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AUSTRALIAN HISTORY - Defending Liberty in Wartime |
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Defending liberty in
wartime – 20 December 1917 Humphrey
McQueen in conversation with Bill Deller and Annie McLaughlin. ANZAC-ery is used to legitimise other
wars and military alliances. But more importantly the aim is to define what it
is to be a good Australian. Going to war is equated with how best to serve
one’s community. It directs attention away from the conflicts inside Australia. The occasion we celebrate is the
defeat of the second attempt to introduce conscription for overseas military
service. 96 years ago yesterday – 20 December 1917. Did
it rate a mention in the mass media – even on the ABC? Yet it is one of the
three most important events in the history of 20th century
Australia. Need
a very quick chronology of what was happening in 1917. What was in dispute?
Conscription for home defence had been in place since 1910. The issue in
1916-17 was conscription for service overseas. In 1914, all the Australians who
went to war were volunteers. During 1916, the British convince Labor prime
minister Hughes to get more cannon fodder through conscription service
overseas. He can’t get it through the labor-controlled Senate and therefore is
driven to hold a plebiscite. The vote was not a referendum to alter the
constitution. There was no doubt that the government had the power to conscript
for overseas service under the defense power. The vote was therefore a
political conflict. The first plebiscite was defeated with 52 % voting against
in October 1916. Labor splits and the Rats join the Libs to form a coalition.
The elections in 1917 gave a big win to the Imperialists. That victory
encouraged prime minister Hughes to have a second vote on 20 December 1917. He
lost again this time by a bigger margin with 54% against. Last
week, Annie mentioned the quest for funds to finance a documentary about the
Pig Iron dispute. Why is none of the tens of millions for War celebrations
going into that project? We have only to ask to know the reason. A simple test exists for spotting what
is politically correct for the ruling-class. Does an event get a postage stamp?
Gold Medalists get them even before the drug tests are finalized. Why no stamps
for the Pig Iron strikers? Why has there never been one for any of the
anniversaries of the defeat of conscription? Why none for the defeat of the
anti-Red Bill in 1951? Again, we have only to ask to know the answer. The dominant
ideas in any society are those of the dominant class. There is no place for
celebrating popular victories against that class, no room for reminding us how
to defeat the bosses. The agents of capital know how important it is not to
give people ideas about how to fight back. Progressives cannot afford to say
‘We’ll have Eureka and you can have ANZAC’. There is a democratic story to tell
about the war years. But we have to
present a positive story. Standing on the sidelines throwing bricks might make a
few people feel morally superior. That approach will also make it easier for
the official line to carry the day. Strategically, the test is always whether a
proposal will help to build a mass movement. Tactically, we need to tell
stories which help us to feel ‘I could do that’. People are open to radical
ideas if those alternatives offer values that appeal to the best in our
natures. It essential to remind ourselves of
why these history wars over wars are politically significant. Carrying on like
smarty-pants is the worst thing the Left can do. We have to use our points to
set people thinking about bigger issues. The last thing we need is to piss
people off by making them seem dumb. We have to pose questions, not become
megaphone Marxists. One effective way to intervene is to
turn the values and yarns pushed by the warmongers against them. Wartime
propaganda concentrated on the claim that our side was fighting to protect
British liberties against German junkerdom. Our case is that our rights and
liberties were defended above all by the defeat of the conscription plebiscites
in 1916 and again in 1917. Our proof is a
counter-factual: what if YES vote had won? We have a good idea of the kind of
regime that would have been imposed. Our guide to that future comes from the solicitor-general,
Sir Robert Garran: The regulations were mostly expressed
widely to make sure that nothing necessary was omitted, and the result soon was
that John Citizen was hardly able to lift a finger without coming under the
penumbra of some technical offence against the War Precautions Regulations. (Prosper the Commonwealth) If
that web of controls had spread then an even more open dictatorship would have
followed. ‘British’ liberties suffered with the Commonwealth’s censorship of
the Queensland Hansard, and the creation of the Commonwealth political police. In addition, conscription for overseas
service would have opened the door to industrial conscription. Ten years after
the war, in 1929, the government used the War Precautions (Repeal) Act to
convict the secretary of the Melbourne Trades Hall for encouraging something
like a strike. If they could do that under the Repeal Act in peacetime, we
don’t have to imagine what they would have got up to during wartime. What
the two NO votes protected was bourgeois democracy. Before anyone says, only
bourgeois democracy let’s spotlight two points
such liberties and rights as we do
have were won and sustained by struggle. So
we have another chance to quote Hobart union organiser Samuel Champ from 1916: Our liberties were not won by mining
magnates and stock-exchange jobbers, but by genuine men of the working-class
movement who had died on gallows and rotted in dungeons and are buried in
nameless graves. These are the men to whom we owe the liberties we enjoy today. Every
teacher knows: You start from where people are. You take something that the
vast majority have some sort of notion about. That’s why Simpson and his donkey
is a gift from the war-mongers’ side. They have spent decades and millions
making him the best known soldier at Canakale (Gallipoli). We need to subvert
the Simpson Essay that the Departmetn of Veterans’ Affairs pushes in the high
schools. The Labor History Society in the ACT is sponsoring an essay
competition to challenge the line required be in the running for a trip to
Canakale. The alternative topic will be something like: ‘Had Simpson lived, how
would he have voted on the conscription for overseas service?’ Other groups can
follow suit by promoting essays and school debates in their communities. A
not particularly good movie from 2010 dealt with tunneling under enemy lines in
June 1916. The plot focused on the officer in charge of the mine workers who
were doing the tunneling. The director totally ignored the industrial and political
disputes that were raging throughout the mining districts back home. The script
is typical of how the politics of wartime are ignored. The study notes for high
schools did not raise conscription or the strikes. Teachers need supporting
materials. The HonestHistory site
aims to provide them. We’ll do our bit on 3CR in the coming years. |