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BOOK REVIEW
| Ken Buckley, Buckley's! Ken Buckley: Historian, Author and Civil Libertarian: An Autobiography, A & A Books, Sydney, 2008. pp. 373. $29.95 paper.
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| As its subtitle suggests, this autobiography of the late Ken Buckley (1922–2006) is that of a 'Historian, Author and Civil Libertarian'. On page 203, Buckley confesses that during the writing process he needed to remind himself constantly that 'this book is an autobiography, not a history of the Council of Civil Liberties' (CCL). In large part Ken succeeds on both fronts, but there is no disguising the fact that Buckley's is a strongly personal account of that estimable organisation, the NSW CCL. Born in 1963 amidst growing evidence of abuses of police power in New South Wales, for a man like Ken Buckley, of firm socialist convictions, committed to the extension and maintenance of democratic rights and civil liberties, the CCL was a perfect marriage of political activism and intellectual engagement. Indeed he is no doubt right – establishing and sustaining the CCL over more than 30 years was the greatest achievement of his life. Stockily built, like the former rugby front row forward he once was, Ken Buckley confronted injustice and censorship front-on. |
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Readers of Labour History, however, may have wished for a slightly different emphasis. True, there are two chapters (of 30) concentrating on Ken Buckley's work as a historian, but the reader seeking illumination about his role in socialist historiography in Australia may well be disappointed. Some of Buckley's more recent historical works and the travails involved in their research and writing are covered in significant detail. Much of it, however, is referred to only in passing. For left-wing postgraduate students in the 1970s and 1980s, seeking ways of reinterpreting Australian history along broadly Marxist lines, the volumes of Buckley and Wheelwright's Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism assumed iconic status. Buckley's mentions them in a line or two. Similarly we learn that No Paradise for Workers, another of the works Ken Buckley co-authored with his friend and fellow socialist, Ted Wheelwright, largely emerged from his lecture notes. Considering their significance and originality, Ken Buckley's research into nineteenth century colonial land policy, published in various academic journals in the 1950s, also deserves some reflection and contemplation. Prior to emigrating to Australia in 1952, Ken first heard the word 'squatter' mentioned in its Australian context when listening to a talk Robin Gollan delivered to the Marxist Historians Group in London. It would be fascinating to know more about how Ken started and carried out that pioneering research into Australian colonial history. Of course Ken was also editor of Labour History between 1986 and 1989 and crucial to the journal's successful transfer from ANU to the University of Sydney where he rose to become an associate professor in the Department of Economic History. |
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Buckley's is a story of campaigns more than an intellectual (auto)biography. The individuals Ken recalls are principally activists in the CCL, politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers, rather than fellow academic historians, though understandably, the political economist Ted Wheelwright is remembered at length and with great affection. We read of the CCL's part in a myriad of civil liberties and censorship campaigns including the Oz trial and the publication of The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover. In tandem with the great political campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-apartheid movement, as well as Vietnam and the anti-war movement, Ken and his colleagues were ever vigilant as to the depredations of the police and ASIO. Significant contributions were made in terms of gaol, abortion and homosexual law reform. Along the way we read of Ken Buckley's connections with The Push, the Bogle and Chandler affair, his marriages and loves, his children, (including the suicide of his daughter), his family background as a working-class boy from Hackney, and war service. It is a surprise to find that Ken was attached to a secret intelligence corps in the British Army during World War II, the Political Warfare Executive/Bureau. It is a connection that perhaps partly explains his friendship with the highly conservative Stephen Salsbury, long term Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Sydney University, who also enjoyed war-time and (so it was claimed) continuing connections with the American secret state. |
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Buckley's is an attractive, well-produced book. If it suffers from a major flaw this is simply that it lacks an index, a problem no doubt partly attributable to the fact that Ken died in the final stages of writing the manuscript. There are also some excellent photographs, several of which remind me that Ken was a socialist who got on with the serious business of enjoying life under capitalism with a broad smile on his face and a glass of red wine or beer in his hand. Nor did Ken suffer from false modesty. As Buckley's argues, unlike most Australian historians, Ken Buckley contributed to the making of history as well as to the writing of it. The timing of Buckley's launch at Gleebooks on 10 October 2008, the so-called 'Black Friday' on which the Australian stock market recorded its biggest one-day loss since the crash of 1987, was especially propitious. As capitalism crumbled, one can well imagine the wry smile of at least one heavenly observer. |
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| University of Western Sydney |
ANDREW MOORE | |
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