Critical Times

by Jefferson Lee (written 9/3/09 as my initial contribution to this website)

On Friday 24th April 2009 (Anzac Eve) at Leichhardt Town Hall in Sydney’s inner-West will be the “Inaugural Denis Kevans Memorial Anzac Eve Peace Concert” from 6pm-11pm as a fund-raiser for Leichhardt Council’s “Friends of Maliana” friendship city project.

The significance of this event is that it will be the first time in a decade and a half that the cultural hegemony of increasing militarism surrounding Anzac Day celebrations has faced a direct and conscious challenge from progressive forces in Sydney – outside of the marginalized sloganeering of a few predictable the ultra lefty.

Flash back to Australia and Anzac Days of yesteryear. In my lower year High School days in the mid-1960s we all read Alan Seymour’s “The One Day of the Year”. The class syllibi the teachers taught was that it was a text about whether old diggers and society in general should put the old wars behind them; forget about them and get on with living. Another theme pursued was Anzac Day was ignored by Seymour’s digger because it was always the “Brass” and the politicians and the religious ministers up on the roster and not the foot soldiers who did the hard yards of fighting.

As the 1960’s progressed, and the Vietnam War and Conscription emerged in the public debates, the “anti-war” themes of the Seymour play became more pronounced in class rooms around the nation, even if they remained the sub-text. With teachers from Adelaide to Sydney dragged from their classrooms and gaoled for non-compliance with the National Service Act this was hardly surprising. As the national Anzac Day celebrations of the late 1960s and early 1970s became increasingly politicized by the military “Brass”, and used to bolster a pro-Vietnam War commitment/anti Moritorium-anti peace activist platform by ultra-conservative RSL leaders at the time, like Bruce Ruxton in Victoria and Colin Hines in NSW and to a lesser extent Sir William Hall from the Federal Office of the RSL, my generation of youth came to detest the day. If we did not boycott or ignore it, some of actually opposed it.

In the immediate post-Vietnam era of the mid 1970s feelings still ran high. The Melbourne feminists, draped all in black, counter-marching with wreaths and banners labeled “Remember Women Raped in Wars” were confronted by a Vietnam Vet ripping his false leg off and throwing it at them. The media fed on the confrontation of the two aggrieved sides. The divisions were maintained with each side having a legitimate argument.

Similarly, the newly emerging Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia (VVAA), like the Commandoes of World War Two, felt they were outside the mainstream of war veterans. They were told by older veterans of earlier wars that they hadn’t been to “a real war” or “a legitimate war”. They were told by the media that they were despised by the general public, or at least they felt they were because of the Moratorium Movement still riding on the public popularity of the defeat of US imperialism with the “fall of Saigon”, Nixon’s disgrace-post-Watergate and the euphoria of anti-war sentiment epitomized by the Whitlam Era’s “youth revolt” and an enduring “bucking of authority” generally.

There were deep post Vietnam War war schisms in Australian society beyond those normal ones of class, ethnicity and gender. The shift in public consciousness back to a post-Vietnam “consensus”came first from television in the late 1970s. Two mini-series called “Sword of Honour” and then “Vietnam :The Mini Series” were both studies in politically divided families who eventually resolved their differences over the war and reunited as a family. Both were metaphors for Australia as a nation. See the definite writing on this by Screen and Media Studies lecturer, then from La Trobe Uni, Dr Ina Bertrand.

In popular cultural terms the mass Australian audience was also absorbing US cultural imperialism offerings via Hollywood’s reconstruction of Vietnam. It was Rambo(revenge), Missing in Action films (extracting the ones we left behind to prove we are still superior fighters to the Viet Cong) and Apocalypse Now (de-gutting War movies of linear narrative [and hence historical readings] and reducing them to the post-modernism of ‘the spectacle’). The anti-war theme of Jane Fonda’s ‘Coming Home’ was lost to sympathy for the wounded Viet Vet. Similarly psycho-visuals of the of the torture scene in the bamboo prison with the Russian roulette pistol is all we ever recall of “The Deer Hunter”.

But there is a missing link between late 1970s peace movement anti-war euphoria over Vietnam and its eclipse with the 1987 Vietnam Vet as forgiven and resurrected as once again, upholder of the Anzac Legend, in the 1987 “Welcome Home Parade” in the Sydney Domain. With concommitantly Anzac Day itself fading as a target of derision by feminists, anti-war activists, dissident veterans alike, by the 1990s.

That missing link was provided eventually by the Redgum’s “Only 19” connection. Returning however, to where I started this preview article, it was during a wave of post-Whitlam era cultural nationalism that the popularity of the electronic folkies known as “The Bushwackers”, with their songs about bush legends, anti-authority irreverence and a good dance. The size of these regular dancers out-grew the Birkenhead Point former Dunlop tyre car factory disused site around 1982 and shifted to the larger Sydney Town Hall.

The promoters were always looking for an extra buck as The Bushwackers phenomenon had virtually no limits, and perhaps inspired by a Bushie front man Jan Wotizsky (aka Bill Smith) who was looking for an opportunity to perform his C.J. Dennis ‘Ginger Mick’ role, decided to book the Sydney Town Hall for what immediately became an annual (anti-war) Anzac Eve Concert. The link was not Redgum, but folkies Eric Bogle, doing the World War One tribute, (in keeping with Bill Smith’s ‘Ginger Mick’ presentation), “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, along with radical feminist Judy Small performing her “Mothers, Daughters Wives”. The theme (from 1982-84?) was clearly all wars are universally wrong.

My dates may be out of skew, but Redgum joined the Bill following “Only 19” becoming a run-away success and, therefore, the Vietnam Veterans were welcomed into the “peace camp?” fold; to milk the occasion accordingly along the Big Govt has denied us our veteran entitlements over Agent Orange. The debate over whether they had been servants or puppets of US imperialism during the Vietnam War was neatly side-stepped or ignored.

In order to enter this new pact with the militant anti-war soldier-dissidents of the Vietnam Vets leadership, the anti-war movement had to accept their premise, that we can’t blame the soldiers for fighting wars; they are always just doing their job. But in accepting this premise, rather than the more militant one displayed by the USA documentary film “FTA” (F##k The Army) where Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland mobilized thousands of American GI’s into total defiance of their Brass over the Vietnam War, the Australian anti-war movement left the door open for a succeeding generation of politicians to manipulate this sympathy for aggrieved veteran into an endorsement, or at least a silence, with every overseas troop commitment, lest one be called disloyal to our troops.

The grey areas emerged as one debated the nature of Australian soldiers as UN or otherwise (“Popular coalition”) peace-keepers. Clearly the Interfet force inserted into Timor Leste in late 1999-2000 was another key turning point. It buried the last of any lingering “Vietnam Syndrome”, (guilt over Vietnam), as Interfet was almost universally supported by the Australian public, to save Timorese lives from the vicious TNI Indonesian butchers and their “Militia” puppets. The criticism if any (outside of some ultra-left purists) was that Interfet was moving in too slow and allowing the Indonesian military to butcher thousands of Timorese independence supporters as they withdrew.

Of course the debate over Interfet and Australian peace-keepers in the region is more sophisticated than this and I acknowledge Clinton Fernandes book “Reluctant Savior (Scribe Publications, Melbourne) and acknowledge the broader debate over RAMSI and Australian peace-keepers in The Solomons here on Critical Times (April 21st 2006), by Tim Anderson, by Phillip Adams on ‘Late Night Live’ and elsewhere. But this article is not about the legacy of John Howard’s “regional policeman” strategy, but the shifting meaning of Anzac Day to the Australian Left and progressive anti-war forces.

Clearly, the Howard Doctrine was to hide behind the armed services and people’s reluctance to criticize them, both in order to muster support for his pro-George Bush coalition imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and to marginalize anti-war forces as unpatriotic and un-Australian if they as much as questioned where and why he was committing fellow Australians to battle. Given Rudd’s reluctance to as much as cancel the Lombok Treaty, a clear attempt to muzzle debate in Australia on the West Papuan independence movement, or commit to a withdrawal from Afghanistan, while using all the Howard shibboleths about “our troops”, indicates the wheel has indeed turned full circle. Anzac Day 2009 will be about promoting War and not Peace.

Thus those of us in Leichhardt who wish to invoke the popular anti-war spirit of the early 1980s, in giving a more meaningful expression to the term “cultural resistance to war”, on the eve of Anzac Day, are mobilised. I suggest you read the contribution made last year (Critical Times May 6th 2008) to gain some yardstick on the parameters of the Anzac Debate and Australian Foreign Policy. Closer to the date, I will post some Denis Kevans poetry on Critical Times website in the poetry category. Have a look! His own website is < www .deniskevans.net>. Also view Kevans retrospectives on the NSW Folk Federation site < www.jam.org.au>. There will also be a follow up April article on the performers for the night (both of the ex-military and entertainment variety).