, their physical remains show that they were Caucasoid, and there are several clear parallels between their culture and that of the Tarim Basin.

According to the Australian geographer, Griffith Taylor, the cephalic index of the Tocharian-speakers was 76. This means that, seen from the top, their skulls are very long and narrow (“dolichocephalic”) The cephalic index correlates with other measures of Nordic appearance so well that it can almost stand alone. To get a sense of where theTarim people fit on the spectrum of skulls of people speaking Indo-European languages, we can note that the Latin average was broader at 77, the Teutonic slightly more so at 78, Persian 80, Lithuanian 82 and Armenian 85. If Taylor’s figures are correct, then our Tarim Basin cousins were on average more Nordic in appearance than most modern Anglo-Saxons.

It is important to get a sense of the land that these people occupied. A dreary, salty desert, locked in by mountains, with an oasis here and there, does not sound like a real estate agent’s marketing dream. Yet the strategic and economic importance of the region lies in the fact that it is the natural conduit between East and West – as underlined by the fact that this area is the most difficult part of what was to become famed as the “Silk Road”. Furthermore, the area is rich in minerals. The mountains to the north provided copper, iron, tin, lead, gold, coal, sal ammoniac, copper oxide, sulphur and other valuable items. Salt, vital in the ancient world, was and still is abundant.

Clearly, the Tarim Basin was not a ghastly wilderness in which a few ancient Caucasoid people eked out a miserable existence. It was the pivot between East and West, and whoever controlled it was guaranteed a materially high standard of living. For that reason the Han Chinese invaded it, the Tibetans invaded it, the Uighur Turks conquered it some time around the eighth century CE, and the Han Chinese in turn are currently dispossessing the Uighurs. As we would imagine, then, the Tarim mummies are magnificently dressed in expensive clothes made of felt, leather, and wool woven into beautiful and striking tartan-like patterns.

Through the land they controlled passed some Chinese inventions and goods; but, crucially, the flow of ideas also went in the other direction. Chinese culture did not grow in splendid isolation from the rest of the world, and Mair and Mallory give several examples. 

For instance, China had acquired domestic horses and wheeled chariots from the West at an early date. By the second century BCE warfare had changed, and the Chinese needed horses powerful enough to carry heavily armoured soldiers. Accordingly, in 138 BCE Emperor Wudi imported the horses he needed from the oasis town of Ferghana. Donkeys, sheep and wool were also introduced to China from the west, and this may be dimly recalled in the Chinese word for “lamb”, which seems to be derived from a Tocharian or Sogdian word.

During the very first Chinese dynasty, the Shang, China was importing Iranian-speaking priests. So much so that the modern Mandarin word for a magician is derived, ultimately, from the Old Persian magus. Some carvings depicting these Magi have survived, and they are clearly of Caucasoid appearance. While the individuals in these portraits may have come from further west than the Tarim Basin, they must at least have passed through the region. The modern province of Yunnan in southwest China has also yielded bronze figures with Caucasoid facial features. They wear clothing identical with that of the Tarim mummies.

Bronze metallurgy, and later iron casting, probably also arrived in China along a similar route, originating with the Iranian-speaking tribes of the steppelands. The modern Mandarin word for “cooking pot” seems to be based on the Proto-Indo-European word for “cauldron”. Jade, which we associate so closely with China, was another import. Chemical testing has shown that the jade objects of the Shang dynasty came from East Central Asia, and were probably supplied by the Tarim Basin people themselves.

Even at a comparatively late date the Tarim culture had a major influence on Chinese music. The town of Kucha was noted for the great talent of its musicians, especially its flautists and players of stringed instruments. The Emperor Xuanzong (8th century CE) was so impressed by Kuchean music that he “completely reorganized the instrumentation of China to accommodate Kuchean music”. (Incidentally, the name Kucha might be an ethnonym meaning “the white people”.)

Given the huge impact that the Tarim people had on the development of Chinese culture over three millennia, it is tragic to read that today their mummies are treated with disdain. As Mair and Mallory write, “The overwhelming majority of the Tarim mummies either have been or are currently in the process of being destroyed. In some instances, ripped from their graves and strewn over the ground like grotesque props from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, literally hundreds of corpses could be found rotting in the sun at Őrdek’s necropolis or, more recently, at the cemeteries of Sampul and Subeshi.”

Even the few mummies that find their way to museums fare little better, often being dumped in cellars to rot. The Chinese claim a lack of funds to look after them properly; but funds raised overseas for this specific purpose have not resulted in any more respectful treatment for the mummies.

Why is this so? Remember the Chinese official with whom we began this account, the young woman in Melbourne whose adequate English suddenly failed her when she was asked about the word “Caucasoid”? It seems that whoever instructed her not to discuss this topic reflected a view that is not uncommon in China.

Choosing their words very carefully, Mair and Mallory wrote: “It is suspected that in some cases certain archaeologists and officials with their own political or racial agenda have been blatantly hostile to the discovery and preservation of these ancient ‘foreign devils’, especially when equally misguided Uyghur nationalists seize on them to demonstrate a more ancient claim to their territory than history allows … [W]e should hardly be surprised when some Chinese officials appear to prefer that the mummies of these troublesome foreigners dissolve under conditions of not-so-benign neglect. From their viewpoint, these were hu, ‘barbarians’, who contributed nothing to Chinese civilization in the past and represent an unnecessary distraction from its real achievements.”

So, because of Chinese cultural insecurity, manifested as a refusal to acknowledge the massive impact of Westerners on their civilisation, the mummies are being allowed to rot away. Priceless evidence of our people’s history is being destroyed to prop up the official Chinese propaganda line that their people’s culture is indigenous. 

*****

This foray into ancient history may perhaps seem to have been a long digression from the main subject of this study, which is the rise and decline of Anglo-Australia. But it is now time to close this short account by briefly listing a few parallels between the Tarim people and modern Australians.

First, the Tarim people were not indigenous to the part of Asia in which they established themselves, but they formed a majority in their own settlements from at least 3,500 BCE to perhaps the 8^th century CE. Equally, Anglo-British settlers from the British Isles are obviously not indigenous to Australia, but they have formed a majority in that continent from some time after 1788 to the present.

Second, the Tarim people are now extinct. At some stage along their path to extinction they must have become a minority in their own lands. If current demographic trends continue, Australians whose origins lie in the British Isles will become a minority of the population by about the middle of the 21^st century. The historical precedent suggests that once that happens, people of Anglo origin will form an ever-dwindling percentage of the population, and will eventually become extinct in Australia.

When the Tarim people vanished their advanced culture vanished with them, except for some aspects that the Chinese were able to preserve. If Anglo-Australians become extinct, the cultural contributions they have already made to the world might perhaps be sustained in other hands, but those that they would otherwise have made in the future will never eventuate.

Long after the Tarim people disappeared, those who have now acquired their ancestral lands treat their memory, even their physical remains, with a contempt probably born of envy. It is likely that, for similar psychological reasons, if the Anglo-Australians ever become extinct, their historical contribution to human progress will be equally traduced. ¹

Australia is, of course, not an isolated society. It is subject to the same historical processes as, say, New Zealand, Canada, the British Isles, and the United States. Demographers have estimated that indigenous British people will become a minority in London within the next ten years, and in Britain generally before the end of the current century – if current trends continue. In the U.S., Anglos are already a minority in the State of California, and are expected to become a minority in the nation as a whole by about 2050. Similar projections can be made for Canada and New Zealand, (and even Scandinavia and northern Europe).

All around the world, the long-term survival of people of Anglo-Saxon and related origin is far from assured. Others may choose to write on that broader theme. This short study has tried to show that even the small, isolated Australian outpost of the world-wide British diaspora has contributed, greatly and beyond all initial expectations, to the world-wide sum of human achievement. If Anglo-Australians fail to address their future, and consequently dwindle to a minority in the nation-state that they, and they alone, created, then their ability to contribute to the betterment of humanity will come to a premature end. All of humanity would then be the poorer. 

Australia is also a case study of Anglo decline. In the light of the Australian experience other similar nations might well consider the impending fate of their own founding populations. At some point in the future, if current trends persist, Australia will be taken over by a nascent Asian majority. Yet the same trend is occurring all around the world. Every year, in all the states originally created by Germanic tribes and their descendants – from France to Flanders, from the Netherlands to New Zealand – the percentage of the founding population is declining. That is the demographic consequence of the current dominant ideology in the West. In the absence of Marcuse’s “massive external shock”, unless new ideals arise, bringing about a moral reinvigoration of our people, our fate will be that of the blond mummies of the Tarim basin.

As the conservation movement so often reminds us, “Extinction is forever”.

1. This term derives from the Latin verb fugere, “to flee”. 

2. Hardin, G., 1991, Conspicuous benevolence and the population bomb, Chronicles, 15:20-22.

3. It may be some comfort to know that few Australians live, or die, in areas where natural mummification could occur. It is therefore unlikely that they will ever be “ripped from their graves and strewn over the ground like grotesque props from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead”, unlike their ancient relatives from China’s Tarim Valley.

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