by Larry Writer
A few protesters started throwing rocks and bricks, one of which smashed the window of the first-storey room in the Tower Mill Motel where Police Commissioner Whitrod had been monitoring the situation and instructing police on his loudhailer. Whitrod ordered the demonstrators to disperse. They stayed put. This gave the police the chance they’d been waiting for, and — either ignoring or not hearing Whitrod’s amplified cries of ‘Police, come back! Police, come back!’ — they took their identifying badges off and charged.
Abetted by plainclothes agents provocateurs (who, protesters said, threw coins at uniformed police to incite them and then sidled away so it appeared that the demonstrators were the culprits) and neo-Nazis, the stampeding police sent protesters tumbling and sprawling down a steep unlit slope into Wickham Park, where they were crushed against an eight-metre-high embankment. One protester remembers the ‘nasty grins’ on the officer’s faces. And another: ‘When people got to the bottom of the hill, they realised they’d been trapped. I think that’s when the police started to be brutal.’ Demonstrators, reporters, photographers, and innocent bystanders were bloodied and battered in the human avalanche. Police made seven arrests, all students. ‘You’re treating us like animals,’ screamed one girl. ‘What have we done wrong?’
‘The police just charged. The riot was sport to those Queensland coppers,’ remembers Tasker, who was in the thick of it. ‘Joh had given them a licence to kill … well, not to kill, but to deliver some good hidings. I was on the hill for a while, and when the police charged I got out of the way in a hurry. It was terrifying.’
One long-haired 18-year-old first-year University of Queensland law student was pursued by police as he ran to what he hoped was sanctuary in the Trades Hall, about 50 metres from the Tower Mill Motel on the corner of Wickham Terrace and Edward Street. The youth, whose name was Peter Beattie, would go on to become a Labor MP and premier of Queensland, winning elections in 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2006.
Beattie recalls well the events that put him in hospital and were the catalyst for a political career of a very different stripe to Bjelke-Petersen’s. ‘I’d played rugby union and rugby league and in some ways was a rugger-bugger myself, but it was wrong that Australian teams were playing against this racially selected South African team, so I exercised my right to protest against the tour,’ says Beattie. ‘I went to the Tower Mill Motel to join others who were telling the Springboks that we thought their team should be selected on merit, not race. In Wickham Terrace, there were the usual chants, but it was a peaceful protest. The police were lined up on one side of the road opposite the protesters. Then they charged us, beat us with batons, pushed us over the hill and down the incline. People were knocked over. I saw a policeman battering a woman with a baton. This was how Bjelke-Peterson dealt with so-called radicals who, according to him, were threatening the future of civilisation. His State of Emergency was an act of political bastardry of the worst kind. He had brought in a whole lot of country coppers who had taken their names and numbers off. At any demonstration, there’ll be agitators, stirrers, and hard-line ideological people of the left who will campaign on a whole series of issues, but most of us there that night were like me, ordinary Queenslanders who believed apartheid was wrong and wanted to express that view peacefully.
‘After I’d been shoved down the hill, I thought, “Bugger this! I’m out of here!” It was a pretty frightening experience. I took off down the road with a number of other protesters to what was then the Trades Hall. I’d never been inside it. I had only been in Brisbane six months, from Atherton in North Queensland. About six of us — from memory, three girls and three boys — were sitting on the steps of the Trades Hall when a police car drove up the hill and one of the officers inside must have recognised us from the protest because the car screamed to a halt and the police jumped out. I suspect they were from the Special Branch, which was in effect Bjelke-Petersen’s personal police force. We bolted into the Trades Hall. I was standing at the bottom of the stairs [inside] when I was grabbed by a whopping big copper and thrown to the ground. He landed on me and I ended up in hospital.’
After treatment for suspected spinal injuries, cuts, and bruises, Beattie was charged with behaving in a disorderly manner and resisting police officer Lindsay Edward Daniels in the execution of his duty. ‘Resisting arrest! I was running away! I was verballed by the police. They lied. They bounded out of their car and went for us. There was no attempt to arrest us. There was no conversation. They attacked us. I couldn’t believe this verballing. I’d been raised by my grandmother to respect authority, the local policeman was like a god, and here were these two guys telling bare-faced lies in court. It was so disillusioning. It was a real turning point in my life, politically. It made me suspicious of the system. It was a time of new awakening, a new awareness. It was a frightening watershed … But out of that I was determined to make changes. I’d experienced firsthand the corruption in the Queensland Police Force and figured if I ever had the chance I’d do something about it.’
Beattie was remanded on $50 bail and ordered to appear in court to face the charges on 4 October. He followed his lawyer’s instruction to forfeit the bail and not turn up. Good advice, because he heard no more about the matter.
Peter Beattie’s arrest became a cause celebre whose headlines in the papers horrified the grandmother who had brought him up, and for a time, destroyed their relationship. ‘She was a conservative country woman, a good soul, and because Joh espoused conservatism she thought he could do no wrong. He was cynical and unscrupulous and tricked many fine people into believing he was a good man. One method he employed was portraying anyone who stood up to him as a troublemaker and a radical and a communist, a totally unacceptable human being. My grandmother could not understand why I would be at a protest against the Government, against the police.’
A witness to the altercation at Trades Hall was David Halpin, press secretary to federal Senate Opposition leader Lionel Murphy, who later reported that at 6.05 p.m. on 22 July he saw a young woman being chased by four police up the steps of the Trades Hall. The police grabbed the woman and he heard her scream. At that point, he saw three policemen dragging a young man — Peter Beattie — ‘along a wall of a corridor. A girl was trying to stop them and one of the policemen punched her in the face. We all piled in to stop the police. Two of them got out the door, but we locked the door before the last one could get out.’
According to the pamphlet The Whole World Watching, written and distributed by the protesters, Daniels, the policeman who assaulted Peter Beattie, was ‘beside himself with rage’ until the unionists intervened. At that point, Daniels, realising he was isolated, became, according to some who were there, ‘a quiet and frightened man’. The publication continued, ‘Someone said, “Take his number”, meaning, “write it down”, and one of the girls leaned over and grabbed the number and wrenched it right off Daniels’ shoulder. Daniels was held in the Trades Hall pending the arrival of a solicitor who questioned him. He refused to answer the question of what charge he was making against Beattie. He admitted that he had swapped numbers with other policemen.’
In the wake of the Tower Mill Motel riot, Queensland Opposition leader Jack Houston and federal Labor Party president Tom Burns — who had hosted Sekai Holland, Anthony Abrahams, and Jim Boyce on their Queensland speaking tours before the Springboks arrived — demanded an official inquiry into the allegations of police brutality. ‘The Labor Party will not stay silent while the Premier and the Police Minister indulge in blood sports at the expense of young Queenslanders. What kind of Queensland will develop if they grow up in an atmosphere of police bashing and persecution?’
Bjelke-Petersen was having no part of any inquiry. ‘I don’t want any inquiry or investigation of any sort,’ he responded. ‘The police force faced an extremely difficult situation last night in trying to control demonstrators outside the Tower Mill Motel. They were opposed by trained agitators, radicals and
militant union leaders. I have every confidence in the Queensland Police Force, which has a reputation second to none in Australia. Police violence has become the catch-cry of demonstrators and law-breakers in Australia and overseas. It’s remarkable how union leaders who trample arrogantly over the rights of others are the first to complain when the events for which they are responsible directly affect themselves. It is no coincidence that some of the demonstrators made for the Trades Hall. This or any other building is not accepted as a sanctuary for those who break the law. The Trades Hall has a reputation as a treason centre for draft dodgers and it would appear that it is to become the headquarters for law-breakers taking part in demonstrations at the Tower Mill Motel against the Springboks.’
Police Minister Hodges went so far as to suggest that the demonstrators had caused their own injuries. ‘The police did nothing wrong. They took two steps forward and the crowd ran away shouting police violence.’
Police Commissioner Whitrod was criticised by his own men for trying to restrain the police from propelling the protesters down the incline at Wickham Park. The president of the Police Union, Detective Sergeant Ron Edington, said that a number of older police officers believed that Whitrod ‘could have handled the situation better’. Police, Edington went on, felt that it was their job to force the demonstrators to obey the law, and the law was that demonstrations were banned. ‘Mr Whitrod doesn’t want to annoy the students. He doesn’t want to annoy the ALP. He’s having a two bob bet each way.’ Whitrod was also attacked for handing over a knife-wielding demonstrator, whom he had personally disarmed outside the Tower Mill Motel, to Labor senator George Georges instead of arresting him. A motion of no confidence in Whitrod for his mollycoddling of demonstrators was passed by the small number of Police Union members who bothered to vote; Whitrod shrugged and returned to work.
Few of them realised it, but the Queensland Police Force was lucky to have Ray Whitrod. He was a decent, humble man and an honest cop, whose aim was to establish a corruption-free police force and introduce promotion based on merit, not seniority. This earned him the hatred of many in the force who did not share his standards. He received threats that saw him keep a loaded gun in his home. Whitrod butted heads with Bjelke-Petersen throughout his time in office and always felt himself an outsider in a Queensland system he considered ‘populist, conservative, anti-intellectual and authoritarian’. In his memoir, Before I Sleep, Whitrod wrote, ‘Joh treated me rudely, arrogantly and ignorantly … his knowledge of police principles and practise was largely confined to stories he would have been told by his police drivers.’
The quelling of the protest at the Tower Mill Motel sent a shudder through the local anti-apartheid movement. The night after the violence outside the Springboks’ hotel, a crowd of 300 gathered to sing and chant, but when Whitrod asked them to keep the noise down because it was upsetting patients at nearby Holy Spirit Hospital, they quickly and amiably complied. The campaigners took a vote and opted for a silent vigil.
In Queensland, thanks to the State of Emergency, instead of being tormented everywhere they went, the South African players were feted. On a walk through the CBD on 23 July, they were clapped by members of the public. As photographers snapped away, Robbie Barnard and Frik du Preez played props to Miss Rugby 1971, Susan Francis, who hooked each of her arms over the South African forwards’ massive shoulders and kicked up her legs. And there was a staged photo taken the day before the match against Queensland at the Exhibition Ground when Piston van Wyk, Hannes Marais, and the Joggies Viljoen and Jansen pretended to be hauling up the goalposts. The players posed with helmeted police emergency-squad members as they inspected protective mesh shields that had been erected over sections of the field at the Exhibition Ground to catch thrown objects. Morne du Plessis, Syd Nomis, Ian McCallum, and Peter Cronje relaxed together at the Souths versus Valleys rugby league match at Lang Park. These photographs are among the few taken on their Australian tour that capture the Springboks smiling.
A leaflet circulated from the university after the strife at the Tower Mill Motel informed readers that recent events meant there was no guarantee ‘of even limited rights of protest in Brisbane any longer. People who go into the streets to dissent go into an atmosphere of justifiable fear and the danger of violence.’ The police had been turned into ‘an almost military force to be used quite ruthlessly against groups of citizens who conscientiously disagree with government policies … How are we to protest against racism and the Springbok tour in view of the determined Government onslaught on the union movement as symbolised in large terms by the State of Emergency and in small terms by the police siege of Trades Hall [and] the hard-line policy against student demonstrators as outlined by Hodges the Police Minister … Students should consider the only remaining avenue for mass dissent open to them: Halt the university system and demand that the university be transformed for the duration of the tour into a citadel of anti-racism. Stop the university until they stop the tour.’
So, instead of demonstrating on the streets and rugby fields, students from the University of Queensland expressed their opposition to the Springboks’ visit, and the Queensland government and police force, by occupying the J.D. Story Room in the student-union building and picketing the university grounds and individual classes. Announcing that the 2,000 students would stay there, ‘on strike’, for the duration of the Springbok tour, organisers Dan O’Neill (an English lecturer) and Jim Prentice explained that because of the strong-arm methods of the police, ‘We can no longer beat the Springbok tour and fight racism in the streets … The only way is to bring the industrial system of Australia to a halt.’
Professor Zelman Cowen, vice-chancellor of the university and a future governor-general, was troubled by the increasingly malignant climate of ‘protest and reaction’ and torn between his personal hatred of apartheid and his vice-chancellor’s sense of duty over the student occupation. ‘It is my responsibility as vice-chancellor to ensure that full and frank debate on all subjects is carried out. It is also my responsibility to see that the normal operations of the university are carried out [and] it is wrong and contrary to the interests of the university to in any way officially endorse such strike action. The university and I look to the Student Union executive to take the appropriate decision for the management of this distinctly student area of the university.’
Some 3,500 university students and staff voted to continue the sit-in and strike. Professor Cowen could do nothing but provide classes for those who cared to attend. In Dan O’Neill, the students had a courageous and idealistic leader, determined to affect progressive change. In his early 30s, he was the son of a Lebanese mother and an Irish father, and was a powerful and inspiring public speaker. One of his students would recall ‘the tenor and rhythm of Dan O’Neill’s voice as he argued with such force and clarity on the issues of the day — a brilliant orator the likes of which I have not heard since’.
With the Springboks’ Brisbane matches — against a Queensland team on 24 July, the Junior Wallabies on 28 July, and Australia in the Second Test on 31 July — and their game against Queensland Country in Toowoomba on 4 August about to commence, Police Minister Hodges announced that under the State of Emergency a raft of orders would be enforced to protect the public, rugby players, and police from demonstrators at the games and in the streets. A two-metre-high chain-wire and barbed-wire fence would be erected around the Exhibition Ground: should a demonstrator somehow scale it, he or she would be faced with a four-metre drop onto the bone-cracking crushed-granite trotting and speedway track below. There would be no public car-parking in the streets adjoining the Exhibition Ground. The one point of entry to the Exhibition Ground would be the Gregory Terrace entrance; this would facilitate the searching of ‘suspect’ people thought likely to be carrying ‘objectionable weapons’. Police could do whatever they thought necessary to prevent disruption of the matches, including making arrests and searching bags without a warrant. Should th
eir clothing be dirtied or damaged in the carrying out of their duty, the government would pick up the cleaning and repair tab, a cost normally borne by the officers. On the other hand, police had to work overtime if so instructed, without extra pay.
Protests at these Brisbane matches, like those outside the Tower Mill Motel, were low-key, with only flashes of the revolutionary zeal shown in other states.
As the South Africans were defeating Queensland by 33–14, a handful of demonstrators chanted and held up signs, but caused no problem to the 300 police strung around the Exhibition Ground fence and as many stationed in the crowd. Indeed, the main instigator of trouble was a small dog that ran onto the field and disappeared into the depths of a scrum and needed to be carried to safety by a linesman.
Around 1,000 Labor Party members, trade unionists, University of Queensland students, Aboriginals, and school children boycotted the game to rally in Brisbane’s Victoria Park. This was the first time that Labor as a party, rather than individual members such as Gough Whitlam, Tom Burns, and Barry Cohen, had united to oppose the Springbok tour. At the gathering, speakers — unsuccessfully — advocated burning down the Rugby Club at Ballymore and setting aflame the Australian and South African flags. Protest songs were sung by Irish minstrel Declan Affley. Peter McGregor, fresh from Sydney, told why it was more important than ever, in the ‘police state of Queensland’, to fight apartheid. Dan O’Neill spoke, as did Senator George Georges and Catholic priest John Maguire. Bill Hayden, a former Queensland policeman turned federal Labor MP (who would take on the roles of minister for social security, treasurer, Labor leader, minister for foreign affairs, and governor-general), counselled a more passive approach and warned the protesters against playing into the Queensland government’s hands by letting themselves be goaded into violence. ‘You will be cleaned up. Innocent people will be hurt. Remember, [a majority of] the workers are not behind you.’ The time for manning the barricades was not now. Sekai Holland, who had found kindred spirits in Lilla Watson and other Queensland Indigenous activists, expressed her sorrow that the police and conservative governments were using barbarity to ensure that the Springbok rugby tour would not only proceed, but also be followed by the South African cricket tour. She could not see at that moment, she mourned, how the reactionaries could be overcome, ‘but overcome they must be’. On the orders of Ray Whitrod, no police attended the rally; however, one man drove his car at the campaigners and another ran about throwing punches at them.
