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'Australians for Australia': The Right, the Labor Party and Contested Loyalties to Nation and Empire in Australia, 1917 to the Early 1930s

Neville Kirk*

Between 1917 and the early 1930s the Right achieved political hegemony in Australia. Based largely upon neglected contemporary sources, this article maintains that the politics of loyalism to nation and empire contributed significantly to the Right's electoral domination. The first section of the article traces the successful attempt of the Nationalists and their allies to tar the Australian Labor Party (ALP) with the brushes of disloyalty and extremism mainly during federal elections. The second section examines the nature of the ALP's response around the tenets of 'true Australianism'. The third section describes and explains the mixed picture in terms of state elections. The conclusion evaluates the overall national situation.

 1
In contrast to the electoral domination of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) between 1910 and 1916 and notwithstanding the continued strength of trade unionism and industrial militancy for much of the 1920s, the Right achieved political supremacy in 1917 and maintained its electoral control throughout the inter-war years. This was most marked at the federal level. In the states a more chequered electoral picture emerged, but within the determining general context of Right domination and the failure of the ALP to maintain its high level of pre-war success.1 Based largely upon neglected contemporary sources, this article argues that the politics of loyalism to nation and empire contributed significantly to the Nationalist Right's electoral hegemony and the ALP's subordination between 1917 and the Depression years. The latter's pre-war ascendancy had partly resulted from its support for radical nationalism and its opposition to coercive imperialism.2 However, by the 1930s the dominant 'spirit of Australianism' had been transformed from a radical and in some respects anti-imperial force to one synonymous with conservatism and conformity.3 2
   

Tarring the ALP with the Disloyal Brush

 
While historians have drawn attention to the ways in which various elements of the Right employed the 'Red Scare' to discredit the revolutionary Left and other elements of the labour movement, there remain gaps in our knowledge concerning the extent and frequency with which the Nationalist Right sought to so target the mainstream ALP and, more so, the latter's reactions and the outcomes of these contests.4 This section of the article fills gaps in the first area by outlining the persistent and highly successful attempts of the Nationalists to tar the ALP with the brushes of disloyalty and extremism mainly during federal elections. The second and third sections advance our knowledge and understanding of the ALP's response and electoral outcomes in the States respectively. 3
      The Right's anti-ALP propaganda between the federal elections of 1917 and 1922 was shaped by key events of the war and post-war years. These included the failed conscription referenda of 1916 and 1917, the irreparable split within the ALP, the mainly enforced departure from the ALP of pro-conscription and pro-British leaders, and the subsequent involvement of some of the most prominent, such as W.H. Hughes and W.A. Holman, with Liberals in the 'Win-the-War' Nationalist Party, formed in 1917. Of equal importance were the ALP's formal adoption, in 1918, of an anti-war stance, the massive upsurge in industrial militancy and political radicalism from the New South Wales General Strike of 1917 onwards, and the leftward shift of the post-war labour movement, including the ALP. The 1917 Russian Revolution gave a massive boost to revolutionaries worldwide and promoted dread among defenders of the established order. Anti-British sentiment was fuelled, especially among Australia's large Irish Catholic population, by the suppression of the Easter Rising of 1916 and among the population at large by British officers' incompetence, snobbery and indifference towards the Diggers' contribution to the war effort. Lastly, the return from abroad of a large body of soldiers and sailors, expecting due recognition and reward for their war-time heroism and heavy sacrifice, into a domestic society profoundly divided about the war and its own future direction, added to the charged atmosphere. 4
      It was within this context that the Nationalists and their allies, such as leading members of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia (RSL),5 formulated their charges of disloyalty and extremism against the ALP. The Nationalists claimed that these manifested themselves in the ALP's 'support' for and effective 'control' by 'alien' and 'hostile' 'IWWers, Bolsheviks and Sinn Feiners', its backing for 'fatal blows' against the Empire, its advocacy of the 'Go Slow and Sabotage evils' and its 'treachery' to Australia during World War I. The latter was seen to lie in the ALP's support for peace by negotiation, the employment of 'cunning and unscrupulous devices to prevent victory' and its 'hypocrisy' towards the troops. From allegedly being branded as 'SIX-BOB-A-DAY MURDERERS', the returned men were hailed by the post-war labour movement as 'OUR GALLANT CHAMPIONS OF LIBERTY' and asked to join the movement and vote Labor.6 5
      The ALP's and the trade unions' 'capture' by 'enemy agents and sympathisers' was declared by the Nationalists to owe far more to design than accident. Bereft of its pre-1916 moderates and notwithstanding the protestations of moderation, respectability and anti-communism of some of its spokespersons, 'new' Labor was adjudged to be predominantly led by knaves who knowingly 'associated with and encouraged' the 'extremists'. For example, instead of allowing the May Day marches of revolutionary 'Red Flaggers' to take place in Brisbane in 1919 and Sydney in 1921, the Labor authorities should have banned them and the carrying of 'the red flag of revolution' as being conducive to 'lawlessness and riot', 'antagonistic' to Australia and 'destructive' of the Empire and its emblem, the Union Jack.7 Furthermore, rather than condemning the massive loyalist demonstration against the alleged burning of a Union Jack by the Sydney 'Red Flaggers' as 'mob rule', the ALP should have welcomed it as 'a great, luminous flame of patriotism'.8 Even more damningly, the ALP's adoption of the 'socialisation' plank in 1921 was portrayed in Nationalist election material as conclusive proof that the labour movement now had, 'AS ITS MAIN OBJECTIVE', the intention of implementing in Australia a 'SCHEME DIRECTLY MODELLED ON THE SOVIET SYSTEM OF COMMUNISM'.9 In sum, the ALP had become part of 'the enemy within our gates'.10 6
      Propaganda of this kind, combined with the call to voters to rally to the Nationalists as the party that had 'won the war' and would restore order, security and loyalty to nation and empire in a highly unstable world, characterised the successful Nationalist campaigns in the federal elections of 1917, 1919 and 1922. In the 1922 contest Labor actually won three more seats than the Nationalists — so exposing the limitations of the politics of loyalism — but the formation of an alliance between the Nationalists and the Country Party, conditional upon the resignation of Hughes, secured continuing Nationalist rule. 7
      The coalition government of Bruce and Page then went on to achieve clear victories in the federal elections of 1925 and 1928, albeit with a much-reduced majority in the latter, only to lose to Labor in 1929. These three elections were set against serious industrial battles on the waterside, and in the timber and coalmining industries. In the face of these conflicts, declining profit margins and the onset of the Depression, the coalition sought to cut labour costs, 'tame the unions' and create 'a climate of repressive conservatism' by means of surveillance, censorship, increased strike penalties, the attempted deportation of foreign-born 'undesirables' and the legalisation of lock-outs.11 There was mounting government and employer hysteria concerning the labour movement's 'control' by Bolshevik 'wreckers', acting under orders from 'their masters in Moscow and Shanghai', the 'supine' leaders who were who were allowing their movement to be so 'used' and the 'repudiation' of 'any obligations of loyalty to the British Empire' in favour of 'coloured' socialist internationalism. It was 'futile for Labour to deny its kinship with the Communist Party', according to Attorney-General, John Latham.12 8
      During the 1929 federal campaign the coalition government threatened to dismantle the federal arbitration system in a desperate attempt to reduce the incidence of industrial conflict and end the power of the trade-union 'oligarchs' who, 'following blindly the Russian-Mongol Reds', would jettison 'White Australia' and 'put the black hand of misery and ruin all over Australia', with wages 'equivalent to husks of rice and the smell of an oil-rag'.13 On this occasion scaremongering failed to convince the electorate. The labour movement successfully rallied in defence of two key features of the New Commonwealth, the federal system of arbitration and the 'Australian standard' of comparatively high wages and good living and working conditions. However, Scullin's Labor administration was soon beset by economic problems of an unprecedented magnitude, and was heavily defeated in the December 1931 election by the recently formed United Australia Party (UAP). The UAP dominated the electoral scene throughout the decade on the basis of policies of 'sound finance', economic salvation, and conservative loyalty to nation and empire.14 9
   

Labor's Response: 'True Australianism'

 
The ALP responded to the charges of disloyalty and extremism by claiming that it was the party of 'true Australianism', in opposition to the 'Imperialism' and 'bogus' nationalism and loyalism of the Nationalist Party.15 The latter's charges against the ALP were dismissed as totally false and as providing a convenient excuse for the imposition of 'Prussianistic Imperialism' upon Australia — of 'despotism' and 'militarism', of 'strangling our liberties for British Imperialism'.16 In contrast, the ALP's 'true Australianism' consisted of attachment to three elements: the traditional liberties of British-inspired 'popular constitutionalism';17 a commitment to the creation of a more progressive, just and peaceful world on the basis of support by the working-class and other 'productive' members of society; and insistence upon the primacy of Australia's interests, involving a predominantly antagonistic stance towards Britain and the Empire. The purpose of this section is to consider these elements in turn. 10
      First, in contrast to the Nationalists' 'Prussianism', the ALP highlighted its popular constitutionalism. This was expressed in defence of the rights to speak and act freely within the law, including the freedoms to strike and hold minority and oppositional views, without fear of being subjected to Nationalist coercion and repression. There was also a spirited defence of the rights of lawful assembly and the display of 'sacred' symbols such as flags, complete with their multiple significations. This was clearly seen during and after the Red Flag Riots in Sydney. While upholding 'the liberty of lawful assembly' on May Day against the Nationalist demand for a ban and dismissing claims that the ALP was responsible for 'the burning of the Union Jack', Henry Boote, the editor of the Australian Worker, also fully endorsed the ALP's belief in 'treating with respect' and 'protecting' flags and 'all symbols revered by the law-abiding'. This included the Red Flag as well as the Union Jack and the Australian Flag. Rather than being the sole preserve of revolutionary Bolshevism, the Red Flag, observed Boote, was celebrated by mainstream labourites throughout the world as a symbol of loyalty to 'the international unity of the working class'. While being 'superior to the national welfare', this internationalism, however, was not 'in the least antagonistic towards it'. Furthermore, Boote condemned not only the burning of the Union Jack by the revolutionaries on May Day and the burning of the Red Flag and the tearing down of the Australian Flag by returned soldiers and other 'loyalists' during the subsequent counter-demonstration, but also the Nationalists' demand that the carrying of the Red Flag be declared illegal.18 11
      The ALP's criticism of Nationalist and returned soldier intolerance and violence was accompanied by equally strong criticisms of the revolutionary Communists. During the Red Flag Riots in Sydney and Brisbane the mainstream labour movement quickly distanced itself from the 'direct action' methods of the Communist 'Red Flaggers' and the danger they were seen to pose to public order and the democratic process. In Sydney those mainstream labour movement members present on May Day marched and gathered separately from the revolutionaries.19 In Brisbane the Industrial Council which had organised the civil liberties march in 1919 against the draconian provisions of the War Precautions Act— under which the carrying of the Red Flag was still banned — 'dissociated the Trades Hall from any further proceedings' once the revolutionaries unfurled their red flags at the beginning of the march. The labour movement in Brisbane condemned the ensuing three days of 'mob violence', including an attack on the building housing the ALP's Daily Standard newspaper which was falsely accused of being pro-Bolshevik, and totally rejected the Nationalist charge that it had been responsible for the riots. Queensland's Labor government highlighted its constitutionalism and the 'peaceful attainment of its political objective'.20 12
      By the mid-1920s, specific ALP criticisms of the Communists had hardened into a general indictment of their objectives and methods. Early ALP support for the blows struck by the Bolshevik Revolution, against tsarist tyranny and oppression and for working-class emancipation, had given way to growing disillusionment with the perceived tyranny of the Russian Bolsheviks.21 Within Australia mainstream labour increasingly saw the Communists as a hostile and divisive force, intent upon attacking its leaders as 'selling out' the working class. While Communists continued to figure prominently in industrial disputes, they were formally expelled from the ALP in 1924.22 Communist beliefs in violent revolution and in parliamentary institutions as a fig leaf for class rule and capitalist oppression held a negative appeal for the vast majority of ALP members. Unlike Russia under the tsars, resort to revolutionary violence could not be justified in democratic and socially 'advanced' Australia, in which there existed due process of law and in which organised labour had already made considerable progress by constitutional and peaceful means. Evolutionary gradualism rather than revolution was the route to be successfully pursued. The importation of the 'Russian model' into Australia by the Communist Party was not only out of step with democratic Australian conditions and traditions, but it also provided a ready made excuse for the Nationalists both to impose and attempt to legitimise their 'Prussianism'.23 Opposition to the Communists underlines the important point that in the vast majority of cases the ALP, in both words and deeds, simply did not conform to the picture of 'alien Bolshevik domination' painted by the Right. 13
      Second, against the Nationalists' reactionary conservatism and 'militarism', the ALP set its progressive radicalism. In opposition to the Nationalist charge that it had abandoned its reforming goals in favour of newfound 'alien extremism', the ALP reaffirmed its 'traditional' commitment to the creation of a more democratic, egalitarian and, eventually, socialist society. In practice, as documented in the historiography, the socialisation objective of 1921 became heavily qualified and, by socialist standards, the ALP's achievements were modest and limited.24 However, the party did adopt positions and implement measures which were perceived by contemporaries to be radical and in some instances anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist in character. These included: the abolition of the conservative and undemocratic upper house of state government in Queensland in 1922 and attacks on the upper houses in Tasmania and New South Wales; the granting of the 44-hour week in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales and improved social-welfare provision; the creation of state and co-operative enterprises and the 'muzzling' of the power of capitalist middlemen and large pastoralists; preference in employment for trade unionists; the right to appoint Australian-born citizens, rather than Britons, to official positions; and greater financial and economic control and independence from Britain.25 14
      Anti-militarism was an important feature of the ALP's radicalism. While fighting was still taking place in 1918, the party widened its opposition to military conscription and formally adopted an anti-war stance. Thereafter, ALP members played a part in the international movement for peace and reconciliation. The editorials of leading anti-conscriptionist and future Prime Minister, John Curtin, in the Westralian Worker and the writings of Henry Boote in the Australian Worker, exemplify these developments. For Curtin, the repudiation of conscription in December 1917 represented a victory for freedom of choice and the national interest against 'Junkerdom' and those 'hypocritical' capitalists who supported conscription of the workers but were not prepared to 'LAY THEIR WORLDLY POSSESSIONS UPON THE ALTAR OF THE NATION'.26 The 'War to End War', involving death, horror and destruction on an unprecedented scale, had resulted in 'chaos', 'ruin', 'disillusionment' and further aggression and conflict, rather than the promised peace, stability, hope and prosperity.27 The League of Nations, 'that grandiose project for the prevention of future wars', had failed because it was the 'the instrument of the dominant powers' intent upon further 'imperialist aggression'. International labour movements, with their appeals to 'fraternalism', 'civilisation' and 'humanity', offered the only effective hope for peace.28 Curtin and Boote also joined with social-democratic parties and radical women's movements worldwide to call for the settlement of international disputes by means of negotiation and arbitration rather than war, for disarmament — to help prevent aggression by stronger against weaker states — and the control of the League of Nations by elected representatives of the people rather than government nominees. They opposed the 'vindictive penalties' imposed upon the defeated powers of World War I, Australian plans for annexation in the Pacific, the growing international threat of Fascism and the compulsory military training scheme in Australia (the latter was suspended by Scullin in 1929). They supported the return of Germany and Russia to the international fold, and measures to restore them to economic and social health. They adopted a pan-Pacific approach to the avoidance of war in the region and advocated the building of new hospitals instead of the construction of war memorials.29 The latter, including the proposed Australian War Memorial in Canberra, symbolised 'the hell' rather than 'the glory' of war.30 15
      The ALP's condemnation of war and militarism fundamentally shaped its attitude towards Anzac Day and the ANZACS. In the post-war period, Anzac Day came to be widely commemorated and by the mid-1920s it had attained the status of an official public holiday. Moreover, since the RSL 'controlled the official commemoration of Anzac Day' and mainly conservative state governments made it a holiday, Anzac both assumed close connections with the Right and became 'an expression of national fulfilment' that was 'consistent with imperial loyalty'.31 The labour movement fully endorsed the 'Anzac spirit' as a form of mateship, but opposed both it and the landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the subsequent fighting as marking the defining moments in the birth of the nation. The bravery of the Anzacs and the solemnity of Anzac Day were both unquestioned and widely respected in labour circles.32 At the same time, strong opposition was registered to the increasing glorification and national importance attached to 'the Anzac experience'. There was widespread agreement that the Anzacs had been the unsuspecting victims at Gallipoli of a campaign 'doomed to failure', 'maggoted in the brains of one or two Junker egotists' and designed to 'satisfy the insatiable vanity of the war-gambler, Winston Churchill'.33 Labor in Victoria and Western Australia 'banned all school texts which glorified war' and forbade ex-soldiers to promote the 'glorification of war' among state schoolchildren on Anzac Day respectively, while in the country at large there was opposition to April 25, a day of remembrance for the dead 'brimful of poignant grief and desolation, tears and heartache', becoming the occasion for 'rejoicing' and 'cheap-jack jingo speeches by ghoulish politicians' or for 'filling bookmakers' bags'.34 16
      There was insistence that Gallipoli had played a subsidiary role in the development of 'Australian nationhood'. The latter pre-dated World War I. Major contributions had been made by the 'many thousands' of 'adventurous spirits', at odds with the 'whims and stupidities of overseas imperialism', attracted to Australia by the discovery of gold. They included in their ranks the radicals of Eureka, 'the women who first faced the great outback', the 'comparatively small body of determined men' who had 'brought into subjection' the 'most stubborn continent in the world', those who had revolted against 'the Kanaka slave trade and the influx of Asiatic immigrants', and the labour movement itself. The combined efforts of these immigrant and native-born white radicals and racists had amounted to far more in terms of 'the cultivation of an Australian sentiment' than had those of the young men who had heroically 'fronted Turkish guns'.35 As full recognition of the key contributions of the former to both radical 'Australianism' and the mateship of the labour movement, the mainstream labour press of the 1920s placed far more emphasis upon the celebration of Foundation Day or Australia Day, on 26 January, and May Day, rather than Anzac Day.36 17
      Seeing most soldiers and sailors as workers, and the 'soldier problem' as 'but one aspect of the worker problem', the ALP and the trade unions made a nationwide effort to appeal to the returned men. They were seen as a core element of the labour movement's 'natural' class-based and 'producerist' constituency of manual workers and small farmers, combined with sympathetic members of the 'middling sort'. The ALP opposed preferential employment for the returned men. However, it sought to convince the latter both that organised workers were their 'mates' rather than, as portrayed in the Right's propaganda, 'disloyalists' and 'Bolsheviks', and that it, as 'the workers' party', rather than the 'fake' Nationalists, was far more likely to deliver what they wanted and deserved — 'employment for all', a living wage, good housing, access to land, a pension, a war gratuity and sound War Service homes — than the 'fake' Nationalists. The 'fake' Nationalists were 'exploiters and profiteers' who, under the pretence of helping them, were 'maligning our brave boys' and rendering many of them unemployed, homeless and penniless.37 Both the ALP and the trade unions warmly welcomed the returned men to the movement, established distinct organisations for them — in the form of Returned Soldiers' and Sailors' Labor or Political Leagues — and gave them a prominent place on their public platforms.38 18
      The labour movement's efforts, however, met with very limited success. The Nationalists enjoyed very close ties with the RSL, the main organisation for war veterans, as a result of their 'Win-the-War' policy, their identification of the labour movement with defeatism and disloyalty, and their policies of preferential employment and land settlement for the returned men.39 Yet there were some notable local successes. In Adelaide in 1918 and Fremantle in 1919 returned soldiers refused to 'scab' against trade unionists engaged in industrial disputes. In the former case there arose the claim that the RSL had offered to find replacements to run the trams in place of the 750 locked-out trade unionists. In response, returned soldier members of the tramway workers' union both organised a meeting of some 1,200 men which 'repudiated all connection with strike-breakers' and urged their comrades in the RSL to 'get into as many unions as possible'. The week-long dispute ended in the reinstatement of all the union members.40 During the coal lumpers' dispute in Fremantle returned soldiers 'assisted the angry unionists to wreck the National Employment Bureau and drive the scabs off the wharves'. Around 500 of the returned men also held a meeting to 'defend the rights of the people against the tyranny of the present Government' — it had been responsible for the introduction of 'loyalist scabs' to coal the boats — and to 'avenge the blood of a wounded comrade', Thomas Edwards, who had died from injuries sustained in a battle with the police. According to Bobbie Oliver, the South Fremantle RSL was said to exclude from its membership all those who, while eligible, declined to be members of a trade union and the ALP.41 Other instances of solidarity between the returned men and workers in dispute with their employers were recorded in Western Australia, Sydney, Melbourne and Broken Hill.42 Lastly, despite the fact that returned soldiers led the onslaught and riots against the 'Red Flaggers' in Brisbane in March 1919, the labour movement in Queensland managed to enlist approximately 2,000 ex-soldiers in its Returned Soldiers' Labor League by early May of the same year. These men figured prominently in the May Day parade in Brisbane.43 In sum, these examples of labour success qualify a picture of uniform returned soldier allegiance to the Right. 19
      Third, in contrast to the 'disloyal' Nationalists — the 'plutocratic Imperialists', who were 'scheming to deprive Australia of its self-governing powers ... and render it subservient to a ruling class of capitalists and militarists twelve thousand miles away' — the ALP placed Australia's interests 'first', as 'standing above all others'.44 As seen in the title of this article, the Australian Worker presented itself as representing the cause of 'AUSTRALIANS FOR AUSTRALIA'. It had as its sub-title, 'An Australian Paper for Australian People'. The ALP had already shown itself to be 'the only truly national party of Australia' in its 'leading role' in the introduction of the White Australia policy and Arbitration, the enfranchisement of women and the maternity bonus, the national bank, in the setting up of 'a defence programme independent of, though on friendly ... terms with, Britain' and 'in its claims to have Australian citizens appointed' as state Governors 'in lieu of imported British aristocrats'.45 It was also committed to 'fostering the genius of our own country' by means of the promotion of 'not only Australian industries, but Australian art, Australian literature, Australian music, Australian philosophy'.46 As seen in the Red Flag Riots in Sydney, the notion of 'Australia first' was highly symbolic in character. Thus Boote condemned not only the Right's 'disloyal' attempt to 'push forward the Union Jack', the 'emblem of the Empire', as 'the Australian Flag', and so 'exalt' the interests of the Empire above those of 'our Commonwealth', but also the fact that 'some Nationalists' went so far as to 'despise the Australian Flag, and all that it signifies as the emblem of a great and free nation'.47 20
      The ALP's commitment to 'Australia first' led it to adopt a predominantly hostile attitude towards both existing relations with Britain and British imperialism in general. ALP members frequently expressed the view that the very nature of the imperial tie, rooted in British domination and Australian subordination, meant that British interests usually took precedence over those of Australia. This was particularly the case when the interests of British capitalists, the 'masters' of the imperial system, and their Australian counterparts clashed with those of organised labour. It was this systemic, class-based critique of imperialism which led the Australian Worker to refer to the 'utter incompatibility' between the labour movement's class-based radical nationalism and imperialism.48 21
      To be sure, the newspaper's view must be qualified. The ALP was formally committed to the notion of Australia as a self-governing community within the British Empire, while 'the gradual rise of Labor to governmental control in various parts of the Empire' rendered possible the development of 'a loftier conception of Imperial destiny', the ending of 'jingo' and 'plutocratic' control and 'aggression' and the triumph of peace, democracy and freedom.49 The ALP also set out to cultivate the 'best interests' of the empire by holding out the hand of friendship to the workers, the true 'people', of Britain.50 Furthermore, the Balfour Declaration of 1926 stated that Britain and the Dominions were henceforth to be 'autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate to one another ... though united by a common allegiance to the Crown'. For the first time Australia would, at least formally, be free to conduct her own foreign policy, to remain neutral while Britain went to war and not automatically to be bound by treaties drawn up by the British government.51 22
      These qualifications, however, must not obscure the continuing strength and depth of the ALP's anti-imperialism. In contrast to the emphases upon consensus and compatibility characteristic of the more recent historiography,52 ALP members highlighted the tensions and conflicts both in relations between Australia and Britain, and attachments to 'Australianism' and 'Britishness'. 23
      Examples of these attitudes abound. In the early 1920s, the Labor government in Queensland expressed outrage at the denial of local democracy and the 'tyranny' and 'blackmail' being visited upon it by the concerted actions of capitalists and their allies in London and Queensland itself. Alarmed by Labor's increase in the rents to be paid by large pastoralists, a delegation of 'three of Queensland's oldest active conservative men of influence' successfully lobbied financial interests in the City of London in 1920 to deny the loan urgently sought by Premier Theodore to finance economic development in the state. The ensuing British 'economic blockade' against Queensland, lasting almost four years, had a detrimental effect upon the state's economy and was only lifted as a result of Theodore's effective capitulation on the issue of rents.53 The ALP's attacks on state upper houses similarly arose not only from a commitment to the achievement of full Australian democracy, but also from opposition to an institutional symbol of British aristocratic, monarchical, and imperial privilege and influence. Thus Curtin described a 'two chambered legislature' as 'a survival of the days when the King's sycophants formed one House and the people's commoners the other'.54 The appointment of wealthy and conservative Britons, as opposed to native-born males, to state Governorships generated strong Labor hostility, as did Prime Minister Bruce's 'anti-Australian' appointment of a British naval official to command the Australian navy.55 24
      The 'real' effects of the Balfour Declaration were also perceived to be far less positive in practice than in constitutional theory. For many ALP members the Declaration reeked of 'hypocrisy', with 'cynical' imperialists attempting to hide continuing Dominion subordination to Britain under the appearance of autonomy and equality. While welcoming the Declaration's promise of greater freedom, Curtin and others drew attention to the continuing economic dependence of Australia upon Britain, the practical impossibility of Australia remaining neutral in the event of Britain declaring war, the lack of working-class representation at the annual Imperial Conferences, and Britain's attempts, throughout the 1920s, to 'dump' her unemployed and cheap 'coloured' labour upon Australia.56 These sentiments, combined with the preference of Hughes and other mainstream politicians for Australia's relationship with Britain to be informal and pragmatic, rather than formalised and 'demeaning', and sporting and other forms of cultural hostility towards the 'Poms', were partly responsible for the fact that the 1931 Statute of Westminster, giving legal effect to the Balfour Declaration, was not ratified by Australia until 1942.57 25
      It is, of course, the case that Prime Minister Scullin secured the appointment of the first Australian-born Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs, in 1930. However, this was achieved after months of wrangling between Scullin on the one side and King George V and British Labour's traditionalistic Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, on the other. The King dropped his candidature of the British Field Marshal, Sir William Birdwood, only after Scullin threatened to call an election on the issue.58 Moreover, this was an isolated success. Hughes' and Bruce's perceived general 'groveldom' towards Britain during the 1920s was followed, in the Depression years, by Australia's capitulation to Britain's insistence that Australia adopt a deflationary policy of 'sound finance' in an attempt to resolve its economic and social problems. Curtin asked whether the ALP had the courage to stand up for 'the Nation' in opposition to the British and Australian 'Money Monopoly'.59 Jack Lang, Premier of New South Wales, did 'stand up'. In 1930, Lang won a landslide election victory on the basis of his defence of Australian 'self-government' and the 'Australian standard' against the cuts demanded by the Bank of England's representative, Sir Otto Niemeyer, on his visit to Australia. However, two years later Lang's continued refusal to pay money to the Commonwealth, in order to meet interest payments to British bondholders, resulted in his dismissal by the state's Governor, British-born retired Air Vice-Marshal, Sir Philip Game. The latter judged that Lang had acted illegally. In the election that followed, Lang was heavily defeated and the ALP cast into the political wilderness in New South Wales for the rest of the decade.60 The fact that the majority federal ALP and its successor in office, the UAP, adopted the deflationary British line, led to the charge of betrayal and bitter, debilitating faction fights and splits within the labour movement as a whole.61 The perception of dissident ALP members was that the principle of 'Australia first' had been sacrificed upon the Nationalist and UAP altar of Empire loyalism.62 26
      Anti-imperialism also manifested itself strongly in criticisms of the general character and symbols of British imperialism. As a feature of capitalism, imperialism was widely seen by ALP members as being necessarily exploitative, militaristic, undemocratic, 'territory-grabbing' and intent upon 'race aggrandisement', 'the subjugation' of weaker colonial peoples and denial of their 'right of self-determination'.63 While staunchly defending 'White Australia' as an effective bulwark against capitalist attempts to import cheap, 'coloured' and anti-labour elements into the country and their assumption of the axiomatic consequences of 'race mixing' and 'race hatred', Curtin, Boote and many others supported the principle of self-determination not only for 'white' countries, such as Ireland, but also for India, Egypt and China — countries 'where civilisation is much older than in Europe'.64 While individual monarchs and other members of the royalty might display pleasant personal characteristics, they were seen, nevertheless, not only as 'anachronisms' of a 'barbarous past' but also as mere figureheads and puppets of the capitalists and their allies who ran the exacting imperial machine.65 Empire Day continued to be largely ignored or opposed by the labour movement on account of its very close associations with Protestant Imperialists.66 27
   

Outcomes: Nationalist Hegemony, ALP Subordination

 
Attention has been drawn to the Nationalists' domination of federal politics and the importance of loyalism to that outcome. This third section considers the electoral situation in the states and the extent to which the ALP's resort to 'true Australianism' constituted an effective counterweight to the Right. 28
      Electoral results in the states were far more mixed and, from a general ALP perspective, healthier than at the federal level. Queensland was the flagship, with Labor holding continuous office there between 1915 and 1929. Western Australia came second. Having governed in that state between 1911 and 1916, the ALP was in opposition between 1917 and 1924. However, it won the 1924 election and maintained power until 1930. Third-placed Tasmania experienced Labor governments from 1914–16 and 1923–28. The contrast between war-time and post-war performance was most marked in terms of fourth-ranked New South Wales. Whereas the ALP had enjoyed continuous electoral control there between 1910 and 1916, it was in power for just four years and four months between 1917 and 1930. Moreover, this was a rollercoaster ride, with losses being recorded in the elections of 1917, 1922 and 1927 and wins in 1920, 1925 and 1930. In South Australia and Victoria, the fifth- and sixth-placed states, the ALP was in office for just under three and two years respectively between 1917 and 1929.67 29
      Notwithstanding important successes, the ALP's overall electoral record in the states between 1917 and 1929 was both less impressive than in the pre-1916 period and, as at the federal level, inferior to that of the Right. However, attention should be drawn to the further electoral victories achieved by the ALP in Victoria in 1929 and South Australia in 1930. Moreover, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania were all returned to Labor between 1932 and 1934 and remained under its control for 25, 14 and 35 years respectively. Against these impressive results, the leading industrial states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia were lost to the Right in 1932 and 1933 and remained so for the remainder of the decade.68 Electoral control of the states as whole during the 1930s lay with the Right, but in a far less complete way than federally. 30
      There is no doubt that an appeal to the tenets of 'true Australianism' both characterised and brought mixed fortunes for the ALP at state level between 1917 and the Depression years. For example, in Queensland and New South Wales the party adhered to the notion of 'Australia first' and fought for local democracy against British and Australian 'Imperialists', built alliances among urban and rural workers and small producers, promoted employment and economic growth by means of union preference, state and co-operative enterprises, and attempted to steer a radical constitutional way between the extremes of the Left and the Right. In Queensland the results were particularly impressive. The ALP not only performed very well at the polls, but also abolished the Legislative Council, boosted rural, primary-based industries and mounted successful opposition to the Nationalist and Country Party 'plutocrats' and their allies in Britain who, inter alia, wished to subvert 'whiteness' and the gains made by the labour movement by importing cheap 'black' labour into the state.69 During the 1920s the Worker routinely boasted that the 'socialistic' ALP in Queensland had delivered the best living standards, working conditions and social welfare provision in the whole of Australia. As a result 'real', 'bread and butter' politics had triumphed over the post-war Nationalist 'frenzy' with 'flags and anthems'.70 Labor in Queensland also had the good fortune to be out of office between 1929 and 1932, the worst years of the Depression, and largely avoided the divisions over economic policy so debilitating to the ALP nationally.71 Electoral results in New South Wales, as indicated, were far more mixed. Yet due attention must be drawn to Lang's forceful rebuttal of the persistent 'Red bogey' slurs made by the Right, his opposition to both the 'tyrannical' and 'divisive' revolutionary Left and overbearing British imperialism and his defence of the 'true Labour principles' of strong trade unionism, and improvements in living standards, working conditions and social welfare.72 31
      Labor's 'true Australianism' manifested itself in the other states, albeit in a less militant and flamboyant form than under Lang. For example, the successive electoral defeats suffered by the ALP in state elections in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania between 1917 and 1923–24 — the result of the split over conscription, labour's anti-war stance and post-war radicalism and militancy, combined with the successful anti-Bolshevik and patriotic propaganda of the Right73— led to the adoption of a more moderate stance. In Western Australia the ALP fought for state enterprise, rural and urban development, the 44-hour week and improved workers' compensation, expressed anti-militarism and anti-imperialism, and clashed with the RSL over its ban on ex-soldiers entering state schools on Anzac Day to 'glorify war' among the children.74 However, under the leadership of Philip Collier there was an overriding concern to demonstrate Labor's 'fitness to govern' by means of its representation of moderate labour and the public rather than the militant industrial and sectional interest. This was seen during the bitter seamen's dispute of 1924–25 and in other industrial conflicts. Militants were suppressed, and the police and employers treated quite favourably by the ALP. Moderation reaped electoral reward. Labor won the state election in 1924 and remained in office for two terms until 1930. This was an impressive achievement in the face of the conservatives' re-organisation and the more united 'anti-Bolshevik' counter-attack in Western Australia after 1924.75 32
      In a variation on the theme of 'Australia first', Labor won the 1924 state election in South Australia largely on the slogan, 'Be Patriotic Stop the American invasion'. This was a reference to the rationalisation and wage cuts implemented by W.A. Webb, an American, appointed by the Liberal Premier, Barwell, to reorganise the state's railways.76 Despite the persistent anti-socialism of the Liberals from 1924 onwards, the ALP, under its leader John Gunn, retained power in South Australia until 1927 on the basis of its opposition to wage cuts and support for better housing, public works for the unemployed and a rural bank. Yet the Gunn government's increasing caution and conservatism around workplace and free speech issues alienated many organised workers. His successor, Lionel Hill, Premier from 1930–33, was even more conservative. Hill's support for the deflationary Premiers' Plan of 1931 led to 'bitter recriminations' in the ALP and Hill's expulsion from it. Having lost the 1933 election, the party remained in opposition in South Australia until 1965.77 33
      In Tasmania the ALP's move to the left and electoral defeats in the later war-time and post-war years were offset by a return to 'traditional' moderation and the assumption of office from 1923–28. Joseph Lyons, the dominant figure in Tasmanian politics during the 1920s and the 'conservative and consensual' leader of the ALP, cultivated 'good relations with prominent businessmen', opposed the introduction of the 44-hour week, practised financial orthodoxy, and met with serious criticism from within the party and the trade unions. Lyons was elected to Scullin's ministry in 1929, but his deflationary sentiments took him out of the ALP and into the position of leader of the UAP. Following the election of 1931 Lyons became Prime Minister.78 34
      Like Hill and Lyons, Ned Hogan, the Labor Premier of Victoria between 1929 and 1932, supported the Premiers' Plan. Like Hill, but unlike Lyons, he paid a heavy price. He lost the 1932 election and was subsequently expelled from the party. Suffering from deep and persistent internal divisions and facing a voting system gerrymandered in favour of conservative rural interests, a hostile upper house, a divided state party system in which the Country Party held the balance of power, and the powerful conservative, pro-British presence of Robert Menzies and his colleagues in Melbourne, the ALP was very weak in Victoria.79 In 1924, 1927–28 and 1929–32 it governed as a minority party and was dependent upon shifting and unstable alliances. For example, in 1924 its opposition to militarism and capital punishment 'seriously jeopardised' its alliance with the powerful Victorian Farmers' Union.80 35
   

Conclusion

 
Notwithstanding the complex pattern of state politics outlined above, and the variable influence of the ALP's 'true Australianism', it is the electoral domination of the Right, both federally and in the states, which must be highlighted. As we have seen, this domination was particularly marked between 1917 and 1924 and during the Depression. In the first period the Nationalists and their allies successfully appealed to returned soldiers and other 'patriots'81 and tarred the labour movement with the brushes of defeatism and Bolshevik disloyalty and extremism. In the second, it was loyalty to British 'traditionalism', rooted in conventional, 'safety-first' economic prescriptions, which generally proved decisive at the polls and which in many cases set the ALP back for many years. The ALP fought back and enjoyed some electoral successes, especially between 1923–24 and 1929. Furthermore, the factor of loyalism constitutes a necessary rather than a sufficient explanation of the Right's hegemony. Chronic and bitter conflicts within the labour movement, the misfortune of the ALP to assume federal and in some cases state office when the economic growth of the 1920s, presided over by the Right, was giving way to the Depression and the appeal of the Right to powerful and wealthy propertied interests, are among the many contributory factors to be considered. However, as in Britain,82 there is no doubt that the Right's success in winning the battle of ideas and minds over the politics of loyalty to nation and empire was of special importance in its achievement of political hegemony in inter-war Australia. 36


Neville Kirk teaches History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published in the fields of modern British and comparative British, US and Australian history. His most recent book is Comrades and Cousins: Globalization Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia (Merlin Press, 2003). He is currently researching the subject area of labour and the politics of class, race, nation and empire in Australia and Britain, 1901 to the present day.
<n.kirk@mmu.ac.uk>


Endnotes

* I am grateful for the comments of Paul Pickering, John Shields and Labour History's anonymous referees.

1. Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 4 1901–1942, The Succeeding Age, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 168, 190–91, 196–97, 228–29; Bobbie Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia: The Social and Political Impact of the Great War 1914–1926, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1995, pp. 40–1, 79–85, 107, 196, 232, 250; Raymond Markey, 'The Australian Labor Party and the Working Class', paper presented to the UK-Australian Labour History conference, Manchester, England, July 2003; Bobbie Oliver, 'Back from the Brink: 1917–29', in John Faulkner and Stuart Macintyre (eds), True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2001, pp. 47–59; Raymond Markey, In Case of Oppression: The Life and Times of the Labor Council of New South Wales, Pluto Press, Leichhardt, NSW, 1994, chs 5, 6; Bede Nairn, The 'Big Fella': Jack Lang and the Australian Labor Party 1891–1949, Melbourne University Press, Carlton,1986, pp. 60–7, 71, 85–90, 103–4, 158–59, 163–69, 177, 180–81, ch. 9; Jim Hagan and Ken Turner, A History of the Labor Party in New South Wales 1891–1991, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 116–39; Ross Fitzgerald and Harold Thornton, Labor in Queensland from the 1880s to 1988, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, ch. 3; Jim Moss, Sound of Trumpets: History of the Labour Movement in South Australia, Wakefield Press, Netley, South Australia, 1985; John Hirst, 'Labor and the Great War', in Robert Manne (ed.), The Australian Century: Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999, pp. 47–79; Allan W. Martin, 'The Politics of the Depression', in ibid., pp. 80–118; Greg Patmore, Australian Labour History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 82, 87–8; Kosmas Tsokhas, Business Empire and Australian Conservative Politics 1923–1936, Working Paper no. 127, Dept Economic History, RSSS, the Australian National University, November 1989.

2. Neville Kirk, Comrades and Cousins: Globalization Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914, The Merlin Press, London, 2003, pp. 101–33.

3. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974, pp. 1, 2, 278; Macintyre, Oxford History, pp.181–82, 189–91; Alan Sykes, 'Their Island Story', in Carl Bridge (ed.), New Perspectives in Australian History, Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Occasional Seminar Papers no. 5, London, 1990; Humphrey McQueen, 'Shoot the Bolshevik! Hang the Profiteer! Reconstructing Australian Capitalism 1918–21', in E.L. Wheelwright and Ken Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Capitalism, Vol. 2, Australia and New Zealand Book Company, Sydney, 1978, ch. 7; Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (eds), The British World: Diaspora Culture and Identity, a special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. xxxi, no. 2, May 2003, pp. 8–11; Kosmas Tsokhas, Making a Nation State: Cultural Identity Economic Nationalism and Sexuality in Australian History, Melbourne University Press, South Carlton, 2001, pp. 2, 3, 119–27.

4. For a sample of the relevant literature see, Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, ch.1; Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1983; Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1998, chs 5, 6, 9; Andrew Moore, The Secret Army and the Premier: Conservative Paramilitary Organisations in New South Wales, New South Wales University Press, Kensington, 1989; Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class from Alfred Deakin to John Howard, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 69–85; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', pp. 60–7, 85, 88, 101, 103–4, 170–71, 177; articles by Andrew Moore, Nick Fischer, Marinus La Rooij, Peter Henderson, Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, Murray Goot and Marcel van der Linden in the 'Thematic Section', 'The "Extreme Right" in Twentieth Century Australia', Labour History, no. 89, November 2005.

5. Sarah Gregson, Footsoldiers for Capital: the Influence of RSL Racism on Interwar Industrial Relations in Kalgoorlie and Broken Hill, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2003, especially intro., ch. 3.

6. National Party, New South Wales, Pamphlets etc., 1919, Mitchell Library; Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 9, 17, 145; NSW Elections. Leaflets etc., 1922, Mitchell Library; Brett, Australian Liberals, pp. 73–4.

7. Sydney Morning Herald, 3, 4, 14, 16 May 1921; Raymond Evans, The Red Flag Riots: A Study of Intolerance, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1988.

8. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 1921.

9. 'The December 16 Devilfish', in Federal National Party, Federal Election, 16 December 1922, How to Vote Pamphlets, Mitchell Library; C. Manning Clark, A History of Australia, Vol. VI, 'The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green' 1916–1935, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 1999, pp. 190–91; Australian Labor Party, New South Wales Branch, New South Wales Elections, 1922, Mitchell Library.

10. See W.M. Hughes's letter in National Party, New South Wales, Pamphlets; John Curtin's editorial, 'The Smell from the Cabinet', Westralian Worker, 1 December 1922, for the central importance of anti-communism in the 1922 federal election.

11. Macintyre, Reds, p. 102; Macintyre, Oxford History, p. 228; Patmore, Australian Labour History, p. 85; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', p. 101.

12. John Latham, The Communist Menace in Australia, in Sir John Latham Papers, NLA, MS 1009/27/120–162, folder 4, pp. 1, 128, 140, 156–57, 160–61. See also, The PM's Dandenong Speech, 9 September 1925, in Latham Papers, NLA, MS 1009/ 27/115–162, folder 4, pp. 1–2, 5–6, 9, 14; National Party, New South Wales, The National Policy: Speech Delivered by Hon. T.R. Bavin, MLA at Chatswood Town Hall, 8 September 1927, Mitchell Library; Sydney Morning Herald, editorial, 13 November 1928; Oliver, 'Back from the Brink', pp. 53–4.

13. National Party, New South Wales Elections, The Government Policy: Speech Delivered by Rt. Hon. S.M. Bruce, 18 September 1929, Mitchell Library; Victory, 9, 10, 11 October 1929.

14. Martin, 'The Politics of the Depression', pp. 106–16.

15. Worker, 26 January 1927.

16. Worker, 8 July 1920; Australian Worker, 12, 19 May 1921.

17. Paul Pickering, 'Popular Constitutionalism in Colonial Radicalism', paper presented to the symposium, 'The People and their Rights: Notions of Rights and Popular Sovereignty in the British World since 1790', Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, October 2002.

18. Australian Worker, 12, 19 May 1921. See also Australian Worker, 29 April 1920; Worker, 29 April, 6 May, 8 July 1920, 19 May 1921.

19. Australian Worker, 12, 19 May 1921; Worker, 19 May 1921.

20. Don W. Rawson, 'Political Violence in Australia', Dissent: A Radical Quarterly, no. 22, Autumn 1968, pp. 18–27; Evans, Red Flag Riots, p. 174; Worker, 27 March, 3, 10, 24 April, 8 May 1919; Australian Worker, 3 April 1919.

21. Worker, 27 March, 17, 24 April, 31 July 1919, 1 February 1924; Australian Worker, 1, 22 May 1919, 10 March 1921; Westralian Worker, 4 April 1919; Don W. Rawson, Labor in Vain? A Survey of the Australian Labor Party, Longmans, Croydon, Victoria, 1966, pp. 81–2.

22. Worker, 1, 8 November 1923, 25 February, 27 October 1926, 11 May, 28 September, 23 November, 1927, 8, 15 August, 5 December 1928; Australian Worker, 27 October 1926, 30 January 1929, 19 February 1930; P.F. Loughlin, Ten Reasons why Labor should Continue to Exclude the Communist Party and Members of that Party from the ALP, Sydney, 1924; Macintyre, Reds, chs 4, 5, pp. 152–57.

23. Australian Worker,10 April, 1, 22 May 1919, 16 September, 14 October 1920, 10 March 1921, 15 November 1922, 27 October 1926; R. S. Ross, Revolution in Russia and Australia, Ross's Book Service, Melbourne,1920, pp. 6, 47; Worker, 27 March, 17, 24 April, 31 July 1919, 1 February 1924; Westralian Worker, 4 April 1919.

24. Macintyre, Oxford History, p. 232.

25. Macintyre, Oxford History, pp. 229–33; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', p. 99; Hagan and Turner, Labor Party New South Wales, pp. 121–30; Australian Worker, 16 September 1920, 17 May 1923, 12 May 1926, 7 May, 10 December 1930; Worker, 15, 22 July, 19 August 1920; Fitzgerald and Thornton, Labor in Queensland, ch. 3.

26. See Curtin's editorials in the Westralian Worker, 3 August, 23 November, December 19 1917, 4 January, 1 February, 8 March 1918; Hon. Barry O. Jones MP, 'Curtin's Tradition and the Party's Future', <http://john.curtin.edu.au>.

27. Australian Worker, 13 May, 26 August, 16 September, 4 November 1920; Westralian Worker, 1 April 1921; Ric Throssell, My Father's Son, Australian Large Print, Melbourne, 1991, chs 4–7.

28. Australian Worker, 22 May 1919, 18 March, 4 November 1920, 13 January 1921; Westralian Worker, 2 August 1918, 1 June 1923, 2 March 1928. For Captain Hugo Throssell, VC, 'War had made him a Socialist ... He had seen enough of the horrors of war and wanted peace', Throssell, Father's Son, p. 105.

29. Australian Worker, 8 April 1920, 13 January 1921, 15, 22 November 1922; Westralian Worker, 2 August 1918, 2 May 1919, 1 June 1923, 25 April, 2 May 1924, 4 February, 3 June, 1 July 1927; Bobbie Oliver, Peacemongers: Conscientious Objectors to Military Service in Australia 1911- 1945, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1997, ch. 3.

30. Oliver, Peacemongers, pp. 56–7; Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, p. 282.

31. Macintyre, Oxford History, p. 189; Mary Wilson, 'The Making of Melbourne's Anzac Day', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 20, 1974, pp. 197–209; Frank Farrell, International Socialism and Australian Labour: The Left in Australia 1919–1939, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1981, intro., pp. 1–2, 144–47; Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2004. For reports of the commemoration of Anzac Day see, for example, Worker, 1 May 1924, 28 April 1926, 27 April 1927, 2 May 1928, 30 April 1930; Australian Worker, 28 April 1926, 25 April, 2 May 1928, 24 April 1929; Tsokhas, Nation State, pp. 59–60; K.S. Inglis, 'The Anzac Tradition', Meanjin Quarterly: A Review of Arts and Letters in Australia, vol. xxiv, no. 1, 1965, pp. 24–44; Australian Worker, 24 May 1919.

32. Worker, 25 October 1923, 1 May 1924.

33. Australian Worker, 5 February 1920, 2 May 1928. See also Worker, 24 June 1920.

34. Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 281–82; Australian Worker, 24 May 1919, 28 April 1926; Kate White, John Cain and Victorian Labor 1917–1957, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney 1982, p. 50.

35. Frank Cotton, 'Australia's National Birth', Worker, 1 February 1928; 'Straight Australian', 'The Making of the Nation', Australian Worker, 27 April 1927.

36. Worker, 29 April 1920, 8 May 1924, 12, 19 May 1926, 26 January, 27 April, 4 May 1927, 30 April, 7 May 1930; Australian Worker, 6 May 1920, 19 May 1921, 6 May 1925, 4 May 1927.

37. Australian Labor Party, Manifesto of the Australian Labor Party to the People of the Commonwealth, 1919, p. 8; Westralian Worker, 8 February, 1918, 28 March, 4 April, 23 May, 13 June 1919; Australian Worker, 3 March 1921, 28 March, 25 April 1928; Worker, 28 April 1921, 30 April 1930; New South Wales Elections, Leaflets etc., 1922, Mitchell Library; Worker, 15 May 1919.

38. Worker, 13 March, 8, 15, 22 May 1919, 13 May 1920; Westralian Worker, 13, 20 June, 4 July 1919.

39. Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, p. 156.

40. Australian Worker, 28 November 1918; Adelaide Observer, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 29 November 1918.

41. Australian Worker, 8 May 1919; Westralian Worker, 2, 9, 16 May, 25 July 1919; Bobbie Oliver, '"The Diggers' Association": A Turning Point in the History of the Western Australian Returned Services League', Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 23, October 1993; Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 144, 172–80.

42. Worker, 27 March, 24 July 1919; Rawson, 'Political Violence in Australia', pp. 22–3; Australian Worker, 12 December 1918; Worker, 5 December 1918; Argus, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 July 1919; Age, 21, 22, 28 July 1919.

43. Worker, 13 March, 8, 15 May 1919; Returned Soldiers' and Sailors' Labor League, The Returned Soldiers and the Labour Movement, Brisbane, 1919, Mitchell Library.

44. Australian Worker, 12 May, 2 June 1921, 8 December 1926. The extent to which this charge of a 'sell-out' to British capitalist interests was true, in terms of the thoughts and actions of leading Nationalist politicians, is considered by Tsokhas, Business Empire and Australian Conservative Politics 1923–1936.

45. Worker, 26 January 1927.

46. Australian Worker, 2 June 1921; Australian Labor Party, Manifesto of the Australian Labor Party to the People of the Commonwealth, pp. 6–7.

47. Australian Worker, 12 May, 2 June 1921.

48. Australian Worker, 2 June 1921.

49. Australian Worker, 19 May 1921; Worker, 2 June 1926.

50. Australian Worker, 19 May, 2 June 1921, 27 May 1925.

51. Dennis Judd, Balfour and the British Empire: A Study in Imperial Evolution 1874–1932, Macmillan, London, 1968, pp. 319, 327–38.

52. Bridge and Fedorowich (eds), The British World: Diaspora Culture and Identity; Russel Ward, 'Two Kinds of Australian Patriotism', Victorian History Magazine: Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, vol. 4, no. 1, February 1970, pp. 225–43; Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, pp. 128–29.

53. Tom Cochrane, Blockade: The Queensland Loans Affair 1920 to 1924, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1989; Worker, 22 July, 19 August, 2, 16 September 1920.

54. Westralian Worker, 4 April 1924.

55. Worker, 15, 22 July 1920; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', p. 99; Australian Worker, 16 January 1929.

56. Westralian Worker, 3 December 1926, 1 April 1927, 1 June, 3 August 1928; Worker, 29 September, 27 October, 22, 29 December 1926, 1 February, 9 May 1928; Australian Worker, January 13, 27 October 1921, 10 November, 1, 8 December 1926, 26 January 1927.

57. Macintyre, Oxford History, p. 206. Humphrey McQueen also observes that the UAP was afraid that, if ratified, the Statute of Westminster, 'would deprive the Queen's Representatives of the power to dismiss elected governments'. See Humphrey McQueen, Social Sketches of Australia 1888–2001, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2004, p. 136.

58. James Henry Scullin, Papers 1929–1939, NLA, MS 356, 1 folder; Australian Worker, 7, 14 May, 10 December 1930; Worker, 10, 17 December 1930; Bulletin, 30 April, 10 December 1930.

59. Westralian Worker, 14, 21 February 1930, 7, 14, 21 August 1931; Australian Worker, 22, 29 October 1930; Worker, 9 May 1928, 16 October 1929.

60. Macintyre, Oxford History, pp. 259–73; J.T. Lang, 'Australian Labor Party for Australia', and 'My Message to You', in Australian Labor Party — New South Wales Branch, Election Campaign Literature, 1930, Mitchell Library; Frank Cain, 'NSW Labor Governments at the Hands of their Hostile British Governors', in Greg Patmore, John Shields and Nikola Balnave (eds), The Past is Before Us: Proceedings of the Ninth National Labour History Conference, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Sydney, 2005, pp. 63–70. Interestingly, Curtin disapproved of Lang's actions in 1932 because they divided the ALP and united 'the parties of reaction'. See 'The Views of Labour', West Australian, 18 June 1932.

61. See, for example, White, John Cain and Victorian Labor 1917–1957, ch. 3, for the divisions and recriminations afflicting Logan's Labor government in Victoria between 1929 and 1932.

62. See, for example, Curtin's views in the Westralian, 7, 14 August 1931.

63. Worker, 19 August 1920, 6 April 1927; Australian Worker, 29 July 1920.

64. Frank Anstey and John Curtin, The Heritage, 1930, <http://john.curtin.edu.au>; Westralian Worker, 4 February, 1 April, 1927, 1 June 1928; Worker, 8 July, 28 October 1920, 26 May 1921, 19, 26 January, 9, 23 February, 30 March, 6, 13 April 1927; Australian Worker, 14 November 1918, 6, 20 May, 17 June, 15 July, 19 August, 2 December 1920, 31 March 1921, 28 April, 8 December 1926.

65. Worker, 13, 27 May, 10 June, 15 July, 5 August 1920, 6, 13 April 1927; Australian Worker, 15 April, 6 May, 3, 10, 17 June, 1 July 1920, 26 January, 11 May 1927, 25 June 1930; Kevin Fewster, 'Politics, Pageantry and Purpose: The 1920 Tour of Australia by the Prince of Wales', Labour History, no. 38, May 1980, pp. 59–66.

66. Macintyre, Oxford History, p.133; Maurice French, 'The Ambiguity of Empire Day in New South Wales, 1901–21: Imperial Consensus or National Division?', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. xxiv, no. 1, April 1978, pp. 61–74; Stewart Firth and Jeanette Hoorn, 'From Empire Day to Cracker Night', in Peter Spearritt and David Walker (eds), Australian Popular Culture, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1979, ch. 2.

67. Markey, 'The Australian Labor Party and the Working Class'; Macintyre, Oxford History, p. 229; Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 40–1, 79–85, 107, 196, 232, 250; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', pp. 60–7, 85–90, 103–4, 158–59, 163–69, ch. 9.

68. Markey, 'The Australian Labor Party and the Working Class'; Macintyre, Oxford History, pp. 305–7; White, John Cain and Victorian Labor 1917–1957, p. 71.

69. Worker, 30 September 1920, 3 May 1923.

70. Worker, 30 September 1920, 3, 31 May 1923, 6 October 1926; Australian Worker, 12 May 1926; Fitzgerald and Thornton, Labor in Queensland, ch. 3.

71. Brian Costar, 'Was Queensland Different?', in Judy Mackinolty (ed.), The Wasted Years: Australia's Great Depression, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney,1981, pp. 166–69, 173–74.

72. Australian Labor Party — New South Wales Branch, The Voice of Labor: Lang's Great Policy Speech, 1927, Mitchell Library; Nairn, The 'Big Fella', pp. 60–71, 86, 103–4, 158–59, 163–69, 180–81, ch. 9; Hagan and Turner, Labor Party New South Wales, pp. 116–39.

73. Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 106–7, 156, 159, 162; Richard Davis, Eighty Years' Labor: The ALP in Tasmania 1903–1983, Sassafras Books and History Department, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 1983, pp. 13–18.

74. Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, pp. 279–82; Westralian Worker, 1 April 1927.

75. Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia, chs 7, 8, p. 299.

76. Moss, Sound of Trumpets, pp. 265–67.

77. Macintyre, Oxford History, pp. 270–73, 305; Moss, Sound of Trumpets, pp. 262–69, chs 20–23.

78. Davis, Eighty Years' Labor, pp. 18–28; Macintyre, Oxford History, pp. 232, 305–6.

79. White, John Cain and Victorian Labor 1917–1957, pp. xi-ii, 44–5, 66–7, 70–1; A.W. Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life, Vol. 1, 1894–1943, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1993, pp. 80–102.

80. White, John Cain and Victorian Labor 1917–1957, p. 50.

81. For the strength of local patriotism, as manifested in the 'cold-shouldering' of war hero turned Socialist, Hugo Throssell, see Throssell, Father's Son, pp. 105–6.

82. David Anthony Jarvis, Stanley Baldwin and the Ideology of the Conservative Response to Socialism, 1918–31, PhD thesis, Lancaster University, 1991.

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