by Brian Toohey
When Pezzullo moves on, it seems highly likely that he will be replaced by someone with a similar mindset. There is almost no example since 1952 of an Australian government repealing a national security law without replacing it with a tougher version, but the growth of ever more powerful intelligence and law enforcement agencies must be reversed if Australia wants to restore the individual liberties that have been lost.
In an open society, the media would act as a check on Home Affairs’ excessive use of its powers. But Australia is no longer an open society. As noted, unlike the legal situation throughout the twentieth century, it is now a criminal offence to receive leaked government information and some non-government material. When this new offence is combined with the national security state’s ability to access encrypted digital data, it becomes much easier to keep the public in the dark, because the state will know who has been in contact with journalists.
In these circumstances, investigative journalist Andrew Fowler will have warned in vain: ‘Unless there is a concerted effort by the West to abandon the surveillance state into which we are all being drawn, it is highly likely that the journalism that relies on dissent to expose the great injustices perpetrated by governments, particularly when they hide behind the cloak of national security, will be journalism of the past. It won’t disappear overnight, but will fade slowly over the years, like the democracy it defends.’15
PART 8
THIRTEEN WARS—ONLY ONE A WAR OF NECESSITY FOR AUSTRALIA
46
THE FOUNDATION MYTH OF OUR FOUR COLONIAL WARS
‘Not only a test of wartime courage, but a test of character, that has helped define our nation and create the sense of who we are.’
Prime Minister Julia Gillard1
Opposition to Australian participation in nineteenth-century colonial wars in New Zealand, Sudan, South Africa and China was strongest when memories of those wars were freshest immediately after Federation in 1901. Many considered the country’s leaders had been much too willing to send troops overseas to fight in places that posed no threat to Australia.
Following the vicious Boer War in South Africa, most leading political figures strongly opposed further expeditionary campaigns at the behest of the British ‘protector’. Once it became clear that Australia needed no protection from minor ‘enemies’, fears were put aside with a maturity lacking in many modern Australian leaders keen to embark on more expeditionary wars. Three-time prime minister and Protectionist/Liberal Party leader Alfred Deakin was one of the strongest opponents of participating in more expeditionary wars, but he had taken a different view in the 1880s, when he wanted an imperial role for Australia in the South Pacific. The Queensland premier, Thomas McIlwraith, even took possession of eastern New Guinea and its offshore islands in the name of Queen Victoria, but was overruled by Britain.2
After World War I, most Australians seemed content to forget about the colonial wars. It wasn’t until Julia Gillard became Labor prime minister in the twenty-first century that any leader tried to instil a sense of pride in Australia’s contribution to these wars. In a speech in April 2011, quoted above, she called our participation in the colonial wars a ‘test of wartime courage and character’ that had helped define our nation. She said in the same speech, ‘We live in a free country, and in a largely free world, only because the Australian people answered the call when the time of decision came.’ The extravagance of Gillard’s rhetoric was rivalled only by her ignorance.
The 1885 expedition to Sudan had nothing to do with Australia’s freedom, let alone Sudan’s: Britain wanted to secure its colonial control of Sudan via British-occupied Egypt. Nor did the expedition create an enduring ‘sense of who we are’—unless Gillard meant that we are always willing to go to war, no matter how irrelevant the conflict might be to Australia.
While the Sudan expedition was underway, many Australians did not share Gillard’s later fervour. The Australian War Memorial’s online history of the expedition says, ‘Meetings intended to launch a patriotic fund and endorse the government’s action were poorly attended in many working-class suburbs, and many of those who turned up voted against the fund. In some country centres there was a significant anti-war response, while miners in rural districts were said to be in “fierce opposition”.’3
Far from being a noble chapter in Australian history, the Sudan adventure was a minor farce. Gillard’s stirring tale of valour in battle is unrecognisable in any account of what happened. In 1885, the New South Wales government sent a contingent of 758 soldiers to Sudan to avenge the death of General Charles Gordon during a popular uprising against British control. He had been dubbed ‘Chinese’ Gordon for his exploits in China, where he had helped suppress an uprising against European control of Shanghai as a trading centre. In Sudan’s case, the British didn’t even ask its colonies for help—the NSW government offered the troops, and the British accepted provided NSW paid for them and they were under British command. It rejected offers from other states.
Britain’s goals in Sudan were to exclude its French rivals and (halfheartedly) avenge the death of the eccentric and unmanageable general. Gordon, who had previously been governor-general of Sudan, had been sent back in 1884 to evacuate Egyptian troops who had been defeated during the local uprising in Khartoum. Disobeying orders, he used some of the Egyptian troops to attack the Sudanese insurgents and died in the failed attack.
The NSW contingent sailed on 3 March 1885. Instead of a chance to display the ‘wartime courage’ that Gillard later found so inspiring, the action was over by the time the contingent arrived on 29 March. The War Memorial says, ‘Far from the excitement they had imagined, the Australians suffered mostly from the enforced idleness of guard duties.’4
Two new colonial wars beckoned—one in South Africa and one in China. In the latter case, Australia answered the call from Britain by sending ships and soldiers to help suppress the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers (a European term) were members of one of several secret societies rising against Western intruders who had successfully demanded the right to large tracts of land and other concessions, including exemption from Chinese law. Australians knew little of the background beyond reports that the Boxers were attacking Westerners. Initially, our troops were sent to help capture a Chinese fort at Pei Tang, but in an echo of the Sudan campaign, by the time they got there the battle was over. Other Australian troops joined an international contingent to take another fort, only to find the town had already surrendered. The War Memorial history says, ‘The international column then marched back to Tientsin [Tianjin] leaving a trail of looted villages behind them.’5
Again, this doesn’t support Gillard’s claims about how the colonial wars helped Australians to show ‘courage on the battlefield’ and create a ‘sense of who we are’, unless she meant looters. This aggressive Western intervention and the earlier wars promoted by British officials, corporations and traders to force China to open its borders to the opium trade help explain why the leadership in Beijing today is determined never to suffer such humiliation again.6
Gillard also supported the 1899–1902 Boer War, although there was little to celebrate in this conflict. No courage on the battlefield was needed when Australian soldiers shot unarmed civilians who’d surrendered. The British and the Dutch had earlier dispossessed the indigenous population of some of their lands in what is now South Africa. It was a brutal war between the British-led troops and descendants of Dutch settlers called Boers over control of territory. After the British raided a Boer state in an attempt to seize recently discovered goldmines, the Boers declared war. Queensland offered to send troops before Britain asked, but when the other states were asked, they all sent contingents as well. NAA records show that a total of 10,000 soldiers or more served in the Australian contingents; over 500 of them died.7
As the conflict dragged on, Australians at home became disenchanted, especially as the effects on Boer civilians became known.8 After the initial stage, each side turned to guerilla warfare a
nd the conflict became nastier. Over the next two years the British set up what they initially called refugee camps but later described as concentration camps. Similar camps were established in other wars, including the 1898 US invasion and occupation of the Philippines.9 A Boer War historian says that the South African camps included women and children who had been forced from their homes by Britain’s scorched earth policy, ‘in which thousands of homesteads were burnt and food supplies, livestock and crops destroyed’.10
A War Memorial backgrounder for voluntary guides discussed the number of people who had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps, noting that the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the black Africans who were interned.11 Another historian says that no fewer than 145,000 Boers and 140,000 black Africans were interned. Of these, at least 27,927 white people (including 22,074 children) and at least 23,000 (‘probably many more’) black people died in the camps.12
In early 2019, the War Memorial removed the backgrounder from its website because parts of it were inaccurate; there are no plans to replace it with other information on the use of scorched earth policies and concentration camps in the Boer War.13
Although Gillard’s speech praised all the colonial wars, she didn’t specifically mention the sporadic New Zealand wars from 1845 to 1872. Given the inducement of being allowed to settle on confiscated Maori land, about 2500 Australian volunteers answered the call. In part, the New Zealand conflict paralleled the Frontier Wars already underway in Australia, where white settlers and police, sometimes aided by British troops, suppressed Aboriginal efforts to prevent further dispossession of their land. A common estimate is that 20,000 Indigenous people and 2000 white people died in the Frontier Wars. More recent research concludes that over 60,000 died in Queensland alone.14 An even larger number of Aboriginal people died due to introduced diseases and starvation after being evicted from their hunting grounds. In comparison, the War Memorial says that from 1860 to the time of writing, 102,868 Australians have died in overseas wars.15
47
WORLD WAR I: LABOR’S SECRET PLANS FOR AN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
‘Australia—not Empire—is the string we must harp on. We must encourage them to do what they will do willingly and lavishly, namely pay up for safeguarding a White Australia from the cursed Jap.’
General Sir Ian Hamilton1
Following Federation, the British initially struggled to rekindle Australian support for new expeditionary wars. Reflecting this disenchantment, the 1903 Defence Act authorised the government to call up males only for home defence in times of war, but not overseas service. After World War I broke out in August 2014, referendums to boost troop numbers by introducing conscription were lost in 1916 and 1917.2
A letter discovered by historian Greg Lockhart in the archive of British general Sir Ian Hamilton’s papers in London gives a striking insight into the depth of Australians’ feelings. Hamilton wrote to the British prime minister, H.H. Asquith, saying that when he arrived in Australia in early 1914 to earmark a section of the Australian Army for expeditionary Imperial service, he found the country stood firm against this proposition until he appealed to old fears. He said they would ‘pay up for safeguarding a White Australia from the cursed Jap. When the time comes, and when we are fighting for our lives in India or elsewhere, I for one am confident the whole military force of Australia will be freely at our disposal.’3
Hamilton was right about Australians’ fear of Japan, although that country was a British ally at the time. Labor’s leader, Andrew Fisher, was deeply disturbed by the ease with which Japan had won the 1904–05 war with Russia. While he was PM in 1909, Fisher ordered three torpedo destroyers to help defend against a Japanese invasion. The Opposition leader, Alfred Deakin, had long warned about the Japanese danger, but he maintained the strong opposition to expeditionary wars he had earlier expressed as prime minister.
Lockhart notes that another historian, John Mordike, discovered in another secret War Office archive that Labor’s defence minister, George Pearce, offered to establish an expeditionary force during a meeting of the June 1911 Imperial Conference in London, provided the ultimate intention was kept completely secret.4 In 1909, Pearce referred to the threat the Japanese posed to Australia, and more generally the threat from the ‘“hordes of semi-barbarians” to the north’.5
Following this meeting, Lockhart says the necessary preparations began for Australia to develop an expeditionary force without any publicity about its purpose. This made a crucial difference to how quickly the government was able to send volunteer forces overseas after the war began in July 1914.
As former army officers, Lockhart and Mordike reject the official war historian C.E.W. Bean’s claim that the 20,000-man Australian Imperial Force was raised and ready to be sent to war in six weeks. According to Lockhart, ‘No one builds an army of that size and quality from nothing in that time. It overlooks the myriad requirements—planning, organisation, tactical doctrine, training, supply, equipment and transport—without which the raising of such a force would have been impossible.’6
Contrary to the common assumption, Lockhart says, the British were not arguing in 1911 that Germany was any threat to Australia. Instead, a report that year by the Committee of Imperial Defence concluded, ‘With no more than 2500 German troops sprinkled between German colonies in Africa and China, a German landing in Australia was “to the last degree improbable”.’7
Lockhart’s conclusion to his essay is that the sentimentality of the dominant historical literature still protects the imperial ascendency of 1911–14 in the culture as well as the politics of the nation. He says, ‘That is the great deception: Australians still have as little idea of why they were fighting in World War I as of why they are fighting in Afghanistan. The deception has nurtured the autocratic war-making powers of a few ministers each time they decide to send off an expedition. The expeditionary strategy and related culture [have] saved us from nothing, caused great grief and could cause more.’8
Writer Paul Daley says the war was only a horrific beginning for many of the injured: ‘The shell-shocked, like the limbless and disfigured, were kept from view while the nation mourned its lost generation and stoically got on with the task of building the nation. The front doors were bolted shut—hiding the domestic violence, the untouched dinners, the terrified kids, the countless suicides, the rampant alcoholism and the morphine addiction.’9
Journalist Tony Stephens interviewed many Gallipoli veterans before they died and said they used their ebbing years ‘to stress that battlefields are unsatisfactory places to resolve arguments’.10 Albert White, a veteran who had never been previously interviewed about the war, told Stephens, ‘Gallipoli was a bastard of a place. I never understood what we were fighting for. All I could think of is I never wanted to go back to the bloody place.’11 Alec Campbell, the last survivor to die, was more sanguine, telling Stephens that Gallipoli took less than a year, or 1 per cent of his life: ‘It’s not all that important personally.’12 Campbell went on to be president of the Launceston Trades Hall Council, complete an economics degree when he was over fifty years old, and campaign with Lady Jessie Street for peace.
Australian governments spent hundreds of millions of dollars more than the British did in commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I. Unfortunately, they rarely mentioned that New Zealand was part of the ANZAC forces. Stephens mused on what those who served in Gallipoli would make of it all: ‘It’s not just the ceremonies but what David Stephens of the Honest History Coalition calls Anzackery—the luxury cruises to Gallipoli, music and television shows, stubby holders, plethora of children’s books, T-shirts, the Anzac Day display in the fruit and vegetable pavilion of Sydney’s Royal Easter Show and Woolworths’ attempt to keep Anzac “Fresh in Our Memory”.’13 In Stephens’ view, ‘Many of the old soldiers … would agree with the idea that Anzac Day be reinvented as a day for
all victims of war.’14
One of the great lessons of World War I is that it started for no rational reason.15 Australian politicians sent young people off to a horrendously wasteful war when the nation’s security was not at risk. But it’s now common to hear young people interviewed on Anzac Day say how proud they are that their great-grandfather or great-uncle served at Gallipoli to defend Australia. They weren’t defending Australia: they were helping to invade Turkey, a country that posed no threat to us.
Much has also been written in recent years about the undoubted skill and endurance shown by horses and riders during the Australian cavalry charge in 1917 during the battle for Beersheba, which was then in Turkishcontrolled Palestine and is now in Israel. There is rarely any mention of the part that the capture of Beersheba played in furthering the goals of the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement between Britain and France on how to share spheres of influence in territory taken from the Ottoman Empire. Often, the new borders created ongoing problems by ignoring existing divisions on ethnic, religious and linguistic grounds. In a crime that was covered up for decades, Australian and New Zealand troops massacred all the Bedouin males in a camp at Surafend in Palestine shortly after the 1918 Armistice began. As many as 100 were killed and the camp burnt.16
