Days of Wine and Rage

by Frank Moorhouse

  Sexual pleasure

  Although the matter was never discussed formally there was an acceptance that pornography or erotica belonged in the paper. This was sexually stimulating material as distinct from obscene material – that which simply broke taboos. Apart from being aware of the absence of psychological or commonsense evidence of the ‘harm’ of this, we probably thought that it was positively beneficial. Erotic material could awaken the erotic imagination because it operated outside the prescribed sexual behaviour. It was probably felt to be liberating because it aided sexual and self-exploration and gave pleasure.

  There was discussion about whether erotica would have a place in a free society: whether it was a reflection of our sexual hang-ups or whether it was a reflection of eternal human fantasy. But for most of us it was sexual fun and, whether only for now, we wanted it in our publication.

  The paper was sold at the universities in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, around Sydney hotels, especially those used by journalists, students, nurses, and the camp crowd, by bookshops who took the risk, by personal contact and a few subscriptions, at events such as demonstrations and occasionally at beaches.

  The paper was eventually stopped by the exhaustion of the staff. At the time we had forty-one summonses to answer. When we stopped the government withdrew most of the prosecutions.

  From then until the end of the seventies there was virtually no censorship of the printed word in Australia, except, not surprisingly, in Queensland and Western Australia.

  The following is a report I wrote of a court case, showing the position Wendy Bacon took and the attitude of the authorities in the first formal confrontation. Her stand put Wendy in jail for a week.

  Wendy Bacon v. The Commonwealth

  (adapted, from the Bulletin, 13.2.71)

  The first of the forty-one obscenity and indecency charges against staff of the newspapers Tharunka and Thorunka, heard in Darlinghurst Quarter Sessions, ended in a one-all draw but with Wendy Bacon in prison.

  The all-male jury found Wendy Bacon, twenty-four, post-graduate student in sociology at the University of New South Wales, guilty of having exhibited an obscene publication but not guilty on a charge of having distributed an obscene publication.

  However, she is spending a week in prison for refusing to supply the court with details of her personal background.

  The summonses have been issued over the last few months to five people so far who face a maximum of $10 000 in fines.

  The courts face a heavy demand on rooms, staff, jurors and judges. Those involved in the cases have indicated that they intend to have each case heard separately. They will offer a range of responses to the charge – from non-participation to full legal defence.

  The case most likely to stir public interest – certainly some amusement – is the prosecution of the student newspaper Tharunka for publishing the bawdy, traditional ballad ‘Eskimo Nell’ – forty-nine verses of it. Those charged plan a full legal defence of ‘Eskimo Nell’ including witnesses to literary merit.

  Miss Bacon in her case took a position of minimal participation. Appearing in court in jeans, she refused to plead either guilty or not guilty, she was not represented, did not call witnesses, did not present an orthodox legal defence, and refused details of her ‘antecedents’.

  ‘I appear because there are penalties which force me to,’ she told the court.

  ‘I am fundamentally opposed to this court system and for that reason I did not enter a plea.’

  She said that to enter a plea would be an admission that she could be guilty of such a thing as ‘obscenity’.

  ‘To be found guilty of obscenity is to have committed no crime,’ she said.

  The crown prosecutor, Mr V. R. Wallace, told the court that Miss Bacon had appeared in the vestibule of Central Court in Sydney on 17 August 1970, dressed in a representation of a nun’s habit bearing obscene words (‘I won’t read them – I have no taste for them,’ he said). They were the words, ‘I have been fucked by God’s steel prick.’

  She had also distributed a pamphlet on which was printed an obscene poem.

  In Miss Bacon’s statement to the court, she said the poem and the words on the nun’s habit were comments ‘on the sexual nature of virgins’ and about sexual repression.

  Mr Wallace told the jury that a line had to be drawn between freedom and licence to behave in an unrestrained way which affronted society.

  ‘You are ordinary, decent citizens representing the community.’

  In her statement Miss Bacon said her behaviour had been a way of protesting against the prosecution of the newspaper Tharunka, of which she had been editor. The staff of the newspaper had not planned a campaign against the censorship laws to reform them.

  ‘It was not necessary for us to go out of our way to freak out the government,’ she said. ‘What we were trying to do was to avoid being censors of ourselves.’

  ‘I appear here because I would not censor my own views.’

  ‘We want to publish pamplets and newspapers which represent our views and not those of the chief secretary.’

  She said she had distributed the poem at Central Court to give people a chance to read the poem which was being prosecuted. The nun’s costume had been worn to highlight the special privilege and protection given to the christian religion.

  The crown prosecutor objected a number of times to the direction of Miss Bacon’s argument as being ‘irrelevant rubbish’.

  Miss Bacon told the jury that there was no such thing as ‘the ordinary person’ or the ‘average man’. She said the censorship laws were in confusion and involved differences of opinion. Outside the Establishment, especially among the young, there was a feeling that obscenity did not exist.

  Judge Levine ruled that Miss Bacon could not quote Socrates’ dialogue with Euthyphro – ‘the comments of Socrates are not relevant to New South Wales Law,’ he said. [‘The Euthyphro’ is an investigation of the meaning of piety in which Socrates unsatisfactorily concludes that piety is that which pleases the gods.]

  Miss Bacon said the policemen had asked for copies of the poem while she had been in the cells awaiting trial. They had read it and chuckled and exclaimed. They hadn’t found it obscene.

  She said the jury had been set an impossible task.

  Judge Levine said that the only test which could be applied was whether the material offended against the modesty of the average man.

  ‘She was putting herself on as a member of a religious order – the same words on the back of a postage stamp may not be obscene.’

  He told the jury that they were not censors: ‘You do not by your verdict decide what people read or not read – a specific judgment on the matter before the court does not change the law.’ For the same reason the case was not a ‘political trial’ as claimed by Miss Bacon.

  On the question of the existence of the average man Judge Levine instructed the jury that they were competent to judge for the average man: ‘You are twelve men selected at random to judge what the average view is. It is not an impossible task.’

  The jury retired for four hours and delivered their verdict at 7.30 p.m. A crowd of about forty, mainly friends and supporters of Miss Bacon, heard the verdict silently.

  Detective A. Cassimatis told the court that Miss Bacon had refused to supply details of her personal background.

  Judge Levine asked, ‘Do you mean you can’t tell me if she’s married or single?’

  He said that he was only sure that she had no prior convictions.

  Judge Levine said that he did not intend to pass sentence without knowing anything about her. He remanded her in custody until the following Friday and ordered that a probation officer interview her in an attempt to find out something about her.

  Supporters gathered outside the gates of the court – guarded by four policemen – and cheered as Miss Bacon was taken to prison in a police van.

  A defence fund has been started to meet possible fines and court expense
s of the forty-one charges.

  Wendy was the first Australian citizen since 1948 to spend time in prison on a censorship charge. (In 1948 Robert Close’s book Love Me Sailor was prosecuted and Close spent a weekend in prison awaiting sentence.) Wendy wrote quite a lot about her eight days in Silverwater prison. One of her first accounts of her imprisonment was in Thor.

  An Editor in Jail

  Wendy Bacon

  (adapted from Thor and Mejane, 1971)

  I put on a nightdress with rosebuds on it and at 9 p.m. was locked in my cell.

  A bed, a table, a toilet. No toilet paper. The words of the court began to repeat themselves in my head. The mosquitoes began to bite me. At about 3 a.m. a woman in the next cell freaked. She screamed for half an hour.

  This was B. She was crying when I met her in the morning. She was in for possessing stolen property. She told me she tried to write to her parents asking for bail but she said the screw tore the letter up because ‘the spelling was bad’.

  I felt shattered during the first two days; apparently most people do. I hated being treated like an object – at best, a child.

  On the first day I had some visitors. As they left I touched one of them on the hand. The screw supervising the visit leapt at me: ‘You’ll have me shot if you do that.’

  Before I had left Darlinghurst on the Thursday night of the trial, a police sergeant had told me, ‘I want you to keep to yourself out there … you’ll be meeting all sorts of people and don’t you go talking to them.’

  But it is the contact with other prisoners that provides the psychological sustenance and which breaks the misery of the first days. The second prisoner I met asked me what I was in for.

  ‘Exhibiting an obscene publication,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s cool, baby. They can lock you up but they can’t change that,’ and pointed at her head.

  One of the kids on a vagrancy charge said to me, ‘Let’s go upstairs and talk shit.’ They read an article in the Catholic Weekly on marijuana. On another night they ripped out the page and rolled a make-believe fag so that the word ‘marijuana’ from the Catholic Weekly headline was showing. They passed it around like a joint. Getting high in jail was talking shit.

  On Saturday morning I was sent to the Superintendent’s office and she said to me, ‘The place is all right, it’s only the people.’

  I wanted to answer, ‘The people are all right, it’s only the place.’

  I learned a lot in my eight long days: I learned how to forge a cheque; how to get money off ‘a mug’ without fucking him; how to get onto some heroin.

  Some academics and journalists regard Silverwater as a showplace. It’s a jail. You are locked in and there are bars on every window to let you know you can’t get out.

  In an interview with the women’s movement newspaper Mejane, Wendy told of her relations with warders and with other prisoners.

  The day begins at six o’clock. A couple of screws come round and the first thing they do is walk along the dormitory banging on the glass partitions with their keys and saying ‘Get up.’ You get up at six – I found myself getting up just so I could get a quick shower, and during that time you get up, get dressed and make your bed and then you really just sit on it, and the screws don’t come back till seven o’clock. At seven they have what they call a muster and everybody lines up; it’s just like school; they call your name and you say, ‘Yes miss.’ Then they go away again. You just sit and talk, or you could read during that time. At eight o’clock you go to breakfast; it seemed to me that meals were very quick and took about fifteen minutes, so at about quarter past eight you were back in the dormitory.

  Mondays and Fridays you had to clean the dormitories: they make you steelwool every single scrap of the floor and also the walls, and then you polish the floors. I found this quite insane in a hygiene sort of way because at the same time as you are doing that you’re wearing shoes which are smelly and revolting and you feel as though you could get anything from them. But this sort of kept you busy for a couple of hours. Also at that time the prisoners that work – anybody that wants to can work: you can work in the laundry, in the kitchens and some people in the garden – go off. About thirty-five out of the sixty in our dormitory worked.

  … the first night I was there I went down to bed at half past eight and you are allowed to go to the toilet before you go to bed. I was just walking along the corridor and suddenly this screw started screaming at me about why are you going into other people’s dormitories and if you ever do that again I’m going to put you in the pound. (The pound is a place where there are solitary cells and it’s where they take people when they’ve incurred the displeasure of the screws.)

  Some of the prisoners are quite tough and they’re certainly not beyond having fights. One day while I was in there two girls had a fight. I didn’t see it but there was some blood on the floor so they must be quite tough. I didn’t feel threatened in any way in that direction, but one night, after a girl had what they call lagged on another girl – in fact had lied about it – and all the prisoners were quite furious about that (this was right against the prison ethic), they were talking in the dormitory about what they’d like to do to her and some of them were talking about how they’d knock her from one end of the room to the other. But I didn’t find any of them violently disposed; nobody directed any violence against me. I didn’t notice any of the wardresses being violent either; in fact they weren’t while I was there. It may not be physically violent, but just the way it flattens people and deprives them, that is a kind of violence in itself.

  … some women that are in there assume a stronger role and a more assertive role than others. Also, although there was a certain amount of latent and obvious lesbianism going on, I wasn’t sure which ones were sort of aggressive lesbians and which ones weren’t. Perhaps if some of them are like that because there aren’t men around that would lead on to the point that some of them have been in all-women institutions all their lives.

  One of the main activities was combing hair, and you can either have your hair combed or you can comb other people’s. There’s quite a lot of pressure on you to do this and I certainly didn’t mind mine being combed. I don’t think I’m a very good comber. I didn’t really enjoy it much but I did do it a couple of times. This is a way of expressing affection and having contact. There’s also an awful lot of sort of leaning on people and putting your arm around them and this sort of thing. Often it’s the only affection available.

  There was allegedly one married couple in there who got married in a registry office and she was very butch and pulled the long pants that they wear – they wear these dreadful sort of long cotton pants – and she even pulled them down below her dress so she sort of looked like a male, and she was married to one of the women. Quite a lot of the young girls developed a sort of teenage crush on her. There were some people getting in and out of each other’s beds. A lot of these would be people who would only be lesbian in jail but there were also some who said that they were bisexual in and out of jail …

  Other Protests

  The fight against censorship was being carried on by student publications, by publishers and booksellers – in particular by Jim Thorburn of Pocket Bookshops and Penguin Books who were defending Portnoy’s Complaint – and by other magazines.

  None of the daily newspapers took up the fight editorially.

  As subsidiary activities, those around Thor published a handbook on sexual problems both medical and psychological, and The Little Red School Book, a manual of forbidden information for school children.

  The Campaign for Action against Censorship began to picket cinemas showing censored films. Demonstrators handed out leaflets to ticket-buyers showing the number and length of cuts made to films.

  Sandra Levy and I were shopping in Balmain one afternoon when two detectives said they wanted to search her car. I said that it was not legal for them to search the car – not knowing at the time whether it was or not and not having a
clue what it was that they wanted to find. They then dragged me from the car and a fight between them and Sandra and I broke out. A police van was called and we were arrested and taken to Balmain police station.

  In the following court cases it turned out that they had spotted copies of Thor and The Little Red School Book in the back of the car. They charged us with exhibiting an obscene publication, resisting arrest, assaulting police, malicious damage, insulting words. We cross-sued them for false arrest. After a number of court hearings we were convicted only of resisting arrest and fined $5 each.

  As another action against censorship, the Film Censor’s office was broken into and the locks changed so that the staff could not get in when they came to work in the morning.

  The protestors issued this news release:

  Today the Sydney office of the Commonwealth Film Censor was symbolically closed down and put out of action. The office was locked to prevent the entry of censorship office employees, the telephones were cut, the mail diverted, and the electricity cut.

  This was done by an informal group of people as a political protest at the interference by the State in the free communication of information and ideas.

  It was intended as a symbolic act and political sabotage against all censorship.

  The rational debate against censorship has continued for years with the State continuing to interfere with the citizen’s access to information and ideas and ignoring the philosophical and rational argument against censorship. The people involved in the protest do not in any way surrender the selection or suppression of films, books, magazines or any other communication to the State. This symbolic act of political retaliation and rebellion was motivated by frustration and a feeling of cultural injury.