Don’t mention the anti-war feeling
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 1
14 April - 12 May 2008 ] By Shane Cahill
In the 1950s ANZAC Day was the ‘one day of the year’ of old Diggers drinking and playing two-up to the embarrassment of rising generations. Thirty years later feminists used the annual march to protest against male violence in war and were banned from marching. Today relatives of veterans march every 25 April and wear the medals of campaigns past with pride. ANZAC 2007 was bigger than ever.
“ANZAC has been mainstream-ed,” says University of Melbourne Professor Verity Burgmann (Political Science) who disputes the wholehearted embrace of the prevailing picture of ANZAC and later battles on the Western Front as the highest representation of national unity and shared sacrifice.
“Two conscription referenda were defeated and many Australians were totally opposed to any participation in the war.”
Professor Burgmann says 1917 was the crucial year when wartime meant complete polarisation rather than unity in Australia.
She says it was “a year of intense unrest when working people felt they were bearing the brunt of the war effort, providing the bodies for the front and having their living standards squeezed at home. While they were making great sacrifices others were laughing all the way to the bank through war profiteering.”
The Great Strike in 1917 provides parallels with tensions evidenced in contemporary Australia. The strike was in reaction to moves to speed up work under the guise of scientific management.
University of Melbourne senior lecturer Dr Sean Scalmer (History) says the events demonstrated the close relationship between governments and employers and “revealed the state to be a repressive institution not to be trusted”. “Now all we hear of is national unity, which excludes all the disunities that existed in the past,” he says.
For Professor Burgmann, we can understand society only by examining disunity in all its forms. She points to the case of the Industrial Workers of the World who, under the Unlawful Associations Act were jailed for six months or deported in many cases simply for membership of their proscribed organisation.
“They were militant Australians just sticking up for workers’ rights,” she says.
So why are these disunities which provide the context in which the military campaigns were fought largely absent from the contemporary popular understanding and representations?
“We hear mainly from the victors in history,” says Professor Burgmann.
Dr Scalmer points to shrinking publishing and media opportunities and space and concerted efforts to silence dissenting views.
“Every ANZAC day there is more focus on military histories but nothing on the history of peace,” he says.
“The past Federal Government was interventionist and partisan on what is taught and media like The Australian are ready to attack as biased or a fabrication any alternative view.”
And the squeeze on academics’ time – “bludgeoned by petty bureaucracy” according to Professor Burgmann – means they “barely have the time to be public academics” and bring the full story of Australia during the Great War to public attention and debate.
Even family memories are filtered. Dr Scalmer’s great grandfather went to the Boer War and returned a pacifist and socialist. He refused to enlist in the Great War and for his stand received white feathers from his two sisters.
But such memories of opposition and disunity transmitted across generations are the exception in comparison with stories of medals, heroism and suffering.
“Only certain memories are validated and experienced,” says Dr Scalmer. He believes contemporary Australia lacks the confidence to celebrate other memories that exist.
This comes as no surprise to Professor Burgmann, who argues that “governments tend to validate the perspectives of those who did the bidding of previous governments.”
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