Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  ‘The magistrate wanted to make an example of me,’ recalls Burgmann. ‘He portrayed me as a Svengali who’d led the others astray. Everyone else was being fined. I was jailed. As far as I know, it’s the only prison sentence ever delivered in Australia purely for demonstrating. My lawyers were Tom Kelly and Jack Grahame, and when I was sentenced Jack turned to me. His face was white. He couldn’t believe the severity of the sentence. Remember, I hadn’t harmed anyone or damaged property, just run onto the field and lay down. Jack said, “Just be thankful there isn’t a provision for flogging in the act.” My sentence made world headlines. It was the lead item on the BBC news. I thought, “Wow! This is amazing!” I was not looking forward to being behind bars, but if this was a way to let the rest of the world know that playing racially segregated sport wasn’t acceptable to many Australians, it was worth it. Peter Hain saw the BBC report and called me from London to ask if I was all right.’ Hain also took the trouble to release a statement to the world’s media, calling the sentence imposed on his friend as ‘barbaric’.

  Burgmann was eventually taken to Silverwater Prison to begin her two-month sentence. ‘I was placed in protective custody because the authorities suspected I’d write a book about my incarceration and they were not going to let me experience anything negative that I could write about. I shared a cell with an elderly shoplifter. All they gave me to eat was devon white-bread sandwiches. Urghh. I was issued pink prison-issue flannelette pyjamas. No reading matter. Meanwhile, my lawyers appealed, and I was released on bail after two of the most boring days of my life. There followed a whole lot of legal argy-bargy, and two years later my sentence was reduced to a suspended sentence with a good-behaviour bond.’

  Burgmann’s fellow field invaders, her sister Verity, Janice Jones, and Ralph Pearce, were convicted of offensive behaviour, and each fined $120 and placed on a $200 two-year good-behaviour bond.

  CHAPTER 22

  DEAR SIR DONALD

  As Denis Freney sensed, the anti-apartheid movement had made its point. Polls conducted at the end of the Springboks’ tour indicated that one in three opposed Australian teams playing against all-white, racially selected South African sides, whereas before the Springboks landed in Perth some polls put the figure at one in seven. As winter turned to spring and summer, the number of Australians who opposed apartheid rose further.

  Scarcely had the South African rugby players left Australian shores when even conservative politicians and journalists in Australia and South Africa were calling the tour a ‘shambles’. Consequently, the South African Springboks’ cricket tour, due to commence on 22 October, was now in jeopardy.

  Former Australian cricket captain Bill Lawry pointed out that cricket matches extending over five days would be infinitely harder for police to control than an 80-minute rugby match, and he advised the Australian Cricket Board of Control (ACB), chaired by Sir Donald Bradman, to take that into consideration when deciding whether to welcome the South African cricketers or withdraw the invitation. Ex–South African cricket skipper Allan Melville said the ill-treatment of the rugby players had doomed the cricket tour to be even more of a farce and waste of money: ‘I just cannot see how the Australian authorities will be able to control a cricket match under demo conditions. The cricketers will be more vulnerable than the rugby players. Anyway, our players would not be able to give of their best.’ Johannesburg Times sportswriter Kevin Craig said, ‘Let’s get out with dignity. The Springbok rugby shambles — I nearly said “tour” — of Australia has proved conclusively that the possibility of the cricket tour taking place is as remote as the canals of Mars.’ West Indies cricket officials threatened never to play against Australia again unless the ‘racist’ tour by South Africa was abandoned. The United Nations and the Australian Council of Churches voiced their opposition.

  The ACB professed to be unmoved. The tour had been planned since 1967, and there was no reason why it should not take place. To Sir Donald Bradman, the cricket tour differed from the rugby tour because South African cricketers were ‘basically of English descent’ and did not support the South African government’s apartheid policy — indeed, some in the team had boycotted matches in protest at apartheid — whereas the rugby team comprised mainly Afrikaners, who, presumably, supported the government. Privately, however, the Don was worried, so much so that in March 1971, when it was becoming clear that there would be demonstrations and union action against the rugby tour, he had written to the then prime minister, John Gorton, to see if the government had qualms about a Springbok cricket tour. Gorton, even though he would have been well aware of the recent disastrous South African rugby tour to Britain and the subsequent cancellation of the Springbok cricket tour in that country, replied that he did not.

  As the South African tour loomed, Sir Donald deflected attention by advising critics and proponents of the tour alike to put their views to Gorton’s successor, William McMahon, rather than writing to him, because this was a political, not a sporting, issue. ‘I’m a sportsman and cricket is my game — politics is Mr McMahon’s.’

  At heart, Sir Donald wanted the tour to proceed. He was keen for Australian fans to see in action great South African players such as Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Peter Pollock, Eddie Barlow, Mike Procter, Dennis Lindsay, Trevor Goddard, Tiger Lance, and Ali Bacher. And, as one who cherished cricket’s heritage, he was depressed to think that a ban would end seven decades of competition, interrupted only by world war, between the countries.

  And yet … He had attended the first rugby international at the SCG and seen the arrests and the smoke bombs and the barbed wire, and he’d been distressed. He knew now that around 800 people had been arrested in anti-apartheid demonstrations all over the country. He remembered the union bans and the unseemly posturing of politicians and was under no illusion that a cricket tour would escape them. With cricket a national sport — unlike rugby, whose stronghold was in just two states — this tour had the potential to polarise many more Australians. He had visited the Springbok and Wallaby management at the Squire Inn while it was blockaded by demonstrators and come away alarmed because, as Bill Lawry had warned, ensuring the safety of players and spectators over a long cricket tour comprising many five-day games would be a logistical and financial nightmare. Also, though he had long believed that sport and politics should not, need not, mix, he was now beginning to see that the anti-apartheid campaigners had an unassailable point: racial discrimination legislated by a political regime that impacted on sports selection was wicked.

  Sir Donald had been helped to arrive at this last conclusion by an exchange of letters with Meredith Burgmann. He had seen her on TV and read interviews with her in newspapers and magazines in which she had denounced apartheid and the Springboks, and he had seen her arrested and dragged around the ground by police at the SCG. So, intrigued yet puzzled, he wrote to her to ask why she was so outspoken and why she would willingly subject herself to such treatment. Burgmann did not need to be asked twice. She wrote to Sir Donald justifying why she risked life and limb protesting against apartheid, and briefing him about the racial injustice endemic in South Africa.

  Sir Donald’s thorough delving into the pros and cons of the issue included a visit to Johannesburg to meet Prime Minister John Vorster to hear his thoughts on apartheid and cricket. The meeting did not go well. The courtly Australian legend considered Vorster ‘ignorant and repugnant’. When Vorster intimated that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and therefore incapable of appreciating cricket’s subtleties and tradition, an angry Bradman asked Vorster if he had ever heard of Garfield Sobers.

  Sir Donald also paid calls to Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, who, as British prime ministers, had dealt with Peter Hain’s anti-apartheid demonstrations.

  Back in Australia, Sir Donald sought the advice of the prime minister. Bradman’s letter to William McMahon was dated 9 August. He acknowledged that the planned Springbok cricket tour would create con
troversy — there would likely be demonstrations and trade-union action, including bans on transport, food, and accommodation. Because of the difficulty of policing five-day test matches, heavy police protection would be essential, although he was concerned about whether it was ‘reasonable to subject these men in the heat of summer to the greatly prolonged periods of duty, provocation and even danger that cricket would necessitate’. In light of all this, Sir Donald sought the views of the federal government on the tour, to be factored in when the Australian Cricket Board met on 8 September to decide whether the tour should proceed. ‘I believe it my duty to ask you whether there is any advice you may wish to tender. For this purpose I would be willing, if need be, to go to Canberra to see you.’

  Before he replied, McMahon consulted his mandarins about what position the government should adopt. The consensus was that after the bedlam of the rugby tour, a Springbok tour of Australia only months later was untenable. The state premiers were all saying their police forces could not go through in the summer what they had in the winter, and certainly not over five-day games. The problem was, if the government cancelled the cricket tour, it would stand accused of buckling to the demonstrators, and reneging on its oft-repeated stance that while it opposed apartheid, South Africa, like any sovereign nation, had the right to chart its own course, and that, because sport and politics were separate, the political system of apartheid had no bearing on a sporting tour. Therefore, McMahon and his advisers concocted a Machiavellian plan: he would make it clear to Bradman and through him the ACB that the tour could not proceed, but that he expected the board, not the government, to pull the plug.

  Now the prime minister contacted Sir Donald and offered the following advice: ‘I note that it is the intention of the Australian Cricket Board of Control at its meeting on September 8 to finally determine whether the tour should proceed. As you know, it is the Government’s view that sporting fixtures between nations should, as far as possible, be a matter for the relevant sporting organisations themselves. Earlier this year I indicated that the Government had no objection to a South African cricket tour and that we would not wish to prevent such a tour taking place. However, in the light of the difficulties that arose during the rugby tour and of the additional problems that would be posed in the case of cricket, it is difficult to see how it would be possible, without taking extreme measures, to prevent severe disruption, even possible abandonment, of cricket matches. The Board may wish to take this into account at its meeting on September 8 …’

  The government appreciated that the great majority of Australians supported the tour, but recognised the board’s difficulty in arranging a successful tour in the face of the threatened disruption of the matches. However, in keeping with McMahon’s philosophy that sporting organisations, not governments, should control sport, it was not involving itself, and the decision whether to host the Springboks was one exclusively for Bradman’s board to make.

  As a Plan B, if the ACB refused to abandon the tour, the government would over-rule it, pull the plug itself, and wear the political and media flak. McMahon, however, was certain that it would not come to this.

  His instinct was right. On receiving the prime minister’s letter, Sir Donald conferred with fellow ACB members, and on 8 September he announced that it was in the best interests ‘of Australia, the game of cricket and all those associated with it’ to cancel the South African cricket tour. It would be replaced by a visit from a World XI, which would contain the South Africans Graeme and Peter Pollock and Hylton Ackerman. Bradman explained that the South Africans’ tour was being scrapped because it would create ‘internal bitterness between rival groups and demonstrations on a large scale’, and huge numbers of police would be required to keep order throughout the tour and this would deprive other members of the public of their services.

  Then Sir Donald came into his own, and gladdened the hearts of the AAM and CARIS and all those who opposed apartheid, when he said that the ACB ‘earnestly hopes that the South African Government will in the near future relax its laws so that the cricketers of South Africa may once again take their place as full participants in the international field and the Board will give its utmost support to the South African Government to try to bring about this end … We will not play them until they choose a team on a non-racist basis.’

  The Don’s words, and the ACB slamming the door on the Springbok cricket tour, were a body blow to the South African government and apartheid.

  At the announcement, a jubilant Peter McGregor, who was in Sandy Bay in Tasmania, sent a telegram to Meredith Burgmann: ‘Yippee it’s cancelled.’

  John Vorster was furious. ‘I want to make this point right at the outset that this tour was not cancelled by the South African Cricket Association, nor was it cancelled by the South African Government,’ Vorster seethed on 14 September at the opening of the National Party’s Free State Congress at Bloemfontein. ‘No, it was cancelled by Sir Donald Bradman and his committee. If Sir Donald now says … that it was my fault, and the fault of my Government, I say to him as a great cricketer, “Sir Donald, you are talking through your hat, and you know it!” … All decent Australians, and they were the great majority, wanted us, wanted our cricketers, to come to Australia. The riff-raff did not want us to come. The decent people said we were welcome. The riff-raff threatened violence and they committed violence. The riff-raff won.’

  Neither did South African sports minister Frank Waring try to conceal his anger. He accused the anti-apartheid movement of trying to bring down the Government. ‘The anarchy and threats of a vociferous and misguided minority have exerted sufficient pressure on the Australian cricket authorities to have this tour cancelled …’ Activists would not stop harassing South Africa ‘until the black majority ruled the country. Whatever the rest of the world may think or do, we in South Africa are not prepared to hand over our country to anarchy, even when it is disguised by the demand for multi-racial sport. There are national interests which go far beyond even our desire to maintain international sporting contacts.’

  Barry McDonald of the Rugby Seven felt the ire of former friends in South Africa who held him personally responsible for the cricket tour being cancelled. And he was on the receiving end of opprobrium again at a Randwick rugby-club function soon after the cricket tour was scrapped when he locked horns with the guest of honour, the veteran ABC Radio cricket commentator Alan McGilvray. ‘McGilvray stood at the podium and said to the players and guests, “Ask me any question you like and I’ll answer honestly.”’ Someone asked the broadcaster whether he supported the South African rugby and cricket tours and what he thought of those who would stop them, and, recalls McDonald, ‘McGilvray replied that the anti-apartheid demonstrations were disgraceful. “Fancy disrespecting South Africans, the most wonderful, most hospitable people.” I gathered from that that he supported apartheid and, guest of honour or not, I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. I called out, “How can you possibly support racism and racially selected sporting teams?” McGilvray got angry. He pointed at me. “You’re the sort of person who makes me sick! You’ve never been to South Africa, so you have no idea what happens there. You’re speaking from ignorance!” Then Ken Catchpole called out, “Actually, Alan, Barry toured South Africa with the Wallabies in 1969.” Without missing a beat, McGilvray said, ‘OK, so you have been to South Africa … but you still don’t know what you’re talking about!”’

  As John Vorster and Frank Waring fumed, Meredith Burgmann took immense satisfaction from the cancellation of the cricket tour. ‘That decision meant that our campaign against the Springbok rugby team was a success. If we hadn’t done what we did, there is no doubt that the cricket tour would have gone ahead. It was probably the first time that a political-activism campaign in Australia achieved a direct victory. When we formed the Anti-Apartheid Movement, we had two aims: to stop the rugby tour and then the cricket tour. As a result of the mass demonstrations, ours and CARIS’s and HA
LT’s and all the other groups, against the rugby team, the cricket tour by South Africa was cancelled. Bradman saying that South Africa’s repressive system was the main reason why the Australian Cricket Board had withdrawn its invitation was so satisfying to hear. We expected him to pussyfoot that the tour was off because the South African cricketers could not be protected from the demonstrating hordes. To have the ACB bring apartheid and the principle of non-racial sport into its statement was a delightful surprise.’

  Burgmann admits that she was not overwhelmed when Sir Donald wrote his first letter to her from his home in Adelaide. ‘As a young student, I somehow supposed it was normal for Australia’s greatest cricketer to write to an unknown student demonstrator. We had an intriguing correspondence that lasted almost two years, and now those letters from the Don are among my most prized possessions. The first letter arrived in my mailbox in the middle of the Springboks tour, possibly prompted by media coverage of the woman in the unbecoming red wig being arrested at the SCG. Whatever the reason, he put pen to paper to seek out my views. What became clear from his letters to me is that he was a man of his generation being confronted with behaviour by young people that he simply did not understand. But the letters also revealed an inquiring mind trying to come to terms with what was for many Australians a difficult issue.