RECORDER
RecorderOfficial organ of the Melbourne Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History Issue No. 283—July 2015 IN THIS EDITION: • Vale Jack Simpson, by Brian Smiddy, p.6 • Arthur’s last hurrah: Calwell, Whitlam and the Ky visit • The archbishop WAS for burning, by Paul Ormonde, pp. to Australia, by Phillip Deery, pp. 1-2 6-7 • Vale Joan Kirner, by Brian Smiddy, p. 3 • Amirah Inglis, by Sarah Dowse, pp. 8-9 • The Vietnam peace movement made a difference, by • Vale Lorna Cameron, p. 9 Val Noone, pp. 3-5 • Three new research scholarships & No ceboard, p. 10 • Colin Clark and the Movement, by Lyle Allan, pp. 5-6 • Peter Love's retirement from Swinburne, p. 10 • George Seitz MLA, by Kevin Davis, p. 6 • Branch contacts, p. 10
Arthur’s last hurrah: Calwell, Whitlam and the Ky visit to Australia*
By Phillip Deery
In the torrent of tributes for Gough Whitlam after his On 23 December 1966, Prime Minister Harold Holt death in October 2014, it is easy to forget the rancour announced that he had invited Nguyen Cao Ky, South and bitterness surrounding his ascent to the leadership Vietnam’s tenth premier in twenty months and part of a of the federal parliamentary Labor Party. He was elected military duumvirate (with General Nguyen Van Thieu) leader at a caucus meeting in February 1967 after Arthur that took power following a cycle of coups after Ngo Dinh Calwell, having lost three federal elections and now aged Diem’s assassination in November 1963. Calwell 70, decided he would step down. The electoral disaster immediately launched a series of vitriolic attacks on Ky. three months earlier, on 26 November 1966, was On 23 December he had stated that the visit of Ky, a especially cruel for Calwell, who – against Whitlam’s “power-hungry opportunist”, would shock every wishes – had campaigned strongly on the issues of Australian except those who “condoned and tolerated conscription and the Vietnam war. Both Calwell’s murder, brutality and injustice”. His invective went memoirs and Whitlam’s biographer highlight the policy further: in a separate statement, Calwell called Ky a “little differences and personal antagonisms between the two Quisling gangster”, a “miserable little butcher” and a in the run-up to that election.[1] But neither mention a “moral and social leper”.[2] On 26 December he crucial event sandwiched between the November defeat announced his intention to march at the head of any and the Whitlam victory: the state visit to Australia of the demonstration against the visit since “[i]f we are to fete Premier of South Vietnam, Air Vice-Marshall Ky, in military dictators it will be done in the face of my January 1967. That visit, which has largely been strongest opposition”. He added that the day Ky stepped overlooked by historians but which then received on Australian shores “should be declared a day of extensive national press and television coverage, threw a national mourning”.[3] Calwell’s strong reaction may sharp spotlight on the divisions within the ALP and, have been influenced by a 1965 report that Ky admired especially, between the leader and his deputy. Focusing Adolf Hitler. Ky was interviewed by a British journalist, on the Ky visit also illuminates Calwell’s principled stand, Brian Moynahan, who he told, in a remarkable display of opposed by the pragmatic Whitlam and ridiculed in the naïveté: “People ask me who my heroes are. I have only media. one – Hitler.”[4] The Jewish News commended Calwell for his “timely and penetrating opinion” about this “unwelcome guest”.[5] Calwell’s deputy was “not available for comment”.[6]
As government preparations for Ky’s visit firmed up in the first two weeks of 1967, invitations to State functions were issued. Customarily, the Opposition leader and his deputy would be invited and Whitlam was in an embarrassing position, since he had visited South Vietnam in 1966, met with Ky and was his official dinner guest in Saigon.[7] But Calwell’s stated intention to boycott any official meeting or dinner with Ky sank any