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J.B. Chifley and the Indonesian Revolution, 19451949

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J.B. Chifley and the Indonesian Revolution, 19451949 Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 59, Number 4, 2013, pp.517-531. J.B. Chifley and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1949 DAVID FETTLING Australian National University This article traces the role of the Prime Minister, Joseph Benedict Chifley, in Australia’s response to the Dutch-Indonesian colonial conflict. It argues for Chifley’s centrality to the formation of Australia’s eventual policy to support Indonesian nationalist aspirations, a policy often in antithesis to the views of H.V. Evatt. This is significant because a focus on Evatt has distracted historians from ascertaining the causes of Australia’s policy. Examining Chifley’s attitude and role reveals that Australia’s response to revolutionary Indonesia stemmed from an application to the Southeast Asian colonial question of a labourist and post-war reconstructionist ethos, an idea of sweeping reform to rectify deep economic and social grievances. In July 1947, the Netherlands launched a military invasion to reoccupy Java and Sumatra, key parts of their old colonial empire, the Netherlands East Indies or “NEI”, which they had lost during the Second World War. They had grown tired of stalemated negotiations with the leaders of the so-called “Republic of Indonesia”, which had established itself two years previously during a kaleidoscopic mass uprising by Indonesians. The Dutch action was widely perceived as international aggression, contravening the laws of the new United Nations Organisation; however, Australians had reasons for ambivalent views toward the conflict. The Indonesian Revolution had been accompanied by considerable violence. Anti-foreign sentiment was high: militias roaming the Javanese hinterland had taken to murdering Europeans, including Australians. Indeed to Richard Kirby — the Chifley government’s choice to represent Australia on new international-mediated negotiations — Australian policy had so far been marked by a “lack of unanimity”, with “different voices” saying “different things”.1 Before departing for Indonesia, then, Kirby travelled to Canberra for precise instructions. But the External Affairs Minister, H.V. Evatt, was overseas. Kirby instead saw the Prime Minister, J.B. Chifley. In their meeting Chifley, unprompted, told Kirby he had been to Indonesia. During the early years of the Great Depression, recently voted out of Parliament, Chifley said he had travelled by boat throughout Southeast Asia, including to the NEI, “just to see My thanks to John Murphy for supervising the University of Melbourne Honours thesis on which this paper is based, and to Nicholas Brown for subsequently helping me develop my ideas further. My thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. 1 Interview Peter Crockett with Richard Kirby, 7 June 1985, transcript in Papers of P.W. Crockett Relating To The Life of H.V. Evatt, Box 30, Manuscripts Library, State Library of Victoria (hereafter SLV), MS 13347, p.35. © 2013 The Author. Australian Journal of Politics and History © 2013 School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. 518 David Fettling what was going on in those parts”.2 The Prime Minister said he had visited Batavia and been “absolutely disgust[ed] at the colonial attitude”. He had seen the canals the Indonesians had been forced to both wash and defecate in,3 and the “near-slavery” conditions of labourers working the docks.4 “[H]e made no bones about it” recounted Kirby.5 Moreover, “he was rather pleased, I think, that Bert Evatt wasn’t there […] [and] he was the one that was having the [chat] to me.” Chifley “didn’t say, ‘[t]his is where your sympathies are’, or should be, he just told me about his holiday”, Kirby recalled. “[H]e was a very good operator, you know […] Just tell you a nice friendly story like that.”6 Neither the L.F. Crisp or David Day biographies of Chifley mention this trip.7 Nor do any of the major biographical studies of Evatt and his role in Australia’s external policy,8 or Margaret George’s work on the Chifley government’s policy to revolutionary Indonesia.9 This is symptomatic of a wider gap. The 1940s decade in Australian foreign relations is often seen as being virtually synonymous with the figure of Evatt. Consequently, Australian actions in these years are often seen wholly through the lens of the “liberal internationalism” — for our purposes, an emphasis on collective agreements through multilateral institutions, chiefly the UN, to solve conflicts and entrench international norms of human rights and the rule of law — with which Evatt is most associated.10 However, for seventeen of twenty-four months between 1947 and 1949, during Evatt’s long absences overseas, Chifley opted to be his own Acting Minister of External Affairs. 11 In 1981, Peter Edwards declared that “[i]t may well be that there is more to be said about the Chifley-Evatt relationship and its consequences for Australian foreign policy”, specifically mentioning Indonesia. “It would not be entirely surprising” Edwards said, “if future historians portray this [relationship] as more subtle and complex than has usually been recognised.”12 Elsewhere Edwards hypothesized that while Evatt’s influence on foreign affairs was absolute in 1945, in subsequent years both Chifley and Secretary of External Affairs John Burton came to exert substantial influence.13 Yet scholarship still lacks in-depth analyses of Chifley’s contribution to Australian foreign affairs.14 2 Peter Ryan, Brief Lives: Biographical Glimpses of Ben Chifley, Paul Hasluck, A.D. Hope and Others (Sydney, 2004) p.87. 3 Peter Crockett with Richard Kirby, p.32. 4 Ryan, Brief Lives, p.87. 5 Peter Crockett with Richard Kirby, p.33. 6 Ibid., p.33. 7 L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley (London, 1960); David Day, Chifley: a Life (Pymble, 2001). 8 Peter Crockett, Evatt: a Life (Melbourne, 1993); Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale and Wayne Reynolds, Doc Evatt: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar (Melbourne, 1994); Alan Renouf, Let Justice Be Done: the Foreign Policy of H.V. Evatt (St Lucia, 1983). 9 Margaret George, Australia and the Indonesian Revolution (Carlton, 1980) p.4. 10 For the classic account positing Australia’s liberal internationalism in these years see Christopher Waters, The Empire Fractures: Anglo-Australian Conflict in the 1940s (Kew, 1995). 11 Crisp, Ben Chifley, p.276 fn. 12 Peter Edwards, “Historical Reconsiderations II: On Assessing H.V. Evatt”, Historical Studies (Australia), Vol. 21, 83 (October 1981), p.263. 13 Peter Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901- 1949 (Melbourne, 1983), pp.173-175 and 181-185. 14 One exception is Frank Bongiorno, “‘British to the Bootstraps?’: H.V. Evatt, J.B. Chifley and Australian Policy on Indian Membership of the Commonwealth, 1947-49”, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 36, 125 (2005). J.B. Chifley and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1949 519 Not only did Chifley act as his own External Affairs Minister, he displayed a pronounced interest in Asia that has gone largely unremarked. When Australia’s High Commissioner to New Delhi was in Canberra and went to brief the Prime Minister, he was shocked when instead, “for two hours he [Chifley] told me what was going on in India!”.15 When the Indonesian Republic sent an unofficial representative, Usman Sastroamidjoyo, to Canberra, W.D. Forsyth took him to meet Chifley who gave him a “reassuring commitment”.16 In the late 1940s Chifley inserted himself into policy deliberations on Malaya, India, Burma, China and Hong Kong, but most of all on the so-called “Indonesian question”. It is Chifley’s centrality in the crafting of Australia’s policy to back the Indonesian nationalist movement that this paper examines. Chifley’s role in the Indonesian Revolution has been mentioned only in passing. Jamie Mackie added a sentence to the historiography by commenting that “[i]t is noteworthy that Australia’s most dramatic moves in the [Indonesian] dispute were made when [Evatt] was out of the country and Mr Chifley was acting as Minister for External Affairs”.17 Alan Renouf also mentioned that Chifley was “more far-sighted than Evatt about the future of the NEI”, and that “Chifley was more responsive to Indonesian nationalism, whereas Evatt throughout had reservations about it”.18 But this was a brief tangent in a book centred on Evatt. George’s account, even though she provided details on Chifley’s contributions to the Indonesian issue, missed the opportunity to make this point. To George, “a lack of concord” in Australian policy, the fact that “Chifley and Evatt worked in antithesis to each other”,19 was evidence not of Chifley clashing with and eventually overruling Evatt, but of a muddled and confused Australian policy. Oral histories provide particularly blunt indications that Chifley’s role in foreign affairs deserves closer study. When Tom Critchley, Kirby’s replacement on the Indonesian negotiations, was asked about Australian foreign ministers he respected, he answered that “the man that I had tremendous respect for was Chifley”. Critchley said that “of all the ministers” he experienced over thirty years, Chifley and Garfield Barwick “were the two that stood out”.20 Kirby said that “I think Chifley[,] if he’d been able to divest himself of the Prime Minister’s job, would have loved to be Minister for External Affairs”; Kirby thought Chifley had a “very very strong […]” interest in the Indonesian question.21 Most significant of all, we have testimony from Burton. When asked about Evatt’s role in the Indonesian-Dutch dispute, Burton replied that “I had most [to do with it], with Chifley”. Evatt “was just not involved, he was away most of the time”. Indonesian policy from “this end [was handled] by Chifley”.22 Chifley’s role 15 Ivan Chapman, Iven G.
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