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email the perth indmedia mob...
THE ANZAC MYTH - PART 1 |
| by Anzax Mythbuster |
2007-04-11 11:11 AM +0800 |
THE ANZAC MYTH - PART 1
"Hundreds of thousands bitterly opposed Australia's participation in WWI"
The ANZAC myth has become an integral part of Australian folklore, as the last living witnesses to the carnage that occurred cannot personally challenge the idealised sanitised accounts that are being trotted out each ANZAC Day... |
THE ANZAC MYTH - PART 1
The ANZAC myth has become an integral part of Australian folklore, as the last living witnesses to the carnage that occurred cannot personally challenge the idealised sanitised accounts that are being trotted out each ANZAC Day.
The overt politicisation of ANZAC Day during the last decade by the Howard government, is turning it from a day in which the country remembers and recognises the ultimate sacrifice made by Australians who have died in war and the sacrifices made by those who continue to carry the physical and psychological scars that have blighted their lives and continue to blight the lives of their partners and children, to a jingoistic festival.
Many survivors have had to carry the added burden of being sent to wars that were fought for short term political and ideological expediency, not the defence of Australia.
It is strange that ANZAC Day, almost a century after the Gallipoli landing, continues to have a strong hold on younger Australians. ANZAC Day has not always played such a pivotal role in Australian society. Between the Great Wars, Remembrance Day - the 11th November - was a much more important day than ANZAC Day to most Australians.
The re-writing of history by Australia's growing band of government supported historical revisionists has muddied the waters so much that few Australians are even vaguely aware that Australia was a bitterly divided nation during World War One. The sacrosanct mythological account that has been spun to create the ANZAC
myth has little, if anything, to do with reality.
Hundreds of thousands bitterly opposed Australia's participation in WWI.
When the reality of what was really happening on the Dardanelles and later on the Western Front filtered back home, the deluge of volunteers had slowed to a trickle.
Many Australians believed WWI was essentially a trade war that was fought by workers at either end of a bayonet. The bulk of the trade union movement, the Catholic Church, women's groups and radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were openly defiant of the Prime Minister's plans to send more young Australians to the European killing fields.
Prime Minister Hughes was initially against conscription but when he returned from England in 1916, he had changed his mind. Faced with the reality the majority of Labor members of Federal Parliament had signed anti-conscription pledges and that neither Cabinet nor the Labor Caucus would allow him to introduce a Conscription Act into Parliament, he put his faith in the idea
that the electorate would support a Conscription referendum. He gambled that no politician would dare oppose a Conscription Bill backed by the people.
When Hughes introduced his proposal for a Conscription referendum into Federal Parliament, he was expelled from the Political Labor League in Sydney and his own union - the Waterside Workers Union - censored him. The Australian Trade
Union Congress called for a general strike if conscription was introduced. Although a large number of Labor members voted against the Referendum Bill, the Bill was passed with the support of the Opposition.
Faced with the prospect of a Conscription referendum in December 1916 and the introduction of the draconian War Precautions Act - an Act which was very similar to the so called 'anti-terrorist' legislation passed after 9/11 - the anti-conscription forces took to the streets to demonstrate their concerns and attempted to organise a general strike to oppose conscription.
Across Australia, anti-conscription meetings and rallies were met with violence. The IWW were banned, its newspaper 'Direct Action' was closed down, its assets seized and its members were jailed and deported. Despite government censorship and the violence directed at the anti-conscription movement, the movement flourished.
On the 4th of October 1916, a stop work meeting of workers opposed to the war drew a crowd of 50,000 people to Melbourne's Yarra bank. Two weeks later, the Women's Peace Army was able to mobilise 100,000 people (10% of Melbourne's population) at an anti-conscription rally held on Melbourne's Yarra bank that was addressed by a team of women's speakers.
The anti-conscription movement used cartoons, songs and poems to promote their viewpoints; to the relief of everybody involved in the anti-conscription struggle the conscription referendum held in December 1916 narrowly returned a no vote.
(Western Australians voted in favour of conscription in the referendum of 1917, which was rejected by a majority of people in a majority of States throughout Australia.)
NEXT WEEK: The Struggle Continue
----
From: ANARCHIST AGE WEEKLY REVIEW
Internet: http://anarchistmedia.org/weekly.html || Email: anarchistage@yahoo.com
Anarchist World This Week Radio Program on the net || http://home.vicnet.net.au
An Anarchist Society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society based on the creation of social and political structures which allow all people equal decision making power and equal access to society's wealth.
---
PHOTOGRAPH BELOW: [Anti-conscription demonstration street march with a banner reading 'If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, good God we have bought it fair', Melbourne, ca. 1916] See: http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an24601338 |
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WIKIPEDIA: Industrial Workers of the World
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THE ANZAC MYTH – PART II |
| by |
2007-04-25 1:06 AM +0800 |
THE ANZAC MYTH – PART II
(Part I – AAWR Issue No. 735)
Prime Minister Hughes, anticipating a no confidence motion in his leadership, walked out of the Caucus meeting with 23 of the 65 members present. The breakaway minority formed a National Labor Party that established a new government with the support of the Nationals. The torrent of dead and injured, and the deep divisions surrounding Australian participation in WWI, did not stop the new government holding another conscription referendum in late 1917.
Daniel Mannix, the co-adjustor Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, joined the anti-conscription campaign and used church functions to campaign against conscription. He, like the trade unions, Quakers, socialists, the I.W.W. (International Workers of the World) and the Women’s Peace Army, had joined the massive national campaign against conscription because they believed WWI was not the war to end all wars, or a war fought to protect smaller nations, or a war to promote freedom or democracy. To them it was just another grubby trade war.
Archbishop Mannix told his congregation:- “We hear a great deal about the cause of the war, that it was a question of the rights of smaller nations, but as a matter of fact, it is simply a trade war. Those who are now our enemies before the war had been capturing our trade. I say, deliberately in spite of all the things we hear about the war, that it is an ordinary trade war”.
The second conscription referendum in 1917 was easily defeated. Through the courage and efforts of the Australian people, another 60,000 young Australians would not be sacrificed on the European killing fields for the glory of God, King and country. Considering the historical record, it is ironic that ANZAC Day has become such an important day in the Australian calendar. 60,000 young men from a population of 5 million were sacrificed in bungled military campaign fought over a trade war that was opposed by a majority of Australians. The Gallipoli campaign was an unmitigated disaster. The Allied troops that wrest on that peninsula in Western Turkey died in a pointless invasion. The Turks died defending their homeland, the Australian and the rest of the Allies died in a poorly planned and executed diversionary campaign.
ANZAC Day is an inappropriate day to remember those Australian men and women who have died in war, and those who continue to suffer because of their war experiences. There are other more important and appropriate dates that exist.
The Kokoda campaign in Papua New Guinea in 1942 is a much more important campaign than the failed ANZAC campaign. Faced with imminent invasion by the Japanese Imperial Forces, Australia was a united nation during WWII. The young soldiers who were sent to Kokoda were inexperienced, poorly armed and out-manned. They succeeded with the assistance of the Papuans in defeating the battle hardened Japanese Imperial Army. Their success on the battlefield prevented the invasion by a fascist army which would have reeled havoc among the poorly prepared Australian civilian population.
The Kokoda campaign was everything the ANZAC campaign was not. The Australian military succeeded in driving back the Japanese Imperial Forces. They succeeded in preventing the invasion of Australia; they succeeded in preventing the establishment of a fascist occupation force in Australia. They were fighting to protect the nation’s integrity, individual freedom and parliamentary democracy.
Why do we as a nation still continue to remember the horrors of war and honour those who died, those who were injured and those who fought on such an inappropriate day, when other more appropriate and relevant days are available to the Australian people?
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Every society perpetuates myths |
| by |
2007-04-25 9:23 AM +0800 |
Just like the way the Melbourne Anarchists have glorified the Eureka Stockade as some beautiful love in. Even giving out "Eureka Medals". No thanks.
Link here
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Good Riddence To The ANZAC Bullshit |
| by Brendon |
2007-04-26 5:49 PM +0800 |
Celebrating our ability to invade a foreign country under orders from our economic master?
What strange people we Australians are.
I wonder how we would go allowing Indonesia to hold memorials to their invasion of Australia if it were to ever happen?
Link here
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