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AustrAliA’s secret WAr HoW unionists sAbotAged Ten our troops in World WAr ii HAL COLEBATCH’s new book, Australia’s Secret War, tells the Years shocking, true, but until now largely suppressed and hidden story of the war waged from 1939 to 1945 by a number of key Australian trade unions — against their own society and against the men and women of their of The own country’s fighting forces during the perils of World War II. Every major Australian warship was targeted by strikes, go-slows and besT r33011 renodesign.com.au sabotage at home. Australian soldiers fighting in New Guinea and the Pacific went without food, radio equipment and ammunition because 487 pOems by 169 auThOrs of union strikes. “It has been known for decades”, Les Murray writes in his introduction to this Photographs © australian War memorial verse collection, “that poets who might fear relegation or professional sabotage from the Waterside workers disrupted loading of supplies to the troops and It seems to me the best such occasional critical consensus of our culture have a welcome and a refuge in Quadrant—but only pilfered from ships’ cargoes and soldiers’ personal effects. Other strikes collection I have ever read; better, for if they write well.” by rail workers, iron workers, coal miners, and even munitions workers instance, than ‘The Faber Book of Modern From the second decade of his 20 years as literary editor of Quadrant, Les Murray and life-raft builders, badly impeded Australia’s war effort. Verse’; which is saying quite a bit. here presents a selection of the best verse he published between 2001 and 2010. — BOB ELLIS, Table Talk For you, or As A giFt $44.95 Order This Landmark bOOk $44.95 ONLINE ONLINE www.quadrant.org.au/store www.quadrant.org.au/store POST POST Quadrant, Locked Bag 1235, North Melbourne VIC 3051, Australia Quadrant, Locked Bag 1235, North Melbourne VIC 3051, Australia PhONE FAX PhONE (03) 8317 8147 FAX (03) 9320 9065 (03) 8317 8147 (03) 9320 9065

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Letters 2 Christopher Heathcote, Michael Alder, Suzanne Edgar, Peter Jeffrey, Evan Williams, John R. Bicknell, Harry Gelber, Chris Hilder editor’s column 5 Bill Shorten’s Identity Politics Keith Windschuttle asperities 7 John O’Sullivan ASTRINGENCIES 9 Anthony Daniels the usa 11 How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself Bruce Anderson 16 The New Totalitarians Daryl McCann society 22 Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong Philippa Martyr 28 The Cultural Feminism That Betrays Women Augusto Zimmermann trade 32 The Deplorable Victims of Free Trade Peter Smith 35 Concealed Protectionism Threatens Australia’s Trade Andrew Bragg history 40 Howard Haters and the History Wars Gregory Melleuish politics 43 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment David Smith 50 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting I: Brian Galligan II: Keith Windschuttle obituary 60 James Fairfax, AC Mark McGinness books 65 Fragile Nation by Tanveer Ahmed George Thomas 67 The Curse of Mungana by David E. Moore Ross Fitzgerald 68 Mrs Kelly by Grantlee Kieza Doug Morrissey 71 Secret Victory by William Matchett Sean O’Callaghan 73 Kenneth Clark by James Stourton Douglas Hassall 76 Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney Jane Sutton music 80 The Great American Songbook Joe Dolce literature 86 I Hate Saki Michael Connor 90 Following a Literary Trail Roger Underwood first person 96 Short Takes XXII Alan Gould 100 Oceans and Mountains of the Flood-Plain Philip Drew stories 102 God Bless the Freaks! Gary Furnell 106 The Audit Hugh Canham art 110 A Small Workshop in Isfahan Giacomo Sini Poetry 15: Women at the River Carolyn Evans Campbell; 19: Anniversary Poem David Chandler; 20: Beyond Head of Bight; Sea Dog; Forty-one degrees Margaret Bradstock; 21: the moment, taken; plot Jennifer Compton; 27: Combine; Mending Time; The World of Hurt David Mason; 31: Miss Anderson’s Doorbells; Daughters Don’t Cry Marjorie Howard Johnson; Kindling the Real Estate Pages Alan Gould; 38: On Courage Elisabeth Wentworth; 39: Infinite? Cassandra Dickinson; This is it Russell Erwin; 64: Gossiper Andrew Lansdown; 79: This life ... and more Robyn Lance; 88: The World is Simple; Star Sestina Cally Conan-Davies; 94: Le Songe d’Aubert Victoria Field; 95: The Ablation of Time; Masked Memory David Atkinson; 99: Clearing; Hazel Victoria Field; 101: Cullinan Joe Dolce; 105: Go for it, Joe! Kris Hemensley; 109: Torching the Ivories Robyn Lance Letters larger one led by Malcolm Turnbull which is statist, big-government, against free speech, intrusive and shows not a trace of either classical Editor conservatism or liberalism, social or Keith Windschuttle Custodians, Not Owners economic. Where McDermott sees [email protected] liberals, I see loony lefties. Where Sir: Upon the publication of my Editor, International he sees conservatives, I see snouts article “The Politically Correct John O’Sullivan in troughs. Pulpit” (March 2017), I was con- It will be interesting to discover Liter ary Editor tacted by Anglicans about a major what other voters see. And which Les Murray theological problem the piece planet the majority live on. Deput y Editor touched upon. As I wrote, the George Thomas Melbourne diocese has produced Michael Alder a sign which runs, “We are proud Crawley, WA Editor, Qua dr ant Online to acknowledge the Wurrundjeri Roger Franklin people as the traditional owners [email protected] of this land”. After pressure from Be Careful Who Contributing Editors Archbishop Freier, this sign is You Write For Film: Neil McDonald now displayed outside many parish Sir: Thank you for publishing Joe Theatre: Michael Connor churches. Dolce’s astute review (March 2017) I am very reliably informed that Columnist of Sarah Holland-Batt’s edition of in the 1960s and early 1970s, when Anthony Daniels Best Australian Poems 2016. Aboriginal land rights were being Dolce’s careful and detailed intensely debated, Anglican theo- Subscriptions analysis of both the editor’s choice logians determined that humans do of poems published and the editorial Phone: (03) 8317 8147 not “own” land: instead, they have guidelines which she laid down Fax: (03) 9320 9065 “custody” of it. So it was determined but then ignored (to the detriment Post: Quadrant Magazine, that Aboriginal peoples are tradi- of those submitting poems for Locked Bag 1235, tional “custodians” of this land, not consideration) is invaluable now North Melbourne VIC 3051 its “owners”. The doctrine commis- E-mail: quadrantmagazine@ and will be in the future. Literary sion enshrined this as the national data.com.au historians, too, may well appreciate church’s position, and it was taught the convenience thereby provided. in theological schools for decades. Publisher Perhaps even Black Inc, the So, the Archbishop’s new sign collection’s publisher, may note the is contrary to doctrine; indeed, Quadrant (ISSN 0033-5002) is substantial points Dolce raises; this for firm theological reasons some published ten times a year by firm has, after all, published recent Quadrant Magazine Limited, clergy are very disturbed by the books by Les Murray, Quadrant’s Suite 2/5 Rosebery Place, political signs and Aboriginal flags literary editor. Dolce found that no Balmain NSW 2041, Australia now imposed on church property. ACN 133 708 424 poem accepted by Murray for your Christopher Heathcote magazine last year was included in Production Keilor, Vic BAP 2016. Suzanne Edgar Design Consultant: Reno Design Art Director: Graham Rendoth Only One Conservative Garran, ACT Printer: Ligare Pty Ltd Sir: The phenomenon of peo- Sir: I very much enjoyed and was 138–152 Bonds Road, ple apparently living on two dif- gratified by Joe Dolce’s piece about Riverwood NSW 2210 ferent planets alluded to by Alex Best Australian Poems 2016. Cover: Colours of Australia McDermott (March 2017) is indeed I also was invited, on the basis “Khaki” apposite. I do not recognise the split of a poem in BAP 2014, to submit between classical liberals and con- some poems for consideration in www.quadrant.org.au servatives in our polity at all. I see the 2016 collection and duly sent in a party led by Cory Bernardi and three. One had been published in containing only one member which Quadrant and the other two were is recognisably conservative, and a new. Joe did not include my name

2 Quadrant April 2017 Letters among Quadrant-published poets, benefitsn i a very plain way of doing more learned and sensible (and but I forgive him as I have appeared things”. One can only hope that sensitive) articles on China that there only a few (seven, if you must today’s egocentric directors and we have seen in recent times. On know) times. self-indulgent theatrical auteurs almost every point he is careful and Gratified, because of being one will heed his words. well-informed. of the number of excellent poets However, there is one issue on Evan Williams who did not make the cut. I had not which he does not comment, on Killara, NSW known there were so many. This which it is difficult to be didactic, may explain why a respected poet yet which may well be at the core of once warned me not to become Dangers Within current Chinese politics and policy. identified as a Quadrant poet. It has to do with the unity— I also want to thank Joe Dolce Sir: eTh most disturbing article I or factionalism—of the Chinese for his judicious and balanced (oh have ever read about Islam would Communist Party (CCP). As all right, brilliant) article on Bob have to be Victoria Kincaid’s arti- Hendriks has acknowledged, the Dylan’s Nobel Prize in a previous cle “Islamic State, Child Soldiers CCP now appears to have some issue. and Intolerable Islamic Schools” 89 million members. At the same (January-February 2017). time, President Xi has personally Peter Jeffrey It is obvious to non-Muslims chosen to lead or supervise, or at Griffith, ACT that Islam is encompassed by a least keep close tabs on, not just legacy of death as laid down in the the Party but government, foreign Brando’s Antony Koran and related texts. Victoria relations, the military, the security Kincaid’s article should be taken apparatus, economics generally and SRI : nI his otherwise excellent seriously by all governments, not Chinese fiscal and monetary policy, resume of Marlon Brando’s films just democratic governments; not to mention keeping an eye on (March 2017), Neil McDonald and measures put in place to curb major construction projects of cit- made no mention of Julius Caesar— and even nullify the teachings of ies, transport and so forth. In addi- Joseph Mankiewicz’s lean and hun- Islam. Muslims who adhere to the tion, he has set up a powerful and gry adaptation of Shakespeare’s teachings derived from the Koran, detailed supervision and domestic tragedy, in which Brando played Hadith and related texts and wish management apparatus to look, Marc Antony. It was a film with for the introduction of sharia law among other things, after the CCP no frills, no updating, no arty into democratic countries are itself, for whose senior ranks he is digressions, no gender-mixing, potential quislings who will try to clearly planning a major reshuffle. no “reimagining”, and a more or destroy democratic societies from It is beyond belief that a party of less uncut text. For those of us within, using our legal systems to such a vast (and, even now, grow- who love Shakespeare even more achieve their aims. ing) membership, of divergent local than movies, it is perhaps the best We in Australia have become interests, peoples and even local lan- Shakespeare film of all—Welles, acutely aware of the insidious guages, would for long remain truly Olivier et al notwithstanding. John nature of Islam, yet there are apol- unified, except perhaps in following Gielgud (who played Cassius) was ogists on the extreme Left and in the national ambitions that have so so impressed by Brando’s perform- Green-leaning groups that seem strongly succeeded the large-scale ance that he invited him to go to hell-bent on enabling the spread of disappearance of Maoism. London to appear on the English Islamic teaching in our schools and It is true that solid evidence of stage (in Hamlet, among other universities which is totally coun- domestic disagreement is hard to things), and who knows where this ter-productive to the democratic find, let alone to document, given might have led? mores of our Australian populace. that details of government planning The critic David Thomson, no Why? have always been kept most secret great fan of the film, nevertheless until the emperor was ready to John R. Bicknell had this to say: “Marlon Brando’s reveal them. There may, however, Bargo, NSW Antony has always been the star be two things to keep in mind. The attraction, if only because at the first is the question of what issue, or time his shift from mumbling The Stealthy Xi issues, might be powerful enough to full-scale Elizabethan verse to keep President Xi himself in came as a surprise.” According Sir: Eric Hendriks’s article “The charge of so many posts of quite to Thomson, the film’s producer, Eternal Centre: Why China is divergent interests and needs, many John Houseman, who had worked Not a Model” (January-February more than anyone since Chairman with Orson Welles, “had seen the 2017) has to rank as one of the Mao has done.

Quadrant April 2017 3 Letters

A second and even more pointed included the cautious and rela- birth to a unique work ethic that issue is why and how President Xi tively obscure Mr Xi, whose final spawned capitalism, and thus it is has handled the court cases of Bo ascent to presidential power may that modernity is a direct result of Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, both well have stemmed, at least in part, the Reformation.” This notion, and members of the highest ranks of the from the anti-Zhong affair. It could much other anti-Catholic propa- CCP. The younger man, Bo, had also explain the care with which ganda that still circulates today, become a member of the Politburo the new President has managed has been thoroughly debunked in and Secretary of the Communist extensions of his power in several Rodney Stark’s recent book Bearing Party branch at Chongqing, in directions, ranging from support False Witness: Debunking Centuries China’s south-west, where he gov- for nationalist and military affairs, of Anti-Catholic History (2016). erned over 30 million people. He the extension of Chinese power, as To paraphrase a quote in Stark’s was even rumoured to be a likely well as the assembling of so many book from British historian Hugh candidate for membership of and varied posts in his own hands. Trevor-Roper about large-scale China’s supreme governing body, The entire story might even be con- industrial capitalism: the idea that the Standing Committee of the sistent with the hyper-active way sublimating aggression in work, com- Politburo. From that basis he came in which President Xi seems to be panionate marriage and self-education to promote strongly Maoist prin- preventing the appearance of any was ideologically impossible before ciples and the “red culture” of the kind of non-Xi faction within the the Reformation is exploded by Cultural Revolution era of 1966 to CCP. the simple fact that it existed. For 1976. His dismissal in 2012 marked If that interpretation is at all example, St Benedict’s rule from his disagreement with the more correct, it could also explain both the fifth century emphasising the moderate and market-based prin- the ways in which China has virtue of work, medieval romance ciples of his seniors. That dismissal secured political advantages around writing, and the monastic commit- followed the fall and arrest of his south and south-east China, and ment to study. wife, Gu Kailai, who had amassed the way in which differences with Stark’s book is an eye-opener, millions in hidden and often illegal the US and Japan have been left, for even for a Catholic such as myself ways. She was even held responsi- the foreseeable future, to the realm who was already aware that much ble for the murder of a British mer- of words. historical distortion and exaggera- chant who may have threatened to tion arose out of the Reformation Harry Gelber expose her dealings. and Enlightenment. It is an indis- via e-mail Her trial and conviction inevi- pensable reference, highlighting tably cast a shadow over her hus- the need for caution in accepting band, which allowed his political Anti-Catholic History many secondary sources concern- enemies to end his career. Not ing Protestantism, Catholicism and only that, but the trial of Bo cast Sir: Whilst enjoying Peter their impacts. an even more important light on Murphy’s puncturing of EU pre- Chris Hilder the position of Bo’s mentor, Zhou tensions in “The Anglosphere’s Queanbeyan, NSW Yongkang. Here was unquestion- Quiet Revolution” ( January- ably one of the most senior officials February 2017) I find his statement of the CCP, the security chief for that the “The modern world exists all of China and Secretary of the because the Calvinists found ways Quadrant welcomes letters Central Political and Legal Affairs of sublimating aggression in work, to the editor. Letters are subject Commission of the entire CCP. companionate marriage and self- Since he was a supporter of Bo, education” implausible. to editing unless writers Bo’s fall made it easier for Zhou’s This statement seems to be an stipulate otherwise. opponents to unseat him too. updated variant of Max Weber’s Those opponents clearly thesis that “Protestantism gave

4 Quadrant April 2017 bl i l shorten’s identity po l i t i c s

Keith Windschuttle

nef o the most disappointing spectacles in ers from any reticence about the level of abuse they the aftermath of the death of Bill Leak—a hurl at opponents. lovely bloke of extraordinary genius whose Identity politics today has overturned the prin- pOremature passing is one of the tragedies of our ciple, once taken for granted in Australia, that time—was the vile invective hurled at him by the politics is more like sport than warfare. We once proponents of identity politics. As Roger Franklin thought that, although the other team are your found in a quick survey for Quadrant Online of the rivals, if you lose to them the proper response is to Twitter postings of gay activists, feminists, Muslim revise your tactics, train harder and try again next pundits, indigenous identifiers and the left-wing time. You could even have drinks with them after media, many used the opportunity to tell the world the game. how glad they were he was dead. Here’s a sample: Today, interest group politics is more like a civil Paul Kidd, gay and HIV activist: “Bill Leak war in which the contenders want to destroy their was an enemy of my community; he made a living opponents utterly, so they can never compete again. insulting and attacking queers. Of course I’m glad They prefer the other side dead. he’s dead.” Yet if opinion polls keep going the way they Stephanie McCarthy, transvestite performer: are, in two years time Australia will have a prime “Just a quick reminder of what a disgusting, vile, minister totally committed to identity politics. racist piece of shit Bill Leak was. This man deserves Capturing the larger identity groups by taking ZERO praise or respect.” their side and talking their language has emerged Shane Bazzi, refugee advocate and LGBTQ as one of Bill Shorten’s major strategies to defeat activist: “Bill Leak was a horrible person. Homo­ the Turnbull government. Shorten rarely misses an phobic, transphobic, racist, Islamophobic. His opportunity to display his credentials to members death does not change that.” of these groups. Michael Lucy, Online Editor at the Monthly: “It’s one thing not to speak ill of the dead but n February, in a parliamentary speech about the another to praise publicly shitty dead people just Closing the Gap Program which measures the because you were mates with them.” oIutcomes from the $30 billion a year now spent on Fatima Measham, consulting editor and col- Aboriginal people, Shorten said, with a straight umnist, Eureka Street: “Turns out death doesn’t face, “It’s time for truth-telling.” He then went on write off the damage you did.” to enshrine in Hansard two of the most notorious Nakkia Lui, Aboriginal actress and playwright: myths about the treatment of Aboriginal people in “If only the victims of Bill Leak’s racism got as early colonial times: “We poisoned the waterholes; much news and attention as he has.” we distributed blankets infected with diseases we K. Thor Jensen, American comic strip illustrator knew would kill.” and novelist: “Bill Leak, one of the worst political Both tales are historical fictions. Local legend cartoonists in the world, has died. He was a 61 year from mid-nineteenth-century Narrandera, New old piece of shit and should have died years ago.” South Wales, offers two different accounts of the Although identity politics originated in the origin of the name Poisoned Waterhole Creek. It 1970s among radical feminists, gays and black power was originally thought to derive from poisoned advocates, the movement has taken a very ugly turn pellets spread around the site by pastoralists to kill ever since Julia Gillard and the Greens formed a wild dogs that were molesting sheep. The other minority government in 2010. It has changed dem- account is that a drover once lost cattle there when ocratic politics for the worse, and freed its follow- they ate a local toxic weed. However, poet Mary

Quadrant April 2017 5 

Gilmore, whose father once worked on a station blankets but it is these same scabs that provided in Narrandera, later decided the name came from the early material for smallpox vaccines. Before the waterholes deliberately poisoned by a local pasto- eighteenth century, physicians in China and Turkey ralist to kill Aborigines. She wrote in a newspa- developed techniques for immunising people against per article that her father was commissioned by smallpox. Blowing powdered pustule scabs up the a magistrate to fill up the holes to well above the noses of patients was a commonly-used preventive old waterline. However, in an examination of the measure. But, in any case, it would have been dif- name’s origins in the Narrandera Argus in February ficult for the early British settlers in Australia to 1951 (now checkable on Trove), a local historian, spread the disease this way to the Aborigines since George Gow, said Gilmore’s claims were “utter rub- there was no outbreak of that kind among the colo- bish”. The waterholes had never been filled in. Her nists, thus no infected blankets to give. version of events was unknown to either local pas- toralists or local Aborigines and had been invented here are several other recent examples of for political purposes. At the time Gilmore was a Shorten using the myths of identity politics to member of the Communist Party. cTement the loyalty of constituents. Last September, Shorten’s claims about disease-infected blankets during the debate over a proposed plebiscite on are even less credible. This story originated not in same-sex marriage, he accused the Turnbull gov- the early history of Australia but in North America ernment of undermining the legitimacy of the during the Indian Wars of the mid-eighteenth identity of young homosexuals by debating their century. In 1763, at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) the status on the national stage. “Let me be as blunt Indian chief Pontiac had laid siege to the fort where as possible,” he said. “A No campaign would be all the British settlers had congregated. Smallpox an emotional torment for gay teenagers and if one had broken out inside the fort. When two Indian child commits suicide over the plebiscite, then that emissaries visited the site to urge the British to is one too many.” abandon their stronghold, the Swiss commander There used to be an unwritten but widely Simeon Ecuyer refused to leave but, as an appar- acknowledged convention in the news media not to ent gesture of submission, gave the Indians presents beat up stories about suicide, since there was plau- of two blankets and a handkerchief, which he had sible evidence from public health authorities that taken from the fort hospital’s infected patients. A highly publicised stories about the topic produce month later in New York, Ecuyer’s commanding copycat suicides, especially among young men. officer General Jeffrey Amherst learnt there was a Shorten’s speech indicates he knows this but is still smallpox outbreak among the Indians and, una- prepared to go public on the issue in order to shore ware then of Ecuyer’s actions, wrote that it would up his stocks in the gay constituency. be a good idea to “Send the Small Pox among Identity politics needs to be seen as the antithesis those Disaffected Tribes of Indians” as well as “to of democratic politics. Each identity group is taught try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate that its members are victims of the wider society’s this Execrable Race”. intolerance, and so separate rights and expensive Left-wing historians today milk Amherst’s mes- special treatments are their cures. Identity politics sage for all it is worth. In Australia, in an attempt is the most divisive version of relationship a nation to lend credence to claims that the British deliber- can have with its people. Each group pursues its ately gave smallpox to the Aborigines, the historian own aims, irrespective of their influence on the Henry Reynolds in An Indelible Stain (2001) uses national interest. Each group has its own values, Fort Pitt as a precursor. He writes: “In an infamous its own set of moral principles, its own version of incident, two visiting Indian chiefs on a diplomatic its rights. There are no universal rights. This is a mission were given blankets from the smallpox set of views deriving from multiculturalism and hospital. The evidence indicates that the action was cultural relativism. Its logical conclusion is that deliberate and calculated.” In fact, the evidence child brides, pederasty, the subjugation of women, indicates nothing of the kind. It is most unlikely genital mutilation, and the killing of infidels are Ecuyer’s gifts started this epidemic. Reports from culturally, and thus morally, sanctioned. Each settlers who escaped the Indians said it was already culture is entitled to its own “narratives” too, and so prevalent among the tribes months before Pontiac’s generates its own set of historical facts that sanction siege. its sense of victimhood. In any case, smallpox is almost always trans- If Bill Shorten becomes prime minister, he mitted by close contact with infected persons. It is is committed to entrenching this movement and possible for the disease to be transmitted from the these values even more securely than the previous scabs and pustules that might have brushed onto Labor-Greens coalition. Poor fella my country.

6 Quadrant April 2017 a s p e r i t i e s

John O’Sullivan

s Britain heading straight for disaster?” Thatcher had an easy run against Michael Foot and asked Bernard Shaw at the start of a BBC Neil Kinnock. Churchill in his great period had radio talk in the 1930s. “That is a question his most formidable rivals serving under him in “I canI easily answer. Britain is not heading straight the wartime Cabinet. And Menzies towered above for anything.” In the same spirit I ask: Is Australia the opposition. But Turnbull and Abbott are evenly heading straight for a Labor government? matched, have already switched the Liberal leader- The more obvious signs suggest so. Labor’s land- ship between them twice, and are still locked in their slide in Western Australia was a favourable omen death struggle. Both are tough fighters. The rest of for Bill Shorten. The fact that Labor has been stead- us don’t yet know who wins in the final round. It’s a ily winning state and territory elections and now gripping blend of C-Span and Masterpiece Theatre. dominates their parliaments shows that the trend is firmly entrenched across Australia. Two recent t present Turnbull (Motto: Capax imperii nisi state/territory elections were gained in landslides, imperasset), as the leader of a failing govern- in one of which the Country Liberal Party failed to Ament, is clearly in decline. Contrary to almost all win enough seats to qualify officially as the oppo- expectations he has not shone as Prime Minister. sition. (They were given the designation anyway.) He lost ground in opinion polls when his main And Labor’s near-win last year in an election called justification for ousting Abbott was declining by Malcolm Turnbull for the express purpose of poll numbers. He almost lost the recent election. winning control of both Houses to make Australia He struggles to describe a strong mission for his governable closes the case. It’s Labor’s to lose. administration. Labor is pretty effective at losing unexpectedly, That particular difficulty stems from the fact however. On most precedents it should have won its that—as I and others have noted before—he is the second-term election in 2010 handily. In reality the socially progressive leader of a socially conservative party got what was essentially a dead-heat with the party. And though divided parties always invite Coalition under Tony Abbott, whom it despised, trouble, the worst troubles occur when the division and went on to lose to him in a landslide in 2013. It’s is between the party leader and most of his fol- still draining votes to its ideological allies and parti- lowers. Arguably, David Cameron is in private life san opponents, the Greens, who cost it the last two today because he and most Tories were on opposing elections. And as the Australian economy recov- sides of Brexit; Theresa May, who is taking the side ers from its recent wobble, the Coalition might be of the Brexit majority, has relatively little trouble expected to pick up its strength and poll numbers. in managing the revolts of the anti-Brexit minor- Yet most professional politicians on both sides ity even though it contains some very grand Tory don’t think this will happen. Overwhelmingly they grandees such as Michael Heseltine. give the same explanation: divided parties don’t win Turnbull is not at risk of losing his job, at least elections. And the Liberals are not merely divided; not yet. But one effect of his leading a semi-muti- the continuing duel between Malcolm Turnbull and nous crew is that he can’t say what he thinks and his predecessor Tony Abbott is one of the classic that therefore he ends up endorsing a muted ver- political struggles of all time: Burke v Fox, Disraeli sion of Abbott’s agenda to keep everyone in the v Gladstone, Joe Chamberlain v Arthur Balfour, same boat. That satisfies no one, least of all himself, Abbott v Turnbull. and the voters have no real sense of what Turnbull These donnybrooks are rarer than you might stands for and wants to accomplish even when he think. Most great political leaders don’t encounter takes quite bold actions. So the Turnbull Coalition opponents who are worthy of their steel either across drifts downward in public and party esteem, with the despatch box or in the party room. Margaret both the crew and journalistic observers wailing:

Quadrant April 2017 7 asperities

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” spoke to him came away with the impression that Abbott gains in this situation by ostentatiously he wasn’t seeking to fight his way back to power, but denying he’s a rival and even by absenting himself that if the top job came his way, he wouldn’t refuse from the political scene. Last week he launched a it either. In the meantime he would take the high book, Making Australia Right: Where To from Here road and make the case for the Australian blend of (Connor Court), written or collected by James liberal conservatism. Allan of the University of Queensland, advocat- That’s the Colombey-les-Deux-Églises strategy ing all the policies and ideas that Abbott did and for gaining power. It took twelve years to work didn’t do during his period of office. The launch for de Gaulle. But what may help Abbott is that was attended by everyone who was anyone on the as Turnbull flounders, all the other potential suc- intellectual Right. Abbott’s speech was a serious cessors are met with responses ranging from “Not one dealing with the substantive issues raised in the quite seasoned enough” to “Next!” And the con- book but also asking why Liberal voters were drift- stant repetition by Abbott-haters in the media of ing off towards Cory Bernardi and Pauline Hanson the refrain “Nobody is interested in Abbott, he’s and how the party could get them back again. These simply not interesting, he doesn’t count, he’s not were good questions and they started (or at least a factor, I’m ignoring him from now on, go away, catalysed) an internal party debate on Liberalism please,” naturally prompts interest in him. What is which has become more heated since. it that makes him so fascinating? But Abbott did not stay around for it. He flew off to London where he spoke to several apprecia- hat may help him more, however, is that tive Tory audiences, gracefully regretted backing there has clearly been a change in the politi- Remain in the referendum, argued that an Anglo- calW atmosphere since the 2016 election, even in the Australian free-trade agreement should be the UK’s brief period that Abbott was out of the country. first business after Brexit, and soothed their anxie- The South Australian energy blackouts have made ties by pointing out that if obstacles cropped up, you the public more sceptical of “renewables” and other didn’t need a free-trade agreement in order to trade politically fashionable solutions to reducing car- with a country: half of Australia’s trade was with bon emissions—and more irritated too. The treat- countries without benefit of FTAs. ment of the Queensland students whose lives were It was a polished performance, designed to bridge hijacked by Gillian Triggs’s commission for several differences between different Tory factions. When a years merely for protesting against what looks very speaker at the Bow Group dinner criticised David like an official act of racial discrimination has made Cameron over Brexit, Abbott courteously reminded others indignant. the largely Brexiteer audience that Cameron had “Why do they do this?” people ask. “Because won two elections, restored the Tories to power, and they can,” is the truthful answer—one now being brought in the referendum legislation that in the increasingly rejected. end had allowed his audience to vote themselves out It was the death of Bill Leak, however, that has of Europe. This went down well with both halves of prompted the most sincere and powerful outrage. a Tory party, Leave and Remain, now reassembling Bill, who was a great friend of Quadrant and, for themselves into a united party again. too short a time, a personal friend as well, was a Abbott is now a well-known figure in the politi- man of great decency, kindness and wit. He exer- cal worlds of Britain, the US, and continental cised his talents for drawing cartoons and carica- Europe. Like John Howard, he is popular among tures in the service of mocking vice and folly but conservatives as an Australian leader who, instead also in what Arnold Bennett once called “the great of wringing his hands helplessly, “stopped the boats” cause of cheering us all up”. When Bill was pursued and restored some kind of order to the nation’s bor- by the same forces that persecuted the Queensland ders and sea lanes. He’s not seen as having left poli- students, enough people knew him and his work to tics but as taking a furlough to develop a stronger know that the pursuit was unjustified and absurd. set of conservative answers to Australia’s problems His death has now led to a movement, finally, to (and also to those of neighbouring countries and remove or reform Section 18C and its restrictive distant friends). He’s a member of a very exclusive impact on free expression. club, that of former national leaders, and he’s learn- Change culture and you change politics as a ing from Henry Kissinger’s maxim (I quote from result. Bill changed our culture for the better both memory): “You never have the time to build intel- alive and dead. We will shortly see how our culture lectual capital while serving in government. So use now changes Bill Shorten, Malcolm Turnbull and your time in opposition to develop it—and if you get Tony Abbott—and their pecking order. It can only the opportunity, draw on it in power.” Those who be for the better.

8 Quadrant April 2017 astringencies

Anthon y Daniels

n acquaintance of mine with whom I am in Could pretensions to the understanding of correspondence about the evils of modern human behaviour (with us still) be more succinctly architecture sent me by e-mail a brilliant exposed? Acartoon by Louis Hellman, the British architect In another, from the 1920s, a tall, confident and and cartoonist who has long exposed in his car- elegant surgeon lights a cigar with obvious compla- toons the brutality of modernist architects whose cency by the marble fireplace of a drawing room, aesthetic effect has been particularly devastating in while a more diffident and less distinguished-look- Britain. Those architects have taken as a program a ing general practitioner sits on a sofa. Underneath slight adaptation of Dr Johnson’s graceful epitaph is a short dialogue which starts by the doctor ask- on Oliver Goldsmith, that there was no genre of ing the surgeon what he operated on Jones for: writing that he did not touch, and none that he touched that did not adorn: they have built some- Surgeon: A hundred pounds. thing in every town, and built nowhere that they Doctor: No, I mean what had he got? did not ruin. Surgeon: A hundred pounds. The cartoon had two picture panels side by side. The first, called “Architecture”, was the interior of a If brevity is the soul of wit, cartoonists are high- modernist apartment as conceived by Le Corbusier. souled indeed. The ability time after time, often It was bare, unadorned, clean, light, cold and surgi- week after week or day after day, to distil often cal in atmosphere (the requirements of TB sanato- complex ideas into a sketch and a few words is ria early in the twentieth century had a profound admirable, and it is not one that I could ever have, effect on modern architecture, as if life were an ill- even if I were able to draw. Only once in my life ness and a house a sanatorium). The second panel, did I have an idea for a cartoon, and it came to called “Life”, was the same apartment after it had nothing because of my lack of graphic ability. In it, been inhabited by a family: cluttered with orna- Leonardo stands back from the easel upon which ments, clothes, a baby chair, dishes, and in general he has just finished the Mona Lisa. A friend looks with the detritus of daily life. at it and says, “That’s very nice, Leonardo, but is I am increasingly, and rather late in life, an it art?” admirer of cartoons, and especially of cartoonists. To return, however, to the Hellman cartoon At their best their work has a hinterland of meaning and its exposure of the yawning gap between life and I cannot but admire the concision and elegance and theory (and modern architecture is nothing if with which they express it. There used to be not not highly theoretical): that gap exists in all fields far from where I live a little shop in which a com- of human endeavour. The attempt to reduce human mercial artist in his retirement sold cartoons from experience and activity to a few simple principles Punch from about 1910 to 1950 which he had skil- is, if not eternal, at least age-old: as is its failure. fully coloured. I bought several of medical interest The idealist philosopher F.H. Bradley famously or subject matter and only regret, now that he has defined metaphysics as “the finding of bad reasons gone, that I did not buy more. In one, from the late for what we believe upon instinct”; but he not quite forties, a child psychiatrist is bending over a small as famously added that “to find these reasons is no boy of particularly malign appearance as he and his less an instinct”. In other words, we as self-con- mother, a respectable middle-class lady dressed in a scious beings are tied to a task that is Sisyphean in fur, are leaving his consulting rooms. form, if not in content, namely to find a theory of “And remember, Mrs Jones,” he tells the mother, the universe and ourselves that explains everything, “if that doesn’t work, give him a good clout.” including how to conduct ourselves. True, some

Quadrant April 2017 9 astringencies metaphysicians such as Freudians, Behaviourists, from certain premises, arrives at a ludicrous or Darwinists and Neurochemists confine their spec- horrible conclusion by means of seemingly valid ulations to Man alone, but this is a sufficiently wide reasoning—and prefers to believe the conclusion field to be getting on with. The metaphysicians rather than re-examine either the premises or the masquerading as scientists usually implied that suc- reasoning. This temperament has never been as cess was just round the corner, that the essentials prominent as it is today, thanks to the spread of were known and that only a few details remained tertiary education. The result is a kind of moral to be filled in. The mystery of human existence was exhibitionism. not only soluble but solved, though (mysteriously) Let us start off with two premises that seem life itself seemed just as complex and incalculable innocent enough: first that all humans are of equal as it had ever been. moral worth, and second that we have a duty to show compassion towards all humans who suffer. he striving for metaphysically unifying ethi- Would anyone dare to argue that all human beings cal principles has probably never been greater are not of equal moral worth, in some ultimate and Tthan it is today. In medical ethics, no doubt metaphysical sense, or for example, by far the most impor- that we should not show compas- tant principle is now the patient’s here is a type of sion towards all those who suffer? autonomy, his desire, ability and T By what right, then, do I feel and even responsibility to choose for temperament that, exhibit more concern for the suf- himself. Of course there is an ele- starting from certain fering of my child or my neighbour ment in this that is to be welcomed; than for a person unknown to me no one wants surgeons going round premises, arrives at a in the Sudan who, in fact, suffers cutting people’s legs off just because ludicrous or horrible far more than either of them, and they think that their legs ought to conclusion by means what is more is only one of mil- come off whether they want them lions to suffer in the same way? off or not. But mostly we go to the of seemingly valid I forget the lesson of the famous doctor not to be presented with reasoning—and Wedgwood cameo of the slave in a vast menu of possible courses of chains: that they are men and my action, but to be told what best to prefers to believe the brothers. Surely by doing so, moral do. Humankind cannot bear very conclusion rather duty towards others having noth- much reality, said T.S. Eliot: nor, ing to do with proximity, I aban- he might have added, choice. No than re-examine don in practice at least one of my one wants to have to choose the either the premises premises, if not both. bacterial and mineral count of his or the reasoning. The effort of compassionating water, the train timetable, and the the hundreds or thousands of mil- voltage of his electricity supply, lions who suffer rather than merely among the million other decisions that are taken the few sufferers who come within our limited off his hands; and anyone who has been really ill purview is, however, rather tiring; hence the well- knows that what he wants is not an array of choices, known paradox that those who love humanity sel- but utter dependence upon someone he can trust. dom seem to love the individual instances of the In other words, circumstances alter cases, and any- genus very much. one who hopes to cover all cases with his principles Lovers of humanity in general don’t seem to will soon become like the mapmaker in the story by be very happy in themselves, either; how can they Borges who reproduces what he is supposed to be be, from the strictly ethical point of view, with so mapping inch for inch. much misery to commiserate. “Now that we talk A foolish consistency, said Emerson in one of of dying,” asked Eliot, “should I have the right to his pithier and more comprehensible moments, is smile?” the hobgoblin of little minds; but while consist- ency is unachievable, we cannot help but strive for Anthony Daniels’s latest book is Migration, it also—for if inconsistency is not to count as a Multiculturalism and its Metaphors: Selected Essays refutation of an argument, what is to count as such? (Connor Court), published under his nom de plume, There is a type of temperament that, starting Theodore Dalrymple.

10 Quadrant April 2017 Bruce Anderson

How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself

utf o despair, insight. A comment from a Cold War modus vivendi with Russia. Men who despairing American friend of mine sud- regard themselves as much wiser than Mr Trump denly helped me to understand Donald and who have the academic credentials to prove it, OTrump and his context. “If Thomas Jefferson had if not necessarily the record of practical successes, foreseen Donald Trump,” he said, “he would have ought to scrutinise their own motives. They clearly told his fellow revolutionaries that they must stop have an aesthetic objection to a Trump presidency: fighting immediately and make peace terms with that is understandable. “What rough beast, its hour George III.” There was further gloom. “Trouble is, come round at last, slouches towards Washington to and despite Jefferson, the Enlightenment only had be born.” Yet it may also be that they are angry with shallow roots in the United States.” Thus an intel- him because he is forcing them to confront their lectual blue-stater, more influenced by Hollywood own failure. than he would ever acknowledge, looks down on the This failure is not always blameworthy. Some plain people of middle America: the Donald Trump of the challenges which face the West may be electorate. beyond the capacity of anyone to surmount, even Forgetting Donald Trump for a moment, my Donald Trump. In the meantime, Mr Trump is at friend was right, more so than he realises, about the least forcing them onto the agenda. The wiser men long-term failure of the Enlightenment. Which, usually prefer not to think about the insolubles, in turn, was partly responsible for the thirty-year rather as the Eloi tried to ignore the Morlocks. But failure of Western policy which threatens us with even if he might seem to resemble a Morlock, Mr decline. If the West’s will to power and ability to Trump is a great stimulator of thought. Not just exercise power are gone beyond recall, then anarchy thought; action too. On at least three problems, he and destruction loom over the entire planet. might even be able to rescue the West from some of In recent years, the world has been turned upside the Enlightenment’s minor failures. down. Old assumptions and old certainties no longer work. This means that there are no grounds y gloomy friend seemed to take it for granted for Western geopolitical self-confidence. At the that even if his fellow Americans had not been beginning of the 1990s, we were invited to hail the wMorthy to receive the message, the Enlightenment new world order and the end of history. How hollow had been successful in Europe. That, alas, is untrue. those phrases sound now. If they are ever recalled If one considers its high expectations, it has failed. to mind, it is with bitter irony. Forget optimistic This failure has been associated with the most tragic slogans: we are now in the era of the unknown period in human history and may well lead to the unknowns. destruction of the human race. But it should all Yet none of this is Donald Trump’s fault. The have been so different. For countless millennia, and President is dramatising the problems, not creating despite great cultural achievements, much of human them. He had no hand in the West’s failures in life was a wretched business: nothing but the ani- the Middle East. He did not create the threats mal struggle for food, warmth and sex at a slightly to American jobs and living standards from higher technological level. Countless numbers of automation, robotisation and globalisation. He is individual lives were a cry of pain. not responsible for the immigration pressures from Then everything changed. This began with a the huddled masses in poor countries. He cannot paradox. The Reformation and the wars of religion be blamed for the failure of the European single greatly enhanced the scope of individual freedom: currency, or for the West’s inability to reach a post- not an outcome which most of the major participants

Quadrant April 2017 11 How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself would have sought. That laid the foundations for have taken so long to complain. the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, But the Enlightenment did play a role in post- which caught fire in free Britain. There were crises war Europe. It underlay a tragic misjudgment. and wars: there always are. “Man is born to trouble Amidst the ruins, the refugees, the walking as the sparks fly upwards.” But by the end of the skeletons emerging from the death camps, some of nineteenth century, it did seem as if there had been the noblest minds in Europe came to an entirely a decisive and irrevocable break with the long dark understandable—indeed seemingly self-evident— age of scarcity and oppression. It appeared that men conclusion. On the continent, nationalism had come had learned how to live in advanced societies. The into being as a hand-maiden of the Enlightenment, rule of law was basic. Once it was in place, forms a progenitor of progress, a chorus of youthful of parliamentary government and democracy could idealists singing the “Ode to Joy”. That glorious follow, creating a constitutional order which would phase passed. Increasingly, nationalists put on guarantee stability, freedom and growing prosperity, jackboots. The youthful idealists were given haircuts made possible by the great expansion of economic and turned into conscripts singing the “Giovinezza” activity and trade. Progress seemed assured: the or the “Horst Wessel Lied”. By 1945, it was easy to Whig interpretation of history appeared to have argue that far from enhancing the Enlightenment, triumphed—and no wise Tory nationalism had become its prison should have begrudged its success. cell. In order to survive, Europe Any sensible person would rather would have to move beyond the era be governed by Macaulay than by The over-sophisticated of the nation-state. It would have to Joseph de Maistre. Eurocrats regard the unite. “Take up the white man’s burden,” new President with That was an erroneous Kipling urged the Americans. It conclusion, for it ignored two must be conceded that there were horror. There is a apparently contradictory aspects stains on the imperial mission, word for their cast of of human nature. The first is that notably the Germans in South- countries can change and human West Africa and the Belgians in the mind: decadence. A beings can learn from history. In Congo. But there was every reason roughneck President 1648, most non-Spaniards would to hope that its more humane could be a valuable have agreed that it was hard to share versions could spread the benefits a continent with Spain. By 1815, that of Western civilisation to the entire corrective. baton would have passed to France. world. In 1900, we British were widely Then everything went wrong. regarded as too cocky for everyone Europe declared war on itself. From 1914 to 1945, the else’s peace of mind. Our embarrassments in South continent went into the dark: a blacker period than Africa were greeted with a good deal of gloating. the darkest of the Dark Ages. The cries of pain had By 1918, reinforced in 1945, the Germans were the returned, from millions of throats, in some of the villains, though that assessment was confused world’s greatest cities. European civilisation almost once the Cold War started and the Russians made drowned in its own blood. A shattered continent their bid for villain status. But times change. In a crawled away from the abyss. “No poetry after world beset by uncertainty, we can be sure on one Auschwitz,” said Adorno. It almost seemed a case point. Whatever else happens, the French and the of no anything after Auschwitz. Orwell’s 1984 was Germans will never again go to war over Alsace- an entirely plausible next phase in European history. Lorraine. After 1945, continental Europe could have Another was a nuclear wasteland. We were saved, coped with a sadder and a wiser nationalism. but not by the Enlightenment: rather by its reverse. Europe survived because of mutually-assured hich brings us to the second relevant aspect nuclear destruction. If we were determined to go on of human nature. Along with sex, money and destroying ourselves, the third attempt would be the rWeligion, nationalism has a powerful potential for final one. We did not learn that lesson from Locke good or evil. Canalised in the patriotism of a sta- or Montesquieu. We learned it from fear. ble nation-state, it need not be a threat and could Europe also owed everything to the beneficence also help that state to claim legitimacy, inspire alle- of the Americans, who were even prepared to sign giance and govern effectively. Mens sana in corpore up for mutually-assured destruction. Mr Trump is sano has a political equivalent: a healthy nationalism now railing against European ingratitude. This is in a healthy nation. But a repressed and thwarted entirely justified, especially when it comes to the nationalism means trouble. French. It is only surprising that the Americans In their determined attempts to move beyond

12 Quadrant April 2017 How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself nationalism, the founders of the EU were always practice have always ended in cruelty. Intellectuals going to run into trouble—because they ignored also invented apartheid—and the European single the need for democratic consent. The Euro- currency. That single currency is built on ruins. It is nomenklatura has always distrusted democracy. ruining millions of lives. Youth unemployment and Hitler used elections to win power. More recently, chronically low growth not only inflict widespread Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have suffering and the loss of life chances; they are a threat not enhanced the ballot box’s prestige among the to social and political stability in countries where EU’s bien-pensantry. They would prefer to treat neither can be taken for granted. Yet the Euro- the voters as fractious children, suffering from a nomenklatura takes no notice. Well insulated—at high temperature, who are refusing to take their least pro tem—from the sufferings in the streets and medicine. So: distract the brat’s attention, then the market places, their response to any difficulties shove the spoon into its gob, follow that up with a with Europe is to demand more Europe. sweet and then say soothingly to the coughing and This is where Donald Trump could be useful. spluttering infant, “There, there, what was all the Europe is overdue for the emperor’s-new-clothes fuss about?” treatment. An undeceived child would not be Yet there is a limit to the extent that the people enough. He would merely be deluged in outrage. of Europe can be treated as children in a sick-bed, It is not easy to deluge Donald Trump. He will not and the EU has now reached an impasse. The single express polite bewilderment. This rude mechanical currency has proved more durable than we critics in the White House will jeer and sneer and throw thought; I have worn out several sandwich boards things. If there is a dunghill to hand, its contents predicting its demise. But monetary union cannot might be flung at the naked emperors: a salutary work indefinitely, unless it is underpinned by fiscal therapy. Donald Trump could help to bring union. In turn, that must mean political union. Even Europe to its senses. After 1945, the Americans the most insensate federalists surely realise that this saved Western Europe and thus made possible the is not possible without popular approval. eventual rescue of the East. But these wretched So they are stuck. They have tried to refute Europeans always find a way of getting into a mess. architecture and gravity, by building the roof before It is time for a new Kipling to inspire a renewed building the walls. They have tried to refute Marx effort in burden-carrying. The over-sophisticated by using politics to determine economics. They Eurocrats of Brussels and Strasbourg regard the have succeeded—in creating a problem which may new President with horror, and would not think be beyond the power of the human mind to solve. much of Kipling either. There is a word for their cast It would appear that on the single currency, they of mind: decadence. A roughneck President could can neither go forward, go backwards, nor stay the be a valuable corrective. same. Intellectuals have a déformation professionnelle. Anyone naive enough to believe that such persons se h could be in the West’s relations with will have a sceptical temperament ought to examine Russia. Thanks to the West’s economic the evidence. Astrength, Marxism’s chronic weakness, Ronald Down the millennia, most intellectuals have Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the unwitting help worked for churches. As ecclesiastical preferment of Mikhail Gorbachev, the West won the Cold War: became less attractive, many of them moved over arguably the greatest, certainly the most benign, vic- to socialist politics. In each case, they were looking tory in all history. Apart from improving the quality for a faith; in both cases, they were prone to group- of life for hundreds of millions of people, this tri- think. They were also convinced of their own moral umph created an opportunity and a closely-related rectitude. This had two consequences. First, they challenge. The West had the chance to put George tended to dismiss any opponents as either too Bush’s phrase into reality, by creating a new world stupid to understand the truth or too immoral to order, or at least a new system of collective security recognise it. Second, buttressed by group-think which would have embraced the whole of Europe, and by intellectual self-confidence, they were including Russia. NATO had been founded to ready to override any evidence which seemed to keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the contradict their conclusions. Convinced that they Russians out. With the end of the Cold War, it had are building a better world, they are often happy to almost done its work. This does not mean it should sacrifice the present on the altar of the future. Thus have been abolished. There is an analogy with a idealism leads to cruelty. Despite the Gospel of love, liberal-minded headmaster of a generation ago who Christianity has been associated with innumerable disliked corporal punishment and was determined cruelties. Despite the attractive personal traits of not to use it, but was not ready to go as far as formal many adherents, attempts to put Marxism into abolition. So he would keep a cane in the cupboard,

Quadrant April 2017 13 How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself hoping that it would merely gather dust. have far less to fear from a strong and self-confident If the West had come together with the Russians Russia than we have from an embittered and insecure in a new security arrangement, NATO might superpower—for whatever its economic failings, gradually have been subsumed in the military its superpower status is guaranteed by its nuclear co-operation that would have evolved under the armoury. We need have no strategic quarrel with aegis of the new alliance. The early 1990s was the Russia. We do have reason to fear a Russia which moment for the West to scrap all its concepts while relies on its nuclear weaponry for its self-esteem. In keeping its weapons systems. After all, we no longer all this, President Trump seems to have the right had a strategic quarrel with Russia. We also had a instincts. Let us hope that he comes to the rescue. common interest in coping with Muslim extremism. There is another great nation with whom we But by failing to rise to the challenge of a new have no insurmountable strategic conflict: China. security order, we have come perilously close to There is, of course, the Taiwan question, but that losing the chance to make a deal with the Russians. has proved manageable. In this case, however, Mr This has happened because far too many people in Trump’s instincts seem less reliable. Yes, there is a the West are locked in Cold War attitudes, despite moral case for recognising Taiwan. There is a far their reluctance to reinforce that with Cold War stronger case for recognising the limits of morality levels of defence provision. The and the need for it to be constrained result was a widespread failure of by Realpolitik. Equally, superpowers hard thinking: of enlightenment n understanding often seek spheres of influence, as with a small e. A continent which A China is doing in the South China prides itself on a high level of public with the West could Sea. As long as there is no threat intelligence let itself down. enable the Russian to freedom of navigation, we need Could Mr Trump rectify all this? not alarm ourselves. Partly as a Talk about paradoxes—there must economy to grow quid pro quo, partly to deal with be 100,000 people in the West more and the Russians in the real strategic threat, we should qualified in geopolitics than he is. general to recover encourage the Chinese to defang For him to succeed where they have North Korea. failed: that is surely unthinkable. their political But the most important factor And yet. Donald Trump is the least- self-confidence. in Sino-American relations is trade equipped foreign affairs President and jobs: it is the economy, stupid. since Harry Truman, the saviour of The twenty-first century has seen the West. With apologies to Henry Kissinger—no an extraordinary economic symbiosis. The Chinese greater intellect has ever engaged with geopolitics— produced cheap goods, which boosted American it could be argued that the second-greatest Western living standards while helping to control inflation. foreign affairs statesman since 1945 was not Reagan Out of the proceeds, Beijing bought US Treasury or Thatcher, but Ernest Bevin. He owed nothing to bonds, which helped to fund the American deficit. book-learning; everything to instinct and patriotism. That was fine, unless you were an American worker Truman and Bevin had the task of girding the whose job was exported. People like that helped to West’s loins in the pursuit of containment. Thank elect Donald Trump, and he is not going to forget God they succeeded. Our generation faces a lesser them. There is no easy solution. The Chinese labour challenge. We only require a modus vivendi. But that market is also under pressure, from cheaper wage- too will require clarity and steadfastness. It seems rate economies. All this will require negotiations, far-fetched to imagine Donald Trump morphing diplomacy, compromises. On the basis of his first into a Truman or a Bevin. Yet we live in far-fetched month, these are not the new President’s trump times. suits. During the twenty-five years since the West But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense spurned the chance to build on that Cold War Secretary James Mattis are not averse to subtlety. doctrine, peaceful coexistence, and move towards Perhaps they can persuade Mr Trump to reserve his friendship with Moscow, much has gone wrong in belligerence for the EU. Russia. Civil society, a democratic political culture, the rule of law: much of the ground gained has been e could also use it on the Gramscians. Antonio lost. Tentative advances have turned into headlong Gramsci was the most formidable Marxist after retreat. But we need not give way to despair. An tHhe founding father. He realised that the proletarian understanding with the West could enable the revolution was not enough and that there were other Russian economy to grow and the Russians in ways forward. He advocated a long march through general to recover their political self-confidence. We the institutions: educational, cultural, journalistic,

14 Quadrant April 2017 How Donald Trump Can Save the West from Itself bureaucratic, ecclesiastical. This has been alarmingly To t put i mildly, Mr Trump is a work in successful, thanks in part to widespread naivety progress. But he cannot yet be accused of reneging among conservatives, who thought they were being on his promises. Like Hitler—a grossly unfair hard-headed when they reasoned: “Leave culture to comparison—he seems set on doing what he said the leftists. What harm can they do?” This is dan- he would do. Mein Kampf, Mein Trump. It is to be gerous nonsense. Everyone understands the impor- hoped that—the EU apart—he comes to understand tance of soft power in international affairs. That is the wisdom of suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. We equally true in domestic matters. The Left not only shall see. People like my despairing friend, a scion uses its marchers to undermine Western culture. It of the Enlightenment, will no doubt continue to also uses its power to de-legitimise free enterprise despise him. But as I pointed out, Thomas Jefferson and promote egalitarianism. Lose the culture war, is not a reliable ally. Once, as he surveyed a White and the economic war is in jeopardy. House dinner table resplendent with cultural Yet it may be that the Gramscians have over- luminaries, J.F. Kennedy said it was probably the reached themselves, with their attack on the normal. most distinguished gathering of talents that the Tolerance is an Enlightenment virtue and a core building had seen since the evenings when President Western value. Of course sexual minorities should Jefferson dined alone. But it must be remembered have nothing to fear from persecution—chacun a son how Jefferson paid for his library, his mansion— trou. But the escalation of the culture wars has left and his wine cellar. The money came from slavery. many Americans feeling uncomfortable, as if they Blacks toiled in the fields so Jefferson could enjoy were now the victims of intolerance. Donald Trump the harvest of the Enlightenment. ought to be grateful for the liberal proselytisers and Human life is a complicated, paradoxical and for the agitation over lavatory usage by transgender unpredictable enterprise. It may be that we could persons. In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet reap a good harvest out of Donald Trump. this almost certainly won him his majority, and the White House. A reassertion of normality and Bruce Anderson is a British journalist. This article common sense would help to keep him there. Apart first appeared on the online publicationR eaction from that, it would be an unequivocal good. (https://reaction.life) in February.

Women at the River

Women eye each other on opposite sides of the river. One catches fish in a hide basket; the other washes her baby’s bottom. One gathers manioc tubers to pound into paste. The other gathers berries on the river banks. They both bury their placentas or a stillborn at the water’s edge, wash away their blood in the cool water, sing for their living, keen for their dead. They do not divide the flowing water, nor the scent of flowers, air, sky, sun. When the dark men scream and cross the river, they both know where to hide.

Carolyn Evans Campbell

Quadrant April 2017 15 Daryl McCann

The New Totalitarians Fresh Thoughts on James Burnham

he rise and rise of Donald J. Trump is a rev- sive side of politics. olution. While today’s leftists would call it a It is a different story with conservatives, of counter-revolution, we might all agree that course, but still complicated. During James tThe 2015-16 populist-nationalist insurrection, which Burnham’s lifetime his work was widely read and, swept President Trump to power, falls outside the in the case of the Cold War, highly consequential. category of business as usual. For the anti-Trump Many of the ideas he articulated in The Struggle camp, from Hollywood celebrities to Obama hold- for the World were already in circulation as early outs in the Deep State, Trump’s inauguration rep- as 1944. He had identified guerrilla skirmishes in resents the moral equivalent of January 30, 1933. Greece, a power vacuum opening up in Eastern The short-lived Journal of American Greatness and Europe, and the Chiang Kai-Shek-Mao Zedong now the quarterly journal American Affairs provide standoff as the early stages of a global conflagra- a counterpoint to this Antifa (anti-fascist) narra- tion entirely distinct from the Second World War. tive. An integral aspect of this nascent Trumpist Winston Churchill would have been aware of intelligentsia is a high regard for James Burnham, Burnham’s thinking before he delivered his “Iron a founding editor of the National Review and the Curtain” speech on March 5, 1946. author of such formative works as The Managerial Despite this, and his key role in the National Revolution (1941), The Machiavellians: Defenders of Review for a lengthy period, Burnham was rarely Freedom (1943), The Struggle for the World (1947) and a source of political debate in the decades after his Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and death. In 2002, for instance, Roger Kimball wrote Destiny of Liberalism (1964). an appreciative essay but feared that not even a When Burnham died in 1987, President Reagan new biography by Daniel Kelly would rescue James described him as “one of those principally respon- Burnham from relative obscurity: sible for the great intellectual odyssey of our cen- tury—the journey away from totalitarian statism Butn i this world, the combination of Burnham’s and towards the uplifting doctrines of freedom”. ferocious intellectual independence and Not everyone shared Ronald Reagan’s admiration. unclubbable heterodoxy long ago consigned Old-style Leftists reviled Burnham’s The Managerial him to the unglamorous limbo that established Revolution and The Machiavellians because these opinion reserves for those who challenge its books repudiated their fantasy that socialism—that pieties too forcefully. is to say, a classless people’s community—would emerge out of the ruins of capitalism. Trotskyists A “general renaissance” did not appear to be on broke with Burnham (and vice versa) for his refusal the cards—until the momentous events of 2016, that to accept that Stalin’s Russia somehow remained is. In October last year, the anti-Trump conserva- a workers’ state, albeit a deformed or degenerated tive Matthew Continetti, editor of the Washington one. Communist apologists, in turn, were aghast Free Beacon, spoke of the need: at Burnham’s mid-war denunciation of the Soviet Union as “the most extreme totalitarian dictatorship to rehabilitate Burnham’s vision of a in history”. Coming in the midst of the Swinging conservative-tinged Establishment capable Sixties, the central thesis of Suicide of the West— of permeating the managerial society and that the real role of American-style liberalism is “to gradually directing it in a prudential, reflective, permit Western civilisation to be reconciled to its virtuous manner respectful of both freedom and dissolution”—garnered few friends on the progres- tradition.

16 Quadrant April 2017 The New Totalitarians

Jeet Heer, a senior editor for the New Republic, to promote the interests of the (mostly domestic) lambasted Continetti for “holding up Burnham bourgeoisie. The nascent managerial class, on the as an alternative to Trumpism, portraying him as other hand, might be expected to take a different an advocate of a measured, brainy, and pragmatic view on notions of personal freedom, the overreach right-wing politics that seeks to shape elite institu- of the state or the unassailable authority of parlia- tions rather than to take populist delight in burning ment rule. it all down”. Heer, who writes a bi-weekly column George Orwell, in “Second Thoughts on James with headings such as “Steve Bannon is Turning Burnham”, his 1946 critique of The Managerial Class Trump into an Ethno-Nationalist Ideologue” and and The Machiavellians, agreed that Burnham had “Donald Trump is the Bizarro Noam Chomsky”, been “more right than wrong” about the “general appears to have contracted a particularly virulent drift” towards oligarchy: strain of Trumpophobia. That said, Heer might be right to argue that Burnham is not “an alterna- The ever-increasing concentration of industrial tive to Trumpism” and, if anything, “a precursor to and financial power; the diminishing Trump”. importance of the individual capitalist or shareholder, and the growth of the new erhapst i all comes back to The Managerial “managerial” class of scientists, technicians, Revolution and The Machiavellians. Burnham and bureaucrats; the weakness of the proletariat pParted company with America’s Trotskyist move- against the centralised state; the increasing ment in 1940, only a year before he wrote The helplessness of small countries against big ones; Managerial Revolution. There are echoes of his the decay of representative institutions and the Marxist past in the book, especially on the sub- appearance of one-party regimes based on police ject of ideology, but the bogus science of dialecti- terrorism, faked plebiscites, etc: all these things cal materialism is firmly rejected. The capitalism of seem to point in the same direction. West, according to Burnham, was vulnerable not to a socialist revolution but to a managerial one. An important aspect of Orwell’s “second The gravedigger of capitalism, as the likes of Adam thoughts”, nevertheless, is a concern that Burnham Smith termed free enterprise, would not be the not only “sees the trend” but “assumes that it is irre- industrial proletariat but a managerial elite. This sistible, rather as a rabbit fascinated by a boa con- new ruling group did not own the means of pro- strictor might assume that a boa constrictor is the duction in the manner of “the individual entrepre- strongest thing in the world”. Orwell goes so far neur, who owned the whole or the greater share of as to suggest that Burnham’s analysis might be no a factory or mine or shop or steamship company … more than an American version of “power worship”. and actively managed his own enterprise”. Still, the Paradoxically, perhaps, Orwell makes the same managerial elite increasingly controlled the means mistake in a 1944 review of Hayek’s The Road to of production and ipso facto society as a whole. The Serfdom that he (erroneously) accuses Burnham of great contradiction in the capitalist mode of pro- making. Orwell, in the first instance, agrees with duction, then, was not between the bourgeoisie and Hayek that “collectivism is not inherently demo- the proletariat but between ownership and control. cratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical The emerging rulers of our world were “operating minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors executives, superintendents, administrative engi- never dreamed of”. George Orwell savages Hayek’s neers, supervisory technicians” and “administrators, recommended remedy of “an unplanned economy, commissioners, bureau heads, and so on”. free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather This new governing elite, argued Burnham, than security”. To return to “free capitalism”, would not be committed automatically to the politi- were it possible or even desirable, made no logi- cal creeds of freedom. Members of the old capital- cal sense since it would again result in “monopoly”. ist ruling class concerned themselves with liberty Oligarchical Collectivism, ipso facto, was going to because liberty, or economic freedom, was in the be mankind’s brave new world: “the drift towards best interests of the capitalist class, although the collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion lifestyle of individualism had proven “beneficial to has any say in the matter”. Turns out that Nineteen large sections of the masses”. Capitalists, at least in Eighty-Four was not so much a warning, Orwell the era before the First World War and the New claimed, but a prediction. Deal, were also distrustful of an overweening state A different reading of The Machiavellians than since such power had the potential to trample on Orwell’s takes the “Defenders of Freedom” subtitle their own. Moreover, parliamentary rule was given seriously. In our complex world, insists Burnham, its due because national self-determination tended there will always be rulers and ruled, justice and

Quadrant April 2017 17 The New Totalitarians injustice, mendacity and self-delusion. Identifying a against national sovereignty (Project Fear) but also new power elite, as Burnham does in The Managerial railed against the people’s decision: “They still cling Class, is not the same as believing in the inevita- to their orthodoxies. They are still angry that ordi- bility of, let alone developing a penchant for, the nary mortals, or at least Realities, have outfoxed totalitarian phenomenon George Orwell would call them over Brexit.” Oligarchical Collectivism in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Burnham, in The Machiavellians, makes the case nd what, exactly, are the orthodoxies of the for freedom of the press and the continuation of New Class? What is their ideology? Some genuine political opposition, along with the meas- Aanswers are to be found in the work of John Fonte, ured “circulation of elites”. The emancipatory role author of Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans of Burnham’s Machiavellians—Gaetano Mosca, Rule Themselves or be Ruled by Others? (2011). Fonte Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels and we might has written about “transitional progressivism” and include Burnham himself—is to recognise the bru- “post-democracy” hardening into something more tal truth about political power not in order to dis- creedal like “global governance”. Detractors such as pense with liberty but to preserve it. Heer ridicule Burnham for overes- Thus, if James Burnham consti- timating the strength of the Nazi tutes, as Jeet Heer contends, “a pre- state—in the immediate aftermath cursor to Trump”, it is not because Julius Krein, of the Blitzkrieg no less—and yet Burnham advocated totalitarian- by making a the prescience of The Managerial ism—quite the opposite. Orwell fundamental State and The Machiavellians retains misinterpreted the purpose of The an astonishing resonance in the Managerial Class and The New distinction between light of Trump’s victory. It should Machiavellians, but he died in 1950. Kristol’s “neo- not have come as a surprise that For Heer, almost seventy years Julius Krein, editor of American later, to say Burnham “relished” conservatism” and Affairs, a new journal touted in some totalitarianism is a mistake—if Burnham’s anti- quarters as the National Review that is the right word—of another of the Trump era, should title magnitude. Heer bemoans the “cri- totalitarianism or his first article “James Burnham’s sis of the conservative intellectual” freedomism, opens Managerial Elite”. and yet his unceasing (and predict- up a new intellectual Perhaps Krein’s most striking able) twice-a-week tirade against point is his departure from Irving President Trump indicates a crisis landscape. Kristol’s analysis in the well-known of sorts on the progressive intellec- essay “On Corporate Capitalism in tual front. His attempt to distin- America”. While Kristol agreed guish himself from leftist groupthink by labelling that the dynamics of “corporate America” con- Donald Trump as “only fascistic rather than a fas- trasted with those of “entrepreneurial capitalism”, cist” is risible. he concluded that the republic remained capital- Jeet Heer’s conceptual problem—and it is the ist rather than managerialist. Krein, by making a error of not only leftists but also of many conserva- fundamental distinction between Kristol’s “neo- tives—is to believe “capitalism has easily absorbed” conservatism” and Burnham’s anti-totalitarianism the Managerial State. Obviously if this is your or freedomism, opens up a new intellectual land- bottom line then any kind of populist uprising, scape. By 1972, according to Krein, Burnham had starting with the Tea Party movement and cul- rejected much of what passes for “conservative doc- minating in Brexit and the 2016 presidential elec- trine” as “obviously obsolescent” because classical tion, only makes sense in terms of white racism, American capitalism no longer endured. NAFTA, nativism, Islamophobia, and so on. The Brexit vic- for instance, was less about fostering “free trade” in tory, as an example, had to be the result of white any traditional sense than allowing the managerial working-class racism. The facts are otherwise. For class to avoid the rules of national sovereignty: “It starters, post-election statistics show Leave voters is simply the further emancipation of the mana- were not ignorant, old and uneducated. Nor were gerial elite from any obligations to the political they xenophobic or anti-migrant, just mindful that community.” a sovereign state should have the right to regulate Additionally, a clear-eyed understanding of the immigration. The transnational New Class, wrote Managerial State might better explain postmodern- John O’Sullivan in the National Review, acknowl- ism and all those other perfidious dogmas haunting edging his debt to Burnham’s seventy-five-year-old our waking hours. The neo-conservative may dis- critique of managerialism, not only campaigned miss them as merely “bizarre cultural phenomena”,

18 Quadrant April 2017 The New Totalitarians but maybe they serve the purpose of disguising the Super-charged patriotism dwelling in the White exploitative and degenerate behaviour of what I House, in any other era, would not have been any- have previously referred to as the Left Power Elite: thing out of the ordinary. In the America of mana- gerialism and “global governance”, not to mention Thats i why, at present, the only program identity politics, Trump’s patriotism is a sensa- that unites the Left intellectually is identity tion. For the globalist Left, which has forged an politics, the sole ideology that can appear to unlikely alliance with Wall Street to endorse eve- reconcile the interests of the managerial elite rything from open borders to Black Lives Matter with elements of the exploited classes. In fact, and the Muslim Brotherhood, dissenting opinion however, the balkanization of the American is illegitimate. There must be no genuine political people only strengthens managerialism by opposition. preventing a majoritarian confrontation with it. The Managerial State has become so censori- ous that Michael Anton, writing for the transient Naysayers, and that includes conservatives, Journal of American Greatness, used a pseudonym, will maintain that Julius Krein’s positioning as a Publius Decius Mus, for his inspirational essay “The “Trumpite intellectual” is the oxymoron to shat- Flight 93 Election” last year. His essay addressed ter all oxymorons. If the Donald Trump phe- the subject at the heart of so much Donald Trump nomenon—as Jeet Heer and so many others discourse, from CNN to American Affairs: whither proclaim—amounts to nothing more than a reac- totalitarianism in the United States of America. For tionary strongman promising “to take charge and the PC brigade, at least, the narrative is about the unite the nation under his iron fist”, then there various Brownshirts occupying the White House. won’t be a lot for American Affairs to intellectualise The New York Times, for example, recently published about in the coming editions. I don’t think, how- an article on the estimable Sebastian Gorka, author ever, that will be a concern. President Trump might of Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War (2016), with the not be a philosopher king but he forged an alliance headline “The Islamophobic Huckster in the White with ordinary Americans—of all races, creeds and House”. Michael Anton now works in the White sexual preferences—who identified with his cam- House and, yes, the New York Times has posted an paign-defining line, “Americanism, not globalism, op-ed referring to his “dark anti-otherness”. The will be our creed”. Because the source of his success welcome insertion of James Burnham into the con- was American workers and American real estate tinuing debate, however, provides an alternative he was not only able to differentiate himself from and surprisingly fresh perspective on who might be the transnational skulduggery of Hillary and Bill the real enablers of “dark anti-otherness”. Clinton and their globalist Clinton Foundation, he was that rarest of things in the Managerial State—a Daryl McCann has a blog at http://darylmccann. billionaire patriotic capitalist. blogspot.com.au. He tweets at @dosakamccann.

Anniversary Poem

By now the love we share is wordless and serene as motion in the air, an eavesdropped violin or lamplight anywhere that we have been in either hemisphere.

David Chandler

Quadrant April 2017 19 Sea Dog

Outn o the Harbour in the wooden yacht without a sail Heathcliff, the little black dog in his flotation-jacket, balances on the prow, John-Howard eyebrows scan the horizon like sensors, nose uplifted, snuffing the breeze, a captain searching for landfall. You’d almost expect to hand him a telescope. We anchor offshore from a sandy bay— the water’s fine, and passing monoliths wave a greeting, foreshores as thickly wooded as a Glover painting, except for Darling Harbour. Take your last look at Barangaroo, before the casino’s phallic projection, burgeoning in metal, marks another dispossession, high-rollers blowing smoke-screens. Beyond Head of Bight Every dog has his day, so they say. Matthew Flinders charted this coast stunned by its loveliness. Margaret Bradstock Unending Bunda cliffs, towering over a vast unspoiled ocean, iconic curve the longest line of sea-cliffs in the world; a nursery for sea lion colonies to raise their pups, seasonal home of the southern right whales great white sharks, humpbacks, bluefish tuna white-bellied sea eagle, and albatross. What’s not to save? The ocean’s a rich field for profiteers, for oil and gas, offshore drilling, underwater blasts of seismic exploration. Remember the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010 Deepwater Horizon), oil pouring into the sea for eighty-seven days? Seasonal upwelling of deep ocean waters along the coast brings nutrients to the surface, fertility, making it a hotspot. Southern right whales come here to Head of Bight from summer feeding grounds in the Antarctic to calve and breed, not feeding until their return. Spy hopping, deep diving, the calves now schooled in life skills, from a distance they look like upturned hulls, a constant loop of broad gun-metal backs, their sheen a light across oceans.

20 Quadrant April 2017 the moment, taken

Forty-one degrees harkening clouds storming over Almost summer, season of hot dry winds. our weatherboard house Cooling off in Clovelly Bay, among rolled me tumbledown sea-urchins and blue gropers, you enter with their driven, indifferent a floating world, easy to forget distance out there it’s another heatwave. Outside my townhouse, men with hats their imperative and overheated brains are repairing going somewhere else the roof, damaged in last April’s storms, summoned, bidden still leaking water. then that once, i was waylaid The garden needs watering. While rock-plants by a green lure and veldt daisies may survive a staircase into our future desert, magnolias up into a wilderness bloom fast and quickly die, browned flowers within which drifting onto unswept tiles. At dusk each element touched the air’s still warm, black cockatoos have fled with raucous cry, back to their cooler forests. i sat on a lower step In a neighbouring pond, frogs belt out knees to my chin loud mating-songs, secure for now, until nodded, keened developers arrive, to move the earth. (when i got to school Out there, it’s also a war on terror i told a lie as jihadists and extremists take control with eyes averted) and suddenly we know how, at any given moment, in a train carriage in London, a music festival plot in Paris, or a Lindt cafe somewhere life can be snatched away. each grain slips off each grain Même pas mal, say the French, in solidarity, how can i make a garden out of this? “Not even hurt.” But we all are. recalcitrant and unrepentant In this hot, shifting darkness sullen earth I wish the rains would come. i need shit, i need worms, and long years Margaret Bradstock digging in, digging in until the sudden rain does not glance away with hurried, scornful panache like someone not prepared to wait for a minute, but off what will grow in such a plot? nothing much, yet

Jennifer Compton

Quadrant April 2017 21 Philippa Martyr

Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong

rom February 6 to 24, the Royal Commission for what we allowed to happen. This would be a into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual marvellous opportunity to find out just how badly Abuse held its wrap-up sessions for the Catholics want their parish priests, schools, hospi- FCatholic Church. Back in December 2012, I pub- tals, welfare agencies and nursing homes. It would lished an article in Quadrant on the child sexual also allow them to decide whether they want to abuse crisis called “Reaping the Whirlwind”. I wrote keep paying for thick layers of diocesan bureauc- it for two reasons: to show that Vatican II was not racy. The final choices would be very enlightening. the origin of all the Church’s troubles with sexual The wrap-up sessions were covered by Sydney’s abuse, and to argue that liturgical abuse had paral- Catholic Weekly, and I recommend you visit their leled child sexual abuse, including mismanagement, website and read Monica Doumit’s summaries, cover-ups, and victimisation of complainants. which are concise and informed. These summaries That was four years ago. What has since emerged also take care—with hard evidence—of unbalanced from the Royal Commission’s hearings is an appall- claims made by some Church officials and academ- ing story of child sexual abuse, overwhelmingly ics who appeared as witnesses during the wrap-up. male-against-male, across denominations and insti- Key issues came up over and over again, and they tutions of all sizes and types. A culture of harsh are all worth talking about—celibacy, clericalism, physical punishment, sexual secrecy, and an auto- supervision, changes in practice, the seal of the con- matic tendency to disbelieve children combined fessional, and so on. But at the same time, a colossal to produce a perfect environment for widespread elephant in the room was barely discussed. I want predation. to talk about this elephant, as I believe it may be a Government institutions were exempted from significant factor in the child sexual abuse problem. this inquiry; if they had been included, exactly the same pattern would have been revealed. This is sim- et’s t look a the Commission’s own statistics. ply what society was like. Now, we have replaced one • Of the 4444 complainants, 78 per cent of perfect storm with another: political correctness, cLomplainants were male, with an average age of cultural relativism and sexual autonomy. That’s why around eleven years at the time of the alleged abuse. Aboriginal children are raped in their own commu- • 90 per cent of the perpetrators were male, and nities, children with gender dysphoria are denied were most likely to be clergy or religious. proper psychotherapy, and African Muslim girls are • Around a third of all offences were committed mutilated in the suburbs. But I digress. by diocesan priests, and another third by members I have no patience with the (admittedly dwin- of male religious institutes, whether priests or reli- dling numbers of) hard-core Catholic apologists gious brothers. who focus on dodgy figures and who claim that the Is this the usual gender balance of victims to Commission engaged in a witch-hunt. It’s not per- perpetrators, compared to the general popula- secution; it’s justice, and it’s long overdue. We gave tion? No, it isn’t. Even allowing for the difficulty our enemies a great many weapons to use against us, of getting reliable data, the overwhelming major- and if we are getting an absolute hammering now, ity of child sexual abuse victims in Western coun- it’s actually less than we deserve for letting these tries are female. This anomalous finding has been crimes happen in the first place. commented on by other researchers, including the Just to make sure I alienate everybody: I would Australian Institute of Family Studies, which also gladly see every diocese bled dry by compensation noted that the other group where the number of claims if it would give the victims peace and atone male victims was statistically far higher than the

22 Quadrant April 2017 Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong norm was among gay and bisexual men. freedom of movement and daily access to a wide Trying to discern the causes and motivations range of women, sexual acting-out with adoles- behind child sexual abuse makes for very muddy cent boys is clearly not “situational homosexual- research waters. The literature is contradictory— ity”. Most diocesan priests spend a lot of time with some studies show that victims are more likely to women as part of their normal ministry. The his- become perpetrators in later life; other studies show tory of the Church has shown, anecdotally at least, they that aren’t. Contrary to the dogmatic state- that if a priest wants a sexual relationship with a ments you may encounter on websites or Facebook, woman, it is distressingly easy for him to find one. there is no agreement across a range of disciplines So why did this particular group of diocesan priests about the specific causes and motivations for child in Australia—and in other parts of the world—tar- sexual abuse, except at the very broadest level: the get teenage boys instead of available women? perpetrator wanted to do it, and had the opportu- It is customary at this point to start talking about nity. The other thing everyone agrees on is that it is “hebephilia”. But we actually need to peel back a a very complex question, and that there is not a lot few more layers first. The term “homosexuality” of research evidence or reliable data. as we currently understand it is a construct of late When we talk about “child sexual abuse”, many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychol- of us think of very young children. We tend to for- ogy. “Homosexuality” in the modern sense was ini- get that in Australia, a “child” is anyone up to the tially classed as a mental disorder. “Hebephilia” and age of eighteen, and the sexual age of consent in “ephebophilia” were similar constructs, invented to most states is sixteen. The Royal classify the practice of adult males Commission reports that, based on having sex with pubescent and late data collected from the Catholic hy did this adolescent boys as mental disorders. Church in Australia, 40 per cent of W The diagnostic lenses used by all victims were aged thirteen and particular group psychology and psychiatry are noto- over at the time of the abuse, but of diocesan priests riously blurry: diagnostic categories that the ages of victims rose over change frequently, and for all sorts time, so that from the 1970s victims in Australia—and of reasons. In 1973, “homosexual- were much more likely to be teen- in other parts of ity” disappeared from DSM-II as agers. Similar results were found in the world—target a mental disorder. The present-day the United States: around 40 per gay community has also been anx- cent of victims of clerical child sex- teenage boys instead ious to dissociate itself from men ual abuse were males aged thirteen of available women? who have sex with pre-pubescent or above. boys, and attempts to have hebe- So over a third of the cases philia included in DSM-V have involved teenage boys, rather than pre-pubescent been controversial. This is why, if you make any link boys. It is this group that I want to focus on. Why between the adult male sexual abuse of adolescent does an adult man act out sexually with a teenage boys and what we understand as “homosexuality”, boy? There are really only two answers, one or both you will be shouted down very quickly. The Royal of which may be true. The first answer is that the Commission’s own researchers restrict themselves man is in prison or some other isolated and con- to saying that “justification for the concept of hebe- fined all-male environment where he has no normal philia (and similarly the concept of ephebophilia …) sexual access to women (“situational homosexual- remains controversial in the literature”. ity”). The second answer is that the man has a pre- There are two sides to this argument. One is that existing sexual attraction to other males (“same sex there are robust studies of child sexual abuse which attraction”, “homosexuality”, “being gay”). class all male-against-male sexual abuse as “homo- Is male-against-male child sexual abuse by sexual”. These demonstrate a very high correlation priests and religious a case of situational homosex- between “homosexuality” and the sexual abuse of uality? This is a reasonable argument when look- young males. If homosexual adult males account ing at closed communities like single-sex boarding for less than 2 per cent of the general population, schools, especially in more isolated rural areas. The they are thus enormously over-represented among dioceses with the highest numbers of child sexual sexual abusers of males under the age of eighteen. abuse reports by diocesan priests are all rural, and The argument against this is that the studies are the religious community with the highest number over-inclusive because they are based on the acts, of priest perpetrators is the Benedictines of New not on the abuser’s orientation or self-identification Norcia, an isolated rural community. as homosexual. This is often supported by claims But for diocesan priests in urban settings, with that the actual homosexual population is more like

Quadrant April 2017 23 Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong

10 per cent, which makes male-against-male sexual active homosexual who has been accused of sexu- abusers less statistically anomalous. ally exploiting vulnerable young adult men. This is the only difference in the two argu- There were also Catholic theologians (and their ments. If you read the studies involved, everything followers) who argued that same-sex attraction hinges not on the actual numbers of victims and and acting-out were not impediments to living a their attackers, but on how the key categories of happy and healthy priestly life. These theologians sexual preference are defined. Despite the sweeping have been at work in the Catholic Church since the polemics on gay-rights websites, there is actually no 1960s, in seminaries, dicasteries, diocesan offices mass of data that shows that coercive male-against- and Catholic colleges. They have made life very male sexual acts between adult males and boys are difficult for the Courage ministry, whose chastity- unrelated to “homosexuality” as a whole. It’s all in based approach has proved successful for many self- the definitions. identified gay Catholics. These theologians were also gravely displeased when in 1986 the Church issued o s what i actually going on? We could disappear official guidelines on the pastoral care of homosex- right now into the vortex of causation versus ual persons, and then in 2005 a clear instruction not cSorrelation, except for two uncomfortable facts. to ordain men with homosexual tendencies. The first uncomfortable fact is that since ancient You can see this troubled internal dialogue at Greece, countless texts demonstrate that the culture work among the Royal Commission’s Catholic of male homosexual activity in the West largely witnesses. Appropriately, it was Day Seven of the revolves around adult men sexually enjoying boys wrap-up (February 14), right at the heart of the and adolescent males. There are novels, non-fic- process, that the elephant in the room was finally tion, poetry, plays, memoirs, histories, documenta- mentioned. Sr Lydia Allen RSM, the Director of ries, interviews, and other texts in abundance, the Human Formation at Sydney’s Good Shepherd most recent example being that which caused Milo seminary, has a PhD in psychology and a solid track Yiannopolous’s very public downfall. They all pro- record in seminary formation. Monica Doumit vide a very similar picture: close-knit communities summarises her evidence on February 14: with their own rules of sexual engagement which are often at odds with those of the dominant culture; Sr Lydia … explained that deep-seated initiation, secrecy, substance abuse and violence. homosexuality was more than same-sex Male youth has always been the most powerful attraction, but a desire to make that part of their and desirable currency in this sexual world, and the identity, to be part of the gay community and a younger, the better. refusal to be of the same mind as the Church in The second uncomfortable fact is that there are such matters. Justice McClellan asked whether also abundant texts which demonstrate that in the deep-seated heterosexuality was treated in the confused years after the Second Vatican Council, same way, but Sr Lydia said it was not, saying many Catholic diocesan seminaries in Western that there was a need for a person to accept countries became overt or covert enclaves of homo- the natural law and ideas of masculinity and sexual activity. Diocesan seminaries and male femininity. religious orders were the perfect hiding places for Catholic gay men. And the same patterns apply: Thiss i a perfectly straightforward summary of close-knit communities with their own rules of sex- standard Catholic thinking and practice on the ual engagement which were at odds with those of issue. But another witness present on the same day the dominant culture; initiation, secrecy, substance was Dr David Leary OFM, a Franciscan friar and abuse and violence. Because this was a question lecturer at Yarra Theological Union in Victoria. of deep-seated same-sex attraction and prefer- He also has a PhD in psychology. Here is how he ence, it persisted beyond the seminary and into the responded to Sr Lydia’s comments: community. Diocesan seminaries are under the authority of Dr Leary criticised this, saying that the local bishop, but in many cases the fox was in homosexuality did not impact on ministry, charge of the chicken coop. Celebrity cases imme- and that viewing it as a disorder had no basis diately spring to mind—Rembert Weakland of in good theology or psychology. He said a Milwaukee, Keith O’Brien of Scotland, Reginald capacity for compassion was much more critical. Cawcutt of Cape Town, Hans Groer of Vienna. In To illustrate his point, he told a story about the case of Corpus Christi seminary in Melbourne, showing a movie about grief and loss to his its informal psychological assessor for thirty years, seminarian students, and receiving a complaint Ronald Conway, was a discreet but apparently from one seminarian because the movie

24 Quadrant April 2017 Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong

[possibly Brokeback Mountain] featured two gay eterosexual men who have freedom of move- men as the main characters. ment do not usually try to have sex with Hadolescent boys; they seek adult women who are Lookt a how quickly Dr Leary—whose doctoral reasonably attractive to them and reasonably will- thesis was on the development of resilience among ing. When clergy do this, it’s now politely called male street sex workers—shut that conversation an “adult boundary violation”. Again, it is almost down. And that was the last anyone heard about impossible to get accurate data on how common this clerical homosexuality as a possible contributing is in the Catholic Church worldwide, historically factor for the remainder of the hearings: an authen- and today, because of a paradoxical mix of under- tic case of the love that dare not speak its name. reporting and sensationalism, and a lack of formal This knee-jerk reaction speaks volumes about the data collection. There are some research studies, but ongoing omertà in certain Church quarters; an these are based on tiny samples, I suspect because entrenched unwillingness to turn over that rock. there are very few priests who want to complete an It is not homophobic or unreasonable to spec- “anonymous” survey on their sex life. ulate about an association between a cohort of Last year I took part as a witness in a formal homosexually-active adult men in the diocesan diocesan investigation of an adult boundary viola- priesthood and an increase in clerical sexual abuse tion. This gave me an opportunity to experience the of adolescent boys. The major argument against Towards Healing process first-hand, and it was pro- this is that it’s not currently politically correct to do foundly distressing. I made a complaint afterwards so. Where we may struggle is in determining the to the Western Australian Professional Standards extent to which homosexual orientation may have Office (WAPSO)—the “independent” body funded contributed to the problem. The American scholar by the Catholic Church’s insurance offices—about Myra Hidalgo sums up the conundrum when she how the investigation was carried out. WAPSO fol- says, in her book Sexual Abuse and the Culture of lowed up on my complaint immediately. I also made Catholicism: a formal written complaint to the Archdiocese of Perth. That was last July; I have yet to receive Io d believe that the homosexual nature of the any acknowledgment of this complaint from the majority of the sexual abuse offences reported, Archdiocese, and I have yet to see any consequences along with a disproportionate representation of for the priest involved. homosexuals in seminaries and convents, are Experiences like this don’t fill me with confi- critical factors related to the problem but that dence when I think of how the Church will handle homosexuality itself is not the cause. sexual abuse and boundary violation cases in the future. We may be telling Royal Commissioners Fr James Martin SJ argues that there has been that we now have transparency and accountability, a recent increase in the numbers of homosexual and perhaps we do with children, but we have a priests, and that this has led to a fall in abuse cases, long way to go when dealing with adult bound- but both of these claims are based on questionable ary violations and other failures in clerical celibacy. evidence. The complainant in the case described above had a The Royal Commissioners stayed on safer previous sexual relationship with another diocesan ground and instead focused on priestly celibacy as priest, who had had sexual relationships with other a contributing factor to child sexual abuse. Most of adults. The previous bishop allowed him to remain the witnesses obligingly said that yes, it was prob- in the active ministry, but he was eventually lai- ably a factor, and it was very difficult, especially as cised. Had he been laicised after his first reported it was mandatory. The one notable exception was sexual relationship as a priest, a lot of heartbreak Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, who con- and scandal might have been avoided. sistently maintained that celibacy in itself was not Last year Fr (now Bishop) Richard Umbers the problem, but rather a lack of sexual integration. wrote: Fisher is right. Priestly celibacy is not a secret; it is not sprung on the candidate the day before When the bureaucratic mindset is coupled with his ordination as a special surprise. Candidates secrecy, with an inability to be held accountable for ordination have at least six years in which to and questioned, the results can be catastrophic practise living as celibate men, and many of them … Canon Law is meant to be a mirror of justice, realise it’s not for them, leave the seminary, and get but where asymmetric information rules there is married. But like marriage, celibacy often turns out too great an opportunity for mischief and cover to be very different from what you signed up for: up. In clergy sexual abuse cases, the call for more demanding, less room for selfishness, lonelier. permanent silence only compounds the hurt.

Quadrant April 2017 25 Where the Catholic Church Went Wrong

o what are some possible solutions? Common sense can’t always be assumed, and priests The collection of transparent data on child also can’t be expected just to pick up this knowledge sSexual abuse and adult boundary violations by each on the job, especially when more and more seminary diocese is essential. Last September, the Australian candidates come from cultures outside Australia, Catholic Bishops Conference formed Catholic with different attitudes to women, and who can- Professional Standards Limited, a Church-funded not instinctively read a situation when it gets out of “independent” organisation which will apparently hand. publish reports on compliance with professional A third solution is better pastoral care of dioc- standards by individual dioceses. If it collects reli- esan priests. They are often exhausted and over- able data, that would be a considerable step in the worked, but that’s because most of them are doing right direction. work which should be done by the laity—commit- However, it’s not enough just to collect it; they tees, courses, meetings and so on. The diocesan must publish it. This would constitute genuine insti- priest’s principal job is to administer the sacraments; tutional accountability. If we as a Church can’t see that is his core business, and everything else should the size of the problem, how on be oriented towards that. The Royal earth can we fix it? If the problem is Commission witnesses talked about actually heterosexual adult bound- he psychological the dangers of “clericalism”, but in ary violations, what are we doing T fact the opposite is true: diocesan about educating both priests and lay strain placed upon priests are now expected to be jolly, people about the problem? a priest makes him matey, prayerful, popular and well- As to same-sex attraction, I wish liked by everyone in their parishes, I could say that men in this situa- vulnerable, and he even though this is impossible. The tion would make fine priests, but cannot afford to have burden of “niceness” is the modern I can’t. The psychological strain to struggle with a equivalent of clericalism: the priest, placed upon a priest makes him especially if he is young, is not vulnerable, and he cannot afford deep-seated sexual allowed to be human. to have to struggle with a deep- attraction to other I have always thought that seated sexual attraction to other priests should be encouraged to live men in addition to everything else. men in addition to with other priests wherever pos- I think many people personally everything else. sible. This can alleviate loneliness, know priests who are in this situa- put the brakes on selfishness, and tion, and their priesthood is rarely a keep susceptible individuals out happy one. The Church’s ruling on ineligibility for of the more obvious sorts of trouble. However, it ordination is a sound and compassionate one, not would be wise to allow some degree of personal just for the men themselves, but for those who may choice with this, because some people simply can- be at risk of being exploited by them covertly in the not live together, and it can cause more trouble than future when they can’t cope. it’s worth. This may also require some merging of Careful screening of candidates and good semi- smaller parishes, but as most Catholics own cars and nary formation is next, and this must be matched by drive, this should not be seen as impossible. an episcopal willingness to let numbers fall if nec- Above all, the culture of omertà which privileges essary. Quality is now more important than quan- clerical privacy over lay distress has to change, and tity. Good priests are men who are good spiritual quickly. There is a lot at stake, and so far the Church fathers, and they are made of the same material as a in Australia has not distinguished itself by its in- good human father. This isn’t an argument for mar- house handling of child sexual abuse. If we are seri- ried priests, because celibacy actually frees a man ous about protecting non-negotiables like the seal of to be a spiritual father to everyone he meets. In a the confessional from the heavy hand of the state, society that is starved of fatherhood, the priest as we had better come up with some viable alternatives father—rather than “leader” or “servant”—is a role for facing and managing some unpleasant truths waiting to be rediscovered and renewed. about our clergy. Religious celibacy is the single greatest sacrifice a healthy heterosexual man can make for his God. Dr Philippa Martyr is a Perth-based historian, It’s meant to be a sacrifice, and a sacrifice is ipso university lecturer and academic researcher, who facto something uncomfortable. Proper formation in currently works in mental health services. The opinions the seminary should include training in the need expressed here are her own. A footnoted version appears for prudence in personal relationships with women. at Quadrant Online.

26 Quadrant April 2017 Mending Time Combine The fence was down. Out among humid smells The tractor puffing diesel and shrill cicadas we walked, the lichened trunks crawled along the swath, moon-blue, our faces blue and our hands. the hayfork pulling vines into the combine’s maw, Led by their bellwether bellies, the sheep and the high bin filled had toddled astray. The neighbor farmer’s woods with damp green peas— or coyotes might have got them, or the far road. a boy’s first shirtless job, I remember the night, the moon-colored grass baked nut-brown from dark we waded through to look for them, the oaks all through the burning day tangled and dark, like starting a story midway. until the Sound beyond the dikes bled red. We gazed over seed heads to the barn Gulls in the fields, crows toppled in the homestead orchard. Then we saw in the bramble hedges, the weather of white wool, a cloud in the blue a field mouse squirming on the fork boy’s tines moving without sound as if charmed and the old mechanic standing by the moon beholding them out of bounds. in white overalls mid-field Time has not tightened the wire or righted the barn. as if he’d lost his train The unpruned orchard rots in its meadow of thought. and the story unravels, the sunlight creeping back Those hands of his, like a song with nobody left to hear it. work-swollen knuckles, grease in the whorls a boy discerned his future in, even the one finger nipped off The World of Hurt at the top joint, even that old pain recovered from Where are its borders—the world of hurt? was prophecy of a kind Not in these woods outside the window, (we all bleed and lose not in the helpful drone of the sea. the fortuneteller says). The work was slow enough But the mind has trouble neglecting the news, for thought, still more for books the acid comment, expedient bombing read in all weathers and frontiers brimming with refugees. when the bosses left, She turned from the pictures to face me, the hurt and reading under the sky taking hold in her eyes. Right then I saw to the smell of marsh salt from the ragged green of the woods, the bird and chaff and rotting vines, education’s skin and bone that had come for itself in the window, and banked for learning’s ache before impact, and left like a song and the ache of learning, and was gone to die some other way. gone to school in work and for a time a living A skill of intelligent flight. Or luck. wage to wage a life. Her look changed when I told her about it. The bird that flew off into the world.

David Mason

Quadrant April 2017 27 Augusto Zimmermann

The Cultural Feminism That Betrays Women

slams i the world’s most feminist religion,” cultural feminists risk themselves justifying the ill- the Australian Muslim woman Yassmin treatment of individual women, both within and Abdel-Magied claimed on the ABC’s Q&A outside Western societies. o“n IFebruary 13. Her controversial thesis has been The issue of genital mutilation is an excellent shot down as ridiculous by conservative writers and example. Although the amputation of the clitoris politicians across the nation. However, her claim (sometimes the entire vulva) from a woman’s genita- that Islam is “the most feminist” of all religions is lia is commonly practised in several Muslim-majority not entirely wrong, if one considers it through the countries, Germaine Greer and other like-minded lens of a particular variant of radical feminist ideol- feminists contend that this brutal mutilation of girls ogy—cultural feminism. as young as five years old “needs to be considered in Abdel-Magied’s observation about women under context”. Hence, any attempt by Western govern- Islam is typical of cultural feminists who demand ments to eliminate such a heinous practice has been that individual members of “societal cultures” be perceived as “an attack on cultural identity”. Greer, endowed “with meaningful ways to live across the the author of The Female Eunuch (1970), has notori- full range of human activities, including social, ously supported some of the most appalling actions educational, religious, recreational, and economic of radical Islamic groups. In 1989, after Ayatollah life, encompassing both public and private spheres”. Khomeini issued his fatwa condemning Salman Since cultural identity is said to play a more perva- Rushdie to death for writing The Satanic Verses, sive role in the lives of certain minority groups, cul- Greer saw nothing wrong with Khomeini’s fatwa. tural feminists argue that the individual members of She called Rushdie “a megalomaniac” and added: “I such groups should be accorded special rights (privi- approve of the behaviour of the Muslims.” leges) lest their minority status be endangered by Have girls in Muslim communities benefited the dominant culture. Any criticism of cultural or from the sentiments expressed by such cultural religious practices—including female genital muti- feminists? In Britain, hospitals report an aver- lation and forced marriage—is summarily dismissed age fifteen cases of female genital mutilation each as a form of “colonialist imperialism”, one which is day, yet despite the practice being illegal since 1984 disrespectful of the more deep-seated traditions of there have been no successful prosecutions. Where non-majoritarian ethnic and religious groups. are the feminists on this and other issues such as Above all, cultural feminism advocates that spe- forced marriages and “honour killings”? Nowhere, it cial consideration must be given not just for the legal seems, with a handful of honourable exceptions. For status of individual women in Western societies, many cultural feminists there is a hierarchy of “cor- but also for the position of individuals belonging rectness” and the notion of “cultural respect” appar- to minority groups. Since the alleged deprivation ently trumps the fundamental rights of women. experienced by certain minority groups is regarded Cultural feminists are on record linking any primarily as a result of “white male oppression”, criticism of female genital mutilation to a form of cultural feminists generally support state-imposed “cultural imperialism”. For instance, US law profes- measures which attempt to correct “past injustices” sor Leti Volpp has written several articles in lead- in the workplace and other spheres of social activity. ing law journals arguing that any attempt to outlaw From a human-rights perspective, however, such heinous practices apparently underlies a “rac- there are serious problems with the ideology of cul- ist ideology” which portrays non-white women as tural feminism. By prioritising collective rights at “requiring liberation into the … social mores and the expense of the basic rights of the individual, customs of the metropolitan West”. Volpp thinks it

28 Quadrant April 2017 The Cultural Feminism That Betrays Women is morally wrong for Western democracies to priori- by requiring them to conform to illiberal beliefs or tise women’s rights at the expense of group rights norms. Cultural feminists contend that “sensibility” and “race consciousness”. Hence she deliberately to human rights abuses against non-Western women downplays the need to create any law which might might be a disguise for “cultural imperialism”. After assist non-white Western women to escape such downplaying the values of Western civilisation “cultural practices”—forced marriage, clitoris muti- and its focus on the legal protection of individual lation, polygamy, honour killings, and so on. As she rights—as only one possible cultural approach notes candidly: among numerous other approaches by which human life can be organised—such feminists advocate that We o need t abandon the ethnocentric notion our laws should tolerate and accommodate even of the inferiority of certain cultures, and cultural and religious practices that Westerners tra- to understand that all communities are ditionally find repulsive and degrading. Such peo- characterized both by patriarchal formations ple no doubt agree with Bhikhu Parekh (a British as well as by resistance to those formations. political theorist and Labour member of the House We also must acknowledge that posing of Lords) who notoriously claimed: multiculturalism as antithetical to feminism is a false opposition and one that is predicated to insist that these groups should abide by our on racism. Further, refusing an explicit fundamental rights is to expose ourselves to the consideration of “race” or “culture” within our same charge of fundamentalism that we make legal system will not result in “colorblind” and against them, and to rely solely on our superior “cultureblind” meritocratic justice, but in a coercive power to get our way. replication of dominant patterns of dispersal of power. These are the premises that need to Some feminist scholars go even to the point of be understood if we want to move forward in contending that non-white male violence against scholarship examining the relationship of culture women is not the perpetrator’s fault. They claim it is and the law. actually a by-product of the abuser’s lack of a “sense of self-worth and empowerment”. So it is not his Women from minority cultures often protest fault that he physically or emotionally abuses his about such double standards applied by Western wife and children. Such fault, so they say, lies pri- feminists. They claim their radical advocacy of marily on Western democratic governments which “cultural diversity” denies the recognition of equal have failed to “empower” him. This is how such a rights for every individual. Since the postmodernist cultural feminist typically downplays male domestic dogma of moral relativism has been accepted with violence against women in the context of cultural no proper critical reasoning, it really does not matter values and “minority rights”: that, at least within some cultural groups, so many women will never enjoy the same level of legal pro- Power and control are fundamental values for tection that is normally afforded to Western women the men in some African communities, and this within the mainstream group. As noted by philoso- plays a role in the domestic violence that occurs phy professor Michael Freeman: post-settlement here in Australia. In a sense, it is unjust to prosecute an offender without also This debate inevitably throws up a conflict prescribing education about the more equal value between women’s interests and those of a racial system that Australia has in regards to women or cultural group. It is an issue addressed by and their place within the home. The offenders critical race theory. For Volpp, prioritising in this case need to develop a sense of self-worth women’s rights embraces gender consciousness and empowerment that does not rely on abusing at the expense of race consciousness. But can it their spouses. not be argued that allowing a cultural defence enables the rights of a group to prevail over iven such moral relativism it is no wonder that the interests of female members of that group “cultural excuses” are a common strategy in the who are likely to have had little input into the Gvast majority of criminal cases involving non-white formulation of its norms? male violence against women and children. These criminal cases relate to “cultural” practices such as What Professor Freeman says about Professor honour killings, child molestation, forced marriage Volpp applies to any other legal scholar who believes and polygamy. The notion of “cultural defence” has that minority groups have a right to be “left alone”, been successfully applied in a variety of criminal even if such groups violate the basic rights of women trials in the United States, including (1) the kidnap

Quadrant April 2017 29 The Cultural Feminism That Betrays Women and f rape o women by men who claimed that such of women. Their appeasement generates horrendous actions are part of their cultural practice; (2) wife human-rights consequences for women. It means, murder by immigrants from Asian and Middle for example, that almost 4000 cases of female geni- Eastern countries whose wives have either committed tal mutilation were reported in Britain in 2014 and adultery or treated their husbands “inappropriately”; 11,000 cases of so-called honour-based violence (3) the murder of children by Japanese or Chinese between 2009 and 2014. Research into family vio- mothers who also tried but failed to commit suicide, lence in the UK in the 1990s found that British claiming that the shame of their husband’s infidelity women married to men of Muslim background are drove them to the culturally condoned practice of eight times more likely to be killed by their hus- mother-child murder-suicide. bands than any other married women. And yet, as In each of these criminal matters expert testi- Geraldine Brooks has noted: mony concerning the cultural background of the male perpetrator resulted in dropped or considerably Presented with statistics on violence towards reduced sentences. Of course, such “cultural defence” women, or facing the furore over the Rushdie over-emphasises the more excessive aspects of par- fatwa ... Muslims ... ask us to blame a wide ticular cultures, thus grossly distorting broader per- range of villains: colonial history, the bitterness ceptions within the mainstream community about of immigrant experience, Bedouin tradition, these non-Western cultures. pre-Islamic African culture. Yet when the Some cultures are clearly not good for women, Koran sanctions wife beating and the execution since they might be suffused with practices that both of apostates, it can’t be entirely exonerated endorse and facilitate male oppression. And yet, as for an epidemic of wife slayings and death US law professor Susan Moller Okin points out, far sentences on authors. In the end, what they too many contemporary feminists “have been too ... are proposing is as artificial an exercise as quick to assume that feminism and multiculturalism that proposed by the Marxists who used to are both good things which are easily reconciled”. argue that socialism in its pure form should She reminds us that within these minority groups not be maligned and rejected because of the there are “clear disparities in power between the deficiencies of “actually existing socialism”. At sexes, such that the more powerful, male members some point, every religion, especially one that are those who are generally in a position to deter- purports to encompass a complete way of life mine and articulate the group’s beliefs, practices and and system of government, has to be called to interests”. account for the kind of life it offers the people Unfortunately, today’s feminism accords very lit- in the lands where it predominates. tle recognition to the fact that certain cultures may contain a substantial power imbalance between men There should be no compromise when it comes and women. That being so, securing “cultural diver- to the protection of basic human rights. Regrettably, sity” and preserving the basic rights of women may it appears that for far too many feminists it is much be actually impossible, since enforcing diversity and easier to attack the “gender pay gap” than female protecting individual rights may be competing prin- genital mutilation or child brides or so-called ciples that might have to be traded off against each honour killings, which logically “may require you other depending on the context. As Ibn Warraq to make judgments about cultures that oppress correctly points out: women”. This f sort o feminism is anti-Western and it has Multiculturalism often ends up providing cover become the natural ally of retrograde forces which for the most reactionary beliefs and practices deny the elementary fact that, in a free and tolerant of other cultures, rather than encouraging the society, everyone must have the same rights to life, more liberal strands to develop. An attentive liberty and property legally enforced and preserved; ear is given mostly to the community elders and that in a true democracy every person should be traditionalists, who often are the least educated treated equally and fairly before the law, regardless and most determined to preserve their power of gender, ethnic or religious identity. So it looks in the status quo. Thus we essentially defend as if Abdel-Magied’s claim is not entirely wrong the most oppressive beliefs and practices of a after all. minority culture, ignoring the denial of rights to its women or children. Dr Augusto Zimmermann is Law Reform Commissioner, Law Reform Commission of Western Thiss i why cultural feminists may be fairly Australia. He wishes to thank Mr Heath Harley- accused of ignoring or downplaying the basic rights Bellemore for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

30 Quadrant April 2017 Miss Anderson’s Doorbells

Miss Anderson taught us Latin: Kindling the Real Estate Pages Silky white hair in a sidelift French twist. (Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.) She might have been a Calvinist. Sober with dignity, crispspoken, cool. Igniting a journal’s pages, Her school dress was dark blue rustling crepe, the flames glow green. And gold-rimmed pearl buttons strode down No bytes or gauges Over her overhung robust bosom, measure my scene Begging to be rung. as polymers of print soft-tongue the black in reach and feint Daughters Don’t Cry on firebox back. The Big Bang blew this thought, Daughters don’t cry when their fathers die, atoms combine, There is not time. let all consort, There’s Mom, for one, not all will shine. She needs a face Closed systems and their perks To hang her pale questions on. make lives from heat, There’s the undertaker to put in his place, convert to works, And the minister, who will eulogize this strangest feat Without ever having met him Dad. to move, be pent or glow. No time to cry, I am not zero Because of all the calls to make: if cosmic flow There’s the editor of the obit page, makes me brief hero. The organist, and the guy who plays taps; A bloodline’s like a star, There are caterers and florists, it warms near-space, And there’s Mom again, distraught, will warm so far, And baseball keepsakes to allot; then ice its face There’s the office steno pool, because its energy The Friday afterwork barstool must deal elsewhere. With the old drinking buddies; So what is free A few surviving schoolmates, if nothing’s spare? There’s all those Aunts and Uncles and A people do their works All those unidentifiable small cousins. then turn their speech No time for a daughter to recall into self-hex His one stride to her three skips to shrink their reach, As hand in hand and with parallel feet ignite a journal’s message— They once made their way together down the street. tongues luminesce. If all is usage. Marjorie Howard Johnson what grows less?

Alan Gould

Quadrant April 2017 31 Peter Smith

The Deplorable Victims of Free Trade

resident George H.W. Bush signed the North countries having natural advantages. By “natural American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) advantages”, I mean advantages springing from in 1992. Did he take account of the probabil- nature or from a long history of specialisation and ityP that US manufacturing plants would move to skill development. Essentially, free trade flows Mexico? Did he consider the economic and social should mirror the relative strengths of participating effects that this would have on many thousands countries. All should gain. Any outcome that has of US manufacturing workers, their families and one country benefiting to the detriment of another their communities? I doubt it. Elite indifference doesn’t necessarily sit well with the precepts of free to the plight of ordinary (“deplorable”) people is trade. precisely the reason why Donald Trump’s populism History provides a backdrop. In 1817 David resonates. Ricardo set out his theory of comparative advan- Free trade is totemic for economic rationalists. tage. This theory is not innovative in showing that It is unsurprising that they object to what they specialisation and trade are potentially beneficial. consider to be President Trump’s protectionist Adam Smith had already done that. It is innovative tendencies. The virtue of free trade is unarguable in showing that specialisation and trade are benefi- to its disciples. To them, those who have doubts cial even between countries when one of them has clearly lack a proper understanding of the benefits an absolute advantage in producing all tradeable it brings. The wellspring of our very progress and commodities. When, in other words, one coun- future prosperity is brought into question. To be try can produce all tradeable commodities more clear, they have a point. No one should doubt the cheaply. It is a powerful testament to the benefits of essential role that specialisation and international free trade. It is instructive to examine the example trade have played, and will continue to play, in cre- devised by Ricardo to demonstrate his theory. ating wealth. That cannot legitimately be brought He used the example of England and Portugal into question. However, what can legitimately be and the production of wine and cloth. He con- brought into question is the proposition that each figured his example so that it was beneficial for instance of freeing up trade always brings net ben- England to specialise in cloth and Portugal in wine; efits to all participating countries. even though Portugal could produce both products A first thing to say is that “free trade” is usually more cheaply. Now, his example was made up; still, a misnomer when applied to free-trade deals. Free- it would have seemed discordant if England had trade deals invariably run to many pages in length. ended up with wine and Portugal cloth. That’s not NAFTA, which has earned Trump’s ire, runs to quite right, we would think, example or not. about 1000 pages. Clearly this is free trade with It was too cold in the Little Ice Age in England lots of ifs and buts. Ergo, a different NAFTA could to grow grapes abundantly. At least that would be be produced with different ifs and buts and could the common view. And the production of cloth equally be called free trade. But this is incidental to fits our knowledge of the English inventions of my argument. My argument is that real free trade, machines like the spinning jenny (1764) and the or anything approaching it—freer trade—should power loom (1785). So Portugal had the climate be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In particular, and, I assume, the soil and home-grown expertise rich (First World) countries should be circumspect fitted for wine; while the Industrial Revolution when striking deals with poor countries. fitted England for cloth. Of course, this is a pot- Free trade works best when it provides each par- ted account. Nonetheless it is good enough for my ticipating country with comparable export oppor- modest objective. My objective is to suggest that in tunities or where it is built around participating Ricardo’s example specialisation and trade fell out

32 Quadrant April 2017 The Deplorable Victims of Free Trade of the natural advantages possessed by the coun- parative advantage (or absolute advantage) suggests tries in question. that specialisation and trade will occur. There is no Two additional factors should be borne in mind. incentive. What will happen? Think of the devel- First, both England and Portugal were First World opment of the universe. Matter was almost evenly countries for their time. Second, each country was spread after the Big Bang. Almost is the key word. insulated, relatively speaking, from the other. They The slight unevenness allowed gravity to work to were kept apart by distance and attendant transport bring particular pieces of matter together. In turn, costs, by culture and language, by slow communi- these supplemented pieces attracted yet more mat- cations, by imperfectly connected capital markets, ter and the rest is history and eventually us. Equally, and by labour immobility. only a small perturbation may be required to dis- Jump 200 years to 2017. The world is intercon- rupt the balance of production in the two countries. nected. Internationally traded goods accounted for Once disrupted it is entirely possible that econo- an estimated 2 per cent of all goods produced in mies of scale will underscore the specialisation of 1817; now they account for about 45 per cent (World each country in one or other of the goods. The pro- Bank merchandise trade data for 2015). Transport duction of both goods will increase and, through costs have become only a marginal impediment to trade, both countries will benefit. Which good each global trade. Four years ago I took a twenty-seven- country will specialise in is a matter of chance, in day voyage from Hong Kong to Southampton on the sense that it is not predicable on the basis of board Magellan which, at the time, natural advantages, which are the was the third-largest container same in each country. ship in the world. It runs on cheap ree trade deals are marine diesel and has a comple- F o far, s good. Whether trade ment of a mere twenty-eight offi- like any other deals. is based on natural advantages cers and crew. On my voyage it was There must be a quid orS on developed advantages, there carrying the equivalent of nearly is a mutual and complementary 10,000 standard-sized containers. pro quo. Both sides benefit for both countries and, by Each container, which can be more need to reap tangible extension, for numbers of coun- than double the length and taller tries involved in such trade. There than standard-sized, can hold up to gains otherwise the will often be dislocation costs as 28 tonnes of cargo. Containers were deal is exploitative. countries switch out of one produc- off-loaded and on-loaded expedi- tion activity to another. But, on the tiously at each port of call. whole, there are evident benefits for Why mention my voyage? Simply to illustrate all participating countries. And, on balance, there starkly that times have changed. The cost of ship- is no compelling reason to believe that the demand ping machine parts, cars, whitegoods, computers for labour will fall in any country after a period of and the like from one part of the world to another is adjustment. Consider a dissonant case. now comparatively trivial in the scheme of things. Rexford is an American company. It has a ball- And, to complete the contemporary narrative, bearing manufacturing plant in Indianapolis. It has English is a universal language, communications come under fire from Donald Trump for announcing are effectively instantaneous, capital moves freely, its intention to move its plant to Mexico. According and labour (as shown by economic migration flows) to reports, the company says this will save US$30 is mobile to a much higher degree than in the past; million annually. It has 350 employees who, again even than in the relatively recent pre-1960s past. reportedly, are in the process of training visiting As I said in a previous Quadrant article (“The Mexicans. Presumably their severance pay is depen- Debate That Never Dies,” July-August 2011), the dent on their co-operation. This must be hard to modern world provides “fertile ground” for special- swallow, but that is an aside. isation and trade to play out. To an extent trade has In 2013 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) been based on natural advantages. Australia exports published an international study of manufactur- primary products. Switzerland exports watches. But ing compensation costs (wages plus on-costs). The by far the bulk of trade is not built around natural hourly cost (to the nearest dollar) was $36 in the US advantages but around developed advantages. It is a in 2012 compared with $6 in Mexico. Simple arith- case of specialisation driving trade rather than the metic shows that paying employees $30 an hour less, reverse; as recognised by Adam Smith. assuming a ten-hour day, saves Rexford $27 million Take two adjacent countries both equally adept a year. It seems fairly clear that the saving the com- at producing two different goods each of which is pany anticipates is predominantly made up of labour sold only locally. Nothing in the theory of com- costs.

Quadrant April 2017 33 The Deplorable Victims of Free Trade

Mexico does not have a natural advantage in manufactured imports from China and Mexico. the production of ball-bearings. Mexico and the These products would cost a lot more if they were US have not reached a mutually beneficial trade made locally. This benefits US consumers and also accommodation related to ball-bearings. Mexico’s businesses that use such products as inputs. In turn, increased specialisation in ball-bearing production these businesses become more competitive and is not instrumental to its ability to produce them might, as a result, expand and employ more people. more cheaply. Mexico’s ability to produce ball-bear- Yes, there are dislocation costs but these are tem- ings more cheaply, and a host of other manufactured porary while markets adjust. That’s the argument. goods, is because its wages are at Third World level. There is no fault in its economic logic and undoubt- The same story can be told for China and India, edly the US has benefited from cheap manufactured whose hourly manufacturing labour compensation imports. Why then have qualms? It is glib. rates were around $2 in 2010, according to the BLS It describes an open-ended process, which study. assumes that net benefits will continue being reaped High-minded conservatives and libertarians however much manufacturing switches out of the who extol the virtue of free trade without qualifica- US. It fails to contemplate the likelihood of disloca- tion ignore inconvenient facts on the ground. One tion costs becoming overwhelming. As perhaps they of these facts is that people in the First World are have already in parts of the industrial heartland of thrown out of work when they are put in a posi- the US. For some workers the adjustment process tion by “free trade” deals of competing with people lasts longer than the remainder of their working whose wages reflect the backward circumstances of lives. They are victims of free trade. How exactly do their country. Often those circumstances have been you quantify the costs of that? Certainly such costs caused over many years by entrenched economic and should not be glossed over. political corruption. Those who have been part of It might be sensible to put in place provisions the social fabric of corruption gain at the expense to guard against a flight of manufacturing produc- of those who have been part of a more enlightened tion when negotiating trade deals with countries culture. whose labour costs are completely out of kilter with In textbooks, free trade is not about a First World First World standards. Take the US and Mexico. country agreeing to allow a Third World country Without trade impediments, the playing field is to take over most of its manufacturing activities. It markedly skewed to favour a flight of labour-inten- is about mutually beneficial accommodations. It is sive US manufacturing businesses to Mexico. The worth going again to Ricardo’s example. Now imag- advantage of cheap labour is complemented by hav- ine that Portugal has an exceedingly large reservoir ing the world’s largest market for their products of underemployed labour scratching out a subsis- right on their doorstep. Hence for Donald Trump tence living and, furthermore, that cloth-makers in to threaten to impose a “border tax” in such circum- England are willing and able to switch their opera- stances, in an effort to balance the playing field, is tions to Portugal. England will have to find another probably impractical, but it is responding to a real outlet for its labour while using its gold reserves to problem. pay for wine and cloth imports. And, after finding There are three things to remember in the debate and building a replacement manufacturing activity, over free trade. First, free trade usually isn’t free who knows, that too might go to Portugal. Quite trade at all. It is freer trade at best and comes in simply, one-sided free trade driven solely by cheap many variants. Second, while freer trade tends to labour does not necessarily work to the advantage of expand total production of all goods, it doesn’t nec- both sides; at least not until the long run has worked essarily benefit each participating country to nearly itself out, when we might be all dead, as Keynes so the same extent. Third, freer trade can have unfortu- ominously put it. nate consequences for numbers of people, which can Suppose you run a workshop near the border. be difficult to measure and which, in consequence, A competitor opens up across the street employ- are not given the consideration they warrant. ing sweated labour. Foul! You cry. Now put this Trump’s stated view that free trade has to be fair competing workshop just across the national bor- trade should not be summarily dismissed. Nothing der. Exactly why has the unfair competition become in the textbooks under international trade that I fair? Free trade deals are like any other deals. There have seen has one country voluntarily worsening its must be a quid pro quo. Both sides need to reap tan- position to benefit another. Essentially that would gible gains otherwise the deal is exploitative. represent a betrayal of the precepts of free trade. I will put the other side of the argument, using the United States as an exemplar of an industrialised Peter Smith is a frequent contributor. He wrote the First World country. The US gains from cheap article “Scary Population Tales” in the December issue.

34 Quadrant April 2017 Andrew Br agg

How Concealed Protectionism Threatens Australia’s Trade

ollowing the seismic political events of 2016, wise productive trade agreements between nations. including Brexit and the election of Donald Like most relatively new legal mechanisms, it can Trump, we confront the most disruptive be improved. Improvement should be the focus, not Flandscape in global trade policy in decades. Dozens using ISDS as a blocking excuse. of new bilateral trade agreements are expected There are three pivotal points which are rarely to be agreed with the newly unrestrained United aired on ISDS: one, it supports the rule of law and States and United Kingdom. The bookends of the is a conscious act of sovereignty. Two, investor com- Atlantic also have plans to formulate a trade deal panies benefit from ISDS protection and it is often between themselves following Theresa May’s visit a precondition for investment. Three, the tribunals to Washington after the US elections in November. used in relevant cases are not murky bastions of A further consequence of Trump’s election is the secrecy. uncertain future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is dead according to Shinzo Abe but alive irst, a report by Australia’s Centre for according to Justin Trudeau and Malcolm Turnbull. Independent Studies says ISDS mechanisms It is unclear where the enormous pan-Asian Fsupport the rule of law by reinforcing a legal frame- Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or work that has been a cornerstone of free markets the European Union-US Transatlantic Trade and since Magna Carta in 1215. The report states that, Investment Partnership will land. Similarly, the to date, just 30 per cent of the 362 ISDS cases have fate of a renegotiated North American Free Trade been ruled in favour of foreign investors. In keeping Agreement remains murky. with the averages, only one of the three Australian- One issue which is likely to feature heavily in initiated cases was successful. the public debate on every new bilateral or regional The Australian Greens cite Philip Morris’s trade deal is Investor State Dispute Settlement attempt to overturn Australia’s landmark plain- (ISDS). ISDS clauses provide companies with legal packaging cigarette laws in the Permanent Court redress typically when unfavourable or unfore- of Arbitration in Hong Kong as evidence of a loss seen legislation is passed in a foreign jurisdiction. of sovereignty—even though Philip Morris lost Unfortunately ISDS has become a damaging myth the case. Australia’s former trade minister Andrew which gives contemporary cover to protectionism. Robb describes the threat of ISDS as “dogma”. He It needs to be properly evaluated, given ISDS has told me last year: “We’ve had [them] for thirty years, been known to deprive nations of advantageous we’ve got ISDS clauses with over twenty countries trade agreements. and we’ve won the only case brought against us.” The debate on ISDS in Australia, a nation with Another test of plain-packaging laws in July a deep history of participation in the international 2016 between Uruguay and Philip Morris was also trading system, has been distorted by dogma, few resolved in Uruguay’s favour. But even if the ciga- stakeholders taking the time to examine ISDS rette makers had won, it wouldn’t be a transfer of coolly and methodically. Supporters of mutually sovereignty or the overturning of an Australian beneficial free-trade deals will be forced to con- law—it would be reparation that any company sider ISDS in coming years as a coalition of unions might similarly expect on outbound foreign invest- and Centre-Left political parties campaign to stop ment. This is the very reason ISDS emerged in trade deals which contain ISDS. investment and trade agreements in the decades It is important to get the facts on ISDS on the after the Second World War, when commercial table so it cannot be used as a reason to block other- interests were nationalised in nations such as Cuba,

Quadrant April 2017 35 How Concealed Protectionism Threatens Australia’s Trade

Egypt and Iran. Alan Oxley told me last year, “ISDS is a good Many globalists believe in the value of multilat- idea. It is in the interests of Australian business, eralism through the WTO and United Nations but which we need to support.” do not value international law reflected in ISDS. Very few businesses have the capacity or where- For instance, Australian Greens Senator Peter withal to enter the debate against activists. One of Whish-Wilson said in 2014 on the Australia–Korea Australia’s umbrella business groups, the Australian free-trade agreement: “Including ISDS provisions Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has presented in our trade deals leaves us vulnerable to being a clear view with useful examples: sued by foreign corporations for simply legislating to protect the environment or internet use, if those ISDS provides protection for Australian laws affect corporate profits.” The use of the word firms when they invest in mines, factories, vulnerable ignores the fact that agreeing to ISDS infrastructure and intellectual property in clauses is a consciously sovereign act. other countries. It means they can defend their Another group, the Australian Fair Trade and commercial rights and the investment of their Investment Network, argues: “governments should shareholders from expropriation by governments have the right to regulate in the public interest that are not on fair and just terms. without being sued by global corporations”. The Network is suggesting governments should have Not s only i ISDS a protective mechanism, it also rights which are beyond legal reproach—a form drives investment. In recent years, research on the of absolutism. Thankfully the liberal grounding of connection between ISDS or investment treaties Western civilisation dating back to Magna Carta and foreign investment has emerged. Neumayer and has abhorred absolutism. Spess of the London School of Economics found The bottom line on sovereignty is the absence of that “developing countries that sign more bilat- evidence. No advocate against ISDS can point to eral investment treaties receive more FDI inflows”. a single example where a nation has lost a health, Unsurprisingly, higher investment levels are linked environmental or welfare law in an ISDS case. to a desire for legal enforceability: “[treaties] guar- antee certain standards of treatment that can be econd, the ISDS mechanism provides valu- enforced via binding investor to state dispute settle- able legal protection and promotes investment. ment outside the domestic judicial system”. SAlan Oxley, a former chairman of the General A similar point is made by Asian Development Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, said: Bank research fellow Alisa DiCaprio, who argues that the Asian region has long accepted ISDS as For f one o [Australia’s] big shopping centre a mechanism of investment promotion. According businesses establishing in Chicago or Michigan, to DiCaprio, “it is telling that all ASEAN coun- where in the United States state authorities do tries have multiple bilateral investment treaties” and intervene, and I can envision a circumstance many Asian nations see “an ISDS clause is likely to where they would erode the right in the free promote foreign investment”. trade agreement for that investment to take More outbound investment is occurring into rap- place, then the natural response would be to use idly growing Asian nations, some of which is into the ISDS system of arbitration to address that. recently signed free-trade agreements or countries with less familiar legal systems. As at 2015, Australia Companies investing offshore value a legal had $542.6 billion in foreign direct investments over- mechanism that protects their interests. The Chief seas. This more than doubles the amount of foreign Operating Officer of Australia’s Servcorp, Marcus investment overseas in 2001, which stood at $230 bil- Moufarrige, told me: “the role [of government], at a lion. China has emerged as Australia’s fifth-largest diplomatic level, is to ensure Australian businesses direct investment destination. In 2001, foreign direct are protected overseas”. investment stood at $395 million. In 2014, Australia As a former trade minister and adviser to global has $14.6 billion invested in China—approximately businesses, Andrew Robb reinforced: 2.6 per cent of our total investment. Investment into ASEAN economies has grown from 6.3 billion [ISDS has] given confidence to our companies in 2001 to 37.6 billion in 2015. ASEAN economies to go into countries where they are not familiar make up 7 per cent of Australian FDI investment with the legal system. It allows Australian abroad as at 2015. These countries have less familiar companies to access a framework where a local legal structures than the traditional destinations of court would probably never find in their favour. outbound investment which has usually been into The arguments against ISDS are wrong. the “Anglosphere” nations such as the UK and USA.

36 Quadrant April 2017 How Concealed Protectionism Threatens Australia’s Trade

Yet f one o Australia’s major political parties is established in 1965 and its enabling treaty has been wedded to a view that ISDS has none of these ben- ratified by 151 nations. efits. Labor’s last trade minister, Craig Emerson, There is always room for improvement, and said in 2012: the UN Conference on Trade and Development has recommended “tailoring of the ISDS system”, Weo d not and will not support investor- including the creation of a standing international state dispute settlement provisions … This is investment tribunal. This is a sensible suggestion government policy … It’s the result of a cabinet which would provide more confidence that the legal decision in April last year, reaffirmed at the processes will be clear and consistent. At least, it [Labor Party’s] national conference. might stop Centre-Left parties such as Labor from needlessly blocking or changing trade agreements. Labor has maintained this position since in its Before Donald Trump scuttled the TPP, many years in opposition. Launching the Labor Party’s citizens of the Pacific Rim may have heard of the trade policy during the 2016 federal election cam- TPP only when mentioned in conjunction with paign, the shadow minister for trade Penny Wong ISDS. To formalise the established convention that said: governments do not give away rights under ISDS, the TPP exhaustively protects legislators’ rights to There are also ISDS provisions in four of legislate for public welfare, health, safety and envi- Australia’s earlier free trade agreements and in ronmental reasons. As Dartmouth trade expert 21 bilateral investment treaties. Some of these Douglas Irwin wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2016: provisions were drafted many years ago and do not contain the safeguards, carve-outs and And despite populist claims to the contrary, the tighter definitions of more contemporary ISDS TPP’s provisions for settling disputes between provisions. A [future] Labor Government will investors and governments and dealing with develop a negotiating plan to remove ISDS intellectual property rights are reasonable. provisions in these agreements. In the early 1990s, similar fears about such provisions in the WTO were just as exaggerated If future Australian governments seek removal and ultimately proved baseless. of ISDS from existing trade agreements, it would be a large and controversial body of work which In other words, we have seen this film before. would necessitate the review of almost every We just have to remember the scenes and call out Australian trade and investment agreement. Any concealed protectionism as necessary. ISDS removal project would require a significant investment of diplomatic resources. Foreign gov- ustralia provides a great case in point of the ernments might use the opportunity to negotiate impact of anti-ISDS sentiment on executive further changes. It is unlikely all governments will Agovernment, trade policy and a nation’s economic agree to removing ISDS, and therefore whole trade opportunities. ISDS is one of the reasons Australia’s agreements and export opportunities will be lost. trifecta of North Asian bilateral agreements were Removing ISDS would also send a message to the not concluded during the Labor administration of domestic business community that the government 2007 to 2013. Yet it is more likely to be the result will not pursue legal mechanisms to protect or of poor research rather than ideological obsession. encourage outbound investment. Australia’s governments did not understand ISDS clauses particularly well and their concerns about hird, its opponents argue that the tribunals ISDS were overblown. Similarly, the potential ben- and processes of ISDS are secret. Yet the efits and protections Australian investors stood to Tplain-packaging case against Australia was heard receive were not considered. During this malaise by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which was New Zealand was able to conclude an agreement set up by the Hague Convention, hardly a flimsy with China which delivered transformational ben- or discredited heritage. The second test of plain- efits to the New Zealand dairy industry, partly at packaging laws occurred between Uruguay and Australia’s expense. Philip Morris in July 2016, which was resolved in The benefits of a bilateral agreement during Uruguay’s favour in the International Centre for this disruptive period of trade policy should not be Settlement of Investment Disputes. The Centre is overlooked. Once Australia’s new trade agreement part of the World Bank—an institution established with China was agreed, in the first three quarters of following the Second World War and the Bretton 2016 (the first nine months of operation) the value Woods conference of 1944. The Centre itself was of Australian exports to China more than doubled

Quadrant April 2017 37 How Concealed Protectionism Threatens Australia’s Trade for cherries, abalone, medicaments, grapes, wine leastf i national leaders want to go down the dis- and oranges. Australia also gained ground against credited protectionist route, let them do it transpar- New Zealand’s dairy industry with a 28 per cent ently, not by using the fig leaf of ISDS. increase in fresh cheese exports. ISDS should be retained, supported and Andrew Bragg is the Director of Policy and Research improved in future trade agreements. At the very at the Menzies Research Centre.

On Courage i.m. Geoffrey Wentworth

Courages i the slow burn virtue Necessity propels it Wake up, remember, endure, repeat Unlike the short sharp bang of bravery What compels you to it may ask years of you I know now your dignity was in denial Of all of us you knew the score Resolved to see it out in silence Ignore the rising tally of the falls The telltale gait Pretend that you were still deciding Whether or not to walk through that door Laugh it off, as soldiers will, to overwrite the fear I wish now we had taken all our cues from you You hated the noise of our concern Our hovering, our solicitude We did better when we let you be But to us, back then, there seemed so little time I see now you looked far ahead As you sat in your stiff and stubborn pride At those awkward gatherings Of the newly-diagnosed While others blindly sought advice On how to eat, talk, walk You took the experts aside And asked And how will I die?

Elisabeth Wentworth

38 Quadrant April 2017 Infinite? For Leo

Soonerr o later, we are all reduced to this— A single number teetering on the edge of a couplet, always reminded of the power of two, forever questioning the value of one. Searching through sums like lovers infinitely trying to find a whole in the fraction. We could have joined forces both you and I strengthening our parts as a pair, but in my heart’s quest for convergence, I lost yours to divergence. So now, This is it You’ll stay “you” while I’ll remain “I” A Reading from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians incalculable and yearning for a number, (i.m. Michael Hewitt. For Natalie Hewitt) more rational than π. He enters, with a touch at her back, guides her Cassandra Dickinson to one of the few empty places. In turn, she brushes lint from his shoulder. They settle among us. This is it. The light is honeyed; there is a peewit outside, calling, wincing off. Hay-making season. The smell of grasses drying. This is it, big man. Your people are here. This is old Crookwell. You’d know. You’d’ve done this yourself, big-hearted man, any number of times—St Mary’s, your church, where you were married, from where you’ll be taken. “She’ll be a big one,” we say, “Get there early.” This is it: in the quiet river of the responses: in the answering silence, in each body murmuring with the words which hum of our mortality. This is it. Taken out from the day we again know something and despite our coarseness and forgetfulness touch death, and moved, are moved into love, even in the casualness of a gesture. Never more so than when that slight, shy woman stepped to the lectern and from her little body gave clear, assured shape to those words of Paul as I have never heard before, for you, her brother- in-law, you big man. Those words read, spoke. And being spoken, enacted, no, breathed life, love.

Russell Erwin

Quadrant April 2017 39 Gregory Melleuish

Howard Haters and the History Wars

n 2003 the Howard government was in power lenge, and hence provisional. in Australia and Howard hating was at its Gignosco, of course, is where our word gnosti- height. It was what passed for political analysis cism comes from. The gnostic knows, and his or oIn the Left, with Robert Manne leading the way. her knowledge is not open to challenge. That is the That year a new book, The History Wars, appeared mark of the modern Left intellectual. That is why written by Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark. it is crucial to insist that the origins of history lie in Browsing in the university shop, I came across inquiring, not in knowing. The one is a process; the a copy of the book, bought it and began to read other a finished product. One is open-ended; the it. I was puzzled that a man like Macintyre, who other is closed. One inquires into things, which is enjoyed quite a bit of government patronage, was not the same as knowing something, and the out- attacking the Howard government for its hostility come of an inquiry is not necessarily knowledge. to history and the history profession. Consider the example above. Historians must I noticed that Macintyre had spelled the name inquire into Howard’s actions using the available of my friend Imre Salusinszky incorrectly and con- evidence. It would be illegitimate for them simply tacted him to tell him. I also noticed that Macintyre to give a judgment on those actions because they had made a mistake in his account of the origins “know” what Howard was like (which is, of course, of the word history. In The History Wars Macintyre what many of his critics have done). Historians states: “The word ‘history’ comes from the classical who believe that they possess wisdom may find Greek word ‘to know’, with connotations of learn- themselves open to charges of hubris. ing wisdom and judgement.” Imre Salusinszky e-mailed the opinion page In my article in the Australian of September 3, editor of the Australian, Tom Switzer, and the 2003, I pointed out that the Greek word for “to result was an article on the day when the book know” was gignosco and that the Greek word his- was launched. The article contained many things toreo means “to inquire in or about a thing” (Liddell and was focused on what seemed to me to be the and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon). excessive amount of influence which Macintyre To inquire is clearly not the same thing as to apparently exercised in the Australian historical know. After all there are a variety of ways of know- profession. It discussed the origins of the mean- ing. The Greeks themselves wanted knowledge that ing of history as well as taking issue with some was certain; the sort of knowledge that mathemat- of his account of the famous Blainey episode at ics can supply but historical inquiry cannot. The the University of Melbourne in 1984 when most only historical knowledge that inquiry or research of the History Department engaged in what is can establish is provisional in nature; historians rely now termed “virtue signalling” by writing a let- on empirical data that may turn out to be wrong ter to the Age condemning comments Geoffrey and is always open to new interpretations. Blainey had made at a rather obscure talk given in This is not to say that there are no facts; these Warrnambool regarding the rate of Asian immi- form the bedrock of historical inquiry. For exam- gration into Australia. I also pointed out that ple, John Howard was Prime Minister of Australia Macintyre seemed to be claiming that the historian from 1996 to 2007 and he was instrumental in Geoffrey Bolton was at a meeting at the University bringing into being a number of policies. The rea- of Melbourne when he was not, as I knew, having sons for those policies and their effects are open to been present at that meeting. interpretation. The historian can inquire into such But the passage in my article which seemed to matters but their conclusions will be open to chal- cause the greatest impact was the following:

40 Quadrant April 2017 Howard Haters and the History Wars

Macintyre claims that history is under threat However, on September 5 I received an e-mail because the Howard Government has made from Sue Rowley, who was the Executive Director dubious appointments to the various boards of the Humanities section of the ARC. It was and cultural agencies under its control. Never also sent to all of the academics who comprised mind that Macintyre has enjoyed considerable the Humanities panel and to my vice-chancellor. patronage under the incumbent Government. Coming from a government employee, this e-mail He is a member of the Civics Education Group was completely improper, and the fact that it was of the Department of Education, Science circulated to so many other people, including my and Training that oversees the Discovering vice-chancellor, is an indication that it was intended Democracy program, and hence civics education to bully and intimidate me. in Australia. He is the chairman of the board of In the e-mail Rowley stated a number of things, management of the National Centre for History including: Education and a member of the governing committee of the History Educators Network I was disappointed that you would make the of Australia. The Commonwealth Government unfair and untrue implication that Professor funds both bodies. Macintyre’s chairing of the Humanities He is chairman of the humanities and and Creative Expert Advisory Committee creative arts panel of the Australian Research (HCA EAC) had resulted improperly in a Council and the only historian on the panel. disproportionate number of grants being He became chairman of the panel in 2002. In awarded to historians at the University of that year, more than one-quarter of the grants Melbourne. awarded in the area of historical studies went to I regret your intemperate and ungenerous members of Macintyre’s faculty. comments about your colleagues and the ARC.

This passage was simply meant to point out that Now I did not make any statement that Macintyre had hardly been shut out from being able Macintyre had engaged in improper behaviour. to have his say as a member of a number of gov- I drew no implications from the statement which ernment bodies, including the Australian Research I made, which needed to be placed in the context Council. Historians in his department certainly of the preceding sentences. Equally my comments had not suffered at the hands of the Howard gov- were hardly made in an “intemperate” way. ernment. Perhaps it would have been better if a If she had concerns about what was in the article statement along the following lines, “There is no she should have written to me in a private capacity suggestion that Professor Macintyre acts improperly and asked what I meant in that sentence. That would in his role at the ARC”, had been included. I made be how a civilised human being would behave. a simple factual observation about the allocation of Instead I received an e-mail which was designed to grants but it was one which, I was to discover, would threaten me from a government employee who had have enormous implications for me. no right to engage in such things. It was essentially I am sure that Macintyre did not like being chal- rogue behaviour. If a government employee behaved lenged, but he made no attempt to debate any of in such a fashion today he or she would be sacked. the points I had made. For example, the discussion Interestingly, the University of Wollongong made about the origins of the word history was carried on no attempt to do anything about my article. I was by other academics, leading to a lively discussion in not summoned to explain it and there was no threat the letters pages of the Australian on the etymology of disciplinary action. However, the vice-chancellor of Greek words. I have the good fortune of hav- decided to issue an apology to Macintyre without ing a Classicist wife, and together we defended our ever discussing the matter with me. Macintyre says, position, pointing out that the cases where historeo in his afterword, that he “was touched by a phone meant truth were of later usage, and arguing that if call from the Vice-Chancellor of Wollongong one wished to know the meaning of Greek words University who regretted the aspersions cast on my the appropriate reference work was Liddell and role in the ARC”. Other people told me that the Scott, not the Oxford English Dictionary. Macintyre university was frightened that the ARC would take may well have felt humiliated that someone from the punitive action against it. Macintyre’s afterword provinces outside of Melbourne had challenged his says nothing about Sue Rowley’s e-mail. wisdom, but there was not a word out of the Great Man, until twelve months later when he attempted year n later i 2004, when the second edition a rebuttal of my arguments in the afterword to the of The History Wars came out, I wrote another second edition of the book. aArticle for the Australian, in which I bemoaned the

Quadrant April 2017 41 Howard Haters and the History Wars fact that there were problems with Australian his- to keep everything behind a wall of silence. Don’t tory and that students too often found it somewhat seek clarification, just send out a defamatory e-mail boring: that combines condemnation and threats. The response for the gnostic who possesses wisdom is This may help explain why, for many of them— not to engage in calm, rational and civilised discus- in fact, far too many—Australian history is a sion but to look at ways of punishing the deviant. giant turn-off. In conversation with many of Needless to say, the proposed letter to the vice- these students the word “boring” often crops up. chancellor went nowhere. It may have been sent but In many cases the experience of the compulsory it had no consequences. civics-Australian history subject in Year 10 in NSW is the cause of their disenchantment. The ne might say that I escaped unscathed from problem, I suspect, is that Australian history these nasty incidents; maybe and maybe not. has become just another excuse for preaching OThey may have had ramifications which continue to politically correct ideology at students. the present day. A significant issue is that too many members In any case, it is worth recounting what those of the history profession in Australia have an of us who lived through the History Wars when attitude problem. Instead of whingeing about Howard hating was at its peak, and who were how awful everything is, they should view not members of the Howard-hating pack, had to the present situation as an opportunity and endure. It was not pretty. It was ugly at the meet- a challenge. Their particular challenge is to ing of the Australian History Association held in teach the type of history appropriate for the Newcastle in 2004 when there was a discussion internationalised world of their students. about how they were going to “get Windschuttle”. Sitting in the room during that discussion was to Twofy o m colleagues at Wollongong took experience the fury of the mob. And it was more exception to my arguments and, being academ- than just unpleasant for those of us who had to ics, assumed that I was referring endure the Howard haters every to them, which I was not. It was day. a general argument, and I had not ote the tactics: To be fair, my university has even thought of them when I wrote N the right “to express opinions, it. They sent around an e-mail to We do not want to including unpopular or contro- everyone in the School of History discuss the matter versial opinions about issues and and Politics, claiming that I had ideas” written into its Academic “impugned” their “capacities and with you, we do not Enterprise Agreement. The frame- professionalism” and that I had want public debate. work for free speech is still there. abused my role as Head of School. We do not like what The problem is with those academ- Unfortunately for them, I was not ics who seek to discipline and pun- identified as Head of School in the you say and we will ish those who express views they article, so it was clear that this was seek to discipline do not agree with, who go on the not an “official” position of any kind. attack without first seeking clari- The e-mail included a letter drafted and punish you for fication, and who do not appear to the vice-chancellor demanding what you have said. to appreciate the importance of that action be taken against me conducting debate in a calm and and for which they sought addi- civilised fashion. This is what hap- tional signatures. They claimed that they could not pens when historians forget that history is about respond in the Australian to my arguments because inquiry and instead see themselves as gnostics who they somehow knew, in advance, that they would believe that they possess wisdom which is not open be denied “right of reply”. But there are lots of other to challenge. fora where they could have placed their arguments should they have wished. If they had a case to argue Gregory Melleuish is Associate Professor in the they could easily have found somewhere to put it. School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the Note the tactics: We do not want to discuss the University of Wollongong. His most recent book is matter with you, we do not want public debate. We Despotic State or Free Individual? Two Traditions do not like what you say and we will seek to disci- of Democracy in Australia (Australian Scholarly pline and punish you for what you have said. Best Publishing, 2014).

42 Quadrant April 2017 David Smith

:Australia’s Head of State The Definitive Judgment

ustralia’s system of government is that The governor-general exercised these constitutional of a parliamentary democracy under the powers in his or her own right, and not as a repre- Crown, based on the British Westminster sentative or surrogate of the sovereign. Moreover, sAystem of representative parliamentary govern- the governor-general’s other powers, conferred ment. Our sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II, Queen by legislation passed by the Commonwealth of Australia. The Queen plays an important part Parliament, such as the making of regulations, or in our system of government—in fact she is an the appointment of statutory office holders; and integral part of the carefully calibrated system of conferred by the standing orders of the houses of checks and balances prescribed in the Australian the Parliament, such as opening a session of the Constitution. She is part of our Parliament, along Parliament; were also conferred directly on the with the Senate and the House of Representatives. governor-general and could be exercised by no one She appoints the governor-general, on the advice of else—not even the Queen. To understand this, it is the prime minister, to be her representative. Bills necessary to distinguish between our sovereign and passed by Parliament are given the royal assent by our head of state. the governor-general in order for them to become law. The defence force and the public service serve he governor-general, originally a British offi- the Crown. cial, with duties and responsibilities to the As well as being the Queen’s representative BTritish government, became an Australian office- under section 2 of the Constitution, the governor- holder, with duties and responsibilities to the general has significant powers under section 61 of Australian government and people. However, he the Constitution—powers which he or she exer- was from the outset entitled to exercise his own cises in his or her own right, and not as the sover- discretion and judgment. The change in his rela- eign’s representative. tionship with the British government occurred Thus the Constitution gives us a well-ordered without the text of the Constitution being altered. system of checks and balances, with the Queen of No one described Queen Victoria as “head of Australia at its apex, and a governor-general as the state”: the term was not in use in the Australian Queen’s representative, with separate roles under colonies before Federation, nor was it in general use sections 2 and 61 of the Constitution. And all of elsewhere in the British Empire. The term was not this gives us our system of government as a consti- used during the Convention debates in Australia in tutional monarchy. the 1890s and it does not appear in the Australian In preparing for the 1954 royal visit to Australia— Constitution. the first ever by a reigning sovereign—the Menzies Section 2 of the Constitution describes the government wanted to involve the Queen in some governor-general as the Queen’s representative who of the formal processes of government, such as can exercise the prerogative powers and functions presiding at a meeting of the Federal Executive she may assign to him or her, but section 61 provides Council, or giving the royal assent to bills that for the executive power of the Commonwealth had been passed by the Parliament. However, the to be exercised by the governor-general. Two of Solicitor-General discovered something that had Australia’s distinguished constitutional scholars been largely ignored since Federation. He pointed who had been involved in the drafting of the out that the Constitution placed all constitutional Constitution, A. Inglis Clark and W. Harrison powers, apart from the power to appoint the gover- Moore, pointed out at the time that the Constitution nor-general, in the hands of the governor-general. conferred powers on the governor-general that the

Quadrant April 2017 43 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment

British Parliament had not conferred on any other the head of state was used to justify the criticism of holder of vice-regal office in the empire. him over events in the Anglican diocese during his Since the Constitution does not in terms iden- time as Archbishop of Brisbane, and became the tify our head of state, he or she must be the person basis for calls for him to resign. So much so that the who exercises the functions of head of state. This Australian’s Editor-at-Large, Paul Kelly, was able can only be the governor-general. The sovereign’s to ask: only constitutional function is to appoint or remove the governor-general. have Australians decided not by formal The claim that the governor-general is our head referendum but by informal debate that the of state is not some bizarre theory dreamed up in Governor-General is our head of state? … Take recent years for the republic debate. Lord Dufferin, the media eruption of calling the Governor- then Governor-General of Canada, described a General head of state, pursued in the papers, governor-general as a constitutional head of state the ABC and commercial media. Simon Crean in a speech in 1873. Constitutional scholars such as [then Leader of the Opposition] now refers to Professor D.A. Low, Dr David Butler, Professor the office as the head of state. Brian Galligan and Professor Stuart Macintyre have also referred to the governor-general as a head Sir Zelman Cowen, a distinguished constitu- of state. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam consid- tional lawyer, described the governor-general as head ered Sir John Kerr to be Australia’s head of state, of state in 1977 when Governor-General designate, and ensured that when the Governor-General and again in 1995, thirteen years after leaving office. travelled overseas in 1975 he did so So too did Governor-General, as head of state and was acknowl- General Sir Peter Cosgrove, in an edged as such by host countries. interview given in 2015 while in The media refer to the governor- The claim that the office. general as head of state. In 1977 the governor-general A significant contribution to the opening sentence of an editorial is our head of state debate appeared in the Common­ in the Canberra Times was: “We wealth Government Directory in shall have today a new Governor- is not some bizarre August 1992, which had this General, Sir Zelman Cowen, as our theory dreamed up description of the governor-gen- Head of State.” The Australian pub- eral: “He is the head of state in lished a speech by Mr Bill Hayden in recent years for whom the executive power of the to the Royal Australasian College the republic debate. Commonwealth is vested.” The of Physicians in 1995 under the description was used in fifteen suc- heading: “The Governor-General cessive editions of the Directory has made one of the most controversial speeches over more than four years, but disappeared from ever delivered by an Australian Head of State.” Its the December 1996 edition. It reappeared in vari- next day’s editorial said, “it is perfectly appropriate ous issues in 1997, 1998 and 1999, making a total of at this stage of our constitutional development that twenty-one issues in all. the Head of State address important issues of social policy”. In 1996 it referred to the Governor-General, ut s all this i only anecdotal evidence. The legal Sir William Deane, as head of state, and soon such position must be the final arbiter. references became commonplace, without adjec- BDuring 1900 Queen Victoria signed a number tives such as “de facto” or “virtual” or “effective”. of constitutional documents relating to the future By the time Dr Peter Hollingworth succeeded Commonwealth of Australia, including Letters Sir William Deane in 2001, any media coyness Patent constituting the office of governor-general, about referring to the governor-general as head of and Instructions to the governor-general on the state had disappeared, and scholarly commenta- manner in which he was to perform certain of his tors such as Richard McGarvie, formerly Governor constitutional duties. of Victoria and a Judge of the Supreme Court of Inglis Clark and Harrison Moore said at the Victoria; and Professor George Winterton, at the time that these were superfluous, or of doubtful time Professor of Law at the University of New legality, because the governor-general’s position South Wales and later Professor of Constitutional and authority stemmed from the Constitution, and Law at the University of Sydney, referredo t the the sovereign could not re-create the office or direct governor-general as head of state. the incumbent in the performance of his constitu- When Dr Hollingworth faced the crisis which tional duties. led to his resignation in 2003, the fact that he was Inglis Clark pointed out that sections 2 and 61

44 Quadrant April 2017 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment of the Constitution were unique. The powers and intervention in their affairs and handing functions of every other vice-regal officer in the them over, unlike the case of Canada, to the empire were conferred by the Letters Patent which Governor-General? created the office, and by the commission which appointed him, whereas the office of Governor- The 1926 and the 1930 Imperial Conferences General of Australia was created by, and the holder changed the status of the vice-regal office and exercised powers and functions derived from, the established a new relationship between governors- Constitution. He rejected the view that section 2 general and their governments. conferred a power to control the governor-gen- At the 1926 conference the empire’s prime eral in his exercise of the executive power of the ministers declared that the governor-general of a Commonwealth pursuant to section 61. That view dominion was no longer to be the representative of was shared by Harrison Moore, who pointed out His Majesty’s government in Britain, and should that the governor-general’s powers were placed in not remain the formal channel of communication his hands by the Constitution, and the sovereign between the two governments. The conference fur- could not diminish or enlarge them by a prerogative ther resolved that, henceforth, a governor-general instrument. would stand in the same constitutional relationship The views expressed by Clark and Moore were with the dominion government, and hold the same later accepted by Dr H.V. Evatt and in 1975 by the position in relation to the administration of pub- Solicitor-General Maurice Byers QC. lic affairs in the dominion, as did the King with British ministers advising Queen Victoria did the British government and in relation to public not understand these features of our Constitution, affairs in Great Britain. It was also decided that the and for a long time Australian ministers did not dominion government should provide a governor- realise that the Letters Patent and the Instructions general with copies of all important documents and which Queen Victoria issued were inappropriate. he should be kept as fully informed of cabinet busi- Between 1902 and 1920, Edward VII and George V ness and public affairs in the dominion as was the issued further Instructions on the advice of British King in Great Britain. ministers, and in 1958 Queen Elizabeth II amended At the 1930 Imperial Conference Australia’s the Letters Patent and gave further instructions to Prime Minister James Scullin brought up the the Governor-General on the advice of Australian appointment of governors-general, and the confer- ministers. ence resolved that the King should act on the advice In 1916, in a Canadian case before the Privy of his ministers in the dominion concerned. This Council, Viscount Haldane said: led to the appointment of Sir Isaac Isaacs as the first Australian-born governor-general on January Thereso i n provision in the British North 22, 1931. America Act corresponding to s. 61 of the Australia accommodated these developments Australian Commonwealth Act which, subject without any change to the text of the Constitution. to the declaration of the discretionary right of delegation by the Sovereign in … s. 2, provides hen Prime Minister Menzies wanted to that the executive power, though declared to involve the Queen in constitutional duties be in the Sovereign, is yet exercisable by the Wduring her visit in 1954, it was proposed that she Governor-General. should preside at a meeting of the Federal Executive Council and open a session of the Commonwealth The statement was made in the judgment, not Parliament. As this was the first visit to Australia during argument. by a reigning sovereign, the Solicitor-General, In 1922, during the hearing of an application by Professor K.H. Bailey, was asked for a legal opinion. the state governments for special leave to appeal to He advised that it would be necessary to arrange the Privy Council from the High Court, Viscount the business of the Federal Executive Council with Haldane said: some care. In his view such a meeting could not exercise any statutory functions conferred on the Under.1 s 6 it is declared the Executive power Governor-General in Council unless Parliament of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen passed enabling legislation. As a result of his advice and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Royal Powers Act 1953 was passed, section 2(1) the Queen’s representative … Does it not put of which provides: the Sovereign in the position of having parted, so far as the affairs of the Commonwealth At any time when the Queen is personally are concerned, with every shadow of active present in Australia, any power under an Act

Quadrant April 2017 45 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment

exercisable by the Governor-General may be As a matter of law, however, I do not think that exercised by the Queen. the change in the constitutional conventions, important though it is, can deprive the express The Act further provides in section 2(3) that the designation of the Governor-General, in respect governor-general may exercise any of his statutory of these matters, of its ordinary legal effect in powers while the Queen is in Australia, and this the interpretation of the Constitution. has been the case. Special provision was also made to enable the Queen to open the Commonwealth Professor Bailey went on to discuss the ques- Parliament. tions of the Queen opening parliament and pre- In 1901, 1927 and 1934, during visits by members siding over a meeting of the Federal Executive of the royal family, the Australian government had Council. He then wrote: taken the view that the sovereign could not author- ise the visitor to perform functions in relation to The executive power of the Commonwealth, the Parliament that the governor-general ordinarily by section 61 of the Constitution, is declared performed. Professor Bailey agreed. to be vested in the Queen. It is also, in the The standing orders of both houses of the same section, declared to be “exercisable” Australian Parliament conferred functions on by the Governor-General as the Queen’s the governor-general for the opening of a new representative. In the face of this provision, I Parliament and of a new session of an existing feel it is difficult to contend that the Queen, Parliament. In 1953, as a result of Bailey’s advice, even though present in Australia, may exercise both houses amended their standing orders to ena- in person functions of executive government ble the Queen to do this. However, nothing could which are specifically assigned by the be done, without a constitutional amendment, to constitution to the Governor-General. The enable the Queen to exercise the governor-general’s appointment of a Minister of State (section 64) constitutional powers. As Professor Bailey put it: is an example.

The Constitution expressly vests in the This confirmed earlier views that the governor- Governor-General the power or duty to general is not the Queen’s delegate in the exercise perform a number of the Crown’s functions in of constitutional, that is, head-of-state, powers and the Legislature and the Executive Government functions; and explains why the Queen has never of the Commonwealth. In this regard, the exercised them, even when in Australia. Professor Australian Constitution is a great deal more Bailey’s final sentence above explains why the specific and detailed than is the earlier Queen could not intervene in 1975, when asked Constitution of Canada. to by the former Speaker, to restore Mr Whitlam to office as Prime Minister after he had been dis- After commenting on the changes since 1900 missed by Sir John Kerr. in the relationship between Australia and Great Earlier in 1975 the Commonwealth Solicitor- Britain, Professor Bailey said: General, Maurice Byers QC, advised Mr Whitlam that the Royal Instructions to the Governor- Iot d no think it follows that the Constitution General were inconsistent with the Constitution must be read as permitting the Sovereign to and that the executive power of the Commonwealth perform each and every function the Governor- exercisable by the Governor-General could not be General may perform. In respect of the affected by Royal Instructions; and that this had particular functions which the Constitution been the case since 1901. vests nominatim in the Governor-General, The Constitution binds the Crown. The consti- the Constitution must, as it seems to me, be tutional prescription is that executive power is exer- regarded as having designated the mode or cisable by the governor-general although vested in instrument in or by means of which the relevant the Queen. What is exercisable is original executive Royal function is to be performed. In the power: that is, the very thing vested in the Queen light of the current conventions of Dominion by section 61. And it is exercisable by the Queen’s status, it may very well be that some of the representative, not her delegate or agent. The lan- constitutional provision expressly vesting guage of sections 2 and 61 had in this respect no specific functions in the Governor-General contemporary parallel and suggests (as section would not now be necessary, as they were 61 makes clear) a vice-regal status. So much was thought to be in 1900, in order to assure the full suggested by Harrison Moore in 1900. The same working of responsible government in Australia. view has also been expressed by the present Chief

46 Quadrant April 2017 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment

Justicef o Australia more than once. Byers referred the Letters Patent, continued under the Fraser to the views expressed by Viscount Haldane in government, and was completed under the Hawke the Privy Council in 1916 and 1922 and concluded: government. On August 21, 1984, on the advice of “I think no place remains for Instructions to the Prime Minister Hawke, the Queen revoked Queen Governor-General.” Victoria’s Letters Patent, all amending Letters Patent, and all Royal Instructions. New Letters he dismissal of the Whitlam government on Patent were granted which, in the words of the November 11, 1975, provided further support Prime Minister, would: Tfor the legal opinions given over the previous sev- enty-five years. Writing after the event, Sir John achieve the objective of modernising the Kerr stated: administrative arrangements of the Office of Governor-General and, at the same time, I t did no tell the Queen in advance that clarify His Excellency’s position under the I intended to exercise these powers on 11 Constitution. I would emphasise that the new November. I did not ask her approval. The Letters Patent do not in any way affect the decisions I took were without the Queen’s position of Her Majesty as Queen of Australia advance knowledge. The reason for this was or diminish in any way the constitutional that I believed, if dismissal action were to be powers of the Governor-General. taken, that it could be taken only by me and that it must be done on my sole responsibility. There were no further Royal Instructions. The My view was that to inform Her Majesty in views of Inglis Clarke and Harrison Moore were advance of what I intended to do, and when, finally vindicated, and the governor-general was would be to risk involving her in an Australian acknowledged as the holder of an independent political and constitutional crisis in relation to office created by the Constitution and not subject which she had no legal powers; and I must not to Royal Instructions. take such a risk. n 1985 the Hawke government set up a After the Governor-General had withdrawn Constitutional Commission to carry out a fun- Mr Whitlam’s commission, the former Speaker damentalI review of the Constitution. Three of its wrote to the Queen asking her to restore Whitlam members were constitutional lawyers—Sir Maurice to office. In reply her Private Secretary told the Byers, the chairman; Professor Campbell, Professor Speaker: of Law at Monash University; and Professor Zines, formerly Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Ase w understand the situation here, the Australian National University. The other mem- Australian Constitution firmly places the bers were former heads of government—Sir Rupert prerogative powers of the Crown in the hands Hamer, Liberal Premier of Victoria from 1972 to of the Governor-General as the representative 1981, and Gough Whitlam, Labor Prime Minister of the Queen of Australia. The only person from 1972 to 1975. The commission was assisted by competent to commission an Australian Prime an Advisory Committee on Executive Government Minister is the Governor-General, and the chaired by Sir Zelman Cowen. In 1988 the commis- Queen has no part in the decisions which the sion concluded: Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution. Her Majesty, as Queen Although the Governor-General is the Queen’s of Australia, is watching events in Canberra representative in Australia, the Governor- with close interest and attention, but it would General is in no sense a delegate of the Queen. not be proper for her to intervene in person in The independence of the office is highlighted by matters which are so clearly placed within the changes which have been made in recent years jurisdiction of the Governor-General by the to the Royal instruments … Constitution Act. Onef o its terms of reference asked it to report The defining power of a head of state is to on the revision of the Constitution to “adequately appoint and remove the prime minister, and the reflect Australia’s status as an independent nation”. events of November 1975 confirmed that the gover- The Commission concluded: nor-general is our head of state. As a result of Byers’s opinion, work began Its i clear from these events, and recognition under the Whitlam government on a revision of by the world community, that at some time

Quadrant April 2017 47 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment

between 1926 and the end of World War II to section 61 under which the governor-general Australia had achieved full independence as exercises the executive power of the Commonwealth, a sovereign state … The British Government or to the views of Inglis Clark, Harrison Moore, ceased to have any responsibility in relation to Viscount Haldane, Dr Evatt, Sir Kenneth Bailey, matters coming within the area of responsibility Sir Maurice Byers, Sir John Kerr, Sir Harry Gibbs of the Federal Government and Parliament. and Sir Garfield Barwick. Sir Anthony intervened again in May 1998 On , June 7 1995, Prime Minister Keating said after the Constitutional Convention when in a statement to the House proposing a move to he delivered a paper titled “The Republic and a republic: “The President will perform essentially Australian Constitutional Development” at the the same functions as the Governor-General.” He Australian National University. He said that “the continued: Constitution makes the Queen our constitutional head of state” but in terms it says no such thing. To the Government believes that, on balance, support his argument he referred to the evolution whatever the immediate attraction ... it would of the role from being the representative of the not be desirable to attempt to codify the reserve British government to being part of the Australian powers: and that the ... conventions at present government and said that it occurred over a period governing their exercise by the Governor- of years, but as noted above it actually occurred General should be transferred to the Australian at the 1926 Imperial Conference. He said that the Head of State without alteration. Royal Style and Titles Acts 1953 and 1973 were passed to enable the Queen to open the Parliament, but On coming into office the Howard government set this was achieved by amendments to the Standing in train arrangements that led to the Constitutional Orders of the Houses—the Royal Style and Titles Convention in 1998. The republican Acts do not refer to the opening of model which emerged was based on Parliament. He said that when the that proposed by Prime Minister o one has ever Queen was in Australia she took Keating. Significantly, “The powers N over head-of-state functions from of the President shall be the same explained how a the governor-general, but this has as those currently exercised by president carrying never happened, and could not the Governor-General.” The happen. Convention also resolved that out the functions Sir Anthony supported his the reserve powers of the Crown of the governor- argument by asserting that the exercisable by the governor-general general would be a governor-general could not attend would continue under a republic official functions when the Queen and be exercisable by the president. head of state, but a was present and described this as A major argument of those wishing governor-general a constitutional convention that for an Australian republic is that was “robust and full of life”. This our governor-general is not our carrying out the same is not correct. There is no such head of state. No one has ever functions is not. constitutional convention. They explained how a president carrying have both been present on many out the functions of the governor- occasions at official functions. general would be a head of state, but a governor- He referred to the opening of the High Court by general carrying out the same functions is not. the Queen in 1980 when Sir Zelman Cowen was not present, but this had nothing to do with the t is not surprising that most Australians do not supposed convention. Draft arrangements had understand the role of the governor-general. Sir been prepared, which I had cleared with the Palace, IAnthony Mason did not. He took a prominent that provided for the Governor-General to be in role in the referendum campaign, and in a the official party on the dais, but his presence was television interview in 1997, when asked about the vetoed by Malcolm Fraser so that Fraser could take constitutional monarchist view that we already had a more prominent place in the official procession an Australian head of state, he said: “They should and on the dais. Sir Ninian Stephen was more re-read section 2 of the Constitution.” However, fortunate. The Queen came here in 1982, 1986 and Professor Zines had said ten years earlier that section 1988 during his term of office and they were both 2 now has “little or no operation”, and in 2001 Sir present at official functions. The most important Gerard Brennan doubted whether the section “has was the opening of the new Parliament House on any present relevance”. Sir Anthony did not refer May 9, 1988. A painting of the occasion hangs in

48 Quadrant April 2017 Australia’s Head of State: The Definitive Judgment

Parliament House showing the Queen addressing prevent a Court of Law from ordering the the gathering in the Great Hall. It shows the Sovereign to perform a constitutional duty are Governor-General seated on the dais behind her. applicable to a case where it is alleged that the Sir Anthony as Chief Justice was seated in the front Constitutional Head of a State has ... failed in row. the performance of a duty imposed on him as such Head of State. lthough the foregoing may be persuasive, the decision of the High Court in The King v The This decision has not been by-passed in recent AGovernor of the State of South Australia (1907) 4 CLR years and left in a legal backwater. It was treated 1497 settles the question. The case involved an as good law by the High Court, including twice application for an order directing the Governor to by the Mason court, in 1981, 1987, 1988 and 1998. issue a writ for an election to fill a Senate vacancy. The passage of time and the later developments In its unanimous judgment the court, in which all in constitutional law and practice, summarised in five of the Justices sat, held that it had no jurisdic- this paper, in fact have reinforced the conclusions tion to order the Governor to perform any of his reached by the court in 1907. functions as the constitutional head of the state. In Moreover in 1976 the Parliament declared so doing they also held that the governor-general the governor-general to be our head of state in was the constitutional head of the Commonwealth. the Crimes (Internationally Protected Persons) Act, Sir Edmund Barton, delivering the court’s judg- which was passed to give effect to the Convention ment, said: on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, includ- The Governor, as the officiating Constitutional ing Diplomatic Agents. Article 1 of the Convention Head of the State, is accordingly named provides that the term “internationally protected as the person to whom the notification [of person means (a) a Head of State ...” Section 3A(1) the Senate vacancy] is to be given ... So, in of the Act provides: certifying to the Governor-General the names of the Senators elected, chosen, or appointed For the purposes of this Act, the definition of the Governor must be regarded as acting “internationally protected person” in paragraph the capacity of the Constitutional Head of 1 of article 1 of the Convention has effect as the State, being in that capacity the proper if the reference in that definition to a Head channel of communication with the officiating of State included, in relation to Australia, the Constitutional Head of the Commonwealth, Governor-General. the Governor-General. Thus the Constitution, the High Court, the The court continued: Parliament, and current constitutional practice speak with one voice. The governor-general is our A somewhat analogous duty is cast upon the head of state, and the High Court and Viscount State Governors under the Constitutions of Haldane confirm the status of the Queen as our the States, all of which provide that upon sovereign. a dissolution of the House of Assembly the writs for a general election are to be issued * * * by the Governor. It has never been suggested that if the Governor failed to issue the writs a This article was originally published in the mandamus would lie to compel him to do so. Australian Law Journal, December 2015, 89 ALJ There is of course a remedy in such a case but 857. By December 2016 there had been no response it is to be sought from the direct intervention by any constitutional lawyer or republican. That of the Sovereign ... The duty, therefore, is one is, twelve months after publication it remained of the duties which the Constitutional Head unchallenged and uncontradicted. of the State owes to the State (and ... to the Sovereign). Sir David Smith was Official Secretary to five governors-general from 1973 to 1990. His book Head The court concluded: of State: The Governor-General, the Monarchy, the Republic and the Dismissal (Macleay Press, 2005) its i a duty cast upon ... [the Governor] as Head was launched by former Governor-General Bill of the State. And the same reasons which Hayden.

Quadrant April 2017 49 Brian Galligan

Fabricating Aboriginal Voting A o Reply t Keith Windschuttle

n response to my review of his book The first sent my review to John O’Sullivan, editor of Break-Up of Australia: The Real Agenda Behind Quadrant with a comment that I’d be happy to have Aboriginal Recognition, Keith Windschuttle has it sent on to Windschuttle. I received no acknowl- pIublished a response in the March 2017 issue of edgment or response, so published it with Inside Quadrant. He has kindly invited me to respond. It Story. I am told the editor’s non-response was an might seem odd that a review would draw such a oversight, and so it might well have been. lengthy, and at times vitriolic response. However, It does mean that my response to Windschuttle’s the issues in dispute are vital for understanding long rejoinder and dismissive invective needs some Australia’s constitutional history and character, and detailed analysis and presentation of points made the Commonwealth’s early treatment of Aboriginal in the original review. Otherwise Quadrant readers people. would be left with a sustained attack on a short review In particular, did the Australian Constitution published elsewhere. I am grateful to be extended and the first Commonwealth Parliament and gov- this privilege of outlining what Windschuttle has ernment in its Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 taken such lengthy exception to, and for the oppor- treat Aboriginal people as citizens with the same tunity to respond to his criticisms. political rights as everyone else? Or were their polit- ical rights, particularly voting rights, denied? The answer requires some examination of: the relevant Franchise Act 1902: Denying Aboriginal constitutional section—its drafting and intended natives of Australia the vote meaning; the Franchise Act 1902; and whether he Franchise Act 1902 was clear in denying Aboriginal people were excluded or not in practice. the vote to “Aboriginal natives of Australia”, These were the three facets I took up in my review, Talong with aboriginal natives of Asia, Africa and leaving aside more outlandish claims about the the Pacific Islands, except New Zealand. The exclu- “break-up of Australia” and more sensible analysis sion was extended to Aboriginal natives of Australia of the Australian Constitution showing it was not a by means of an amendment to section 4 of the racist document as some critics have claimed. I was Franchise Act. Despite impassioned and noble rhet- writing a review, not an alternative monograph. oric from Senator O’Connor, government leader in Much of Windschuttle’s rejoinder is a lengthy the Senate who introduced the bill, the controver- restatement of arguments and evidence from his sial amendment was eventually passed. The possible book directed at what he calls my “purported anal- saving clause was Section 41 of the Constitution. ysis” that he brands in his introduction as “selec- The wording of Section 4 of the Commonwealth tive, freighted with pre-conception and laughably Franchise Act 1902 is as follows: at odds with fact” and “slipshod scholarship”. Once an academic, Windschuttle should know that such No aboriginal native of Australia Asia Africa or invective typically prefaces weak argument. In his the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand introduction to Part 1 of his response, Windschuttle shall be entitled to have his name placed on an makes much of the refusal of Peter Brown, editor of Electoral Roll unless so entitled under Section Inside Story, who published my review, to publish his 41 of the Constitution. lengthy response, leaving him, in his words, “hold- ing my nose against the stench of yet another decom- The Franchise Act is clear: Aboriginal natives posing body in the graveyard of Australian academic of Australia were excluded, unless entitled under integrity”. For the record, back in December 2016 I Section 41 of the Constitution, which is examined

50 Quadrant April 2017 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting in the next section. try and not Aboriginal natives as defined by the So who was an “Aboriginal native of Australia”? Franchise Act. The meaning and extent of the term became an issue In his response, Windschuttle makes much of his immediately after Federation and was defined nar- tracing of other prominent Aboriginal names using rowly by the first attorney-general, Alfred Deakin. ancestry.com: Goolagongs, Boneys and Professor The particular case related to Section 127 of the Larissa Behrendt. He reports forty women with the Constitution that also uses the term “aboriginal surname Goolagong and twenty-eight Boneys being native”. In his ministerial directive in August 1901, on electoral rolls in New South Wales between Deakin ruled that “half-castes” were not “aborigi- 1913 and 1943, and Larissa Behrendt’s grandmother nal natives” and so were not affected by Section 127 Lavena being on the electoral roll in 1936. This is of the Constitution. Deakin reasoned that this was supposed to clinch the point that Aboriginal people a restrictive clause so should be interpreted nar- were not excluded by the Commonwealth Franchise rowly. Section 127, repealed in the 1967 referendum, Act 1902 since women got the right to vote in New stipulated that “aboriginal natives” were not to be South Wales in 1902. This might appear reassuring counted in determining early voting and financial but is largely beside the point. As with the Tasmanian arrangements for the new Commonwealth. Deakin’s case, we would need to know whether any of these restrictive definition of “aboriginal native” had two people were Aboriginal natives according to the dis- essential parts: being aboriginal meaning a descend- abling legislative category. Windschuttle’s method- ant from the original people of the country, and a ology of testing the restriction on Aboriginal voting native meaning born in that country. This meant by using a broader modern category of Aboriginal that an Asian born in Australia was not an abo- people is fundamentally flawed. Nor is it conclusive riginal native of Asia, being a native of Australia. to find that there were women with the common Deakin’s definition also ruled out people of mixed surname of Goolagong and Boney on New South race: a person with one Australian Aboriginal par- Wales electoral rolls in the decades after federation. ent was not an Aboriginal native but only part For an accurate picture we would need to know how Aboriginal and so not strictly Aboriginal. many Aboriginal people were not on the electoral Deakin’s authoritative ruling was applied to the rolls. Ancestry.com is of no assistance with this. Electoral Act, as affirmed by Robert Garran, sec- retary of the Attorney-General’s Department, in 1905: “half-castes are not disqualified”. However, Section 41 of the Constitution Garran advised, “all persons in whom the abo- ther than blurring the categories of “Aboriginal riginal blood preponderates are disqualified”. This natives” who were excluded by the Franchise preponderant blood stipulation was an extension of AOct and “Aboriginal people” of mixed ancestry who Deakin’s stricter definition, but was accepted and were not, Windschuttle’s case relies on Section 41 applied throughout the Commonwealth bureauc- of the Constitution being a cast-iron guarantee racy. It was still being used in vetting people by the that virtually neuters the Franchise Act’s exclusion. Commonwealth Electoral Office in 1961. On the Section 41 is as follows: other hand, those without preponderant Aboriginal blood, “half-castes” or less, were not classified as No adult person who has or acquires a right to “aboriginal natives of Australia” and so were not vote at elections for the more numerous House banned from voting by the Franchise Act. of the Parliament of a State shall, while the It is important to note that the category of right continues, be prevented by any law of Aboriginal people in modern usage does not equate the Commonwealth from voting at elections with Aboriginal natives barred in the Franchise for either House of the Parliament of the Act 1902. A person is classified as Aboriginal today Commonwealth. if they claim some Aboriginal lineage, identify as Aboriginal and are recognised as such. Curiously, Section1 4 was one of the more contentious sec- Windschuttle pays no attention to this key differ- tions of the Constitution, designed to protect the ence between Aboriginal natives who were barred right of women who had acquired the right to vote and Aboriginal people in today’s terms who were in their state, as women had in South Australia in not. He documents early voting in Tasmania by 1894. The South Australian delegate William Holder Aboriginal people whose names are prominent tried to have a universal franchise clause inserted in today, but omits to note that officially there were the Constitution, but failed for several reasons: that no Aboriginal natives in Tasmania at the time, and it would be best left to the new Commonwealth gov- hence none were caught by the Franchise Act exclu- ernment to enact; and that state sensitivities might sion. The people he traces were of mixed ances- be aroused by putting such a blanket entitlement in

Quadrant April 2017 51 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting the Constitution. When Holder’s motion for a uni- that Commonwealth laws would be subject to versal franchise was defeated, he proposed the more future state laws in areas of its jurisdiction, and modest alternative of ensuring that those possessing Commonwealth electoral laws were clearly a matter the right to vote would not be deprived of that right. for the Commonwealth. This was carried and became Section 41. The point at issue is whether Section 41 protected Most of the discussion of this section concerned only those enrolled in the colonies cum states prior protecting women who already had the vote. Some to the passing of the Commonwealth franchise, voiced concerns about leaving it to states that or whether as Windschuttle claims it protected might make unacceptable changes such as giving future generations. The issue was not contested the vote to sixteen-year-olds or 10,000 Chinese in in the High Court until 1983. The case concerned the Northern Territory, as one delegate suggested. the right to vote at a forthcoming Commonwealth Surprisingly, Aborigines were barely mentioned. election of people on state rolls who had missed the The section was envisaged by most of the consti- deadline for the Commonwealth rolls. The High tutional framers as interim until the new federal Court ruled that Section 41 applied only to people parliament passed a uniform franchise. Convention on state rolls at the time of the first Commonwealth leader Edmund Barton opposed the section because Franchise Act 1902. The joint opinion of Chief Justice he thought states might manipulate the federal Gibbs and Justices Mason and Wilson pointed out franchise in unacceptable ways, so he brought it that Section 41 did not confer a right or entitlement back to a subsequent session for reconsideration. to vote but rather prevented the Commonwealth There, Holder made clear his intention: “I want the from taking away a right to vote. That limitation states to have their rights with regard to the fran- applied until the Commonwealth passed its own chise unimpaired up to the day when the federal franchise legislation. If states could amend elec- franchise is indicated.” Despite Barton’s misgiv- toral laws after the Commonwealth franchise was ings, others claimed that state manipulation would passed, that would mean the states could alter the be unlikely once the federal franchise was enacted, Commonwealth franchise. It was impossible to sup- and the section was left as previously drafted. As pose that this was intended. Therefore, the judges with other contentious matters, ambiguities were concluded that Section 41 “preserves only those left for future parliaments to decide, on the assump- rights which were in existence before the passing of tion that good sense would prevail. the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902”. Their deci- Windschuttle’s evidence for Section 41 being a sion affirmed the dominant view of the Founders, guarantee for Aboriginal voting into the future is including that of O’Connor discussed below, and his main purpose in his response. In so doing he is entirely consistent with the institutional archi- relies on the selective massaging of a minority view tecture of the Constitution. It flatly contradicts put forward intermittently by various delegates. He Windschuttle’s view, so he charges the High Court quotes at length Sir John Downer’s claim that the with rewriting eighty years of history. Gibbs and states would continue to define the right to vote in Wilson were two of the most conservative members the future and that such laws would prevail over of recent High Courts, given to careful literalism any law passed by the Commonwealth because of and legalism in their decision making—hardly ones Section 41. To my earlier charge that “Downer’s was to rewrite eighty years of history. an exception to the general view”, Windschuttle responds by requoting Downer and suggesting I seem unaware that he was a member of the three- O’Connor’s defining role man drafting committee and one of the authors of s mentioned, Richard O’Connor was one of the the Constitution. This is hardly a reasoned response. most eminent and articulate of the Founders, a The other two members of the drafting commit- Amember of the three-man drafting committee, and tee, Edmund Barton and Richard O’Connor, were government leader in the Senate who had charge more influential: Barton as leader of the whole con- of the Commonwealth franchise bill. His views vention and first prime minister; O’Connor as one both in the constitutional conventions in framing of the most articulate of the Founders and govern- Section 41 and in the first Senate in introducing ment leader in the Senate of the first parliament; and shepherding through the Franchise Act are and both subsequently as original justices of the authoritative. Windschuttle spends a good deal of High Court. Windschuttle acknowledges that their time both in his book and in his response quoting view differed from that of Downer. The difference and interpreting O’Connor. Unfortunately he dis- was about whether Commonwealth laws would be torts O’Connor’s position. To show this requires subject to future state laws, he claims. This is a fur- some detailed analysis of O’Connor’s speeches. phy and beside the point because no one assumed O’Connor made a noble defence of the original

52 Quadrant April 2017 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting

Franchise Bill, which had no restriction on Aboriginal O’Connor’s above response was that state laws Australians, against senators from Queensland and specified enrolment eligibility until the passing of Western Australia who pushed for their exclusion. the Commonwealth’s own legislation, so obviously Senator Matheson from Western Australia claimed, anyone who qualified as an adult before or after “Surely it is absolutely repugnant to the greater Federation up until the Commonwealth Franchise number of the people of the Commonwealth that Act 1902 came into force was covered. O’Connor an aboriginal man, or aboriginal lubra or gin—a said it would be ridiculous if the states could alter horrible, degraded, dirty creature—should have the the franchise after the Commonwealth passed its same rights, simply by virtue of being twenty-one uniform franchise. years of age, that we have, after some debate today, O’Connor managed to have the exclusionary decided to give to our wives and daughters.” Senator amendment defeated in the Senate, but it was rein- Stewart from Queensland railed against “these stated in the House of Representatives and supported opium-eating blacks, these ignorant aboriginals, by leading liberal and Labor members, including these people who do not care two straws about the H.B. Higgins, Isaac Isaacs and Chris Watson. government of the country so long as they can get Higgins put the motion to reinstate Aboriginal their daily tucker and their allowance of opium”. native exclusion because he favoured leaving elec- Against this barrage, O’Connor stressed that toral entitlement to the states; Isaacs supported it Aboriginal people had the right to vote in all the on the grounds that Aborigines might not be wor- states, albeit with a high property qualification in thy to vote in Commonwealth elections because Queensland and Western Australia. He said it would of their lack of intelligence, interest and political be “a monstrous and a savage application of this capacity that would be best left to the states to sort principle of a white Australia” to exclude Aboriginal out; and Watson because of his fear that “thousands people who had the vote, albeit with a high prop- upon thousands” of Aborigines might predomi- erty qualification, in those states. If the excluding nate in electorates in northern Australia, and be amendment were passed, future Aboriginal people beholden to controlling squatters. O’Connor’s views would have to tell their sons “who are becoming on including Aboriginal people were not shared more civilized, and perhaps as civilized, and as wor- by some of his liberal colleagues in the House of thy of the franchise as the white men among whom Representatives. they are living—‘Although your people owned this With the Aboriginal native exclusion now rein- territory for centuries before the white man came stated, the amendment passed the House. When here, although you are his equal in intelligence, it it came back to the Senate, O’Connor reluctantly has been prescribed by the Commonwealth that you accepted the amendment as the price of getting shall not have the right to vote at all.’” the amended bill passed that would enfranchise Connor went on to confirm that states had the women. Having recounted the reinstatement of the power to pass legislation regarding voting until the Aboriginal exclusion in his book, Windschuttle gives Commonwealth legislated. This was constitution- the final say to O’Connor, quoting his earlier speech ally protected by Section 41. O’Connor continued: in defending the Bill against such an amendment. In that speech O’Connor claimed that the franchise Oncee w pass a law dealing with elections given was “the broadest possible one. There is no and electoral rights, it can be altered by no class of the community left out.” The result would State legislation afterwards. It must be clear to be the “most representative parliament, according honourable senators that it would be ridiculous to the truest principles of democracy, which exists if the Constitution were to give us the power in the world”. But this passage is from O’Connor’s to make a uniform franchise, and that then speech defending the original Franchise Bill, which the States should have the power to alter that didn’t exclude “aboriginal natives of Australia”, in franchise in any way whatever. early April 1902. O’Connor said no such thing when the Senate passed the amended Franchise Act, which In other words, O’Connor was restating the excluded Aboriginal people, in late May. majority view that the states controlled elec- toral enrolment under Section 41 until the Commonwealth legislated its uniform franchise, Easing the exclusion of future and after that the Commonwealth legislation was generations paramount. Windschuttle adds a curious addi- hat Section 41 of the Constitution was tion: that individuals “were eligible to vote after considered to apply only to Aboriginal natives 1901, even if those individuals only reached adult- Twho had the right to vote in state elections prior hood after Federation”. The plain meaning of to the passing of the Franchise Act 1902 is

Quadrant April 2017 53 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting confirmed by subsequent amendments made to “Aboriginal natives” or otherwise banned from state the Commonwealth franchise. The Commonwealth enrolment because they were “half castes” or had Electoral Act 1949 extended the Commonwealth “preponderant” Aboriginal blood. Thousands more vote to Aborigines entitled to vote at the state level. who did not fall into these categories were unaware This would have been superfluous if that right were of their right and were not enrolled. In the Northern already guaranteed by Section 41. Such legislative Territory, administered by Commonwealth since entitlement remained the case up until 1962, with 1911, the Committee reported that virtually all were the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1961 providing that: excluded. This was done by electoral regulations that disqualified “wards” from voting. “Of some 17,000 An aboriginal native of Australia is not entitled Aborigines in the Northern Territory, only eighty- to enrolment … unless he—(a) is entitled under nine have not been declared wards or have been the law of the State in which he resides to be removed from the Register of Wards.” Aboriginal enrolled as an elector of that State … or (b) is or military veterans were another example. Having has been a member of the Defence Force. been granted Commonwealth voting rights in 1940 for the duration of the Second World War and for a Federal parliament finally repealed the period of six months afterwards, and enfranchised discriminatory provision of the Commonwealth permanently in 1949, many ex-service members Electoral Act in 1962. Aboriginal voting was made in Queensland and Western Australia assumed optional, however, and remained so until 1983 when they were precluded from Commonwealth voting it was made compulsory and brought into line with because of state restrictions. In the case of the Torres the general franchise. Strait Islands Regiment in north Queensland, only fifty-seven of the 659 were enrolled in the Commonwealth electorate of Leichhardt. Practical exclusion of Aboriginal people South Australia was one of the more liberal states, eading his response, Windschuttle claims that but even there Aboriginal people were sometimes “Aboriginal people were treated by colonial gov- wrongly removed from the Commonwealth ernments,L by the Australian Constitution that cre- electoral roll by bureaucrats. In a well-documented ated the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth case, Pat Stretton and Christine Finnimore have itself in its Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 shown that seventeen South Australian Aborigines as citizens with the same political rights as eve- at Point McLeay were so removed in the decades ryone else”. We have seen he is wrong about the after federation. The Select Committee found Franchise Act and the Constitution’s Section 41 pockets of non-enrolment in New South Wales and that only preserved the right to vote of those on cited one community of Woodenbong as having state rolls prior to 1902. But how did it work in only five out of fifty entitled people actually on practice during the early decades of federation? One the electoral roll. Windschuttle dismisses this as “a possibility might have been for practice to bypass problem due more to Aboriginal lack of awareness legislative exclusion, or to put the positive spin on of rights rather than an active disenfranchisement the Franchise Act and the Constitution’s Section by the state”. 41 that Windschuttle champions. There is no evi- As a counter example he cites the Cumeroogunga dence of this in the multitude of challenges brought Aboriginal Station where local historians have by affected individuals in claiming their rights that found ninety-eight Aboriginal people on the were routinely dealt with by the Commonwealth Commonwealth electoral rolls in 1903 and eighty- public service and occasionally by courts. one in 1906. Had he delved a little deeper he might The most comprehensive source of what was have found a letter from the district returning officer happening in practice around Australia is the in the Riverina to the Commonwealth Electoral Report of the Select Committee on Voting Rights Office in 1904 with a list of Aboriginal electors at of Aborigines. This bipartisan committee toured the Cumeroogunga Mission who were in receipt Australia and took evidence from expert witnesses. of continuous state aid from the New South Wales Its 1961 Report paved the way for amending government. The state attorney-general ruled that the electoral act to take out the exclusion of they were not entitled to vote. The returning officer Aboriginal natives from voting. The Committee advised: “accordingly they were objected to and found widespread exclusion of Aboriginal people struck off the State Electoral Rolls by the State’s from voting. In Queensland, Western Australia Revision Court recently held—they are therefore and the Northern Territory where most of those not entitled to remain on the Federal Rolls”. This who were categorised as Aboriginal people lived, probably accounts for the reduction in numbers tens of thousands were excluded because they were from 1903 to 1906. It shows a state enforcing the rule

54 Quadrant April 2017 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting that n those i receipt of state aid were not entitled who were not banned from voting actually exer- to vote and were struck off state electoral rolls. It cised that right. The 1961 Select Committee found also suggests that the Commonwealth Electoral that thousands of such people who were integrated Office was party to removing such people from into the community were unaware of their right its electoral rolls regardless of the more stringent and did not vote. But we do know that many of “Aboriginal native” legal restriction. those classified as Aborigines were restricted from Other cases show how officials overrode the the Commonwealth franchise by state and territory letter of the law in applying what they thought laws and regulations and administrative practice. was its spirit of exclusion. Broome was the context According to one reputable estimate, there were for a notable case concerning Maunga Katie, a 66,950 people officially classified as Aborigines woman whose mother was a “full blood” Australian in 1901: 26,670 in Queensland, 5,261 in Western Aborigine and whose “reputed” father was from the Australia, 23,363 in the Northern Territory, 8065 in Philippines. Concerned with the “large number of New South Wales, 3070 in South Australia, only half-castes in Broome”, the Broome Electoral Office 521 in Victoria and none in Tasmania. In 1948 the sought advice on her application for enrolment. The official number was only slightly more at 73,817 and next-level divisional officer suggested that, based in 1966, a half-decade after the Select Committee’s on the Attorney-General Department’s well- field work, 79,620. These official numbers come established rulings, Maunga Katie was a person from state Aboriginal Protection Boards and of mixed parentage or half-caste born in Australia Commissioners of Aboriginal Affairs, and depend so not an aboriginal native of Asia or Australia. on state classifications that varied among states Consequently she should not be disqualified from and over time. The most notable change is a large enrolment. This advice was not accepted in Broome, increase in Western Australian numbers to 24,912 with the local electoral official warning that such a in 1947 and a decrease back to 18,439 in 1966. The determination would have “a far reaching effect”: Tasmanian numbers went from zero to 214 and “There is a large number of half-castes resident in then fifty-five. Nor do the state-based categories Broome and District, from whom claims may be square with the strict “Aboriginal native” category anticipated if this claim is accepted.” The official of the Commonwealth or the broader notion of added that “It would be an optimist who would Aboriginal people. In other words the figures are claim to state, with any degree of certainty, the indicative rather than definitive. Nevertheless we male parentage of any of the progeny of the Broome can estimate that there were approximately 76,000 gins.” people officially classified as Aborigines under The matter passed up to the Commonwealth special state and territory regulation in the early Chief Electoral Officer who referred it to the 1960s. Solicitor-General, pointing out that although The 1961 select committee estimated that the person was “apparently not disqualified from 30,000 adult Aborigines were denied the federal enrolment”, it was the practice of Broome officials vote in Australia: 26,000 “full-blood” Aborigines to deny enrolment to people with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and 4000 people of mothers. The Acting Solicitor-General, Knowles, “preponderantly aboriginal descent” in Queensland agreed that, although the matter was “doubtful”, it and Western Australia. This figure of 30,000 did was desirable “to exclude from enrolment persons not include those Aborigines who were unaware of who are the half-caste offspring of aboriginal their formal right to vote because they were not of natives of Australia”. Knowles cited approvingly “preponderating aboriginal blood”: the committee the Western Australian Electoral Act that excluded found there were “thousands of such people in half-castes. Here we have a prime example of how Queensland and Western Australia, who are practice excluded people who were legally entitled already integrated into the community”. to enrolment based on confected reasons coloured Amending Commonwealth voting legislation by racial prejudice and state legislation, and this by removing the Aboriginal native exclusion was sanctioned at the highest level. a major step in extending basic political rights to Aboriginal people. Moreover, it provided leadership to the states that in turn amended their Figuring the numbers own exclusionary laws. Had the Commonwealth o just how many Aboriginal people voted in not excluded Aboriginal natives of Australia in the the early Commonwealth and how many were original 1902 Franchise Act, and not been complicit Sexcluded? We don’t have precise figures. In par- in removing Aboriginal people whom the states ticular, we don’t know how many “half-castes” precluded, this might well have happened more and people with less than “preponderating blood” than a half-century before.

Quadrant April 2017 55 Fabricating Aboriginal Voting

Extending the exclusion of Aboriginal state during Labor’s “golden years” of govern- natives ment under prime ministers Curtin and Chifley. By this time international pressure was forcing he passing of the amended Franchise Act 1902 Australian governments not to exclude “aboriginal that excluded Aboriginal natives from vot- natives” of Asian countries such as India. However, Ting was a pivotal episode in Australia’s treatment new Commonwealth legislation continued to of its indigenous people. That legislation lumped exclude Aboriginal natives of Australia. The Child Aboriginal natives of Australia together with other Endowment Act 1941 barred payment of endow- aboriginal natives of Asia, Africa and the Pacific ment to Aboriginal natives of Australia who were Islands. New Zealand Maoris were exempted dependent on Commonwealth or state support. The to allow for New Zealand’s possibly joining an Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act 1944 denied Australasian federation that would require allow- benefits to Aboriginal natives of Australia. By 1947 ing Maori rights that were already well established. the Social Services Consolidation Act had dropped The Franchise Act set the paradigm for exclusion the exclusion of aboriginal natives from anywhere of Aboriginal people that was mirrored in restrict- else but retained the restriction of Aboriginal ing social welfare rights and entitlements. natives of Australia. Australia was an early twentieth-century pio- This continuing exclusion of Aboriginal natives neer and world leader in providing social welfare of Australia from social and welfare rights and to people in need. Invalid and old-age pensions entitlements is surely shocking. To say the least were legislated in 1908, and a maternity allowance it cannot be squared with Windschuttle’s grand in 1912. Both the Invalid and Old-Age Pensions Act claim that Aboriginal people were treated as citi- 1908 and the Maternity Allowance Act 1912 excluded zens with the same political rights as everyone else. “aboriginal natives of Australia” from receiving Other areas such as freedom of movement show such benefits. The pretext was that such people a comparable harsh regime of discrimination and would be receiving alternative state aid under the government control. The Northern Territory, under various state and territory Aboriginal protector- Commonwealth administration from 1911, has one ate regimes, but these were hardly comparable. of the worst records, with the Chief Protector ena- A diligent bureaucracy under ministerial author- bled under the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 “at any ity enforced the exclusion with callous unconcern. time to undertake the care, custody, or control of For example, in 1938 the Eastern Suburbs District any aboriginal or half-caste, if, in his opinion it Council of the Returned Servicemen’s Association is necessary and desirable in the interests of the of New South Wales made representation through aboriginal or half-caste for him to do so”. The its local member, E.J. Harrison, that the Maternity Protector could move any Aboriginal person from Allowance Act be amended to give Aboriginal one district to another, keep anyone on a reserve, mothers married to AIF veterans the maternity remove camps from the vicinity of towns, con- allowance. The request was handled at the highest trol the care, custody and education of children of level of the bureaucracy with the Commissioner of Aborigines and half-castes, and send to and detain Maternity Allowances advising the minister that any such child in an Aboriginal institution or such amendment would be undesirable because of industrial school. One consequence was the whole- its knock-on effect: sale removal of children from Aboriginal mothers and their placement in institutions—the saga of If the laws were so amended it would be the “Stolen Generation”. difficult to withstand requests for a similar concession to all other aboriginal mothers indschuttle concludes his response with the who are at present debarred under the Act. claim that the case he has argued remains Moreover, the granting of the request would, Wunaffected by my critique. He began with the claim it is thought, soon be followed by demands for that my review was “selective, freighted with pre- similar concessions to aborigines under the conception and laughably at odds with fact” and Invalid and Old-age Pensions Act. “slipshod scholarship”. The reader can decide where the truth lies. The government minister accepted that advice and the exclusion of Aboriginal mothers, invalids Brian Galligan is Emeritus Professor of Political and aged people continued. Science at the University of Melbourne. A footnoted The 1940s saw an expansion of the welfare version of this article appears at Quadrant Online.

56 Quadrant April 2017 Keith Windschuttle

Historical Deceptions and Inconvenient Truths

s Brian Galligan knows, my principal tar- my case, I discussed local historical studies of spe- gets in this debate are those legal academ- cific Aboriginal communities in New South Wales, ics like Megan Davis and George Williams, South Australia and Tasmania that provided tallies aAnd the authors of the report by Julia Gillard’s of how many members of these communities were “expert panel” on the constitutional recognition of listed on electoral rolls both before 1901 and for up Aboriginal people, who make the false and offensive to sixty years after. claim that the Australian Constitution was a racist Galligan replies that I have failed to make a document. Davis claims the Constitution denied all distinction between “full-blood” and “half-caste” Aboriginal people the vote and so they were “cast Aborigines. He says those of “full-blood” were offi- out of the polity”. Her co-author Williams claims cially defined by the Barton government’s Attorney- the authors of the Constitution saw “no place” for General, Alfred Deakin, as “Aboriginal natives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australia” who were denied the right to vote by new nation. “One of the first acts of the new parlia- Commonwealth electoral bureaucrats until 1961. But ment,” he says, “was to exclude Aboriginal peoples “half-caste” people were not regarded as Aboriginal from the franchise.” natives of Australia and hence were permitted to As I noted in my original reply to Galligan, he vote. This is why their names can be found on elec- agrees with me that the Australian Constitution toral rolls in the first half of the twentieth century. was not a racist document. But rather than direct The evidence Galligan offers for his case is feeble. any of his critique at Davis, Williams and Co, he He quotes a letter written in 1901 by Alfred Deakin, seeks to demolish my case by arguing that, while the first Attorney-General, who was discussing I am partly right about constitutional principle, I not electoral rights but who should be counted in am completely wrong about electoral practice. This determining the number of representatives each is, he says, because Aboriginal voting rights were state could send to the Commonwealth Parliament. cast aside by post-Federation election laws and elec- Galligan says Deakin excluded “full-blood” peo- tion administration by Commonwealth bureaucrats. ple from the count but included “half-castes”. At Hence, I am wrong to censure those who claim the time, Deakin’s approach was understand- Aboriginal people were “cast out of the polity”. able because in 1901 the states of Queensland and In both The Break-up of Australia and in my origi- Western Australia each estimated they had between nal reply to Galligan, I offered a variety of evidence 10,000 and 20,000 Aborigines of full descent living that the principles enshrined in Section 41 of the in unexplored country in their north, beyond any Constitution and in the Commonwealth Franchise Act contact with white society. Politicians in the south of 1902, were matched by electoral practice. I pro- suspected these estimates were grossly exaggerated, duced observations by parliamentarians in colonial and proper counts in the 1920s and 1930s confirmed debates in the 1890s and Commonwealth debates their suspicions. But Deakin’s 1901 distinction in the 1900s, including leaders of the Barton gov- between “full-blood” and “half-caste” was never ernment and the Labor Party in both the House written into electoral law. The Barton government of Representatives and the Senate, who acknowl- did not commit itself to any such division in the edged Aboriginal people had the vote in both the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902—those terms former colonies and the new Commonwealth. I are never used. The Act followed Section 41 of the discussed campaigns by both left and right-wing Constitution and accepted whatever definitions the political movements outside Parliament to win over various states had used for voting eligibility up to Aboriginal electors in the 1890s and 1900s. And, in that time, and none of them distinguished between what I regarded as the best empirical evidence for “full-blood” and “half-caste” either.

Quadrant April 2017 57 Historical Deceptions and Inconvenient Truths

Galligan goes on to claim that after 1905 the ship of Cowra, where it became what its historian, Commonwealth Attorney-General’s department Peter Read, calls the “spiritual homeland” of a major replaced the “full-blood/half-caste” distinction with grouping of the Wiradjuri people. In his book Down “an extension” of Deakin’s definition. According There with Me on the Cowra Mission (1984), Read to an edict of the department’s secretary, Robert writes: “The nucleus of each [Wiradjuri] community Garran, “all persons in whom the aboriginal blood consisted of a small number of families long asso- preponderates are disqualified”. Galligan says this ciated with the district, which at Cowra were the definition of eligibility was accepted and subse- Murray, Glass and Coe families.” I have checked the quently applied throughout the Commonwealth electoral rolls to see if any of these families were able bureaucracy until 1961. to vote in the 1930s in the electoral district of Calare, This claim by Galligan completely overlooks subdistrict Cowra. I found thirty-four members of an inconvenient truth. Under Section 51(xxvi) of these and other Erambie Aboriginal families on the the Constitution, the Commonwealth was spe- electoral rolls, twenty-three of them men and eleven cifically excluded from any power to decide pol- women. As I said in my earlier reply to Galligan, icy for Aboriginal people. It only got that power the names of the women are there because the after the amendment of 1967. Until then, matters Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 gave the vote to of Aboriginal affairs remained in the hands of the all Australian women, including Aborigines, which states, and most state Aboriginal Protection Boards disproves another of his interpretations of that Act. guarded their own territories jealously, especially Here are the names and addresses I found: in the crucial definition of who qualified as an Murray family 1930s: Electors: Harry Murray, Aborigine. This was an important matter for the Herbert John Murray, Jane Murray, Claude Murray, boards and their state governments because their James Murray, Percy Murray, Alan Murray, Alfred own funding allocations for Aboriginal housing, Murray, Ethel Murray, Mary Ethel Murray. education and welfare depended on it. Addresses given: “Erambie Mission”, “Mission”, In the example I gave in my first reply to “Aboriginal Station”, West Cowra. Galligan of Cumeroogunga Aboriginal Station Glass family 1930s: Electors: Sidney Glass, Joseph in New South Wales, most of the adult inhabit- Glass, Reginald Glass, Amelia Glass. Addresses ants were on the electoral roll and entitled to vote given: West Cowra, “Mission Reserve Wellington”, from Federation onwards. We can be confident they “Town Common Wellington”, “Town Common were all officially recognised as Aborigines accord- Orange”. ing to the definition used by the state Aborigines Coe family 1930s: Electors: Cecil Coe, Leslie Protection Board at the time. They were not defined Coe, Mary Jane Coe, Paul Coe (senior), Thomas as “half-castes”. If they were not thought to be true Coe, Edith Coe. Addresses given: West Cowra, Aborigines they would not have been permitted by Cowra, “Erambie Mission”. the station manager to live there. Moreover, local Ingram family 1930s: Electors: Louisa Agnes station managers, not Commonwealth bureaucrats, Ingram, Lenry Ingram, Lockey Ingram. Addresses were responsible for distributing electoral enrol- given: “Erambie Mission”, West Cowra. ment forms and for filling them out for those who Williams family 1930s: Electors: Alfred John were illiterate. As I reported in my earlier piece, at Williams, Elizabeth Williams, George Williams, Cumeroogunga a total of ninety-eight Aboriginal Arthur Williams, Muriel Williams, Peter Williams. people (fifty men and forty-eight women) were Addresses given: West Cowra, “Mission”, “The listed on the Commonwealth electoral rolls in 1903 Mission”, “Erambie”, “Aborigines Station”. for the Division of Riverina (Moama polling place), Bamblett family 1930s: Alfred Bamblett, while thirty-nine men and forty-two women were Cameron Bamblett, James Bamblett, Kathleen enrolled there in 1906. From then until 1949, the Bamblett, Rebecca Hazel Bamblett. Addresses station’s Aboriginal voters ranged between sixty and given: West Cowra, “Aboriginal Station”. eighty people. This example alone is sufficient to disprove the claim by academics that all Aborigines ny m article in Quadrant’s March edition, I were denied the vote at Federation. Moreover, if addressed most of the other points in Galligan’s they had the vote at Cumeroogunga, they probably rIeply here, and he has not provided any good reason had it at most other Aboriginal stations in New to change my views now. Moreover, his attempt to South Wales too. Only research can tell. introduce into this discussion the matter of welfare So let me give another example that I have inves- payments to Aborigines is just as unimpressive. tigated in the past month. The Erambie Aboriginal While it is true that Aborigines were initially Station, also known as the Erambie Mission, was unentitled to Commonwealth payments for child established in 1924 on the western side of the town- endowment, unemployment and sickness benefits in

58 Quadrant April 2017 Historical Deceptions and Inconvenient Truths the 1940s, this was not due to what Galligan calls tions and, ipso facto, Commonwealth elections” the shocking racism of the day. It was because, until (emphasis added). And in a paragraph from the the 1967 amendment, the Constitution did not allow same report, which Galligan thought best not to the Commonwealth to make policy for Aborigines, divulge to his readers, the 1961 committee added: and also because state governments had long had welfare programs of their own for Aboriginal In the State of Victoria, the Aboriginal people people. I would have thought a professor of politics have been entitled to enrolment since the at an Australian university would know this. As I formation of the Commonwealth and your noted in my 2009 book on the Stolen Generations, committee was informed that a very high The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 3, in percentage have enrolled and are exercising the New South Wales where government budgets were franchise. more generous than elsewhere, Aboriginal families on several government stations from the 1920s to This outcome was, to a large extent, what the the 1940s had better housing, better water supply, founding fathers intended and, despite Galligan’s better sewerage and better social amenities, such dissembling, it is how electoral officials in most as local schools, recreation halls, electricity and states interpreted their responsibilities for at least telephone connections, than average white working- the first six decades after Federation. The High class families in the outer suburbs of Sydney. In Court took a different view of Section 41 in 1983 1930, a New South Wales Government Tourist but in a case that was not about the election rights Bureau brochure listed the Aboriginal settlement of Aborigines and, as I said in my March article, a at La Perouse in Sydney as one of its recommended High Court decision can not (please note the “not”, visiting spots for overseas tourists. Mr Galligan) rewrite history to change what people It is also disappointing to see that Galligan is thought and did over the previous eight decades. still unwilling to admit that Richard O’Connor, Sir As for Galligan’s final flourish where he claims John Downer and Edmund Barton had definitive the consequence of the Northern Territory’s roles in the electoral politics of their day. Galligan Aboriginal Ordinance of 1918 was “the wholesale tries to dismiss my citations from them as “selective removal of children from Aboriginal mothers and massaging of a minority view”. But these men con- their placement in institutions—the saga of the stituted the three-man Drafting Committee for the Stolen Generations”, this has as little credibility Australian Constitution Bill responsible for rewriting as his other claims here. Since the Human Rights the original draft of the Constitution in the light of Commission’s 1997 report, Bringing Them Home, amendments made during the convention sessions there has been a long line-up of human rights law- in 1897 and 1898. They were also the critical defin- yers, legal aid services, legal academics, left-wing ers of the objectives of the Barton government’s activists and media pundits urging Aboriginal peo- Commonwealth Franchise Bill of 1902. As leaders ple to go to the courts to seek compensation for of both houses of Parliament said when introduc- being wrongfully removed from their parents by the ing the Bill, the government’s intention was to give state. Yet in all this time only one applicant has been every Aboriginal adult in Australia a vote. But due successful before a court, and that was in South to the recalcitrance of the Labor Party and its sup- Australia. In the Northern Territory, the test case porters, the government had to settle for a compro- Cubillo and Gunner v Commonwealth failed in the mise which, while fully enfranchising Aboriginal Federal Court, with Justice O’Loughlin finding the men and women in New South Wales, Victoria, so-called “removal policy” was “beneficial and pro- South Australia and Tasmania, left the Aborigines tectionist”. In the other major Northern Territory of Queensland and Western Australia with a £100 case, Kruger v Commonwealth, in which lawyers for property qualification. Only someone with a seri- Aborigines claimed the Aboriginal Ordinance of 1918 ously jaundiced political agenda would describe this sanctioned genocide, the full bench of the High slightly-less-than-perfect outcome as a racist deter- Court was not impressed. The case failed, with five mination to cast Aborigines out of the polity. of the six judges specifically dismissing the claim Moreover, the document Galligan calls “the of genocide, and with Justice Dawson observing: most comprehensive source of what was happening “The powers conferred by the 1918 Ordinance were in practice around Australia”, the report of the 1961 required to be exercised in the best interests of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives, Aboriginals concerned and of the Aboriginal popu- actually agrees with my interpretation, not his. It lation generally.” described New South Wales as a state “where the In short, Galligan’s claims about the Stolen Aboriginal people have for many years been fully Generations are just as badly informed as his views entitled to become enrolled and vote at state elec- about the history of Aboriginal voting rights.

Quadrant April 2017 59 Mark McGinness

James Fairfax, AC March 27, 1933–January 11, 2017

ax Suich, one in a succession of gifted great-granddaughter of First Fleeters John and Fairfax editors and executives, has writ- Mary Small. James Reading’s son, James Oswald ten about James Fairfax: (1863–1928), also knighted, followed his father. M Sir James Oswald married Mabel Hixson, forth- if a word summed him up it was “tolerance”, right daughter of Francis Hixson, superintendent born of a childhood of parental conflict and of pilots, lighthouses and harbours in New South a painful adolescence but what emerged were Wales who wanted the coast “illuminated like a two lives—an adulthood that lived up to street with lamps”. Family legend has it that on her his inheritance, taking responsibility for the fourth birthday Mabel announced, “This is the hot- company; but also a full creative life—a man test summer I have ever known.” Known to Sydney of taste and leisure and a thousand friendships as “Lady Jim”—but to the family as “Granny … these differences perhaps imposed tolerance. Fairwater”, after their house on Seven Shillings However acquired, it was his tolerance that was Beach—she was a strong influence on her eldest his gift to the company. grandson. But the centre of Granny Fairwater’s life was, perhaps naturally, her only child, Warwick Another editor, Michael Davie, saw it as “an Oswald Fairfax, James’s father. unwavering sense of noblesse oblige”. Warwick Fairfax was the most fascinating, com- Adam James Oswald Fairfax was born in plex figure this formidable family has produced. Sydney on March 27, 1933. Perhaps the first name Fairfax editor John Douglas Pringle saw Warwick reflected his father’s obsession with The Fall? In as “rather like a sensitive, intelligent, slightly neu- any case, it was never used and James eventually rotic don”. The Fairfax historian Gavin Souter rid himself of Adam by law. Truth greeted his birth described “a slightly gauche, dreamy patrician”. He with “Australia’s Richest Baby is Born”. James dis- was not only the prevailing dynastic presence at missed this as inaccurate but he was certainly born John Fairfax for half a century but an alternately to great and, in Australian terms, old wealth— distant, commanding, admired, menacing, baffling, the fifth generation in the male line since thirty- brooding presence in his eldest son’s life. A phi- three-year-old John Fairfax arrived in Sydney from losopher, with a fascination for the doctrine of The Warwickshire on September 26, 1838, with five Fall; an author, playwright, balletomane and cattle pounds in his pocket. By February 1841, John and a breeder, he also broke the Fairfax mould by taking partner had purchased the Sydney Herald, which on three wives. James and his older sister, Caroline, August 1, 1842, became the Sydney Morning Herald. were the children of Warwick’s first marriage, to “Ginahgulla” in Bellevue Hill, a Gothic Revival of Marcie Elizabeth Wilson (always Betty), daughter brick and stone, was the first of many fine Fairfax of David Wilson KC and Marcia Rudge. When houses. As the Australian Dictionary of Biography asked to describe her, an old friend simply said, records, by the time of John Fairfax’s death in 1877, “Cocktails and laughter.” Betty Fair, as she was “he was well known for his tolerance at a time when known, was also a fond but distant figure to her son sectarian feeling ran high … [he] built the Herald in his childhood (perhaps like many in their circle) from a small journal to one of the most influential but once James left school, she was a constant, char- and respected newspapers in the empire”. ismatic presence in his life, loved by his friends and James (later Sir James) Reading Fairfax (1834– a perfect companion during his decades of travel. 1919) followed his father as proprietor. He added By 1933, the Fairfaxes were prominent members some antiquity in marrying Lucy Armstrong, the of Sydney’s plutocracy. Fairfax mansions dominated

60 Quadrant April 2017 James Fairfax, AC the Eastern Suburbs, running from the mountain to staying with the most illustrious hosts. the sea. In Bellevue Hill, Warwick and Betty lived After three years, he returned to Sydney, assigned at Barford, beside Great-Aunt Mary at Ginahgulla; Nanny’s old room at Barford, quietly accepting while on the water at Double Bay, Great-Uncle his destiny at the family firm. Headquarters had Hubert had Elaine beside Granny at Fairwater. moved from Hunter Street to Broadway, where he Barford had a staff of ten. James and Caroline were worked on the executive floor in an office beside driven along Victoria Road to school in the family his father, as a special reporter under John Douglas Rolls by Hook, the chauffeur, until they pleaded to Pringle. On James’s twenty-third birthday, the firm be allowed to walk. established a public holding company—a decision conveyed to him, not by his father but by Rupert fter a few years at nearby Edgecliff Preparatory Henderson, the earthy, assertive, elfin managing School and Cranbrook, James followed his director and the real power and driving force of the Afather to Geelong Grammar in 1946. This was firm’s success. a miserable time for him—a bespectacled, retir- In the mid-1950s James was back in Britain, ing, unsporty child of privilege. James, typically, doing a five-month stint as reporter and sub-editor saw fault in himself, citing his “priggishness and at the Glasgow Herald, repeating the cycle at the reserve”. And yet, he retained an admiration and Evening News. By then, his mother was living in respect for the school’s great headmaster, Sir James London, having divorced Pierre (who had returned Darling, and learnt much from some of his masters. to an old lover). His unhappiness and dislocation were exacer- On James’s return to Sydney, a new woman had bated by his parents’ separation in entered his father’s life. Warwick’s 1944 and divorce. His mother mar- marriage to Hanne had soured as ried Capitaine de Frégate Pierre is houses, be it Mary Symonds (nee Marie Wein), Gilly, son of an admiral of Breton H the Polish-born daughter of Sydney stock, who had sailed into Sydney Lindesay Avenue, merchants, emerged and transfixed on Le Triomphant. A month after Bilgola, Edward him. Mary Fairfax, as she became James’s departure for Geelong, in July 1959, would have a profound Betty and the Commander left Street, Stanbridge effect on the family and the firm. for China where he joined the Mill or Retford Park, French military mission at the ames attended his first board headquarters of Chiang Kai-Shek. were monuments to meeting in May 1957 and for Two years later, his father married an exquisite taste; it Jthe next two decades played his Hanne Anderson (nee Bendixsen), was as if every single part; observing his father, know- a divorced Danish-born mother of ing that one day he would succeed a son, Alan. James was close to his wall, every surface him. Eventually, in March 1977, step-brother and fond of both of his had been curated. forty-four-year-old James became step-parents (even Pierre’s mother chairman when the majority of the became “Grandmere”). directors considered that after forty- After what he described as a wasted year at six years Sir Warwick should make way for the next Sydney University (although all was not lost, as generation. This caused a breach with his father that he reacquainted himself with his family’s city— lasted four years but the resentment on Mary’s part Prince’s, Romano’s, The Australian Club, old lingered and would pass in greater measure to her friends from town and country), he entered Balliol son. College, Oxford, just as his father and grandfather Of James’s legacy as chairman, Clement Semmler had done. He read Modern History. While James wrote in these pages (Quadrant, March 1992), the regretted not making the most of the intellectual charge from Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer, and opportunities, he revelled in his time there—beau- the Hawke and Wran/Unsworth governments that tifully evoked by his Balliol contemporary and Fairfax pages during James’s time were “out of con- friend Michael Collins Persse in Scholar Gipsy trol” was far from true: (2012) his memoir of a friend-in-common. As James put it, Oxford provided “a civilised guide to a well- Not n only i the period of his chairmanship was rounded future life”. it one of unprecedented expansion, of proven His first trip abroad was to the Gillys in Japan in profitability (both in television and newspapers) 1947, and so began a passion for travel; but it was at but probably for the first time in Australian Oxford that he developed the art—always in com- newspaper history there was a surge of truly fort; preferably in good company; and invariably investigative journalism.

Quadrant April 2017 61 James Fairfax, AC

The National Times waged an unremitting cam- ownership) and then their second cousin, the vice- paign against corruption while the Sydney Morning chairman, John Brehmer Fairfax. Herald’s crime reporter, Evan Whitton, and its Two days after impassively attending the board foreign editor David Jenkins’s investigative work meeting on August 27, and hours before the public uncovered some ugly truths. In Australia, the com- announcement from the Exchange, young Warwick pany had, in 1987, fifty-three newspapers, seventy- advised an astonished James of his intention to take nine magazines, two television stations and the control of the firm. The plot had been months (per- nationwide Macquarie radio network. haps years?) in the planning. He was, as V.J. Carroll Unlike his interventionist father, James was titled his wry and gripping account of the takeover, determined “to develop gradually a philosophy of The Man Who Couldn’t Wait (1990). influence that could combine with a considerable In addition to Carroll, the saga describing the measure of genuine editorial independence”. Dr end of family control has been well told not just by Semmler also noted: James himself but also in Gavin Souter’s Heralds and Angels (1991), a sequel to his masterly official Moreover,s a between the various Fairfax company history. Typically James had allowed the newspapers, there was “a jealous independence author final editorial control. of one another and a competition outsiders James and his cousins were criticised for “taking found hard to comprehend”. All this, be it the money and running” but this was not true. As noted, stemmed from the influence and control he wrote: of an Oxford-educated, cultured and cultivated devotee of the arts and literature. One wonders two facts became increasingly clear [to the three if there will ever be his like again in the family directors]: the first was that Warwick Australian newspaper world. did not want us to stay on and the second that our positions, if we did, would be intolerable. One wonders if there will ever be his like again We would bear full responsibility for the in Australian public life. increasingly precarious financial situation of In 1985, Fairfax bought the Spectator. It was the new company but would be powerless to do rather neat that the owners of the oldest newspaper anything about it. continuously in family hands had bought Britain’s oldest continuously published periodical. That And n so, o December 7, 1987, the family direc- presence in London led Lord Hartwell, proprie- tors met for the last time. (Eerily, two years later, tor of the troubled Daily Telegraph, to look to John on the day the company completed its fatal refi- Fairfax to save them. As he put it, “The Fairfaxes nancing, a mysterious fire consumed the Woollahra are newspaper people—our sort of people.” But the Congregational Church, where the early Fairfaxes Telegraph Group was already in the grip of Conrad had worshipped and John Fairfax had laid the foun- Black and the proposal ended there. dation stone in 1875.) Even after the Spectator was lost and his mother Some months after stepping down as chairman, returned to Australia, James would maintain close an exhausted James took himself off to the Japanese links with England, spending time at his house, the mountain village of Koshihata where he began his sumptuous Stanbridge Mill in Dorset, and giving memoir. Two and a half years later he returned to to a wide variety of causes, including the British finish it. The result, My Regards to Broadway (1991), Museum, and funding scholarships to Oxford is a fascinating insight into the man and his times. University. ames was some $164 million richer. Significantly, t the end of June 1987, six months after Sir he had chosen to forgo a further $265 million as he Warwick’s death, his and Mary’s twenty-six- Jbelieved that would be a breach of a trust put in place year-oldA son, “young Warwick”, joined Fairfax. by his father (for the benefit of young Warwick). Mary had been preparing him since birth for not In 1989, Daphne Guinness asked James if he “was “a” but “the” leading role in the family company. having fun with this lovely lolly or whether it was She once claimed that at the age of five he had told weighing heavily on him?” His reply was, “I don’t his father that a front-page story should really have regard it in any way except I’ve got a bit more and it’s been a page-three one. Although not yet a director, no longer invested in Fairfax shares, so something he was invited to sit in on meetings of the board else has to be done with it. It’s not a burden. Neither as an observer, preparing him for the role of chair- is it an excitement.” man, following firstly James, who hoped to retire One of the benefits of Warwick’s ambition in February 1991 (the sesquicentenary of Fairfax was that it liberated James to travel and to collect.

62 Quadrant April 2017 James Fairfax, AC

He o began t acquire works by eighteenth-century banker, lawyer, architect, realtor, curator, designer. French and Venetian artists. Throughout his life And yet in such a full life, he was never hurried; James was the most meticulous collector—stamps, he could never be rushed. Schedules and itinerar- letters, photos, books, bones, Georgian silver, ies, once put in place, were as good as Holy Writ. Chinese dragon robes. His houses, be it Lindesay He always lived well—for most of his life in great Avenue, Bilgola, Edward Street, Stanbridge Mill luxury—and yet he managed to give the impression or Retford Park, were monuments to an exquisite that he was not just delighted but somehow sur- taste; it was as if every single wall, every surface had prised by his good fortune. And this he shared with been curated. endless circles of friends. Some, in fact a very few, He had made his first acquisition at the age might have taken advantage of his generosity but of twelve—a Paris street scene by his Cranbrook even when he learnt of it, the friendship endured. art master, Eric Wilson. As one of his nephews Patrick White had, of course, a somewhat observed: trenchant view but perhaps there was something in it. As he wrote to Geoffrey Dutton: I realised talking with him that collecting wasn’t something peripheral, something he did theres i much more in him than he cares to when he had a bit of time to spare; it wasn’t admit, but I expect he gets so outrageously something tacked on to his life: collecting was flattered because he is a millionaire and a vital to him. Fairfax, and he has withdrawn into himself in embarrassment. And so, later in his life, was giving it away. In October 1994 the James Fairfax Galleries He particularly enjoyed the company of a merry were opened at the New South Wales Art Gallery. band of men-about-town—Frank McDonald, Works by Tiepolo, Rubens, Ingres, Canaletto, Dickie Keep, Leslie Walford, Terry Clune and Lorrain and Watteau were given so “more peo- Charles Lloyd-Jones—all lifelong friends. Among ple than me can enjoy them”. The the many (often older) women National Gallery of Victoria and he was fond of were some great other institutions around the coun- ax Suich referred characters—like Dorothy “Doff” try were also favoured. M Edwards, wife and widow of Sir to his tolerance; but Hughie Edwards, VC; Sue Du ut f what o the man behind the another prevailing Val, a cousin of his brother-in- spectacles? That waspish old law, Philip Simpson; and Diana cBountry-house champion James trait was wisdom. Walder, daughter-in-law of Sir Lees-Milne recorded in his diary One of his nephews Sam Walder, a former Lord in 1987, “We had James Fairfax Mayor of Sydney. He rarely trav- to stay. A perfectly agreeable, dull described him as elled alone and valued good com- Australian journalist. He owns all “Yoda with a glass pany—Mervyn Horton, Guilford the [Australian] newspapers which of champagne Bell and Denis Kelynack, Richard Rupert Murdoch doesn’t own, as Walker, Alan Norris, John Hahir, well as our Spectator.” Lees-Milne in his hand”. and that irrepressible duo, Harold clearly did not know his guest. Hertzberg and Morson Clift. James was not dull—he was laconic Others like Billy McCann opened and had his fair share of Fairfax reserve. And while the grandest doors in Europe, although James he was never showy, and a listener rather than a appeared, of his own accord, to know everyone. raconteur, he had an acute sense of humour, a ready He would visit the Duke and Duchess of Bedford laugh, and attracted and delighted in good com- and Florence Packer in Monaco; Clarissa Avon in pany And yet, despite the love of family and the London, Heinie Thyssen-Bornemisza in Lugano, affection of legions of friends., he remained prone a string of grandees in Spain and survivors of the to moments of loneliness and insecurity. Perhaps ancien régime in France. the result was a profound perception of his fellow When he returned to Sydney, following his sar- man. saparilla years, Patrick White and James became Max Suich referred to his tolerance; but another friends, as Lady Jim and Patrick’s mother Ruth had prevailing trait was wisdom. One of his nephews been. Patrick called on James and Betty’s experience described him as “Yoda with a glass of champagne when researching The Eye of the Storm’s Dorothy in his hand”. He always sought and took advice Hunter’s transformation from grazier’s daughter to from the best—be it an investment adviser, a Princess de Lascabanes. James was to take quiet

Quadrant April 2017 63 James Fairfax, AC pleasuren i the fact that, unlike most of those in the A final honour was the decision in 2015 to make prickly laureate’s life, they were to remain friends a New South Wales state emblem of the 370-mil- until Patrick’s death. lion-year-old fish fossil named after him and the He was never one to bear grudges. There was a creek where it was found. And so Mandageria fair- period of estrangement from that other, very differ- faxi joined the kookaburra, the platypus, the blue ent proprietor, Kerry Packer, who would delight in grouper and the black opal as emblematic of the booking himself into hospitals under the name of state to which he and his family had contributed so James Fairfax. But when James saw his old adver- much for so long. sary, looking so ill, at a Double Bay restaurant a few Only months before his death, James bestowed years before Packer’s death, he went up to him and his last home, at Bowral, the 1887 deep pink offered his hand. Illustrating the big-heartedness of Italianate Retford Park, and thirty-three hectares both of them, Sir Frank’s heir asked Sir Warwick’s of magnificent gardens, to the New South Wales heir to lunch at ACP headquarters in Park Street National Trust, the single largest gift in its history. soon after, and the two scions were reconciled. He also guaranteed its future by selling off nearby Although friendship with the extraordinary land for residential use. Mary was a bridge too far, James did reconcile with Mary, at ninety-four, survives her stepson—as young Warwick, who joined the rest of the family do her three Fairfax children, Warwick, Anna and at a private memorial service for his half-brother on Charles and their eight children. James’s remark- February 8 this year. able sister Caroline (the subject of a newly released collection of essays), died in 2003; his dashing n 2010, James’s rank as Officer of the Order of half-brother Edward Gilly died in 2005; while his Australia was elevated to Companion (AC), “For half-sister Annalise, a unifying force in the family, eIminent service to the community through support survives him—with their eleven children (James’s and philanthropy for the visual arts, conservation nephews and nieces), and their children. organisations and building programs for medi- James had a good death, as he had had a good cal research and educational facilities”—among life, dying three days short of the thirtieth anniver- them Geelong Grammar’s Michael Collins Persse sary of his father’s death. He died surrounded by Archives Centre, a tribute to his old Balliol friend. his beloved Rhodesian ridgebacks and his devoted James sat on the board of management of the staff at Retford Park, the fourth generation to have Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children from 1967 cared for him (another mark of the man he was). to 1985. (He endowed the Lorimer Dods School of It was fitting that Titian’s Portrait of a Nobleman Child Medicine at the University of Sydney.) He was should be hanging on the wall above the dying on the Council of the Australian National Gallery James—a noble man and one of the most civilised from 1976 to 1984; on the International Council citizens our country has known. of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1971; and of the Council of International House, Mark McGinness, a noted obituarist, is living in the University of Sydney, from 1967 to 1979. United Arab Emirates.

Gossiper

As a brass clapper in a windbell, so a tongue in a gossip’s mouth. Any wind will make it swing to strike out its single note.

Andrew Lansdown

64 Quadrant April 2017 BOOKS, ARTS & IFEL

Encouraging the Unwell George Thomas

Fragile Nation: Vulnerability, Resilience and extraordinary courage and grace in the face of Victimhood tremendous adversity” and their “wide variety of by Tanveer Ahmed responses to crafting a meaningful life”. Connor Court, 2016, 212 pages, $24.95 He does not claim to cure his patients. He can only show them how to cure themselves; which is anveer Ahmed demonstrated his common- where the courage is required. This is one crucial way sense optimism in his memoir The Exotic Rissole in which psychiatric medicine differs from medicine T(2011). That book ended with his success, on the more generally. Physical ailments are cured largely third attempt, to convert his medical degree into by following medical advice and waiting. Recovering qualifications to practise as a psychiatrist. Fragile from psychiatric ailments takes courage. Nation is his report on the mental state of the nation, The courage psychiatric patients need is not the based on his subsequent professional experience. passive courage they may have used to try to put up The first and most obvious thing about the with their troubles, or the destructive courage they book is that it is surprisingly cheerful and hopeful. may have used to lash out wildly in desperation, Ahmed is fascinated by people and by the challenges but the positive courage that draws on their virtues his work presents. His predominant theme is that and recovers their full humanity. It must be truly his patients are not helpless victims, no matter what encouraging to people at the end of their tether to the cause of their suffering, but people who have be shown how they can make their way forward somehow lost the ability to live fully. He sees his again using their own inner resources. task as guiding them to ways of rediscovering the ability to cope with life’s vicissitudes. hmed recounts a wide variety of his cases, He finds that such guidance, offering a proper across a range of social classes, ethnic groups balance of sympathy and firmness, and reminding aAnd geographical areas. He approaches each patient his patients of the rewards and penalties that are as an individual with unique circumstances. He is the consequences of their behaviour, leads in most not bound by theory. While he has studied and cases to satisfactory improvement and allows his read widely and continues to do so—the fifty or so patients to get on top of their problems and resume references in the book would supply a year or two of normal life. He attributes their recovery to “their fascinating and instructive reading to most of us—

Quadrant April 2017 65 Books he does not try to fit his patients to his theories, but for children, as we are constantly told? He quotes rather uses his theories where they can help each one former child inmate who doesn’t remember patient. feeling traumatised: “We just played. We didn’t He explains, for example, that while the know it was bad.” Ahmed points out that the usefulness of prescription drugs has its limits, drug genuinely difficult part for asylum-seekers is coping therapy can work in many cases. Patients suffering with extended periods of uncertainty about their from their own damaging behaviour brought on by future, being unable to plan for themselves or their anxiety can often be treated with anti-depressants. families, whether that time is spent in detention or Where their anxiety has led to bad mental habits— in the community. severe neuroses, we might have said in the past, Sadly, there are many incentives for discontented but Ahmed does not use that term—and the bad people to claim mental affliction, and many habits in turn have intensified the anxiety, a course people in the “caring” professions who think it is of anti-depressants can take away the anxiety, and their duty to help them do so. Ahmed’s patient the bad habits, for a few months while Ahmed Angelo, for example, was “able to maintain a highly brings his patients to an understanding of where structured daily routine, planned meticulously” they have been going wrong and how they can avoid yet “was socially withdrawn, had strained family relapsing in future. A bad habit relationships, lacked motivation to can be extremely difficult to break, work and often suffered disrupted but an encouraged person who has sleep”. On the basis of those broken a bad habit and understands If the marriage fails, commonplace symptoms Angelo’s its dangers can avoid a relapse she can retain her GP certified him as “depressed”, relatively easily. migration status if she and so he was able to receive income Of course, I am simplifying, just protection. It could only happen “in as Ahmed has simplified in order claims to have been wealthy countries like Australia”, to explain his work to people like abused by her husband says Ahmed, “where insurance was me. Despite some idiosyncrasy of paying him to remain unemployed expression this is a very readable and has suffered and conduct an alternative lifestyle”. book, especially considering that as a consequence Another example is the psychiatrists are an elite among the supposedly abused wife in an elite who practise medicine. “a diagnosable arranged marriage. Arranged Still, being smart doesn’t make medical condition”. marriages are common among our psychiatrists, as a body at least, migrants from the Middle East immune to irresponsibility and and South Asia. In many cases a foolishness. One of Ahmed’s pet peeves is the way in great deal hangs on the success of the marriage: which every mental affliction, from sadness upwards, her (it’s usually a woman) family back home are is being medicalised, labelled as a condition which relying on her to send money back to them, and therefore is in need of psychiatric treatment. Happy perhaps hoping her success in obtaining Australian people tend to function better at everything. Sad citizenship will help more of the family migrate in people can find all aspects of life difficult, especially future. If the marriage fails, which is also common, if their sadness has persisted for a long time; but that she can retain her migration status if she claims to doesn’t mean they have a mental illness. have been abused by her husband and has suffered Ahmed points out that PTSD diagnoses, as a consequence “a diagnosable medical condition”. which have been useful in treating those who “It’s quite an obscure loophole in our rules,” Ahmed suffer severely from war-front experiences, have observes, “but one that migration experts are all too widened in recent years to take in people who have aware of.” experienced something from the normal range of Ahmed believes that drug addiction, like many upsets we all have to deal with: “a distressing image other mental afflictions, is “more a bad habit than on television, a serious health diagnosis, to even a disease”, and points out that most illegal drugs normal experiences such as giving birth”. He is do not cause addiction in most people, and most of dubious about the mental health claims of asylum- the people “who overcome addictions do so with no seekers in detention. Why, he asks, would people formal treatment”: who have survived war, persecution, displacement, hunger and fear, and made perilous journeys across Like being overweight, addiction results from the sea, suddenly “fall in a heap when a fence was the incremental build-up of multiple decisions placed around them” and they are secure, sheltered over a long period of time, usually in the form and fed? Are such places so intrinsically damaging of reducing some kind of pain or distress in the

66 Quadrant April 2017 Books

short s term a opposed to taking on the much 1931. He was arguably the greatest Australian poli- harder process of confronting larger problems or tician never to become prime minister. inadequacies. In large part Theodore’s political career was killed by what became known as the Mungana Mines In treating addicts he finds it most effective to scandal. The Mungana mining leases were situated allow them to regard their addiction as a disease twenty kilometres north-west of Chillagoe, a north at first, in order to win their confidence and get Queensland town which was part of Theodore’s them into treatment. Then he introduces firmness state electorate from 1909 until 1925. The financial to balance the kindness, and sets them some clear scandal surrounding Mungana intimately involved goals. “Treating addicts like fragile victims of Theodore’s friend and co-founder of the Australian disease,” he says, “disempowers them and helps no Workers’ Union, William McCormack, who was one.” Premier of Queensland from 1925 to 1929. However it was Theodore who was the most prominent casu- he most worrying chapter in Fragile Nation is alty of what David E. Moore calls “the curse of the one on teenagers. Most people, at some Mungana”. sTtage in their adolescence, when their bodies and Ironically it was David E. Moore’s grandfather, minds are changing and they are trying to come to Arthur Moore, who, while he was Country and terms with the challenges and imperfections of the Progressive National Party Premier of Queensland world, can be sensitive and fragile. Social media, from 1929 to 1932, pursued his Queensland Labor which seems to offer them community, in fact tends adversaries. This included setting up a royal com- to isolate them from the people and the world around mission to inquire into the Mungana-Chillagoe them—their real community. At a time when they mining enterprises. need to be gently buffeted by new ideas and experi- The ensuing report of July 1930 found that ences so they can develop powers of discrimination, McCormack, Theodore and two other persons tolerance and resilience, they are instead retreating were, as Moore puts it, “guilty of fraud and dishon- into something resembling the protected world of esty in procuring the State Government to purchase childhood, where they encounter nothing to disturb the Mungana Mines”. In particular, the revelation their feelings or opinions. that from 1920 to 1926 Theodore received regular Given the manifold pressures on today’s teenagers payments from McCormack at the same time as that Ahmed enumerates from his experience, the McCormack received income from the Mungana social media phenomenon tends, he says, to be an leases, and which equated to approximately 50 intensifier of problems rather than a cause. But as per cent of McCormack’s receipts from Mungana a former headmaster told him, teenagers are not Mines, was a bombshell. the best people to handle smartphones: “They’re As a result of these findings and other accusa- P-plate minds with full access to V8 technologies, tions that he had benefited financially from the sometimes a recipe for disaster.” mines at Mungana, Theodore had to stand down Tanveer Ahmed and his colleagues are certainly as federal Treasurer at a time when his economic not going to be short of work in coming decades. policies might well have averted the worst excesses of the Great Depression which was plaguing George Thomas is deputy editor of Quadrant. Australia. Even though Theodore was never found guilty of any criminal or civil offence, the curse of Mungana stayed with him throughout his life, and well beyond. During the bitter federal election campaign Ross Fitzgerald in December 1931 when Theodore lost his Sydney- based seat of Dalley to a Lang Labor candidate who Red Ted’s Fall and Recovery had previously been his campaign manager, he was persistently jeered at meetings with “What about The Curse of Mungana Mungana?” It had become a millstone around his by David E. Moore neck. Often, the anti-Theodore crowd would chant, Boolarong Press, 2017, 336 pages, $34.99 “Yes, we have no Munganas!” echoing a popular song. Moreover, as I wrote in “Red Ted”: The Life of idely known as “Red Ted”, Edward Granville E.G. Theodore, which was published by University Theodore was Queensland Premier from of Queensland Press in 1994, “the word ‘Mungana’ W1919 to 1925 and federal Treasurer during James scrawled on a lavatory wall was enough to turn a Scullin’s federal Labor government from 1929 to vote”. In contrast to the 77.9 per cent he had polled

Quadrant April 2017 67 Books two years earlier, Theodore received a mere 19.6 per country’s history you accepted entirely without cent of the vote. After his overwhelming defeat and financial reward a responsibility of gigantic the utter routing of the Scullin Labor government, proportions. he said: “That finishes me with politics.” When Theodore died on February 5, 1950, exactly e then devoted much of his time to a highly twenty-five years after his resignation as Premier of successful business career. As Moore explains, Queensland, his estate was equivalent to $25 million Hin particular this involved “teaming up with the today. 27-year-old Frank Packer to become half-owner While there is no doubting Theodore’s enormous in the Sydney Newspapers syndicate in November political, economic, financial, business, bureaucratic 1932 to acquire the World”. This floundering AWU- and administrative talents, the taint of Mungana sponsored Sydney afternoon daily newspaper had still poisons some people’s perceptions of him. In been bleeding money. Theodore, who was the chief The Curse of Mungana, Moore argues powerfully for negotiator, became the founding chairman of what Theodore’s guilt—especially given that he received turned into a flourishing print empire, with Packer from McCormack almost exactly 50 per cent of all as its managing director. McCormack’s income from Mungana. Yet, in my As Moore points out in this richly and copiously opinion, the case, although it appears to be strong, illustrated book, the first edition of the Australian cannot be proved absolutely. Available documents Women’s Weekly in June 1933 was an instant success. show that McCormack, over six years, periodically In 1935 Sydney Newspapers bought a Sydney morn- gave Theodore substantial sums—the provenance ing newspaper, the Telegraph, creating a new entity, of which is uncertain. Hence any conclusion about Consolidated Press Limited. The renamed Daily Theodore’s guilt still has to be conjecture. As I have Telegraph and later the Sunday Telegraph made sub- written elsewhere, “the credits to Theodore’s account stantial inroads in the Sydney market, becoming, were certainly paid by McCormack. Beyond this, as Moore puts it, “sufficiently powerful to refuse a their nature was unclear.” takeover bid by the acquisitive Keith Murdoch in Shortly before his death a friend asked: “Was it mid-1938”. true about Mungana, Ted?” In the early 1930s Theodore, in association with Theodore reportedly replied, “There is no more Packer, Patrick Cody, and Ted’s friend the notori- beautiful sight than Sydney Harbour on an autumn ous Collingwood-based “entrepreneur” John Wren, afternoon.” Interpret that as you will. invested in a highly lucrative gold-mining venture in Fiji, employing 1700 people. Theodore, who Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith had management responsibility for the Emperor University, Ross Fitzgerald is the author of thirty- Gold Mining Company, soon also became man- nine books, including “Red Ted”: The Life of E.G. aging director of the smaller, but highly lucrative, Theodore and the recent satire Going Out Backwards: Loloma Gold Mines N.L. In mid-1935 their public A Grafton Everest Adventure. He reviewed Rowan flotations were heavily oversubscribed. Under the Dean’s Way Beyond Satire in the March issue. shrewd direction of Theodore, who lived in Fiji for much of the time, both gold-mining companies continued to generate huge profits. In the middle of the Second World War, in February 1942, Labor Prime Minister John Curtin Doug Morrissey appointed Theodore Director-General of Public Works, a position with extraordinarily wide pow- The Notorious Widow Kelly ers. As Moore explains, Theodore, who refused to accept any payment, was a highly successful direc- Mrs Kelly: The Astonishing Life of Ned Kelly’s tor of the Allied Works Council, which recruited Mother 50,000 workers “for a wide range of production by Grantlee Kieza and support services”. When Theodore resigned as HarperCollins, 2017, 624 pages, $39.99 Director-General of Public Works in October 1944 Curtin wrote: n the past five years, there have been two pub- lished biographies of Ellen Kelly. Neither has I o wish t express to you on behalf of my Ished much light on the mother of Ned Kelly, colleagues and myself our most grateful thanks beyond portraying her as a long-suffering woman for the inestimable service you have rendered to with a large family who was constantly hassled by Australia … At the most critical stage of our the wicked police.

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Despite what the publicity blurb promises on relationships and dealings between people in the the cover of journalist Grantlee Kieza’s Mrs Kelly: Greta community shows this myth to be untrue. The Astonishing Life of Ned Kelly’s Mother, the book There was more community co-operation and far fails to bring the reader any new knowledge. It is less dislike of the police than Kieza or the Kelly a rehash of the old Kelly myth of persecution and myth divulge. Community life was not a squalid harassment of “the poor widow” Kelly. Kieza not “Dad and Dave” existence, barely hanging onto a only misrepresents Ellen and Ned’s dramatic story, troubled life on the margins of failure and despair. he does so in an unashamedly partisan and melo- Nor was it as racially harsh or as socially divisive of dramatic fashion: people’s lives as Kieza and the Kelly myth would have us believe. It was not a case of crooked police- A f spirit o antagonism prevails between the men and nasty squatters exercising a local tyranny [squatter] families in the grand country houses over Greta’s residents. The Greta community fault- and the selectors in their bark-slab huts … For line was between the majority of respectable set- the Kellys and Quinns, the police in Victoria tlers who obeyed the law and a minority of shanty are becoming as oppressive as those in Ireland. thieves, lawbreakers and larrikins who did not. Ellen and her misbehaving relatives belonged to Kieza “goodies and baddies” view of nineteenth- the latter group. Colonial politics, Irish heritage century colonial history ignores recent scholarship, and a heroic fight for justice had nothing to do with which questions the basic assumptions on which his the Kelly clan’s predatory opportunism. interpretation rests. His version is a Kieza’s book is marred from the mixture of misinterpreted facts and beginning by an overly respectful, creative imagination, designed to excuse-finding, reinventing of fic- bring drama and sympathy to this The Greta community tion about a scandalous woman, shanty-living, lawless family. fault-line was who was known as “the notorious Like Peter FitzSimons before between the majority Mrs Kelly”. Empathy for a char- him, Kieza accepts Ned as a rebel acter is a good thing; shaping a hero. The north-east Victorian of respectable settlers sympathetic story around Ellen’s community background is one of who obeyed the law deceits and fabrications about her- conflict, squatter oppression and self and her family is something military-style police occupation. and a minority else. Kieza writes: “Ellen’s hopes of Writing of the Eureka fight, Kieza of shanty thieves, keeping her family out of trouble moralises: “All around Victoria, seem doomed as Ned’s notoriety poor people of the soil, like the lawbreakers and dogs him and the police watch his Kelly family in Beveridge, feel larrikins who did not. every move.” It’s the chicken-and- emboldened to stand up for them- egg conundrum. Did the police selves against unjust laws and drive Ned to crime or was Ned harsh treatment.” An admirer of Ned and his fam- a criminal the police had to watch? Ned’s record ily, Kieza excuses the Kellys, Quinns and Lloyds as a lawbreaker speaks for itself. At twelve years their many crimes, choosing to regard what they old, he was hiding drovers’ livestock in the bush did over two decades as similar to agrarian crime and returning the animals for a cash reward. Ellen in Ireland fuelled by a hatred of the English. The and her children’s lawless behaviour refutes Kieza’s comparison does not hold; there are major differ- benevolent homily. ences between the Irish and colonial situations that cannot be glossed over by a blanket analogy of racial llen emerges in Kieza’s work as a determined hatred and animosity towards the police. When the Irish mother of seven children (an eighth child Kelly clan avoided conviction and jail, as they did Edied as an infant) by Ned’s father Red Kelly, an on numerous occasions due to perjury or compro- illegitimate child to a lodger, and three children mised evidence, Kieza believes it was a failure of with her second husband George King, courageously the police policy of harassment. Failure to convict fighting against the odds for a better life for herself in Kieza’s eyes is the same as innocence, and he and her wayward sons and daughters, defiant spins a fairytale of angry, colonial Irishmen with an and with a “thumb your nose” attitude towards abiding hatred of the English and the police. establishment values and morality. Ellen is seen as Kieza’s Greta community back-story is the a shining beacon of rural womanhood, although Kelly-myth version of Ned and Ellen’s society—a a feminine hero with flaws. She is venerated society riven with dissension and driven by conflict as representative of pioneer women, taming an between rich and poor. Research into all kinds of unpredictable land and civilising their menfolk.

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This,f o course, is a calumny of most pioneer threatened Fitzpatrick with “violence from their women, who neither rejected traditional values nor friends” if he reported the matter. Fitzpatrick’s visit immersed themselves in crime and a shanty lifestyle was the spark; but horse and cattle stealing was the as Ellen Kelly did. smouldering fuse that led the Kellys to bushranging The truth about Ellen is that she was a sly- and murder. grog seller and a sexually promiscuous woman, Like her son Ned, Ellen had a violent temper offering lodgings and providing favours “for cash and a foul mouth. She struck out physically and and presents”, working alongside a well-known verbally at those around her. She faced court sev- Greta prostitute who resided at the Kelly shanty. eral times for fights and the use of threatening She was an indifferent farmer, constantly in debt language, including once for assaulting her sister and receiving little money or practical help from her in law Annie Ryan nee Kelly. She was suspected larrikin sons. Ellen was not a respectable woman of committing other crimes, but the police lacked and the Kelly family was shunned by Greta’s proof and were unable to bring a case against her. decent citizens. Most Greta residents were law- Ellen served time in Pentridge for the Fitzpatrick abiding men and women, some with money, others assault and was still in jail when her son Ned with very little, who did not commit crime but was executed for murdering Constable Thomas worked with pride and integrity to establish a rural Lonigan at Stringybark Creek. Kieza waxes poetic community they and their children could be proud on Ellen’s last visit with Ned, when reputedly she of. What Kieza fails to mention in his dire-poverty- told him, “Mind you die like a Kelly!” He dwells and-conflict model of farming life in the Greta on the emotionalism of the encounter to curry area, is that most selectors survived the rigours and reader sympathy for a jailed mother tearfully bid- hardships of settling on the land and prospered. ding goodbye to her outlaw son: Even Ellen Kelly eventually obtained the title deed to her property. Mother and son are able to talk for half an Ellen, her relatives and her larrikin brood were hour about old times and Ellen tells Ned that part of the criminal underbelly of the Greta com- she always knew he was an innocent man and munity. They were the bullying thieves and rowdy he will become a martyr for those who cry for thugs, to be avoided where possible and scrutinised freedom. when crime occurred. Rich and poor settlers alike lost horses to the Greta thieves, and the Kellys were How could Kieza possibly know what passed invariably involved. There was no conflict between between mother and son at their final meeting? local squatters and the Kelly family. Ned’s Moyhu These are the melodramatic words of a tabloid jour- “Jerilderie Letter” enemies, Whitty and Byrne, nalist, not the balanced words of a careful historian. were selectors, not squatters. The Kelly shanty was The bottom line is that everybody in the Greta located on land close to Robert McBean’s Kilfera community knew who the rowdies and toughs Run. Squatter McBean was well liked by Ned and were. Ellen Kelly’s shanty was at the centre of the his relatives, some of whom worked for him. Police unruly disorder and nobody but her modern-day interest in Ellen and her lawless relatives was not admirers believed otherwise. Kieza writes of Ellen harassment, as Kieza and the Kelly myth claim. It in later life becoming a well-thought-of matriarch came about because of the Kelly clan’s long crimi- respected by the Greta community. Her son Jack nal history of assaults, horse and cattle stealing and King/Kelly, Ned’s half-brother, became a West numerous other crimes. Australian policeman of whom she was proud. Kieza points to the visit of Constable Fitzpatrick This may be true, but it does not excuse or dimin- to the Kelly shanty, to see his girlfriend Kate Kelly ish Ellen’s prominence in the Greta criminal com- and arrest her brother Dan for horse stealing, as a munity before, during and for many years after the principal cause of the Kelly outbreak. The Kellys Kelly outbreak. lied about what happened and a policeman who Grantlee Kieza’s book would have been better had been a friend of the Kelly family was wounded. served if he had listened to the rarely heard voice of Ellen joined in the attack on Fitzpatrick by knock- those in the Greta community who speak of Ellen’s ing him unconscious with a fire shovel. Ned fired turbulent life and times when she was the fiery, three shots, one of which wounded Fitzpatrick in wild, Irish shanty woman of local tradition. the wrist. He was plied with grog and held pris- oner for around six hours. The Kellys released him Doug Morrissey’s book Ned Kelly: A Lawless Life was only when they believed they had persuaded the published by Connor Court in 2015 and shortlisted for wounded policeman to lie about what happened. the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian There was no sexual molesting of Kate Kelly. Ellen History in 2016.

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long-term senior IRA man who followed his own Sean O’Callaghan timetable, operating in his native County Tyrone for going on sixteen years, interrupted only by Heroes of a Dirty War one spell on remand. I was curious as to why this cautious man was operating far from his normal Secret Victory: The Intelligence War That Beat stomping ground. I asked him, and the answer I the IRA received in that tunnel was this: “Special Branch by William Matchett have us in a vice-like grip in Tyrone and it is just William Matchett, 2016, 272 pages, about $30 too difficult to operate, so like a fool I finished up going to Antrim to get some kills and ended up ome might regard the title of this book as mak- here.” Out of the mouths of babes and killers ... ing a grandiose claim. Others may deride it, McNally had no love for the Special Branch, but he Sor ignore both title and book, choosing instead had good reason to be realistic about them as for- to believe that whatever fragile peace Northern midable and professional enemies forged in a very Ireland enjoys today is a blessing bestowed by Tony unforgiving fire. Blair, Gerry Adams, Bill Clinton and an assort- In the introduction to his book Matchett ment of peaceniks, chancers and conflict resolution describes his first days as an eighteen-year-old groupies. Many such people have lined their pock- recruit in the RUC, stationed in the IRA heartland ets by grossly inflating their influence in the “peace of South Armagh: process” and exporting their inanities to gullible audiences worldwide. At8t 1 i was a rude awakening to the reality of In reality they reaped the harvest of peace that armed conflict. I was shot at, caught in roadside others had sown in a long intelligence war, and bombs and mortared. I lost some good friends. William Matchett’s book is the perfect antidote I would lie if I said I was not afraid. I knew the to their delusions. The author is a former senior IRA men who were doing this, we all did, but officer in the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster we could not prove it. Constabulary who fought the IRA (and their loyal- ist counterparts) for a quarter of a century and who This was Northern Ireland in 1982, not Beirut has gone on to advise police forces across the world or Afghanistan, but a part of the UK situated on on counter-terrorism. He describes with the familiar the island of Ireland. It is I think worth taking a understated practicality of the North’s Protestant- moment to ponder those lines. The border was but Unionist majority how he and his Special Branch a stone’s throw away and mostly the IRA simply colleagues were able to win a war of intelligence scooted across the border into the Irish Republic within the civil law. where Matchett and his colleagues could not fol- One experience of mine in Crumlin Road Jail low. And so it went on—year after bloody year. in Belfast in 1989 confirmed for me—not that I A police force that had been utterly demoralised needed much convincing—the absolutely central and demonised by the events of 1969 took years and critical role that RUC Special Branch played to recover some sense of mission and purpose. It in degrading the Provisional IRA, and forcing wasn’t until police primacy in law enforcement and it to end its campaign of murder and intimida- intelligence gathering was restored in 1976 that a tion against the people of Northern Ireland. I was revamped and reinvigorated RUC really took on being led, in the company of seven IRA members, the slow and deadly task of taking back control of through the tunnel from the jail to the courthouse, IRA-controlled areas of Belfast and Derry. Slowly each of us handcuffed to another prisoner. I hap- but surely the rule of law began to assert itself. The pened to be handcuffed to a senior and long-stand- centre of IRA activity began to retreat more and ing member of the IRA from Dungannon, County more to the rural heartlands bordering the Irish Tyrone, named Henry Louis McNally. I knew him Republic. Eventually towards the end the IRA was quite well from my days as an IRA operative in the on its knees, its last stronghold in South Armagh mid-1970s in County Tyrone. He was once named, on the verge of collapse. by Ken Maginnis, an Ulster Unionist MP in the It would of course be wrong to downgrade the House of Commons, as being directly responsi- huge role and sacrifice undertaken by the British ble for the murders of seventeen members of the Army, particularly in the early 1970s. Without the security forces. He had been arrested, charged, and Army holding the line in those difficult years the later convicted of the attempted murder of British RUC, and Special Branch in particular, would soldiers travelling by bus to their base in Antrim. almost certainly never have had the breathing McNally was a very canny, experienced and space to re-organise. Matchett recognises the debt

Quadrant April 2017 71 Books of gratitude to those soldiers who served and were in the “wrong” place and so on. The IRA stupidly, injured or murdered when he writes simply, “The sometimes to appease the worst instincts of their Army prevented Ulster from unravelling.” Of course supporters, gave RUC Special Branch an army of one of the primary differences between the police observers and potential informers, particularly in and the Army was that police knew the ground the urban centres of Belfast and Derry. where they were born, went to school, got married, Matchett’s book necessarily includes much had children and worked and socialised. They were technical, historical and operational detail. Indeed, of the soil, as their enemies in the IRA were, and that is one of its great strengths—it is, among other they proved more resolute, determined and fear- things, a manual of practical counter-terrorism. less in protecting their children, homeland and way Many other police and intelligence services have of life than those who opposed them. They were since benefited from the lessons learned in the field often frustrated by having to observe the rule of by Matchett and his colleagues. law—but it proved the right way. They were deter- It was an unfair fight, of course. For the IRA it mined to outwit and outlast the IRA—and they was a war to be fought and won by whatever means did. Matchett sets out in clear, precise words the possible. Its terrorists could simply shoot people. operational strategies and tactics Special Branch RUC Special Branch, like all other branches of adopted to defeat a well-armed and the security forces, had to operate vicious terrorist group. under the rules of the civil law and he RUC Special in spite of all the provocation they heRA I was far from being T behaved, mostly, with impeccable an unsophisticated enemy and Branch, more than restraint. Tyet it failed utterly to get any real any politician, forced Did they get every decision right? handle on how Special Branch Hardly. Individual Special Branch operated. Special Branch worked the IRA to stop officers had to make instant, ter- slowly and methodically, grinding killing and bombing. rifying and life-changing decisions through the vast amounts of infor- in the middle of a ferocious terrorist mation fed in by all branches of They provided the onslaught. Yet no RUC officer ever the security services and the gen- opportunity for glory- gave an order to kidnap and force, eral public. As the IRA’s vaunted hunting politicians to at gunpoint, an innocent man into “Long War” ground on with little a car and instruct him to deliver sign of victory the jails began to feel the hand of history that car, with a bomb on board, fill up, marriages fell apart, petty on their shoulder to an Army checkpoint, under the jealousies were rampant. The IRA understanding that having done so attempted to fight its “Long War” and to conclude he would shout a warning and be in the belly of the “beast”, in real- a squalid deal. given time to escape, only for his ity part of perhaps the most demo- torturers to blow him and five sol- cratic country in the world, and the diers to pieces. That instruction was “beast” represented by Special Branch devoured it. given by the IRA’s Army Council in which Adams This was a war in which the state provided and McGuinness were leading members. housing, welfare and education to the vast major- Whatever accusations might be made against ity of its sworn enemies. Bizarre, one might say, individual members of the RUC pale into insignifi- but it allowed Special Branch an in-depth view of cance when measured against the bestial thought the IRA and its support base. The IRA believed processes that led to Enniskillen, Bloody Friday, its “Long War” would erode the will to resist its Le Mon, Darkley, Kingsmill and hundreds of other demands. In reality Special Branch were in a posi- bloodstained atrocities committed by the IRA in a tion to know who was pregnant, or visited the den- degenerate attempt to enforce their will. tist, or was missing from their usual haunts, or in I write as someone who in August 1974 mur- financial trouble, or having relationship problems, dered Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan of RUC and so on. Also in pursuance of the “Long War” Special Branch in a County Tyrone public house. I and to enforce control in their communities, the am deeply ashamed of that act. Like many young IRA murdered dozens, mutilated and tortured Irish republicans before me I thought I was fighting thousands. Many of those and their friends and for Irish freedom. I was not. I was fighting for an families became more inclined to phone the con- ugly and perverted form of Irish nationalism which fidential RUC number the longer the war contin- has periodically disfigured the name of Ireland ued, if they saw known IRA acting suspiciously, throughout the world.

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hat struck me most about Matchett’s book on first reading was the sheer modesty and Douglas Hassall Whumility of the man. There is also a mainly sup- pressed rage and frustration at the calculated vit- Lord Clark of Civilisation riol and lies, sometimes spurred on by unthinking ignorance, that he and his colleagues, living and Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation murdered, have been subjected to by the terrorists’ by James Stourton fellow travellers in the media and the human rights Knopf, 2016, 478 pages, $65 industry. The British, Irish and US governments and their intelligence agencies are only too well his new and detailed biography is unlikely to aware of the superb, professional and extraordinar- be surpassed by any further single work on ily courageous work undertaken by Special Branch KTenneth Clark. That is the case despite Stourton’s day in, day out, year after year while all the time own modest averral that his book should be seen being prime targets for the IRA. Yet they remain as “notes towards a definition”. Whilst others (and mealy-mouthed, at best, in the face of an orches- particularly art historians) may well produce fur- trated campaign of lies and slander—led by Sinn ther studies on Clark and his major achievement Fein and its fellow travellers in the media and poli- on the cultural history of the West, the BBC series tics—against a force that won the peace by careful Civilisation, they are likely to be studies of a much detective work. more specialised nature. What Stourton gives us is I make absolutely no apology for saluting the not the first biography of Clark; that was provided brave men and women of RUC Special Branch. It by Meryle Secrest’s book of 1984. Instead, Stourton was they who, more than any politician, forced the gives us the first really detailed study of Clark’s life IRA to stop killing and bombing. They provided and work, and it is one based on extensive access to the opportunity for glory-hunting politicians to feel primary archival materials and with the benefit of the hand of history on their shoulder and to con- the passage of the decades. clude a squalid deal. We are now at nearly fifty years’ remove from William Matchett has written a moving, brave 1968, the year in which Clark’s Civilisation series and not uncritical testimony about how a band was completed for broadcast in February 1969. We of largely unsung heroes defeated a brutal terror- are all familiar with the cultural discontents and ist assault on democracy and the rule of law. We direnesses that focused themselves into the even- owe them and him huge gratitude. More than that, ements of 1968 and have persisted since; Clark’s we owe it to them to speak out clearly and loudly Civilisation of that year gave us something entirely in their defence when we hear them traduced. Yet different. Matchett could not find one publisher to accept his Stourton has now given us a much more care- informative and brave account of how—in a world ful study of Clark, his family background, his of crises and terrorism—one terrorist group was youth and upbringing and his education than we well and truly beaten. So he published it himself (it have had before. This is important, because Clark is available from internet booksellers). Shame on all came from a fairly “privileged” background, and he those publishers, who inhabit a safe and comfort- himself quipped that his parents were part of what able world because of men and women like William used to be called the “idle rich”, adding that “whilst Matchett yet who refuse to pay for their sacrifice many were richer, few can have been idler”. Even so, when the bill falls due. Clark’s particular circumstances enabled the early We may yet have to call men like Matchett into sowing of a deep interest in art and the emergence of the field again. Bombs continue to explode near a real connoisseur. This was coupled with very good schools in Northern Ireland and the latest elections educational opportunities (he attended Winchester, there suggest the Good Friday Agreement is frag- followed by Oxford University) such that there was ile and the myth of an undefeated IRA may tempt never any risk that the young Clark would disap- more young fools to pick up the Armalite. Know pear and sink into a miasma of philistinism of the your enemies. Spread the word. Read the book. kind all too common at that period. Clark’s early encounters with Bernard Berenson in Florence were Sean O’Callaghan’s memoir The Informer: The True of signal importance for his own development and Life Story of One Man’s War on Terrorism was indeed, that experience may be seen as the fons et published in 1999. origo of Civilisation. Stourton tells us much about the influences on Clark, especially the works of John Ruskin, Walter Pater and Jacob Burckhardt.

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In 1933, Clark was appointed Director of the as Peter Conrad and Mary Beard have alighted National Gallery in London at the age of only upon these revelations in Stourton’s book as if they thirty; and one Sunday in 1934, King George were additional proof of the caricature of Clark as V visited the Gallery to meet Clark and to press just an unreconstructed “toff” of unpleasant hab- him also to accept the post of Keeper of the King’s its. Reviews by those two, and another even more Pictures. Despite their many differences, the King bitingly critical of Clark by Peter Rennell in the and Clark enjoyed each other’s company and Clark Daily Mail, bristle with all the stigmata, if not of accepted the extra post. Clark was knighted in 1938 the Trinity Don at his worst (to quote the late Sir and during the Second World War he supervised, Maurice Bowra in another context) then of today’s at Churchill’s direction, the safekeeping of the pic- cultural “Liberal-Left” at its annihilatingly worst. tures of the National Gallery in caves in Wales, Most of us have had quite enough of the “his- an interval which enabled careful re-examination tory-as-the-butler-saw-it” school of biography; but and cleaning and detailed photography of most of it should not be thought that Stourton engages in them. Clark also came to renewed national notice tittle-tattle for its own sake—rather he has men- during the war when, in collaboration with Dame tioned such details in a restrained way, in fairness to Myra Hess, he opened the National Gallery to the the persons involved and simply in order to give us a famous series of lunchtime concerts, which did truer picture of Clark the man and of his life, which much to keep up spirits in blitzed London. Stourton is relevant insofar as it impinges on his personal his- also traces Clark’s career in scholarship. Starting by tory and his public achievements. But this will not working with Berenson on his Florentine Drawings deter trendies with their “in-depth analyses” of art project, Clark moved on to write Catalogue of Da and scholarship as mere cultural “constructs” laid Vinci’s Drawings at Windsor Castle (1935), The Nude: over feet-of-clay “realities”. A Study of Ideal Form (1956), Looking at Pictures A more considered view of Stourton’s book came (1960) and Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance from Giles Waterford, in Apollo magazine: (1966), amongst others. Clark had early developed a natural talent for Stourton writes with a spare elegance and lecturing that enabled him to communicate themes a sense of period as well as an eye for the in art history. This led him to some of the very earli- revealing anecdote: he lets one imagine, for est activity in televised talks on art for BBC televi- example, what it was like to visit Clark’s home, sion in the late 1930s, after its pioneering telecasting Saltwood Castle, for lunch (where very few began from Alexandra Palace in London. Stourton people were considered “cake-worthy” and devotes four very good chapters to the story of how invited to stay for tea). The nature of Clark’s Clark came to be chosen to present what became career means that the period up to 1945 may the Civilisation series. Many of Clark’s critics’ stand out more vividly than the post-war years viewed him as stuffy, buttoned-up and superior, but when he became heavily involved in committee the record shows that Clark managed to work well work, but the changing nature of Clark’s with the diverse team of technical collaborators who identity and the analysis of his achievements enabled him to fulfil this novel and giant undertak- remain central to the narrative. ing; and that he built warm and effective personal relations on set. This brings us to the next important Stourton himself has encapsulated Clark as: point about this new biography, in that Stourton, with access to a full archive of Clark materials the writer who loved action, the scholar who including letters and with the ready assistance and became a populariser, the socialist who lived in co-operation of Clark’s family, has been able to a castle, the committee man who despised the round out the personal and private life of his sub- establishment, the indefatigable self-deprecator ject to a much greater extent than Meryle Secrest, whom many found arrogant, the shy man who who had fallen out with Clark while writing her loved monsters, the “ruthless” man who hated limited biography, which thus did not appear until confrontation, the brilliantly successful man after Clark’s death. who considered himself a failure, the mandarin who had a passion for lemonade and ice cream. t emerges that Clark had romantic affairs with several women during his marriage to his first Like all individuals of great achievement, Clark wIife Jane, who became more addicted to alcohol has had his ready band of detractors (mostly neo- as the decades wore on. Not surprisingly, this has Marxists of various sorts), as well a larger number come as extra grist to the mill for Clark’s detrac- of admirers who rightly see Civilisation as the great tors. Almost as if on cue, Guardian reviewers such landmark study it was then and still is even now.

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However, that is par for the course in the often James Lees-Milne wrote: “I have always poisonous world of the arts, as in other fields. One regarded him as the greatest man of my genera- thinks, for instance, of the famous self-parodying tion.” It seems the BBC plans a new ten-part his- picture of Sir John Rothenstein, who near his retire- tory of art entitled Civilisations, inspired by Clark’s ment had himself photographed in the basement of series. Stourton notes that this initiative follows an the National Gallery alongside the out-of-fashion exhibition devoted to Clark’s life and achievement sculptures under coversheets; and his choice, for one held the Tate London in 2014 and, more recently, a volume of his autobiography, of the title Summer’s highly successful and well-attended conference on Lease, invoking Shakespeare upon that theme. Civilisation. Stourton recalls various mistakes Clark made dur- ing his time as Director at the National Gallery, llowe m some observations on particular but these are more than balanced by his positive things that Stourton brings out better than achievements there. He seems to have had more Aever in this book. One is the importance of the than his fair share of envious enemies in the gal- mentors Clark was lucky enough to have. The story lery’s administration and in the art world. of his apprenticeship with Berenson in the 1920s As for Civilisation itself, its star has scarcely has been often told. It remained an influence upon waned since its first release in the United Kingdom him for the rest of his life and Berenson is a brood- and then in the USA, where it had an enormous suc- ing presence to be felt in most of the episodes of cess. When Clark brought out the Civilisation. Stourton also identifies script in book form, it too had big the importance of Clark’s enlight- sales, and copies in both hardback ened headmaster at Winchester, and paperback still circulate widely It is not hard to “Monty” Rendall, who introduced in the book trade today. Latterly, see the central him to Italian art, so much so that the advent of DVD and then video- importance, for the old Wykehamists would detect, in streaming technologies has given a the Civilisation episode about St new and likely permanent round of peoples of the West, in Francis of Assisi, echoes of a lec- prominence to Civilisation, as has having an authentic ture by Rendall. Later, at Oxford, been the case with today’s much Charles Bell, the Keeper of Fine readier access to classics and histor- tradition which Art at the Ashmolean Museum, ical archival materials of all kinds. we are prepared to was an influence; it was Bell who The series catapulted Clark into introduced Clark to Berenson. international fame, such that after preserve, to nurture Stourton also points to the Harold Wilson had him elevated and to defend. powerful influence of Maurice into the House of Lords, friendly Bowra, Warden of Wadham wags dubbed him “Lord Clark of Col lege, whose ebu l lient Civilisation”, whilst his most bitter enemies unfairly personality served to bring Clark out of his shell as damned him as “Lord Clark of Trivialisation”. a personality and gave him confidence. Bowra was Clark was humbled, and latterly troubled, by the a classicist, but also what Stourton calls “the nodal tumult of personal adulation Civilisation evoked. figure of that liberal generation of intellectuals He broke down after receiving a laudatory award and educators that Noel Annan called ‘Our Age’. in Washington. Yet the series continues to have Bowra had served in the trenches in World War I a wide audience even now fifty years later. At the and gained a lasting dislike of officialdom … his time, Clark received several letters from people who chief weapon was wit [and] all Clark’s priggish thanked him for saving them from thoughts of sui- fears and inhibitions were blown to smithereens.” cide, because the Civilisation series had given them Another important influence on Clark was the “hope to go on with”. Stourton quotes Michael Levy eminent art historian Aby Warburg, whom Clark on how Clark’s death drew international attention: had first heard lecturing at Rome in the later 1920s. Any suggestion that Kenneth Clark was an Few art historians—few scholars altogether—can adherent of the “old guard” of merely reactionary or expect their death to attract the international “academic” bent is dispelled by his long friendships coverage that Clark received. In Europe alone, with Henry Moore and others and his ready encour- from Zurich to Madrid, via Amsterdam, Rome agement of artists such as Oscar Kokoschka, who and Paris, the newspapers united to convey the fled to London from Prague in 1938, rightly fearful event: Kenneth Clark gestorben … fallecio el critic for his life and a target of the Nazis’ “Degenerate de arte … Kunsthistoricus overleden … e morto … Art” exhibition in 1937. We in Australia should la mort de Kenneth Clark. note Clark’s early fostering and encouragement of

Quadrant April 2017 75 Books the f work o Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan in that Clark was “on the way to Rome” as early as London and his astute appraisal of work by other the 1960s, if not perhaps even before, in his early Australian artists such as Constance Stokes, whom times in Italy. Clark once described as “the century’s greatest” James Stourton’s book is peppered with many draughtswoman. The history of Clark’s trip out to indispensable observations and anecdotes about Australia in 1949 and in particular his good advice Clark and his wide circle in British arts and letters towards the development of the collection of the during the twentieth century. Stourton is a gifted National Gallery of Victoria is fairly lightly, but writer whose other books include Great Houses of still effectively, covered in Stourton’s narrative of London and Great Collectors of Our Time. As a for- that period in Clark’s life. But this is probably just mer Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, a lecturer on his- a matter of one looking at it from an Australian tory and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Historical point of view—and even Clark himself was rather Research in the University of London, he is well confused about Australian geography. However, qualified to write about Kenneth Clark’s life and Stourton does not miss the fact that Clark’s father his contributions to the history and appreciation in his thirties in the 1890s had ventured as far as of the arts and to British and international cul- Australia; and indeed, Stourton notes he named tural life in the twentieth century. This is a very three of his racing yachts “Katoomba”. worthwhile book; well produced and illustrated by One recalls here a crusty Australian art critic, a goodly selection of black-and-white plates. J.S. Macdonald, who made the silly quip in 1949: Stourton’s biography, which must now be “What has Sir Kenneth Clark ever done for Art?” regarded as definitive, is truly a treasure trove It was not only a thoroughly silly comment at the for all fans of Kenneth Clark. While it provides, time, but is in the light of Clark’s Civilisation even in the further details revealed about aspects of sillier in retrospect. Clark’s private life, ammunition for his critics Everyone of a certain age has their own and traducers, it will be widely welcomed and Civilisation story. Mine is that I was fortunate as indispensable for anyone interested in the cultural an undergraduate at the University of Queensland history and trajectory of the Western heritage. The to first see the series projected on a large screen fitting closing words quoted by Stourton are from from 35mm colour film, obtained for the university the Queen, who upon Kenneth Clark’s death, sent by Dr Nancy Underhill with the support of its vice- a telegram to his widow Nolwen as follows: “Lord chancellor, Sir Zelman Cowen. Clark’s loyal and distinguished service to my Father and his outstanding contribution to the world of ome may still question the importance of fine Arts and Letters will always be remembered.” Mr arts and of the Western heritage as explored by Stourton’s biography of Clark shows precisely why. ClSark in Civilisation. We do not need any Gramsci to remind us how much of a nation’s tone inevitably Dr Douglas Hassall is a frequent contributor to comes from the top down. And when we look about Quadrant. the world today and see what has been (and is now) offered as the “cultural”, we may well echo Maurice Chevalier’s famous comment about old age: “But consider the alternative!” It is not hard to see, in an epoch when the West has come under renewed Jane Sutton attacks, not only upon its principles and its heritage, but upon its very fabric and its peoples, the central Bright New York importance, for the peoples of the West, in hav- ing an authentic tradition which we are prepared to Bright, Precious Days preserve, to nurture and to defend. Clark spoke to by Jay McInerney these issues at the very outset of Civilisation, in the Bloomsbury, 2016, 416 pages, $29.99 episode titled “The Skin of Our Teeth”—one both true and telling. iledny i m sock drawer was a list of things that Kenneth Clark’s conversion to Catholicism may I liked to do in New York. If I happened to be have been late in his life in the formal sense; and iFn Manhattan on a Friday, around five o’clock, the Stourton seems to imply that, in the end, it and Metropolitan Museum of Art was the place to be. then his reception of the last rites from a Catholic A quartet played in the balcony overlooking the flo- priest were due to the Catholic influence of his sec- ral arrangements landscaping the foyer. Lingering ond wife Nolwen. However, it is clear, even from with a glass of something until eight o’clock was many of his on-camera comments in Civilisation, very special. Walking up the main staircase, one

76 Quadrant April 2017 Books could glimpse the Tiepolos, take a left past the Wall Street buildings and abuts the two water pits Chinese ceramics and grab a table. Oh goodness of the memorial to those who died in the attack. me, very Upper East Side. There couldn’t be a greater contrast. The water The other wonderful experience was to eat a pits are continually weeping into the ground as if sampler plate at the New York Oyster Bar in Grand to douse the flames of the buildings. The Oculus, Central Terminal. The trick was to find it. Entering on the other hand, has opened the underworld to the main concourse with its zodiac starry sky above, reflected light. People are going about their busi- meandering to the right as if to a train platform ... ness of catching trains, eating sandwiches and tak- There it was—a buffet with chrome stools, straight ing selfies in soft bright light. out of an Edward Hopper painting. The night train Decades ago, Jay McInerney began his richly to Tallahassee might pull in shortly. American trilogy of Corrine and Russell Calloway’s And now? Maybe one should avoid repeating life in Manhattan. Brightness Falls (1992) was fol- loved events. On a recent visit, the quartet had lowed by The Good Life (2006) and completed by gone, replaced by a flautist and a grand piano— Bright, Precious Days in 2016. McInerney is a and the tables had multiplied. And Emily Blunt as writer of his age. I purchased his first novel in a Rachel in the film The Girl on the Train was siphon- Bloomsbury Classics small-format hardback edi- ing mid-morning martinis at the Oyster Bar. It tion that fitted nicely into my hand. It was very looked too bright, too cosy, and “Bright” and right; a Kerouac in she ate the olive. I am reminded the city before someone told him of Jay McInerney’s opening pages he is from life can’t go on in this way. of Bright Lights, Big City, his 1985 S Three novels sited in New York debut novel: “You are at a nightclub “old money” that are lodestars for writers: Edith talking to a girl with a shaved head accompanies thinness Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, F. … The bald girl is saying this used Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to be a good place to come before and blondness. The and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the assholes discovered it.” money has long the Rye. Published in 2011, Amor Want to be current in New gone, with only Towles’s novel Rules of Civility is York? Then walk the High Line set in the 1930s when the 21 Club to the new Whitney Museum of memories of the opened as a speakeasy, one decade American Art in the Meatpacking shabby summerhouse after Fitzgerald’s novel. On the District. The High Line is a land- face of it, the publishers wanted to scaped stretch of a former elevated in Nantucket and the stress this link by using the same rail track. Along 20th Street or manners to go with it. Condé Nast cover photograph as so, slip past the hipster restaurant had been on a paperback version Cookshop, where all the food is of Gatsby. The text is aesthetically sourced from personally known suppliers who have pleasing, as civility and money always are. But their own boutique farms. Climb the nearby indus- unlike Fitzgerald’s it is a historical novel. Towles trial stair to this urban public garden. The sight lines has given us reshaped characters, ten years after are spectacular: straight up 10th Avenue to Hell’s Gatsby was shot in his swimming pool. His Daisy Kitchen and beyond. The planting evokes a natu- is a sassy girl who reads and marries old money. His ral landscape—trees and grasses—with sculpture Jay rises and falls happily into obscurity. And yes, and seats for lounging. At the end of the Line, the there is a whiff of contemporary temperament in his Whitney is showing a retrospective of the 101-year- characters. McInerney, on the other hand, main- old Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera. On tains his urbanity, with “Russell Calloway” echo- the floors below is Human Interest: Portraits from ing Fitzgerald’s “Nick Carraway”, the narrator of the Whitney Collection. It is pleasant to view the Gatsby. And John McInerney has stepped into Jay. faces of America—from the early collections of Mrs Vanderbilt Whitney’s, past the sureness of the ansf o literary allusions have a lot to discover 1970s, to an uneasy gaze of the 2000s. in the trilogy. The clearest is his badging of When you tire of being a hipster, keep walking F“Bright” referencing William Blake’s “The Tyger” to One Wall Street, the Oculus, a new mall and in Songs of Experience. There is a clue: Russell train station opened recently, fifteen years after the Calloway spent a postgraduate year in Oxford September 11 terrorist attack. It is a winged beauty, reading Blake. More distant is the theme of loss of a very expensive Nike. The architect has referred innocence in “The Tyger”, “When the stars threw to imagery of a child holding a dove and it is an down their spears / And water’d heaven with their apt response—the building touches gently between tears”, and the unknown narrator in Brightness Falls:

Quadrant April 2017 77 Books

“a ny girl i m [psychiatric] unit … declared that she we have similar views and tastes. I would have could see paper airplanes crashing to the pavement been slightly disappointed if we hadn’t picked of Manhattan”. the same candidate.” If allusion-searching is too affected, the first “… And yes, I’m actually an Obama person.” lines of Bright, Precious Days ought to endear any writer to McInerney’s story: And off came the blue dress. McInerney is a chronicler of a city that is for- Once, o not s long ago, young men and women ever reinventing itself, but perversely these volumes had come to the city because they loved books, have a whiff of being past their sell-by date. Can because they wanted to write novels or short we recall the intensity of Obama versus Hillary? stories or even poems ... Dimly. It is as if these characters are talking to the select few inside a blue-lined zeppelin tethered to Russell and Corrine are English Lit graduates the Empire State Building. McInerney allows them from Brown University, Rhode Island. They move to to descend into downtown Manhattan for hilarious New York to do exactly as the opening lines suggest. adventures at restaurants with unknown addresses But the Calloways live through torrid times. Russell and unlisted phone numbers. works for a publisher and goes to launching parties of other people’s books. Corrine writes a script, an “What kind of food do they serve?” adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of “I think it’s kind of Japanese avant-garde.” the Matter, to modest praise. The second book deals “How can food be avant-garde?” ... with the drama of September 11—a defining politi- “The chef would like you to begin with live cal moment for the twenty-first century. dancing shrimp.” The third volume takes the reader to the glo- bal financial crisis of 2008. Russell is running a My sock drawer is more than a filing cabinet of small literary publication company and makes an old memories. I have at least two pairs remaining over-generous rights offer. At stake are private —a Japanese variety that separates the toes and a school fees, the TriBeCa loft and summer in the burnt-orange over-the-knee type from Portugal. Hamptons. Corrine and Russell are in their fifties Both are very hard to put on in a hurry. So I don’t and the future begins to look forbidding. But it has bother and instead read the dog-eared receipt from always been precarious. Their parties have had the the Blue Hill restaurant in Greenwich Village. Did frantic edge of the financially insecure. The cou- I really eat that fantasy of farm-to-table food? The ple take on a veneer of Scott and Zelda dropped same place as Barack Obama took Michelle in his into the plot of Tender is the Night. She is from “old first term. And in a corner is a box of matches from money” that accompanies thinness and blondness. “21”. I sat at the banquette table favoured by Helen The money has long gone, with only memories of Gurley Brown opposite the one preferred by Donald the shabby summerhouse in Nantucket and the Trump—although it is likely that President-Elect manners to go with it. His family is from Cork Trump booked the whole place on November 8. County, Boston and Detroit. Also thin and given to Russell and Corrine would have reluctantly wearing navy blue jackets in his thirties, he is keen come down from their Italianate brownstone in to party with social New Yorkers from a certain Harlem, drawn to the new people in charge. Over stratum. Everyone they know is a Democrat. The the decades the Calloways have rewritten the same token conservative is Corrine’s sister Hilary, and affectations as Gatsby’s “old sport” banter. But there she has clearly stepped out with the wrong crowd. are new rules in place. Will Corrine find a job pay- Corrine has a lover who appears in the second novel ing more than her food-distributing NGO? Can and resurfaces in the third. Voting intentions are Russell settle his outrageous wine bill? McInerney vetted in a pre-coital banter: could put his characters in the chiller; less earnest- ness, a lot less civility and much, much less sex “Actually, I’ve gotten pretty involved in the between fifty-year-olds. Although I liked the blue Obama campaign. I was suddenly worried you halter-necked dress. might be a Hillary person.” “Why, because I’m a woman?” Jane Sutton, who lives in Melbourne, is a regular “No, just because I’ve always imagined that contributor.

78 Quadrant April 2017 This life ... and more with thanks to Lisel Mueller

Im a born under southern skies. In this year, before my mind keeps memories, the Sixth George dies. Backseat bantam chaperones cluck in the car on our first date. A young Queen waves her hand We vow to love forever from side to side, watched by my husband from his stroller. and drive south to work in Whitlam’s Service Two plus two live in a painted box before the Libs block his air supply. near train tracks and a park with a scoot-foot roundabout. We raise babies in a shambolic mud brick house, Grandparents in hide ’n’ seek houses play farmers after hours, give Willing Shillings, hugs and milky tea in Melamine cups. later moving stock, machines and photo albums to Stillwater We move to a bigger house and on the Great Divide. hold our breath all summer in the backyard pool. Three children chase chooks, drink milk by the bucket, eat In pinstripe suit and hat, my father mutton roasts and shepherd’s pie. holds a small gloved hand on our way to the station and school. Still waters are deep for a season but boot-sucking mud dries in drought. Gentlemen walk on the outside We teach in town to make ends to protect their women from random traffic acts. meet, in and out, in and out to netball, cricket and P&C, until Our mother reigns over us the baby drives away to the city. with TLC, talk and a lick of Marmite This part of forever is as it was in the beginning on the end of a spoon for the farmer and me. to take the taste away. She always knows. Death latches onto my father. Does not let go. Fifty years and Boys have Beatle hair, Holt surfs burnt-out body bits birth poetry. his last and men use the moon as a trampoline. One day on a train a young woman gets up to give me her seat. The Commonwealth educates me I look behind her about rural economy, conscription and the Vietnam War. at the reflection of me, still standing, arm raised and hanging on for My boyfriend’s next-but-one number (more) dear life. comes up in the Birthday Ballot on The Box. Robyn Lance

Quadrant April 2017 79 Joe Dolce

The Great American Songbook The Classical Music of Tin Pan Alley

Writing music takes more talent, but writing lyrics nostalgic curiosities, irrelevant to their own lives, takes more courage. but the songs had an indelible impact on their time —Johnny Mercer and remain relevant today, as evidenced by the recent surge of contemporary artists recording them, ow that Bob Dylan, a singer-songwriter, including Willie Nelson, Robbie Williams, Norah has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jones, Paul McCartney, k.d. lang, Lady Gaga, Amy it is hard to imagine a time not long ago Winehouse and Bob Dylan. Nwhen the writing of popular songs was a specialised activity, quite distinct from the business of singing he melting pot of songwriting and publish- them. Songwriting was traditionally a collaboration ing associated with the American Songbook between two craftsmen: a lyric writer and a music Twas known as Tin Pan Alley, an area in New York composer. Singers never wrote their own material. around 28th Street and Fifth Avenue, where many Between the 1920s and the 1950s, in the days of the early publishing houses were based in the first before pop charts and video clips, popular music was part of the twentieth century. No one can say pre- dominated by a canon of songs created for Broadway cisely how the name “Tin Pan Alley” originated. musicals and Hollywood musical films. The songs Some attribute it to the sound of cheap upright written during this period, which have endured to pianos that could be heard through open windows, this day, have come to be known collectively as the which suggested banging on tin pans in alleys, or Great American Songbook. Loosely defined, the strips of paper that were placed down piano strings Songbook comprises several hundred classics, sung to create more percussive effects. and recorded over the decades by hundreds of art- Phonograph records (which replaced cylinder ists, from Nat King Cole to Joni Mitchell. recordings) were identified by the number of revolu- It is generally agreed that the Songbook “closed” tions they made per minute. Up until the 1950s, heavy with the advent of rock-and-roll in the 1950s, 78 rpm discs were made of shellac, unwieldy, brittle, although there is disagreement. Duke Ellington easily broken or scratched, and contained about four said: or five minutes of sound. Around 1948, 33 rpm long- playing records, made of polyvinyl chloride, known Its i becoming increasingly difficult to decide as vinyl, became the standard, with about twenty- where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin five minutes per side. The shorter, more commercial Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where 45 rpm, seven inches in width, arrived a year later, the borderline lies between classical music and holding only one bite-sized airplay-friendly song per jazz. I feel there is no boundary line. side. Up to the First World War, the RCA Victrola My generation has always heard the American (the one with the big horn and the dog) was the Songbook songs in the background of our lives, such only device anyone could own if they wanted to as “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “America have their own record player and could afford the Beautiful”, but we generally dismiss them as it. After the Second World War, furniture stores perennial pieces in the musical potpourri of our began selling disc-playing turntables built into fine culture, not fully understanding that real flesh-and- wooden cabinets. Initially, the player component blood people like us actually wrote these things, and was simply another way to sell the furniture and audiences like us danced to them and laughed and the first record-floggers were actually furniture wept to them. salesmen. Many of the music publishers who set up Young people often regard them as somewhat businesses in Tin Pan Alley started out as salesmen

80 Quadrant April 2017 The Great American Songbook themselves. Isadore Witmark, of M. Witmark & Sandburg in 1927, called The American Songbag. Sons, sold water filters and Leo Feist, of Leo Feist, An anthology of blues, folk songs, minstrel songs, Inc. (in the 1920s, one of the seven largest publishing pioneer ballads, hobo songs, prison songs, work- companies in the world), sold corsets. gang songs, Mexican border songs and “Darn Fool George Gershwin, a significant composer in the Ditties”, it was an instant success with the public. Songbook repertoire (who later composed with his Sandburg grew up with music in his family. His brother Ira, who wrote the lyrics) entered the music father was adept on accordion and bought a pump industry at the age of fifteen as a “song-plugger” for organ which his older sister learned to play. His Remick & Company, earning fifteen dollars a week. mother sang frequently around the house. Sandburg The song-plugger would sit on the upper floor or bought his first guitar in 1910 and took to the road mezzanine of a music store and play whatever sheet as a hobo, carrying a notebook in which he would music was sent up to him for customers who wanted compile the lyrics and songs he heard on his travels, to know how the tune went. If the developing a repertoire of 300 tunes customer liked it, they would buy which he would sing and play at the sheet music, or the record— he addictive power college campuses during his poetry and, perhaps, the “furniture” to play T readings. He continued to collect it on. of the brilliant tunes songs his entire life, much in the Travelling song-pluggers became written by Tin manner of Alan Lomax; in fact, the crucial to the early music industry. two were friends and often shared They had a powerful union and Pan Alley composers what they found. unlimited expense accounts and often overshadowed The song “Cocaine Lil and some of them could earn the equiva- the insightful and Morphine Sue” has been wrongly lent, in today’s money, of upwards of attributed as an original lyric $300,000 a year. They evolved from poetic words written written by W.H. Auden, but in in-store pianists to travelling sales- by the lyricists. his Oxford Book of Light Verse men, as radio became more popular (1938), the authorship is indicated as the method of promoting songs as Anonymous and Auden to the public. The payola scandals of the early 1960s acknowledges, in a footnote, that Carl Sandburg had to do with the inducements song-pluggers gave had included it in The American Songbag. But the to radio disc jockeys to encourage them to play the misunderstanding of correct authorship still persists records the record companies wanted played. today. “Booming” was another technique publishers used. Dozens of tickets were purchased for shows, s John O’Sullivan said to me of the Songbook, and the pluggers would slip into the audience and “The lyrics so often conveyed tenderness in sing loudly on the songs they wanted to draw atten- dAescribing the promptings of the human heart bril- tion to. Louis Bernstein, of Shapiro, Bernstein & liantly and freshly.” “These Foolish Things”, written Co, took some of his people to the motorcycle races by Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey, was admired at Madison Square Garden: by the poet Philip Larkin who said, “I have always thought the words were a little pseudo-poetic, but They had 20,000 people there, we had a pianist Billie [Holiday] sings them with such passionate and a singer with a large horn. We’d sing a song conviction that I think they really become poetry”: to them thirty times a night. They’d cheer and yell, and we kept pounding away at them. When A tinkling piano in the next apartment, people walked out, they’d be singing the song. Those stumbling words that told you what my They couldn’t help it. heart meant, A fairground’s painted swings, Song-plugging remains an important part of These foolish things remind me of you the music industry. Last year, I was invited to send one of my songs to a well-known song-plugger in The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses, Nashville—for a fee, of course—to have him take The waiters whistling as the last bar closes, it around to his personal contact list of artists and The song that Crosby sings, producers. These foolish things remind me of you.

nef o the important forerunners to the Great One popular poet who applied his talent American Songbook was a collection of songs successfully to songwriting was Ogden Nash. Oand lyric fragments published by the poet Carl Like Lewis Carroll, Nash spoke to the youngster

Quadrant April 2017 81 The Great American Songbook in everyone. But he also wrote serious love songs, and The Sound of Music. “My Favourite Things”, from including the standard “Speak Low”, with music The Sound of Music, performed as an instrumental by Kurt Weill, from the musical One Touch of Venus by John Coltrane, became a jazz standard. Rodgers (1943): was the first person to win the Big Four, known as an EGOT: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Speak low when you speak love, Tony. He also won a Pulitzer Prize. Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon, Irving Berlin was one of the rare Tin Pan Alley Speak low when you speak love, composers who wrote both music and lyrics, cre- Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, ating a library of standards, including “God Bless We’re swept apart, too soon ... America”, “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade”. But Berlin was unable to read or write music and The line, “Speak low when you speak love”, required a secretary to transcribe melodies he heard comes from a line of Shakespeare’s, in Much Ado in his head. Sammy Cahn, who wrote the lyr- About Nothing. The song became part of the jazz ics to “Three Coins in the Fountain”, “Ain’t That repertoire, recorded by Bill Evans, Sonny Clark, a Kick in the Head?” and “Call Me Irresponsible”, John Coltrane and many others. commented:

he addictive power of the brilliant tunes written If n a man, i a lifetime of fifty years, can point by Tin Pan Alley composers for the musicals of to six songs that are immediately identifiable, Tthe 1930s and 1940s often overshadowed the insight- he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can ful and poetic words written by the lyricists. The sing sixty that are immediately identifiable. English actor Dirk Bogarde released a fine album of Somebody once said you couldn’t have a holiday spoken-word versions of American Songbook lyr- without his permission. ics in 1960, titled Lyrics for Lovers, with the music faintly heard in the background; a reversal that On Groucho Marx’s seventy-first birthday, in allowed the true impact of the words to be heard. 1961, he received a cable from Berlin: For example, the subtle imagery of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”: The world would not be in such a snarl, Had Marx been Groucho, instead of Karl. They said someday you’ll find All who love are blind, Jack Kerouac wrote that he often sang an Irving When your heart’s on fire, Berlin song, “Blue Skies”, on his travels: You must realise, Smoke gets in your eyes ... Blue skies smilin’ at me, Nothin’ but blue skies do I see. Now laughing friends deride Bluebirds singin’ a song, Tears I cannot hide, Nothin’ but blue skies from now on ... So I smile and say, When a lovely flame dies, Blue days, all of them gone Smoke gets in your eyes. Nothin’ but blue skies from now on.

The lyricist of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, Otto “Blue Skies” had been written as a last-minute Harbach, wrote librettos for fifty musical comedies addition to the Rodgers and Hart musical Betsy in and is often considered the first great wordsmith 1926. But the song was so powerful that on opening of the American Songbook, and the key writer to night the audience demanded twenty-four encores draw attention to the power of the lyric, in an indus- of it. The singer, Belle Baker, got so nervous at the try previously obsessed with music, costumes and reaction that she forgot the lyrics during one of the drama. He graduated in 1895 from Knox College repetitions and Berlin himself sang them from his in Illinois, where he was a friend of Carl Sandburg. front-row seat in the audience. (Small world, words.) Many of the collaborative songs of the Songbook he songwriters of Tin Pan Alley were known were written by the composer Richard Rodgers in for their sharp wit as well as their romanti- his two partnerships with lyricists, first with Lorenz cism.T Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote the music to Hart and later with Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers “Stardust” and “Georgia on My Mind”, said: “Never wrote 900 songs and the music for over forty musi- play anything that don’t sound right. You might not cals, including Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and I make any money, but at least you won’t get hostile

82 Quadrant April 2017 The Great American Songbook with yourself.” Johnny Mercer, lyricist of “You Must Therese Oneill has written: “It’s hard to believe Have Been a Beautiful Baby” and “That Old Black that if our great grandparents wanted to enjoy a Magic”, said: “You must write for the waste basket.” popular song, they had to know someone who could Cole Porter, in “Anything Goes”, wrote: play piano.” Clever and amusing songs, with twists of language, did not originate in Tin Pan Alley. Good authors, too, who once knew better words, They had always been a staple of vaudeville. Here is Now only use four-letter words a lyric from 1897 that was popular in its time: Writing prose, Anything goes. Mary’s not as green as she looks. Mary knows a lot that’s not in books. George and Ira Gershwin, who composed She’s demure as she can be, “Summertime” and “They Can’t Take That Away But you take a tip from me, From Me”, were two of only half a dozen compos- Mary’s not as green as she looks! ers to receive the US Congressional Gold Medal. George wrote Porgy and Bess, and, in 2005 was The Songbook had a wide range of sensibilities. assessed—based on income earned in his lifetime— “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, for example— as the wealthiest composer of all time. He didn’t give too much credence to “inspiration”, which he Lemonade stands everywhere said was never there when you wanted it, instead Crackerjack bands fill the air relying on hard work. Cole Porter agreed: “All the And there you are inspiration I ever needed was a phone call from a Happy landing on a chocolate bar. producer.” Gershwin frequently heard ideas in “noise” and —sounds almost like the prototype for the Beatles’ called music “an emotional science”. He said, “True “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”: music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time”—echoing a phrase the Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain, English poet John Keats wrote in the early nine- Where rocking-horse people eat marshmallow pies. teenth century: “Poetry should strike the reader as Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear That grow so incredibly high. almost a remembrance.” Often, whether out of boredom, or just for the vast array of colourful and exciting types of challenge of it, the writers would mess around with songs came out of Tin Pan Alley. The term language, almost like a competition to see who A“novelty song” was invented during the time to could get away with the craziest ideas. Cole Porter describe one of the major divisions of popular music is a good example, in “It’s Delovely”: that songwriters worked in—the other two divisions being “ballads” and “dance music”. Whether a song So e please b sweet, my chickadee, is a novelty song depends on the context it is heard And when I kiss you, just say to me, in. The term has no meaning without context. “It’s delightful, it’s delicious, The songs and music that small children are It’s delectable, it’s delirious, inspired by would, on the Top 40 charts, be It’s dilemma, it’s de limit, it’s deluxe, considered novelty songs—“Old McDonald Had It’s de-lovely.” ... a Farm”, “Purple People Eater”, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”, “Monster Mash” This verse I started seems to me, and “Alley Oop”. But in the child’s musical world, The Tin-Pantithesis of melody, they are simply songs. “Yellow Submarine”, released So spare us all the pain, by any artist other than the Beatles, would have Just skip the darn thing and sing the refrain. been labelled a novelty song. But in the context of the Beatles repertoire, it is just a Beatles song. The in-joke in that last verse might have been The song “Shaddap You Face”, released in the days written for his fellow songwriters. This song later of 1980s pop music, now part of the Australian became one of the earliest uses of popular songs Songbook (but that’s another essay!), sung with a for merchandising. The Chrysler Corporation broken accent, is often labelled a novelty song, but promoted their DeSoto automobile in 1957 with the very same song, covered by legendary rappers, a lyric change to: “It’s delovely, it’s dynamic, it’s KRS-One, in the US, was considered just another DeSoto.” KRS-One rap song. Early motivational thinking, in the wake of Dale

Quadrant April 2017 83 The Great American Songbook

Carnegie’s popular 1936 book on sales and self-help, But the original first verse, more in line with the How to Win Friends and Influence People, resulted in German title, went: Johnny Mercer’s 1944 standard “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”: Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate, Darling I remember the way you used to wait. You’ve o got t accentuate the positive ’Twas there you whispered tenderly, Eliminate the negative That you loved me, you’d always be Latch on to the affirmative My Lili of the lamplight, Don’t mess with Mister In-Between. My own Lili Marlene.

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum The s song i echoed in W.H. Auden’s evocative Bring gloom down to the minimum poem “September 1, 1939”: Have faith or pandemonium’s Liable to walk upon the scene. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Bob Dylan once said he got many song ideas Yet, dotted everywhere, from newspaper headlines. So did Woody Guthrie. Ironic points of light Here’s a headline story from 1927 that made it into Flash out wherever the Just the Songbook: Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Over the water, he flew all alone, Of Eros and of dust, Laughing at fear, and at dangers unknown, Beleaguered by the same Others may take this trip across the sea Negation and despair, Upon some future day, Show an affirming flame. But take your hats off to plucky, lucky Lindbergh, Auden’s poem intentionally recalled Yeats’s The Eagle of the U.S.A. “Easter 1916”, which described the Easter Rising in Ireland against the British. he two world wars produced their share of Tin Pan Alley songwriters, meanwhile, were patriotic songs, and the songsmiths of the writing their own kind of patriotic songs, to inspire ATmerican Songbook used their skills as part of and mobilise the common people that formed their duty to serve. The audiences for the poetry of the majority of the soldiers called up to serve. Auden and Yeats would have been quite different Their songs also lifted the morale of loved ones from the admirers of Johnny Mercer, Fred Coots left behind, such as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”, and Frank Loesser, but they were all on the same recorded by the Andrews Sisters, “G.I. Jive”, writ- page about the war. One of the most beloved songs ten by Johnny Mercer, “Praise the Lord and Pass of the Second World War, was “Lili Marlene”, based the Ammunition”, composed by Frank Loesser, on a poem written in 1915 by Hans Leip. Leip had “Der Fuehrer’s Face”, performed by Spike Jones been a German soldier in the First World War and and his City Slickers, “Remember Pearl Harbor”, the song was originally called “Das Mädchen unter written by Sammy Kaye, “God Bless America”, by der Laterne” (The Girl under the Lantern). Marlene Irving Berlin (in the US, the first patriotic song of Dietrich memorably sang: the Second World War) and “Goodbye Mama (I’m Off to Yokohama)”, by Fred J. Coots. Outside the barracks, by the corner light, I’ll always stand and wait for you at night hy are the Great American Songbook and We will create a world for two, its songwriters relevant today? Because the I’ll wait for you, the whole night through, Wsongs won’t lie down and be forgotten. Just like For you, Lili Marlene, myth, they continue to be meaningful to generation For you, Lili Marlene. after generation. Lady Gaga, one of the best-selling musicians of all time, recorded an album with Tony When we are marching, in the mud and cold, Bennett in 2014, Cheek to Cheek, of songs from the And when my pack seems more than I can hold, Songbook. My love for you renews my might, The tradition of the songwriting teams of the I’m warm again, my pack is light, 1920s to the 1940s continued into the 1960s and It’s you, Lili Marlene, early 1970s in collaborations such as Carole King It’s you, Lili Marlene. and Gerry Goffin, Elton John and Bernie Taupin,

84 Quadrant April 2017 The Great American Songbook

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), areas they have already mapped out. And then tak- Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (Rolling Stones) ing it further. and the most prolific of them all, John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Beatles). hilip Furia, in his book The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Bob Dylan declared, naively, and typically, in relates the story of Mrs Oscar Hammerstein, 1963, talking about “Bob Dylan’s Blues”, from his wPife of the great lyricist, who once heard someone Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album: praise “Ol’ Man River” as a great Jerome Kern song and replied: “I beg your pardon, but Jerome Kern Unlike most of the songs nowadays that have did not write ‘Ol’ Man River’. Mr Kern wrote dum been written up town in Tin Pan Alley, that’s dum dum da; my husband wrote ‘ol’ man river’.” where most of the folk songs come from “September Song” was written in 1938 by Kurt nowadays ... this wasn’t written up there, this Weill and Maxwell Anderson for the Broadway was written down somewhere in the United show Knickerbocker Holiday. It has been recorded States. by artists as diverse as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson and Peter, Paul and Mary: However,e h later recanted, releasing Shadows in the Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016) and the When I was a young man courting the girls, three-album set Triplicate (2017)—collections of I played a waiting game. Songbook standards. These recordings contain If a maid refused me with tossing curls, none of his own original material. I’d let the old Earth take a couple of whirls, When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for While I plied her with tears, in place of pearls, Literature, category error or not, it drew attention And as time came around, she came my way, back to the importance of lyric writing in popular As time came around, she came ... music. We are presently in one of the most lyri- cally lazy periods of contemporary song. Emotion But it’s a long, long while, from May to and performance art have created a fog that almost December, obliterates language and lyric. If the singer sounds And the days grow short, when you reach like a breathy teen, with catchy melodies and a sta- September, dium-style performance, that’s enough to make the And the autumn weather turns the leaves to cash registers ring. flame, Lyric writing, as an art form, as practised in And you haven’t got time for the waiting game. the days of the American Songbook, and by the folk-rock writers of the late 1960s, has gone back The Great American Songbook has been called into the trenches. Where once poetry and music the classical music of America, because the songs strolled hand-in-hand on the pop charts, now they in it have become classics. Words and music came are estranged. Hip-hop, freed from the chains together, with great fireworks, from around the of melody, through sheer frustration and anger, 1920s until the 1950s. Then rock-and-roll drove lan- shouts: Listen to what I have to say! But it’s not say- guage into the ground, until the late 1960s, when ing much—yet. There is enormous potential for the singer-songwriters of, ironically, New York’s spoken-word-based music, like hip-hop and rap, to Greenwich Village, lifted poetry back onto the bridge the widening gap that now exists between charts and into public awareness. Now words have poetry, song-lyrics and music. gone into exile again. Today, the rare literate song- The serious problem is this: serious hip-hop art- writers, and poets, are part of the resistance. ists don’t read much literature or poetry. The story- If Dylan’s work can be officially celebrated as telling which forms the basis of their work comes literature, worthy of the Nobel Prize, and thereby from watching television and movies and from their causing the world to take notice again of the impor- own experience. And if you aren’t a prolific reader tance of language in songwriting, there surely and student of poetry you will never be able to write is hope and promise for the next generation of strong language-based songs whose lyrics live on songwriter-poets. the page, in the tradition of Sappho or Homer. Without words that can stand alone, only perform- Joe Dolce adds: John O’Sullivan suggested the idea ance art is possible. of this essay to me, for which I am grateful, as it has So reading, and literary study, have to be persist- allowed me to travel back to a miraculous time of ently encouraged in young musicians and writers— songwriting skill that I was barely aware of. I also learning from the great wordsmiths who have gone want to thank George Thomas for his insights and before, understanding and absorbing the amazing quotations from some notable songbook composers.

Quadrant April 2017 85 Michael Connor

I Hate Saki A f Tale o Literary Misadventure

etween us, it’s personal. There was a time, I a sniper’s shot killed him his supposed and surely was an admirer. His short stories, of course, bowdlerised last words were, “Put that bloody ciga- and I even enjoyed his novels. That was the rette out.” After his death his memory was guarded Bproblem, I suppose. by his sister Ethel. It seemed very possible that a not Sometime in the mid-1990s I chanced upon a very good potboiler first novel may have been tact- copy of Montague Summers’s posthumously pub- fully ignored in favour of the much more interesting lished autobiography, The Galanty Show, in the The Unbearable Bassington, published in 1912. James Cook University library in Townsville. In it In 1911 Constable advertised Mrs Elmsley as six- he mentioned that Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) had shilling fiction and the work of Hector Munro—a given him a copy of a novel he had written called “New Author”. The novel tells of the love between Mrs Elmsley saying, “I wrote it under the influence a single man and a married woman. The actors are of Balzac.” Summers wondered why the book was conventional and dull, without the vitality of Saki’s not listed as his friend’s first published novel. It may better-known works. A plump book of 422 pages, its have had something to do with the tropical heat but narrative is slowed by discussions of contemporary I was fascinated. literature, ideas and politics; its hero, Colin Liddel, Incidentally, the library at JCU is rather special. is even afflicted by a confused socialism. It is over- On the shelves is (or was then) an eighteenth-cen- loaded with women’s rights. It is hard to imagine tury complete works of Voltaire. When you opened Saki as a feminist but the author does try hard. You a volume you could smell the eighteenth century. hope he was only pandering to the prejudices of the The books could be borrowed with a student card. lady novel-buying public when he has Liddel say: There was also a collection of essays which included “the eternal tragedy of life is the way fine women one by Christopher Koch about his time working in with high capabilities are blighted by shallow, the Tasmanian Archives. Reading it was behind my incompetent men, who imagine themselves serious later move to Hobart—for the archives. people doing serious work”. The 1990s were another world—a pre-Google Feeling the usual seasickness from watching backwater we all lived in. I set out to find a copy swirling rolls of microfilm (Quells help to stop the of Mrs Elmsley. A friendly librarian located one in nausea) I unearthed reviews and publisher’s adver- the British Library. The matter rested there until I tisements. Constable had sliced into a review in was in Hobart. One unfortunate day, idly messing the Times for this: “Mr. Munro has constructed around with the State Library catalogue, I found a the social world of his story with a truly Balzacian copy in their Launceston branch. I made a request attention to detail. We hail gladly such sound and and it was sent down to Hobart where an officious conscientious work.” The mention of Balzac seemed librarian grudgingly allowed me to examine it. to fit in with Summers’s comment: “When he gave How wise he was. Then, either divine intervention it to me he said: ‘I wrote it under the influence of or, given Montague Summers’s diabolic reputation, Balzac.’ I think de Goncourts would be nearer the a breath of heat from Hell, interrupted my brows- mark.” ing as the fire alarms rang. We all tumbled out into What the publisher left out of the Times review the street. The book was still on the desk when we was more accurate: “very extensive and hardly justi- returned to the library. I wish it had caught fire. fies its length ... Did a business man at the present Mrs Elmsley isn’t a very good novel, and that day ever write a letter to a lady friend long enough increased my interest. to fill 12 pages of print?” Saki died on the Western Front in 1916. Before Other reviews found it “thoughtful” and

86 Quadrant April 2017 I Hate Saki

“sociological” with “solid qualities”. I was Saki wrote it. It was simply my misfortune that he especially taken by the Athenaeum: “this novel is a didn’t write it. characteristic specimen of the modern fiction which Saki was homosexual, Mrs Elmsley is a hetero- is being written by the feminine hand ... There are sexual love story—but so, so tepid. The lack of pas- suggestions, and even more than suggestions, of the sion in the account of the loving interest led me to making of a fine style in her writing.” Saki. The hero, Colin Liddel, is described as hav- The fine style I was seeking was Saki’s wit, and ing “almost beautiful features”. The married woman Mrs Elmsley does hold some delights. A statue of a he loves, Catherine Elmsley, is well-born, sensitive, virgin and child “overawed the Philistines and gave intellectual, longing to study medicine—her creator pause to the cultured”; “what a tremendous number permits her everything but sexual passion. She is of females there are in the world, and how few married to a brutal man and she and Liddel fall purely, women”; “she came from the North, where they live and unbelievably, in love. Liddel has befriended a in fear of Heaven and the Earl of Durham”; “Didn’t young woman, Dolores (Dolly) Colonbotti, and her some cynical critic say the Church of England is the exiled Italian father. She falls in love with him but only barrier between England and Christianity?” “Liddel loved Dolly with the affection of a brother I sent an essay to the Times for a younger sister who has grown Literary Supplement, which they up exactly what she ought to be”. published as “Saki’s Lost Novel”. his weak novel Because I believed that the author T was Saki it was possible to assume here the matter rested until a seemed to reveal more that the language was a homosexual year later when I was contacted about Saki than his author straining to write a conven- bTy the great-grandson of Hector tional love story—and not doing it Munro, no relation to Saki, and the witty and carefully very well. real author of Mrs Elmsley. crafted tales and This weak novel seemed to reveal Honestly, I felt like a feminist novels. Pieces that more about Saki than his witty and critic who has praised a ghastly carefully crafted tales and novels. novel by an Aboriginal lesbian in did not fit, ideas that Pieces that did not fit, ideas that the Australian [Left] Book Review jarred with what jarred with what one expected of and then discovers the author is a Saki seemed explainable. A dislike white bloke born in Piraeus. one expected of Saki of decadent authors and even the I wrote a grovelling letter to seemed explainable. mocking of a poem by Oscar Wilde the TLS explaining all, and cursed did not seem out of place from a both Saki and Summers. I accu- repressed gay author breaking away rately anticipated an unhappy future for myself as from the effeminacy of Wilde in the period follow- a mugging victim in vicious academic footnotes to ing that writer’s trials and imprisonment. Even the scholarly Saki articles. Modern academia—PC on interest in women’s rights and socialism, so typical the page, bitches in the footnotes. Yet on some light- of the 1900s, seemed to fit within a survey of the blue days, rising above my depression, I dream of a larger cultural life the characters were part of, and golden perch in the Guinness Book of Records—famed this may be what Montague Summers was referring as the man who triggered a 93-year-old practical to when he suggested the book was influenced by joke. And I blame Saki. the journal- and novel-writing de Goncourt broth- My mortal sin was trusting to the kindness of ers. I read Mrs Elmsley believing it had been written strangers and believing Mrs Elmsley was written by by Saki, and so had Summers. Saki. Now, with the modern ease of the internet, I In 2008 the Oxford academic Sandie Byrne would have done a quick genealogical name search published a major new book on Saki. Christopher which might have led me to the correct Hector Hitchens called it “insightful and sprightly”. In tell- Munro. Since the horrible event, academics have ing the tale of my sad quest (above the footnotes) pointed out how obviously un-Saki the book is and she notes a connection between the name of the thus how obviously it was not written by him. I did book’s hero, Colin Liddel, and Alice Liddell, who not hear these righteous voices until after my con- had been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice fessional letter to the TLS was published. Also, it stories, “which had influenced Saki in the past”. was because it was poor, and supposedly by Saki, She had also discovered that at the beginning of that it was interesting. Approaching the novel as the century in London a near neighbour of Saki’s a second-rate text written by Saki, it became an had been a man called William Elmsley. Saki, she enjoyable puzzle. I read Mrs Elmsley not to chal- suggests, would have enjoyed these additional con- lenge the authorship but to explore how and why fusions. A teak-headed literary reviewer peevishly

Quadrant April 2017 87 I Hate Saki wondered why she called her book The Unbearable the pages of the fourth edition, search under reli- Saki—I know why. gion, and there it is: “Didn’t some cynical critic say What I did, Australian historians do. From the the Church of England is the only barrier between evidence of a single account, a single sheet of paper, England and Christianity?” The quote is attributed they apply interpretation and imagination and find to Saki, writing as Hector Munro, in Mrs Elmsley. colonial bloodshed. I did something similar and fell Sorry Mr Sherrin, mea maxima culpa. into a joke; they get invited to Writers’ Week. In 2013 a new and expanded fifth edition of the dictionary was published. The new editor is Gyles orefs on o u at the end of this miserable and Brandreth—an actor, writer, former Conservative depressing tale there has been a happier ending. MP, indiscreet political diarist, and Saki fan. The FNed Sherrin, the broadcaster, writer and theatre quote has kept its place, and attribution—ditto culpa director who died in 2007, must have read my TLS Mr Brandreth. article. He was the original compiler and editor of And congratulations Mr Hector Munro, onlie the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. Turn true begetter of Mrs Elmsley.

The World is Simple

soft, loose curlicues of sea palm torn from rock during the storm lucent sea lettuce rimming glass-clear pools compassed by yellow sponges sharpened by barnacles reacting to spasmodic surges in spumy yellow circles these watery hollows hold shell-grit in skeletal cavities a plastic lure spat out by the sea and fishing-line caught on a mussel bed re-made into a wreath of weed clouds in the mirror ripple a vulture shadow for whom sculpin quivers could possibly mean food but as the tide pulls in the black wings cut away along the cliff having apprehended that little fish are quick with intent and nobody’s fool such force of salt on the coralline algaed rocks a drink of water would go down well but the sea is dry I watch the fog bank dead on the horizon with hands wet from wringing out love under the weather, given the run of the ocean, knee deep in how it never stops

Cally Conan-Davies

88 Quadrant April 2017 Star Sestina

Sometimes you hear a story like this. Some lives seem to hang by a star like the single one in the afternoon sky, the loveliest one that aligns with your face when your mother calls, and you go in the gate left open between the house and the flowers. I come from women who know what flowers will stand the salt. And it comes down to this: summers of sea-thrift beyond the gate and slender sandwort, a five-petalled star, and fog and butterflies licking your face when you lie all day looking up at the sky. There is no limit to the sky my grandmother sang, sewing a flower on a gift tea-towel with a look on her face, alike even then, even in this: that the angel should sit, not the Christmas star, at the top of the gum tree by the gate. A windbreak of driftwood becomes my gate to a skeleton beach. I hear the whole sky empty its birds by a wasted sea star. Night is a field of a different flower. Grandmother’s headstone, a prayer. Beside this, the moon looks down with a quartered face. I turn the pages of her face. She sits on a pony, she swings on a gate, this schoolgirl, this nurse, this bride, and this new mother, bombs grinding the London sky. Five times, her broken water would flower. One of her boys went out like a star. Her mind drew its margins from every star and suddenly I am face-to-face, pressed in the book, with a bone dry flower. Here is her heart. I touch its gate and heaven springs open, taking up the sky for she comes of women who make much of this— this is no end, no end to the sky or the wild flower by the swinging gate this is your star, and this is your face

Cally Conan-Davies

Quadrant April 2017 89 Roger Underwood

Following a Literary Trail From the Somme to J.S. Bach

rom o time t time I come across one of Alan seventeenth-century English writer Sir Thomas Bennett’s diaries, either in book form or pub- Browne: lished as a serial in the London Review of Books.F They are good reading. Bennett’s writing is ...o t drink of the ashes of dead relations, a concise and witty, he has an artist’s eye for detail and passionate prodigality. He that hath the ashes of a dramatist’s ear for dialogue. The diaries seem at his friend, hath an everlasting treasure. first glance to be mere reportage of everyday events, but they are invariably interesting and amusing, and Pondering over this, and failing to understand it, his observations about literature, art, politics, the did not delay me long from starting to read. theatre, and even sport, are acute. Subtitled Fragments of Autobiography, the book One of the other things I like about the diaries was published in 1933 and looks back to the period is that every now and again he mentions the books from 1915 to 1919 during which Chapman was a sol- he is reading at the moment. Over the years, this dier. He was impelled to write it, he explains, by has led me to discover books and authors that oth- reading the poet Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of erwise I would not have known, or to rediscover War, which reminded him that he had met Blunden an old favourite. There is also that special pleasure at the front in 1917. Blunden’s book also suggested that even an amateur scholar knows—meandering the style for his own memoir: the author as both down a literary trail, one book or author suggesting chorus and player. another, and so on. Chapman does not glorify war, but he under- It was through reading one of Bennett’s diaries stands it, and the pull it exerts on its participants. that I discovered A Passionate Prodigality by Guy Best of all, he celebrates the comradeship of soldiers, Chapman. Bennett described it as the finest book and their stoicism in the face of misery, fear, appall- to come out of the First World War. I had not heard ing conditions, death, boredom and officialdom. of the book or its author, but I have read many First World War memoirs and, respecting Bennett’s hapman was twenty-six, a lawyer and a opinion, I sent away for a copy. Now having read graduate of Oxford and the London School it, I can only agree: A Passionate Prodigality is a oCf Economics, when in 1915 he joined the Royal remarkable book, replete with the horrors of trench Fusiliers, part of the “new Army” formed after the warfare and the absurdities of army life that we have professional army had been cut to ribbons in 1914. come to expect from a First World War memoir, Thanks to his status and education, he was immedi- but at the same time beautifully written in almost ately commissioned as a subaltern. Of his joining-up poetic prose, and providing glimpses of an under- he writes: stated, sardonic humour. It is also clearly the work of a writer who is familiar with classical literature I was loath to go. I had no romantic illusions. I and culture. was not eager, or even resigned to self-sacrifice, Having been led to Chapman by Bennett, I was and my heart gave back no answering throb to then led by Chapman along several other paths, as I thought of England. In fact, I was very much followed up various of his literary and musical allu- afraid; and again, afraid of being afraid, anxious sions. I’ll come to these in a minute. lest I show it. But first to A Passionate Prodigality. The title comes from an inscription on an ancient Persian After a few months training in England, with burial urn, quoted in the writings of the melancholy lectures from general staff officers who “seemed

90 Quadrant April 2017 Following a Literary Trail happier talking of Jubulpore than of Ypres”, the bat- the line they were shelled, undertook raids, patrols talion moved to the Western Front and straight into and search parties, maintained the wire and the the trenches. Their arrival was not auspicious: trenches, stood to at dawn, and performed sen- try duty. Out of the line there were interminable The communication trench was just wide enough marches to billets in the cellars of ruined villages, to accommodate a man with a full pack, and occasional visits to an estaminet or bath house, about seven feet deep, so that one’s vision was training, rehearsals for raids or offensives and pro- limited to a patch of darkening sky and the longed train journeys as the battalion was shut- shoulders of the man in front. Its floor was tled from one position to another and then back covered with a foot of tensely glutinous mud. We again. They learned the geography of the complex drove slowly through the morass, wrenching out of front, support and communication trenches, each foot before putting it down again. variously named after places like Piccadilly Circus Darkness fell. After what seemed half a or Leicester Square. And they began to suffer night, the guide stopped and said: “There’s casualties. a road here. See and hurry over it. There’s a Horrible events are described dispassionately. machine gun on it. See? One at a time.” Chapman was asked one day by a fellow-officer: We tore ourselves singly from the mud and bundled on to the road, diving towards a “Do you remember a corporal with the Messina dark opening in the other bank. The machine medal?” gun threw a few desultory shots past us. The “Oh, yes; a dark stocky man.” bullets cracked sharply overhead. We tumbled “He went off with [a German] officer we’d into another trench and went on. This one was caught. Presently I found him back in the narrow, too, but shallower and duck-boarded. trench. I knew he couldn’t have got down to We moved more quickly. We could see lights the cage and back; so I asked him what had rising and falling in front of us, and the noises happened. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s a very hot day. interpreted themselves as rifles and machine We sat down in a shell hole and he gave me his guns firing. watch and his field-glasses and his money. It’s a very hot day and a long way down. So I shot Arriving eventually at their destination, him.’” Chapman is introduced to the environment and “What did you do?” the work that will become his preoccupation in the “There wasn’t any need to do anything,” said years ahead: Vaughan with a curl of his thin lips; “he was killed that afternoon.” The trench was not a trench at all. The bottom may have been two feet below ground level. An Worseso i t come. During a desperate defence by enormous breastwork rose in the darkness some Chapman’s troops against a German offensive, his ten or more feet high. All about us there was an colleague Whitehead recalled: air of bustle. Men were lifting filled sandbags on to the parapet and beating them into the ... n how i the early hours before the attack wall with shovels. Bullets cracked in the he had heard a voice up the trench shouting darkness. Every now and then a figure would “Over the top! Over the top! We are coming appear on the skyline and drop skilfully on the over for you!” The man had somehow got at firestep. the rum and was drunk. I said to someone, “Care to see the wire?” said my guide. I “Keep that man quiet”. And presently the followed him gingerly over the edge of the noise stopped. When I went along next day, I wall, and slid clumsily down a ramp of greasy found him quite quiet. Someone had stuck a sandbags. A small party was working swiftly bayonet into him. over a tangle of some dark stuff. Two of my own soldiers were being inducted into the ceremony n the wake of the ghastly mess and shocking of wiring. “Hold it tight, chum,” growled one losses at the battle of the Somme, Chapman is figure. He proceeded to smite a heavy bulk of Itransferred for a while to Divisional HQ where timber with a gigantic maul, the head of which he works as a staff officer in a general’s chateau. had been cunningly muffled in sandbags. Here, far removed from the front, he finds himself surrounded by clerks, “each of whom knew the The battalion soon “settled” into the routine of exact worth, gravity, and distinction of his position life for infantrymen on the Western Front. Up in to the lightest hair”, and the general’s servants,

Quadrant April 2017 91 Following a Literary Trail chauffeurs and retainers, all superior to the “mere hapman returns from Divisional HQ to his bat- batmen of hangers-on like me”. The Divisional HQs talion in the line just in time for the Battle of he describes as “monstrous tumours swelling with ACrras, another ghastly shambles. It was during that supernumerary officers and self-importance”. time that he experienced his own Hotspur moment. Chapman comes to perceive that the appalling He had been sent one evening to Brigade HQ, failure of the Somme offensive had: where he found there was nothing for him to do except doze away the night, but when he returned bredn i the infantry a wry distrust of the staff; to his company the next morning he found him- and there was a fierce resentment when brass self in trouble. A Brass Hat had called in while he hats descended from their impersonal isolation was away to get him to go out and “find the front to strafe platoon and company commanders for line” and report back on the number and layout of their alleged shortcomings in the line. The Old the trenches and other information. The Brass Hat Army could not grasp that the New Army cared stormed at Chapman for not being able to give him nothing for soldiering as a trade, thought only of the exact information on the forward trench system it as a job to be done and the more expeditiously that he sought. In response: the better. The man in the line ... resented the staff’s well-meant but frequently out-of-date “Well, Sir,” I objected, after I had been cursed admonitions. It made him mad to see “him for not coming back in time to be sent out again, shine so brisk and smell so sweet, and talk so “if the Battalion commanders can’t tell you like a waiting gentlewoman, of guns and drums where their line is, I don’t see how I can. I can and wounds ...” only tell you what I saw from the OP.” I thought of Sam Weller’s reply to Sergeant Buzfuz, but I knew that quotation, having studied forbore to quote it. Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 when I was at school and having re-read it quite recently. Nevertheless I I knew Sam Weller and Sergeant Buzfuz, and looked it up, and re-read with pleasure that wonder- again I set off down a literary byway. This led to my ful soliloquy by Harry Hotspur, reporting in after a tattered copy of The Pickwick Papers, where I turned battle: to a well-remembered scene. Poor old Pickwick has been accused of misleading the cunning Widow I remember, when the fight was done, Bardell, and the business finally ends up in court. When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, The prosecutor, Sergeant Buzfuz, is cross-examin- Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, ing Sam Weller (Mr Pickwick’s wonderful man- Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed, servant). Sam denies having seen Mrs Bardell in Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reaped Mr Pickwick’s arms, where she had deliberately Showed like a stubble land at harvest time. “fainted” to trap Pickwick into marrying her. When He was perfumèd like a milliner, this happened, Sam says, he was waiting in the And twixt his finger and his thumb he held house passage. Buzfuz is sceptical and jeers at Sam’s A pouncet box, which ever and anon professed blindness. He gave his nose, and took’t away again; Who therewith angry, when it next came there, “Have you a pair of eyes, Mr Weller!” he cries. Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talked; “Yes [Sam replies] I have a pair of eyes and And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, that’s just it. If they was a pair of double million He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly, magnifying glass microscopes of hextra power I To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse might be able to see through a deal door and a Betwixt the wind and his nobility. flight of stairs. But being only Eyes, you see, my With many holiday and lady terms vision is limited.” He questioned me, amongst the rest demanded My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf. hapman’s humour is swamped by the terrible I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, events of the succeeding months in 1917 and To be so pestered with a popingay, Cinto 1918, especially the debacle of the Ypres Salient Out of my grief and my impatience in which his battalion was just about eliminated. Answered neglectingly, I know not what— Increasingly he hears “tired, desperate voices” from He should, or he should not; for he made me mad the men in the line: To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman “E’e cawn’t do it Ser’eant; ’e’s finished”. “The Of guns and drums and wounds ... platoon’s all in, old boy, we’ll only make a balls

92 Quadrant April 2017 Following a Literary Trail

of it”. “I’ve only sixty men left in the company, We moved up after dusk, and as soon as we had Sir, it’s too few for the job”. “My battalion’s crossed Pigeon Wood, we became aware that been in the line for ten days, General. It’s had we were in the midst of an invisible army. We 80% casualties; we no longer exist”. “Unless blundered into a gun with its team. All round us my Brigade’s relieved, I’ll not answer for the where that afternoon had been lawn, bare for the consequences”. intersecting trenches, now stood batteries in their These desperate voices never reached masses, almost wheel to wheel it seemed. A tank, England, or if they did they were bawled out by then several more came nosing by. A column such safe patriots as Lord Northcliffe ... of infantry, with emblems of another division, crossed our path. The comp dugout in the front Later, one evening, a new subaltern, “very young, line, which was to be battalion HQ for this show, very fair and very shy”, part of an incoming bat- was surrounded by recumbent soldiers. All space talion relieving the Fusiliers, arrived in Chapman’s between the trenches was occupied. Shelling had dug-out. He was made welcome, shown around. As died away almost to silence. By 4.40, when the Chapman bade him goodbye the next morning, the light was beginning to filter through, there was a young man shyly put a slim paper-covered book in thick mist. Packs of men crouching in the grass his hands. It was a copy of The Harbingers, poems by could just be seen on knees, ready to move. The E.C. Blunden. hands crept over the watch face. 4.45. Now! Like Again I sniffed at the spoor of a literary trail. I the attack of the orchestra in the 3rd Brandenburg have a book of poems from the First World War, Concerto, the guns of the corps on the right Sassoon, Graves, Owen and others, including started. A second later those on the left. Then our Edmund Blunden. I looked it up and found “The own let loose their flood of steel, poured it above Zonnebeke Road”, of which the following is an our heads. A few lights flickered up; a few enemy extract: guns dropped shells: they were scarcely noticed. The companies moved forward … … now where Haymarket starts, That is no place for soldiers with weak hearts; The 3rd Brandenburg! It is typical of Chapman The minenwerfers have it to the inch. that this analogy sprang to his mind, and again I Look, how the snow-dust whisks along the road, was impelled to follow up his reference. I know and Piteous and silly; the stones themselves must love all of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, but flinch I can never remember which is which. Where is In this east wind; the low sky like a load that CD with Number 3 on it! It can’t be found, Hangs over—a dead-weight. But what a pain but the internet has the answer and I listen to (and Must gnaw where its clay cheek watch) a glorious rendition, marvelling once again Crushes the shell-chopped trees that fang the at “the attack of the orchestra”, especially in the final plain— movement. The ice-bound throat gulps out a gargoyle shriek. The wretched wire before the village line espite being gassed and suffering severe damage Rattles like rusty brambles or dead bine, to his eyes, Chapman is there right to the end And then the daylight oozes into dun; Dof the war and beyond, staying on with the Army Black pillars, those are trees where roadways run. of Occupation in Germany into 1919. Over the suc- Even Ypres now would warm our souls; fond ceeding post-war years it is the “tender nostalgia” fool, for his former comrades and the loss of friends that Our tour’s but one night old, seven more to cool! he remembers most vividly. His battalion alone lost O screaming dumbness, O dull clashing death, 800 men killed in action, including thirty-two offic- Shreds of dead grass and willows, homes and ers, and hundreds more were ruinously injured. But men, he also acknowledges the “enormous fascination of Watch as you will, men clench their chattering war, the repulsion and attraction, the sharpening of teeth awareness, and as one became familiar with one’s And freeze you back with that one hope, disdain. surroundings an apprehension that was not fear—a quickening rather”. The final year of the war brings the great offen- At the end, we see Chapman waking up from a sives, first the German and then the final drive by fogged sleep in a troop train: the British, Australians and Americans that ended in the Armistice. Here Chapman describes the The train was standing still. I drew back opening moments of one of the final attacks: the door and peered out. There was a damp

Quadrant April 2017 93 Following a Literary Trail

platform and the name HERBESTAHL, the come f out o all this for me. The positive has been the frontier station of Germany. Beyond a dark opportunity to read and discuss a forgotten classic. I grey morning, windless with a hint of drizzle, confirm Alan Bennett’s summation of A Passionate colourless trees and hedges, and no sound but Prodigality; to me also it is one of the finest books the steam from the engine. The train jerked into to come out of the First World War. The negative movement. We passed over into Germany. No is the fading of the literary culture that enabled a trumpets sounded. writer like Chapman to sprinkle his writing with literary and classical allusions, at a time when many No trumpets sounded. readers would have had no trouble recognising It is an unforgettable evocation of the disaster them. I doubt this would be the case today. and tragedy of the First Wold War, and of its ulti- mate anticlimax. Roger Underwood, who lives in Western Australia, is But there are also a positive and a negative to a regular contributor.

Le Songe d’Aubert after an illuminated manuscript in the museum in Avranches

Not once but three times the angel visited not once but three times St Michael called on the Bishop told him clearly he was needed to build an oratory on the rocks of Mount Tumba said St Michael, I won’t leave until you agree, God’s will and all that the Bishop sat up, rubbed his bleary eyes blamed his dream on too much cheese the next night, Michael, who is after all, an archangel capable of slaying dragons, appeared again to tell the slumbering Aubert in words of one syllable what he must do the Bishop, sitting up, stretched luxuriantly put the dream down to red wine he’d swigged at supper the third night, Michael, glittering warrior saint of Cornwall abandoned words, resorted to his sword drove it swiftly and smoothly through the skull of Bishop Aubert of Avranches finally he sat up, knowing exactly what it was he had to do.

Victoria Field

94 Quadrant April 2017 Masked Memory For Kathleen (1920–1968)

To catch the idea of air in the January heat, we children escape to the verandah. Enclosed by wire gauze, a safe to banish the mosquitos. The country night hums a cricket sonata. My cough hacks the stillness, I wheeze from the oat dust; a child should not lark in the grain silo. You perch on my bunk, cradle my head, your voice solfa soft. You understand shortness of breath, The Ablation of Time you say. My memory specific; the tube is a link, At close range the clash a line to the tank of a cloudburst lapses and the oxygen mask stretches in an instant. across your face, Trussed up like bulging penguins, pallid-pale on the pillow. we huff, our breath freezing on our faces. Belittled as krill by the blue bolt glacier, David Atkinson one mile wide, as it enters the ocean. Novice glaciologists analyse the rifts and the stretched crevasses, cavities in the body of serrated ice held only by tensile strength. The crowd murmurs, anticipates the spectacle, the sonorous drumfire, of ice ablation. An observer predicts, with conviction, that any minute a precarious slab, angular, will break loose and collapse. Ecstasy for the enthusiasts. An hour later, spectators grow listless. It seems that, with debutant reluctance, ice calves not to the minute but to the chronicle of the ages.

Quadrant April 2017 95 Alan Gould

Short Takes XXII (from a journal)

20/5/06 The very joy 9/9/2014 Helen Garner’s Spare Room ’ve now appraised nearly all the dossiers I must he Spare Room is a superbly managed story, in read for our June Literature Board session. This its pace, its acute observation of day-to-day, wIill be my seventeenth meeting and penultimate aTnd how the things of everyday become estranged appearance for the appointment which I reckon to and heartbreaking when an acute illness arrives have been a fair call on my time, where I have been and colonises at the very heart of a friendship able to give back to my patrons some public serv- between two women. ice for the enabling they have provided for my own The characters, particularly the narrator, Helen, compositions over the years. and the stricken Nicola, are scrupulously drawn There are 105 applications, fewer than sometimes, in their humour, anger, fear, sorrow, honesty and and I have read these over four days at the rate of self-deceptions, and they are utterly contemporary. twenty-five per eight-hour day. They leave me with Helen G overstates nothing in this description of these reactions. the ravages of cancer and its “cures” and yet she 1. Most contemporary Australian literature gives manages suspense, an unfolding, and a power to me complex displeasure. Why so much urgency to attach to everyday things like doing laundry or prove and so little wish to please? amusing a grandchild a charge that illumines com- 2. Acquaintance with the diverse wiles by which plex emotions with complete clarity. The writing, authors try to establish salient presence around the which seems plain enough, has a fastidious register Lit-Board honey pot has taken me too far into a for truth at just that frequency where the exact is view of the beggarliness of this, my writer’s profes- entirely confident of its sufficiency. It is the charac- sion, with the result that I could easily lose interest teristic of Jane Austen, and the quality here. in it. Why must the opportunity for patronage illu- Perhaps the most deft strategy of the book is mine the servile in people? to compose a novel where the reportage is so eye- 3. Over-exposure to the veritable cusp of witness. The reader can easily take the fiction to Australian literature during the several annual dos- belong to the non-fiction portion of the Garner sier experiences deadens rather than enlivens any oeuvre. Is Helen the character identical to Helen curiosity I might have in our literary culture. Sure, the author? The art here has been to introduce this why not enable the creation of art where we can, biographical confusion, not in order to serve biog- as the aristocratic patrons of yesteryear recognised; raphy, but rather to heighten the intimacy with certainly there are more barren ways to spend peo- which we, the readers, experience the conflict, ple’s taxes. And yet how, in our fair-go culture, do turmoil and intensity of the emotional sequence we distinguish between opportunist and authentic that begins when the cancer-sufferer arrives for her artist when the supporting material from both will three weeks with the carer-friend. The biographical wink with persuasive merit? ambiguity serves a universal human plight. 4. Over-exposure to this quarterly duty-reading Most profoundly, the novel serves justice. It is also deadens the very joy to be had in reading itself. just to the differing viewpoints, the forlorn sufferer, Patronage by government committee is undoubt- the carer, but more than anything else, to life as it edly the fairest way to transform literary encourage- unfolds itself. There are no miraculous cures, but ment from aristocratic to democratic times. But I there are wondrous realisations. And because the observe it to harm the morale of the artist on such novel is a first-person narrative, there is, at every committees, and protection of that morale is more point of the storytelling, a most conscientious and critical to the making of the art than its funding. intelligent examination of reaction and emotion.

96 Quadrant April 2017 Short Takes XXII

Thiss i the mark of the fastidious artist. have only two children,” she explained to us, then Close to the beginning of the novel a grand- waited to see if we had cottoned on, before decid- mother must rebuff her granddaughter as the ing better to leave no doubt. “Two children. Two stricken one arrives and needs the same exacting hands.” care to undress and be put to bed as a child does. It ends with these two reunited, nestled on a bed as the eventual fate of the stricken one is recapitu- 13/12/15 Our evenings grow longer lated. The closure is unobtrusive and wholly sat- ur evenings lengthen, we are eight days from isfying. Here is a short novel, but a masterpiece the summer solstice, and I walk our bridle path nonetheless. aObove the gardens. Along the stormwater ditch the grass is newly mown, grey-blonde now the sun slips below the horizon cloud. In squeak and wrench, the 16/8/15 I step on the dogfox cockatoos make their last palaver, so many mechan- eturning from my walk along the bridle path ics torquing down the last nuts and bolts of the day. behind our house—an utterly black night—I There is no wind. The gum trees blacken into cut- Rbegan the descent to our back gate when suddenly out and look somehow Chinese in this. From the the ground was a-writhe and the night a-snarl. I further track I hear joggedy conversation along the had all but trodden on a moderately large fox, evi- treeline, two young women taking an evening run. dently as astounded by me as I was Reaching the limit of my walk, by it. I turn back to face the striations We know the foxes infiltrate of the setting sun in their foundry our suburbs from their hides on After the initial brilliance. The sky shows some van- our hills. I have seen a neighbour’s scare, it is rather guard cirrus, followed by bulkier chicken run with its freshly head- a privilege, these hulls of cloud, blue-grey with a suf- less chooks. Once we’ve had a fox fusion of purple. These the sun has try to get into our house by our material appearances underlit with facets of orange that, dog’s cat-flap, deterred only by our one makes inside moment by moment, grow more own dog’s eruption into frenzy; I intense as they catch the sunward was quick enough to glimpse its the poems of irregularities, then broaden and profile against the night sky as it Ted Hughes. intensify until the whole earthward fled. And years ago I sat in a field face of the cloud is phosphorus newly-ploughed near Lincoln in orange. The cockatoos have gone England as shotguns popped away in the spinney quiet, the mynahs are now murmurous, a remote below, watching a fox gallop towards me, and I rub of traffic from the Canberra side. Again I hear wondered at what distance it would register my voices, now approaching me on my bridle path, the immobile presence. It veered at thirty yards—my two lady runners, chattersome as they deal with stink zone, I suppose. their topic which seems to be about well-being. But last night is my closest vulpine encounter, a “You ladies have done well!” I call out. “It was little strange, because the kangaroos along my path only a minute ago you were passing me on the far had been more than usually tolerant of my passing side.” this evening, murky presences that continued to “Thanks for that,” calls out the one in the loose graze as I passed less than a metre—yes, metre— yellow shirt, and I realise my remark has been from their delicate noses. After the initial scare, encouraging. As it happens, I have been think- it is rather a privilege, these material appearances ing about my usefulness on the planet, downcast one makes inside the poems of Ted Hughes. by the usual reasons of author-fortune, and look! Unplanned I have roused a moment of pleasure for two ladies who run our town’s back-paths for their 29/11/15 The imprinted well-being. What a tiny contribution to the good his morning Anne and I attended a neigh- I’ve made, but it is not nothing. Whatever span I bourly breakfast where we met an elderly get, I know I’m now in the latter part of a lifetime. ETstonian couple. The woman, M, had fled Tallinn What is a lifetime—an entity that forever goes with her parents and numerous siblings at the time short of entirety? of the Soviet takeover. A part of their escape had The trees are now two-dimension and jet- involved a sea-crossing during which one of her black, lacework on the west’s vermilion. Dusk’s sisters had fallen overboard and drowned. kookaburras have not yet commenced their hubbub “So when I come to Australia I decide I will from further in the scrub. I head home and also,

Quadrant April 2017 97 Short Takes XXII

I suppose, towards my day of entity because my 3/4/16 A page still luminous material reduction presses that, but also to my place in an entirety because my projective mind can sn a undergraduate I absorbed Henry Handel conceive that. Richardson’s Maurice Guest, then a little while lAater her penetrating study of a man’s descent into madness, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. I relished 2/1/16 Click-a-gram both works. But over the decades I’ve neglected olly! Leftist is an anagram of Litfest. to read The Getting of Wisdom, nor have I seen the film. So I took it for company as I went to hospital G to have a hip done. Could the sensation of pleasure I presently take in reading this masterpiece of the 16/2/16 The handbook on my work novelist’s art have been as vibrant had I read the ndo s I plan the twenty-second century’s hand- book earlier? book on my work. What is the novelist’s art as it discloses itself AWhat will be its title? The Weird Squandering: here? The mental quickness and simultaneity of the Essays on the Work of Alan Gould to Celebrate His circus-juggler gets at it, that presence of mind to 100th Birthday (publ March 2049)? have several streams of consideration unfolding at And its introductory sentence? … In the peculiar, the same time, but as fabric rather than distraction. but decisive collapse of Australian poetry that coincided Laura is being got ready for school, her mother with the new millennium, nothing was more perverse makes adjustments to the clothes she will need. than the seemingly coordinated pre- Laura will not wear the skirt if it is vention of the literary art of Alan too short … This is trivial, heart- Gould … ould the sensation breaking, comic. But its family There will follow cogent and C dynamic is quietly comprehended well-researched argument. It will of pleasure I presently at every point, oldest daughter to deal with the (by then) trivial poli- take in reading widowed mother, sibling to sibling, tics of Australian poetry of the mil- the licence of affectionate imper- lennial cusp, the confusion of what this masterpiece tinence to a trusted maidservant. had quaintly been conceived during of the novelist’s Then, at a level, more slight but that era as taste, the degradation of art have been as no less painstaking, in the names what had been an equally quaint the children call their chickens— notion, the open mind. vibrant had I read Napoleon, Garibaldi—or in the Then it will seek a deeper stra- the book earlier? nicknames they endow—“Res’vor” tum of discourse touching the is the younger sister, reservoir intractable Australian divide because she is prone to tears— between “native-born” and “new-chum” because names alive with the intelligence of the everyday. this sub-rational defensiveness touches the elusive The life-drawing is painstaking, exquisite, modest, subject of ear. How can an ear that is Englished (or no observation appearing unless it both ignites an Poled, Magyar’d, Slovacked, Turked et cetera) until intelligence and implicates a reader’s place in story seventeen, be trusted to know anything that tricks (like Garner’s The Spare Room above). It may be the Australian ear? This invokes mystical stuff, but wordstream that is in my air, but it is the touch of parallels a similar difficulty when the “Native-born” comprehending, light and sure, that is before my sought to penetrate the guarded mystiques of the mind’s eye, to encompass. “Indigenous-born”. Of course my proposed posthumous festschrift is vainglorious! Of course I assess my longevity and 16/4/16 The right sock my century as both laughable and oddly unimpor- resentlym I a unable to draw on my right sock. tant. Of course the dispensations of fortune are The left sock is fine: crook the leg backwards, utterly cold. “Old men forget and all shall be for- Pnose foot into the cavity and haul. Underpants got,” Henry V tells his sodden troops, and that’s the and trousers ditto: like two trout at the edge of existential situation. possibility, I tickle my feet towards these respec- And yet the urgency persists unanswerably. Did tive trouser-apertures, then promptly draw … and I contribute? Was I worth my While? And where, experience an angler’s satisfaction at my catch. But in any case, might that worth attract interest? How the right sock resists human guile, and presents might that While know itself not to have been horrible risk. squandered? For I have had the top of my right femur sawn

98 Quadrant April 2017 Short Takes XXII off, a ceramic/titanium device lodged into its withy m sock and bare foot. “Scuse I, mate,” I said marrow with bio-glue, and then a cup to receive to a lean, tanned man. “Could I ask you to do me this knob screwed to my pelvis. In the healing a slightly peculiar favour?” required by this surgery, for three months I must “Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” he said, draw- observe three conditions rigorously: no bending ing my sock over its pale foot. my body at the pelvis more than ninety degrees, Reader, are you acquainted with baffling help- no crossing my legs, no gyrating on either leg. lessness? O preview for Gouldilocks of the years Should I do so, my new ball-joint might leap from ahead, when he will wander his house, one sock on its cup to go marauding around the soft tissue of and one sock off, mentis compos of course, though my right rump, burst through flesh to stick out like no longer able to prove it to any chance caller not- something from Viking times. Consequently I am ing a bare foot and a distrait composure. a compliant patient. So the right sock is presently beyond my pow- This is the twenty-second in a series that began in the ers, such a simple, everyday thing. Yesterday, hear- September 2004 issue. Alan Gould’s ninth novel, a ing the stonemasons at work next door and Anne picaresque titled The Poets’ Stairwell, is published by being out, I hopped along the back to their site Black Pepper Press in Melbourne.

Clearing

Thiss i the price of light: chainsaws squealing, usual paths closed off with health and safety notices from Euroforest. Yes, I can see further through all that air—trees on the horizon instead of a hand’s breadth away, solitary standards with space for every leaf to drink the light. But I miss the dense silver flicker of birches, thickets for the nightingales. They will return, I know. Meanwhile the earth’s in tatters waiting for green shoots, a million small things to grow

Hazel

path-festooner, soft moss-carpeted modest spindled thing, budding shoots firing on brown cylinders, thicket-maker crouching in the fugitive spring small curator of small creatures dormice alive with ink-filled eyes nightingales spilling songs into the dusk of Kentish skies catkin-quiverer, water-diviner bendy-branched earth mystery-seeker caterpillar-cradler, sweet nut-giver quiet tree, my secret keeper

Victoria Field

Quadrant April 2017 99 Philip Drew

Oceansd an Mountains of the Flood-Plain

and that was once open fields filled with again, in an endless assault. It was deeply satisfy- nonchalantly grazing cows and the occa- ing, as reassuring as the pumping thump in one’s sional horse is now covered by tarred roads chest, life marching to the drumbeat of the rain. aLnd tile-and-brick villas. Slim Dusty once agisted Afterwards, when the rain cleared and the his team there. Suburbia has usurped the flat flood- sky was brilliantly clear again, nature was sharply plain I once roamed as a budding Robin Hood. It is etched, every detail, each leaf, a masterpiece. I sad to see it vanish without a requiem. would venture out across the paddocks. They were Perhaps it is only when we are young that we transformed into a wonderful world of my imagi- fully, completely enjoy a landscape, when our flow- nation. I surveyed the extending spread of conti- ering imagination sees within it so many exciting, nents and oceans, mountains and deep seas, newly evocative frames. Back then the paddock opposite minted countries suddenly rising up and surround- my parents’ house appeared flat from a distance, ing me. Water filled the depressions, unlike any yet it was an illusion since, in reality, it was com- sea one would ever encounter. The water was clear- posed of many folds and depressions. On the hori- est crystal, every grass blade in the bottom sharply zon, ranged against the rich blue sky, were the grey visible. I would plunge forward, a giant Gulliver skeletons of the ringbarked legions, remnants of in Lilliput, wading through each created sea, each the dense forest mane that shrouded once-brilliant Lake Michigan, mastering each craggy Rocky creeks. Mountain top, obliterating cities and towns with Traversing the paddock, you rose and fell at each footfall. each wrinkle, each mound, each miniature moun- It never lasted long. The roasting sun would tain chain or peak. You looked ahead, taking care emerge after the rain and suck up my oceans and not to stumble and trip and plunge headfirst into draw them skyward. In a week Lilliput would van- its folds. Size exaggerated this relief, made it more ish. While it lasted, while the seas were full and pronounced, added an extra dimension. Everything brimming with new life, tadpoles and frogs and looks bigger when you are four feet tall. tiny dark creatures that wriggled in plague forma- In summer the rain would sweep around the tions, this wonder world filled my head and became hills that hemmed in the valley. I would stand still any country—the Aegean with its many islands, and watch its progress: it began in the north-east complete with surging triremes, the West Indies corner, a vague white slanting veil creeping west- with prowling privateers and Spanish treasure gal- erly from one banana plantation to the next until leons. Never Cook in a frozen Antarctic sea, the it reached the head of the valley where the north- Endeavour’s rigging swollen by tangles of jagged ern railway plunged through a long tunnel to the icicles, scurvy sailors and glassy decks. Mine were hinterland. At that point I knew I had about ten always sunny seas, warm and clingy around my minutes to reach shelter before the rain caught me. legs, unimaginably deep, waiting for a breeze to After that, the rain would curl back on itself and ripple their glassy faces. These were happy seas of crawl along Robinson’s Hill above the family home. adventure and discovery. At that point the rain, having encircled the val- Each daily trip to the dairy was a trans-conti- ley, would remember its job was unfinished and nental journey through a wilderness of the unex- turn in on itself and fill the empty cradle in the pected. I carried no maps, not even crudely ancient middle with heavy swollen raindrops thundering ones with fantastic thrilling monsters from the down on tin roofs in a succession of running waves, depths in their empty spaces. I startled the occa- rising to a crescendo, easing off, then picking up sional eel that had paused to rest on its overland

100 Quadrant April 2017 Oceans and Mountains of the Flood-Plain dawn journey. At my approach they would wriggle stumbling up and down steep hillsides, shoulder- away in haste across the wet grass in a series of ing heavy bunches, are all departed, removed and rapidly unfolding S’s. released for the final rail trip to market. The planta- tions are sold off for housing, which clings to the ts i all gone now, lost to development. Progress steep hills where once there were rough timber- saw to that. New people have come. The poet’s packing sheds of iron with burlap walls and the fIather who greeted me at the dairy bails in the best sea views in all the world. morning with a squirt of hot milk direct from the The valley is empty now, though it has never teat is long gone. The grog got him in the end. His been fuller, more congested, noisier, or seemingly son writes Australian haiku from Watsons Bay. more prosperous. The unemployed gather around The house on the hill with its wondrous aviary of the McDonald’s in the mall each morning. They parrots and exotic birds is gone also, the daughter like the warm weather, the surf, and the easy life- now an education officer at the National Gallery in style, in what is promoted as the most livable city Canberra. The rough plantation workers, free men in Australia. Or, as Mother used to say, “The best locked in the weekly ritual of chipping, cutting, dip- of all cities for flying foxes, the unemployed and ping, packing and loading the taut timber banana developers.” cases on the railway track for the Friday pick-up, they too have disappeared. The price of freedom Philip Drew, who now lives in Sydney, is a regular and independence, hernias and backs wrecked from contributor on architecture.

Cullinan

A f flash o light in shaft wall. First thought: glass. Captain Fredrick Wells’ pocketknife released the 621 gram stone, twice the size of any before, named after the South African mine. Remarkable clarity, save the black spot at centre indicating internal strain. Birthday gift from Botha to Edward VII in the presence of the Queens of Spain and Norway. Asscher, the greatest cleaver of the day, broke a knife chipping it into three, then seven majors, ninety-six smaller brilliants. Cullinan I: Great Star of Africa, pear-cut, set in the head of the Sceptre with the Cross. Cullinan II: Second Star of Africa, rectangular-cut, soul of the circlet of the Imperial State Crown. Cullinan III & IV: known as Lesser Stars, pear-and-cushion-cuts, for Queen Mary’s Crown (nicknamed Granny’s Chips). Cullinan V, VI & VII: heart-pear-and-marquis-cut brooch, crafted for the stomacher of the Delhi Durbar Parure, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite. Cullinan VIII: brooch extension, never worn: (Her Majesty claimed it got in the soup). Cullinan IX: better behaved, four- carat, pear-cut, set in a platinum ring. The complete array: one billion £.

Joe Dolce

Quadrant April 2017 101 S t ory

God Bless the Freaks! Gary Furnell

rancis walked towards me as I sat at a table outside my favourite cafe. I was reading the newspaper when I looked up and saw him approaching. He walked like he was always on the cusp of falling forwards. I put the paper down as he drew near. He was weird but I enjoyed his wit and the exchange of banter. “Hi Francis. Out for a Sunday morning stroll?” “I’m going to the Presbyterian church to worship. Same thing you’re doing.” F“Huh?” I grinned. “I’m reading the paper and sipping a latte.” He stopped in front of me. “They’re things you consider worthy, so you commit time to them. Same as me, just different objects of desire.” As he spoke, Francis swayed like he was hearing music too soft and consoling for the normal ear. I gestured towards the newspaper and the coffee cup. “It’s a sensible way to spend a Sunday morning. Lots of normal people do it.” “But God blesses the freaks,” Francis said, and his chuckle descended into a coughing fit. He waved at me in apology and farewell and walked, still coughing, down the street as if every step he took was spoiled by a tripwire. His Akubra somehow stayed on his head, and as he walked he stroked his long beard, collected below his chin by a rubber band into a ponytail. Next Sunday, I was again sitting at the cafe table and saw Francis approaching, this time from the opposite direction. “Hey Francis. Wanna join me for a coffee?” “Thank you, but no. I’m going to meet with the freaks at the Catholic church.” “I’m sure they’d like to hear that!” “Honouring the clowns of God is a Catholic tradition.” He stopped to talk and moved from one foot to the other in a gentle lilting motion. He smiled. “And I see you’re catching up with all the news of the day but none of the wisdom of the ages.” I gave him a defiant look. “And loving my freedom,” I said. It was a warm morning but Francis wore long trousers, a flannelette shirt and a cardigan that had traces of his breakfast or yesterday’s dinner dribbled down the front. He smelled of unwashed clothes and unshowered flesh. There were bits of what looked like egg yolk in his moustache. Francis wrapped his arms around his chest, hugging himself, and he looked upwards to the sun for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he looked down at me and said, “Be careful you’re not enslaved by the merely contemporary. And with that, I wish you good day.” “Seeya, Francis.” He made a peace sign like the old hippie he seemed to be and hurried away in his

102 Quadrant April 2017 Story stumbling-forwards gait. Francis was perhaps fifteen or twenty years older than me, which placed him in his mid-seventies. I’d noticed that old people often dressed like the temperature was ten degrees colder than it was, and in clothes that looked two sizes too big. I was sweating despite being dressed in shorts and a polo shirt and sitting in the shade of the cafe’s awning. I pitied the person Francis sat next to in church. I watched him, thin and dishevelled, amble down the street. You’re a bit freaky, I thought. And you don’t seem too blessed. Next Sunday morning, there was a similar exchange. Francis came walking along the footpath and I put my newspaper down on the table. “Hey Francis. Which freaks are you meeting with today?” “The invisible freaks. In Roman days, a spot beside the river was the place of prayer for the dispersed Jews. So I’m going to the park near the bridge to sit on the grass and look at the water. I like to imagine there’re angels sitting in the trees who might enjoy some quiet human company.” “Right,” I said. “Angels in the trees, perched on the branches like cockatoos.” “You’re welcome to join me.” “Nah. I’ve just ordered another coffee and I’m halfway through the paper. I’ll stick with that.” I patted the open pages. Francis leaned forward and perused the headlines. He nodded. “You prefer the practical politicians and the broad-minded economists?” “Yeah.” I smiled. I could see his point. “Don’t forget,” he began, but I guessed what he was going to say and finished the sentence with him so we spoke in unison, “God blesses the freaks.” “Got it. I haven’t forgotten. I’m not sure I agree with it, but I remembered.” I next saw Francis at a funeral. A work colleague from my teaching days at the local high school had died and although he was an acquaintance rather than a close friend, I felt it was proper to go to the service. I sat in Saint Lawrence’s Church and noticed Francis sitting across from me. Without his Akubra he looked much older and his habit of tying his grey beard and silver hair in ponytails made him look eccentric. His balding scalp was marked with large yellow-red lesions, like severe patches of sunburn. I watched him throughout the service and noticed that nobody engaged him in conversation. Afterwards, outside the church, I went across to where he stood by himself. “Hey Francis. I didn’t know you knew Steve.” “Who?” “Steven Davies.” “Steven Davies?” he said, genuinely puzzled. “No, I don’t know him.” “Mate, we’re at his funeral.” “Oh, I didn’t know him. But I like to go to funerals to hear what’s said. In the eulogies you discover what people think is important in life.” “That’s an odd habit,” I said. “Maybe, but for some people death is the culmination of their lives. They prepare for it with great care.” “Like who?” I hoped he didn’t mean mongrels like suicide bombers. “The saints, for example.” “Hmm, well, you won’t see me at more funerals than I feel obliged to attend.” He stepped closer. His breath made me want to take a step back but I resisted that impulse. He lowered his voice and smiled in anticipation of what he was about to say. “There are people here who go to funerals just for the excuse to dress up and watch

Quadrant April 2017 103 Story

people cry, like it’s free theatre. It’s a small town thing to do. I don’t do that.” “Your purpose is more instructive.” “I hope. I’m sure it’s worthwhile spending time at the pub or at the greyhounds ...” “Or at the cafe,” I suggested. “Yes. But there’s more to learn among the mournful.” It didn’t seem to me that God, assuming he existed, blessed the mournful any more than the non-mournful. I thought Francis’s habit of attending funerals was macabre. I asked around and discovered that Francis, in the years when teachers’ colleges were located in big country towns, had been a lecturer at Armidale Teachers’ College. For decades he had been a teacher of teachers, but he retired early to return to town to care for his ailing, widowed mother. When she died, the story goes, he suffered some kind of breakdown and became a bit unhinged: he neglected to eat regularly, to pay bills, to change his clothes or wash and he’d stay up all night, ranting. He never worked again, and lived alone in his mother’s house. A daughter came from Sydney to visit him every few months, but I never saw her with him. A fortnight after the funeral, I went to Ballina where my retired mates and I rented an apartment for four weeks. All of us were single through divorce or bereavement and we met each year to fish, to cook the fish we caught, or to eat at restaurants and pubs if the weather was too bad to launch the boat. We compared our bad investments, our cholesterol levels, our medications and their nasty side-effects, our bulging bellies, and the anxieties and depressions that plagued us. We told tales about the crazy things our adult children did and wheezed with laughter at their follies. None of us knew what the hell life was supposed to be about and we freely admitted it to each other. It was consoling that my mates were as confused as me. One windy day when the chop on the water made us turn our backs on the sea, we drove to Nimbin to check out the place. The main street was lined with run- down shops that looked like no money had been spent on painting or maintenance since the seventies. We wandered along the street, ate at the Rainbow Cafe, muttered wisecracks in the Aquarius Museum, and nudged each other when we saw a good- looking backpacker or hippie chick. I went into a New Age shop, bought nothing because nothing seemed to have any quality or be to my taste, and was on my way out when I noticed a small table with funny, insulting or smutty stickers and badges. One bumper sticker caught my eye. I chuckled and bought two: one for me and one for Francis. The sticker said, in a wonky informal script, “God bless the freaks!” I guessed Francis had seen the sticker on the bumper of someone’s car, probably a beat-up Kombi or some tree-hugger’s rust-bucket, and made it his motto. When I returned home from Ballina, I resumed my Sunday morning cafe routine. After several Sundays had passed, I mentioned to the young waitress that I hadn’t seen Francis lately. “He died about a month ago, had a stroke or heart attack or something.” “Oh. I didn’t know that.” I digested the news. Even in a small town, a person could disappear and their absence would barely register. She placed my latte on the table. I said, “You’ve got a new tattoo.” A black vine design laced up the inside of her forearm. She also had a new piercing through her bottom lip and her hair was now purple. “Got it done Satdee week ago,” she said. She paused, and twisted her mouth. “I think that bloke died closer to two months ago.” I drank my coffee with no further conversation. News of Francis’s death reminded

104 Quadrant April 2017 Story mef o the stickers I’d bought at Nimbin. Later, at home, I took them from my travel bag. I thought I’d put a sticker on a small piece of wood and place it beside his grave. I cut some pine to size, sanded it smooth, put the sticker on and coated it with varnish to protect it against the weather. The next day I drove out to the cemetery, a clearing in the bush on the edge of town. I found Francis’s plot, but my small gift was eclipsed by what was engraved on the metal plate on his modest headstone. Below his name, the dates of his birth and death, and his age, was written: “You never laughed in all your life like I shall laugh in death.” It wasn’t a proposition I could understand. I read it once more, aloud. It was unreasonable, an absurdity. There was too much hope, too much expectation, and too much confidence, all in the face of the unknown. It went beyond any decent measure. I was inclined to walk away but I looked again at the sticker I’d fixed to the pine and I placed it against the headstone, underneath the metal plate. It somehow complemented the strange line about laughing in death that puzzled and offended me.

Gary Furnell, a frequent contributor of fiction and non-fiction, lives in rural New South Wales.

Go for it, Joe! for Joe Dolce

Go for it, Joe!—do what you have to— criticize—clarify—and always with love—the young burn each other at the stake—rampant around conflagration— but we’re the old guys now— the nation doesn’t need more fire— why rake up spent coals? showed Gebhardt who remarked “I like that—with love— i’m rereading Auden who said the same”—a thought arises: imagine coming home to Auden—the Auden who came home ... conceive “home” as one does “poem”— answer the adversaries for the love of poetry, Joe— like Kinsella urged the other day— signature windmill of speech & gesture— “i’ve got nothing at all against any geezer— it’s only ever about poetry”— (in medias res)— i’ve warmed to enemies as though long ago’s flames—bless ’em—bless ’em, Joe!

Kris Hemensley

Quadrant April 2017 105 S t ory

The Audit Hugh Canham

hen I first worked for the accountants after leaving school, one of the main tasks for me and the other trainee, Jimmy Patel, was to go out and do audits. This was generally very routine stuff: check- ing bank statements against chequebooks, going through petty cash slips, that sort of thing. We had just come back from a miserable two weeks auditing the books of a meat pie and sausage manufacturer in the Midlands. We had to stay at one of the local pWubs, which was awful, and didn’t manage to get back home for the weekend, as we were expected to work on Saturday until lunchtime. Mr Meadows, the qualified assistant, who was supervising us, was cross because he missed his Saturday game of cricket. He was a precise and sardonic young man who lived with his mother. “At least this one is not far away,” the Senior Partner announced. Before sending the three of us out on audit he always summoned us to his room for “a briefing”, as he called it. He lined us up against the wall facing his desk and paced up and down in front of us like a commanding officer giving orders to his troops. “It’s for Williams Williams & Hedges, the solicitors just down the road. They are a very old established firm but I think they’ve seen more prosperous days. There are still two Mr Hedges as partners: Mr Maurice Hedges, an elderly gentleman who lives above the offices, and who has approached us to help out, and Mr Nigel Hedges, his much younger cousin, who apparently spends some of his time in London where he has clients in the theatrical world. Their accounts were previously looked after by a semi-retired chap who came into the office two or three times a week and wrote up the books manually. But he retired completely a few months ago and Mr Nigel Hedges decided to try to computerise the accounts. He called in a specialist firm who promised to help. They suggested as a temporary measure that they should take all the information away at the end of each week and put it on their computer and then send back the stuff and printed-out computer accounts on a Monday. Well, it proved a disaster! The computer cards kept failing to arrive on a Monday and the Hedges found themselves without chequebooks or paying-in books, etc, often until a Wednesday. In desperation, a second set of chequebooks and paying-in books were ordered from the Bank. You can imagine the chaos.” At this stage I must explain that for reasons that will become clear, even though this happened a long time ago, I have changed the names of the solicitors involved. I must also explain that solicitors are all required to keep money they hold on behalf of clients entirely separate from their own money; they have to have two bank accounts, one called the Client Account and the other the Office Account, with separate

106 Quadrant April 2017 Story chequebooks. No transfer of money from the Client Account to the Office Account can be made without the client first having been sent a bill.

So Jimmy Patel, a rotund and bespectacled smiling Indian, and I, led by the sardonic Mr Meadows, duly arrived at our destination fifteen minutes later. It was a very elegant if somewhat dilapidated Georgian house. The brass plate beside the front door announcing “Williams Williams & Hedges Solicitors” was being polished by a pretty, fair-haired girl wearing a green nylon overall. “You must be the accountants,” she said. “I am Valerie. Come in. Mr Hedges will be down to see you soon. He said to put you in the general office. There’s a big table for you to work at in there.” And she led us to a large room at the end of the hallway. It overlooked the garden. The three of us sat down at the table and waited. Valerie, meanwhile, went to her small desk next to a row of filing cabinets and, having taken off her green overall, was silent while she punched various letters and put them on files which she took out and put back into the row of filing cabinets, the drawers of which screeched abominably as she opened and shut them. Mr Meadows kept raising his eyebrows and sighing. Jimmy, I noticed, kept glancing at Valerie, who was revealed to have a very nice figure once her green overall had been removed. Eventually, a tall elderly man with a pronounced stoop and dressed in a three-piece black suit entered. “I am Maurice Hedges,” he announced. “Glad you’re here. You’d better come through into my office and get all the stuff. It’s all ready for you.” Mr Hedges’s office was a room of beautiful proportions but, in keeping with what was general for solicitors at that period, was very untidy with files and papers strewn everywhere. He indicated various ledgers, chequebooks and paying-in books and another small loose-leaf ledger marked “Bills Book” on the floor in one corner of his room. “And this,” he said, kicking a metal holder containing cardboard slips, “is our attempt at computerised accounting. I’m sorry to land you with such a muddle and I do hope that you can sort it all out for us.” We duly carried all the stuff through to the general office and spread it out on the table. “You’d better concentrate on the Client Account side of things, Brian,” said Mr Meadows to me. “I’ll look through everything else. Jimmy can, as usual, make a start on the cash. Where are the petty cash vouchers?” “I’ve got them,” piped up Valerie, who was obviously listening. “But I’m afraid they got mixed up when we had to send some of them to the computer people and then I dropped the lot. They’re in plastic bags in the basement. I’ll go and get them.” “I’ll come and help you,” said Jimmy. “Oh dear, another one he’s taken a fancy to!” said Mr Meadows. It was a joke that on every audit Jimmy was asked to check the cash payments and there always seemed to be hundreds of petty cash vouchers for him to look through, which because of his Indian accent he pronounced “wowchers”. And it was also a joke that he pursued the nearest attractive female in every office we went to. The girls concerned seemed rather to like him. “It’s because he’s got the ‘wow factor’,” said Mr Meadows. Jimmy and Valerie soon returned with four plastic bags almost bursting with “wowchers”. “Oh my God, Walerie, the first thing we must do is to put them in date order. I shall not be able to work properly without that.”

Quadrant April 2017 107 Story

“Well, I’ll help you as and when I have time, but we need to spread them out somewhere. I know, there’s a big table in the basement. It will be ideal. But first I’ll make us all some coffee, shall I?” “Yes, black and strong for me,” said Mr Meadows. “I’ve just started looking through the books. What a mess!”

And so the first day passed. Mr Meadows kept muttering, “This is the biggest bugger’s muddle I’ve ever seen.” From time to time I looked out of the window into the sunlit garden. There were roses in the flower beds. The roses needed dead-heading and the flower beds needed weeding. The lawn in the middle of the garden was unkempt and needed mowing and rolling. In one corner there was a mulberry tree full of mulberries which I guessed would never be picked and I wondered if I really wanted to spend the rest of my life in offices while the sun shone outside and nature rotated the seasons while I checked figures and grew older. Maybe I ought to give up trying to be an accountant and become a gardener? I spent the second day wondering why there were so many balances of clients’ money on various Client Accounts. Some seemed to have remained there for years. This was something I must discuss with Mr Meadows when he returned. He’d left me to it and gone back to our office saying, “I don’t think we shall ever be able to sort this lot out.” Jimmy and Valerie were in the basement. Left on my own, I was just starting to make a list of the client balances to be discussed with Mr Meadows when an authoritative figure walked into the room from the hallway. He was tall and youngish and smartly dressed in a heavily checked grey suit. He was smoking a cigar and had a red carnation in his buttonhole. “Hello, young man. I’m Nigel Hedges,” he said. “I understand you are looking into any Client Account problems, is that correct?” “Trying to,” I said. He pulled up a chair beside mine and said very confidentially, “You’ve probably found small balances on accounts of various clients. The old boy who looked after our accounts rather let things slip, and instead of pointing out that we should send the money to the client or send a bill, he just ignored the whole thing. My responsibility really, as I am in charge of the accounts rather than my cousin. But not to worry, I’ll sort the whole thing out this evening with my secretary. It won’t do, I know, leaving things as they are with your firm investigating the books.” “Oh well,” I thought. “That solves one of my problems.” And went home and slept soundly. There would be no need to say anything to Mr Meadows.

The next morning, a very attractive and heavily made-up lady came into the general office. “Ah, you must be the young man I want to talk to. Could you come into Mr Nigel’s office please. I’m his secretary.” And I remember thinking, “And probably not only that!” “Mr Nigel and I worked until late yesterday evening and these are the copy bills that Mr Nigel asked me to give you,” she said, handing me a large pile of flimsy carbon copies which were used in those days of typewriters. “Mr Nigel said you would know what to do about making the necessary entries and transferring the monies to the Office Account.” “Well,” I said, “I’m glad that’s been dealt with. You must have an awful lot of bills to put in the post!”

108 Quadrant April 2017 Story

“Oh r no. M Nigel said he would deal with all that. He took all the bills away with him. He’s gone up to London this morning. He has a small office there.” What I believe are known as “warning bells” started ringing in my head. When I got back to the big table and sat down I flicked through some of the copy bills. The wording on them was laconic. “To legal services rendered”—for a balance of £150. For a balance of £10, “for disbursements made on your behalf”. What would the recipients make of these bills when they received them? And then it dawned on me that they would never get them. Mr Nigel was probably shredding them at that moment. I had of course to report my suspicions to Mr Meadows, who whistled, raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, I’m buggered!”

We were rapidly withdrawn from the job once Mr Meadows had reported to the senior partner. The official reason set out in a formal letter to Messrs Williams Williams & Hedges was that we had looked into the situation and the confusion in the accounting system was so great that it would take many, many, man hours to sort it out so as to be able to gain a certificate to sign off the accounts. Our firm simply did not have sufficient man power to be able to do that. Jimmy, who knew nothing about the so-called bills, was incensed when he was told we would not be going back to the Hedges office. “You can always ring her up and make a date,” I said to keep him quiet.

I never knew exactly what happened to the Hedges. I walked past the office a few weeks later and noticed that the brass plate had been taken down; a few months after that, the house was up for sale by auction. Although I was shocked at the time I have often thought since that Mr Nigel Hedges acted very sensibly. He had obviously discovered that there were all these Client Account balances when he glanced through the books after his cousin had told him that we had been called in to sort out the accounts. He had, understandably, trusted the accountant who had worked for them to keep the books correctly. So he was in a dilemma. If things were left as they were my firm would have to insist that the money was refunded to the clients with interest or, if work had been done, it would have to be billed. The file of every client involved would have to be examined—if indeed the files could be found. Many of the clients would probably have moved address or even died. So Nigel imagined the chaos and cost and even scandal it might cause if the newspapers got hold of the story. So he did what he did.

Hugh Canham lives in London. His story “The Successful Businessman” appeared in the September issue. His novel Lucasta and Hector, the first chapter of which appeared as a story in Quadrant, was published in 2015.

Torching the ivories

Where roadside poplars block afternoon sun light and shade print piano keys on asphalt. Cars perform highway glissandos.

Robyn Lance

Quadrant April 2017 109 Giacomo Sini

A Small Workshop in Isfahan

he compulsory hijab might be the most is protected by official contracts, one can assume visible aspect of the vast, systematic dis- that the most vulnerable employees are women. crimination that Iranian women face; but Approximately 50 per cent of Iranian women have tThey have worse problems. The impoverishment no choice but to accept informal work arrange- of women in Iran is now on an alarming course, ments that limit their access to social protection exacerbated by the Islamic republic’s persistence in such as pensions and unemployment benefits. policies of sexual segregation and its incompetent social support. While women make up the major- n this harsh environment a growing number of ity of the educated population, they suffer twice women are starting their own businesses. Among the rate of unemployment. Although it has been Ithem are women determined to question the offi- neglected or opposed by the state, there is a vast cial discrimination policy by founding their own demand for social inclusion among Iranian women democratic workplaces. This tendency is embod- which they show by their involvement in every pos- ied in the co-operatives that function based on sible aspect of life in Iran. horizontal association. In these small enterprises, Even more moderate and reformist govern- nobody is the boss. Apart from a portion of revenue ments, despite their promises, have failed to reach which goes into the co-operative itself, the rest is pre-revolutionary figures for women’s inclusion in evenly distributed. the workplace. In the earliest years after the revolu- There are numerous such co-operatives all over tion, women were fired en masse, mostly as a result Iran, in cities and villages, often germinated from of their objection to the compulsory hijab or their ties of friendship or kinship. Most of them hardly protests against repressive policies. make ends meet, but some have managed to offer Sexual segregation evolves from the Iranian possibilities to their members without which their civil code, which is based on sharia law. As an life would be hard to imagine. Some co-operatives example, it recognises the man as the family head are seeking to further their activities. and considers him responsible “for providing for Isfahan, one of the biggest cities in Iran, the wife”. Thus, payments such as child benefit are renowned for its history and rich art traditions, is a directed to men. State propaganda promotes the good place to meet such women. notion that a woman does not need to work outside Naqsh-e Jahan (“picture of the world”) Square the home to contribute to her family’s upkeep; her hosts the most important architectural buildings of foremost role is to nurture her family. However, the Islamic world. Locals old enough to remember such messages, however nationally widespread and the Pahlavis know it as Shah Square, and after the dominant, fade away in the face of the reality of revolution its name was changed to Imam Square, a society in which high inflation, aggravated by but it has always been surrounded by an old bazaar international sanctions, predominantly targets the that functions in the traditional way. The shops are working class. Under such conditions, a family’s filled with pieces of refined artwork. Every shop- survival is precarious if the woman does not take keeper, to emphasise the exquisite intricacy of the a paid job. handcrafts, stresses that they are made by women, Not surprisingly, an immense, unmeasured since only the meticulous feminine aesthetic could underground economy has grown up in Iran which generate such fine work. Only a few metres away according to some assessments accounts for between from the main bazaars, in the labyrinthine back 8 and 36 per cent of total GDP. Considering the streets, numerous workshops are scattered in silence fact that only 7 per cent of the country’s workforce and shadow, unpretentiously feeding a massive

110 Quadrant April 2017 A Small Workshop in Isfahan handcraft market. Their large glass windows invite The friendly atmosphere of the room supports passers-by to look inside, where women sit around her assertion. large tables, placing tiny pieces of turquoise on cop- per vases, hammering delicate patterns on silver- raditionally men have controlled the handcrafts polished pots and enamelling metal plates. market, owning the shops, the workshops and It’s in one of these workshops that Azin works, tThe product. The way they try to reduce the price by a thirty-year-old artist who has decided not to sell stifling creativity and lowering quality annoys Azin her skills to a shopkeeper or wholesaler. She and and her colleagues. “The traders and shop owners seven other women have decided to manage their are the ones who are in contact with the customers own work. This is how the experi- and they dictate the fashions and ence of their co-operative, Toluo’ tastes. They are business people (“sunrise”) came into being. after all, not artists,” says Azin as “It all started two years ago,” She points at the she points at the patterns her col- says Azin. “Three friends and I patterns her colleague league is adroitly drawing, showing decided to buy the raw material is adroitly drawing, the difference between their works and work for ourselves.” and the ordinary mina that can Promising initial results soon showing the difference be found in most of the souvenir led to a more organised experi- between their works shops. ence of self-management. All the Once their co-operative reaches members are between twenty-five and the ordinary a level of sustainability, they intend and thirty years old; each holds mina that can be to contribute their share in develop- a master’s or bachelor’s degree. ing the art form. “For us, producing Azin is a graduate at Shahrekord found in most of the Mina is not a mere job, it is how we University of Art and the winner of souvenir shops. express ourselves,” says Azin. a national art prize. The others are Running a co-operative and graduates of art or other schools keeping it clear of the exploitation who have always had a dedication to the fine arts. of the market, especially in such a prolonged eco- They produce one of the most famous handcrafts nomic downturn, can be challenging. One of the of Iran, mina, the feminised version of the word women says: minoo, heaven. It’s the art of painting and decorat- ing metal and tile with intricate details and pat- We’ren i a crucial time now. To cut our terns in shades of blue. expenses and save money, we shared our They are all sitting side by side in their little workplace with another business owner. The workshop, listening to peaceful music and paint- savings will be spent on renting a proper ing imaginary gardens with miniature flowers. “It’s place where we can open our own shop with a not only a job for us, it’s a place where we retrieve workshop annexed to it. It will be an important our belief in ourselves. We discuss our problems step forward. We hope we will even be able to together and have created a small solidarity group,” support some young talents. Azin says as she carefully handles the plate she has just finished enamelling. “We were tired of being Somef o these objectives have already been exploited by shop owners and wholesalers. Now we realised by an older co-operative that Azin work for ourselves, and any female mina artist who knows, in one of the entrances of old bazaar, a feels the same way is welcome to join us.” few metres away from Naqsh-e Jahan Square. The woman sitting next to her adds that in She often stops by and says hello. Niloufar-Abi their case a form of segregation is beneficial: “We (“Azure Lily”) women’s co-operative has not only wanted to create a women’s co-operative just like maintained a stable income, but has also developed the art itself, purely feminine.” its products with novel geometric patterns and Azin says that the relationship between the colour combinations. These innovations have been members is noticeably different from the usual applauded and are registered under the name of the workplace: co-operative. Every evening, Azin walks home along the river Mostfs o u have paid some sort of a social bank. She often takes a few minutes to listen to price to be independent, to take responsibility people singing popular songs under the arches of for our lives. We have more or less the same the Khaju Bridge. Such enthusiasm doesn’t exist in problems and the same aims. So we get along any karaoke bar or talent show around the world. quite easily. People gather here simply to listen to each other

Quadrant April 2017 111 A Small Workshop in Isfahan sing. There is a respectful order among people who my experience in our co-operative to found a have never met before. The singers quietly await carpet-weaving workshop. their turns, but sometimes the listeners encourage the singers with clapping or background singing. Her small room is full of painting colours, The only thing that interrupts this spontaneous brushes, rulers, paper rolls and so on. She takes her arrangement is the appearance of a police officer, paintings and artworks out of the boxes and drawers with two duty soldiers behind him. People scat- with modest reluctance. The meticulously painted ter; and a few minutes later, singing arises from a scenes from classic Persian literature show the hours different place. This happens every five or ten min- of patience and assiduity that have gone into their utes, every night. Isfahan is not just a centre for creation. Over each painting Amir, Ameneh and old-fashioned fine arts; Isfahanians cherish art in Azin get into an animated conversation about his- every possible way. tory and mythology. “These artefacts encompass a major part of our visual culture. What Azin is trying zin’s success with the Toluo’ co-operative has to do, wherever it leads, plays a part in constructing rekindled her foremost enthusiasm, carpet and enhancing this culture,” Amir emphasises as he Adesigning. After she returns home she spends the helps his sister put the paintings back in their boxes. rest of her day in her smallish room which serves Azin also unrolls the carpet patterns she is working as a second workshop. She lives with her mother on. The myriad of colours in highly detailed shapes and her sister. Amir, her older brother and her is breathtaking and not something you can scan in most ardent supporter, often comes to visit. “I think a hurry. they’re doing what the handcraft market really This design is going to be one of the first produc- lacks these days: authentic artworks coming from tions of a yet-unborn co-operative whose members aspiration, not just material need,” he says as he will be only rural women. They are the ones who pours cups of fragrant cinnamon tea. work under the hardest circumstances, yet none of To the house of this light-hearted family with an their activities is valued as a proper job. Before the inexhaustible sense of humour, Ameneh also comes introduction of Persian carpets to global markets, regularly. An old friend of Azin’s from university carpet-weavers used to work freely and produce and her partner in her new project, Ameneh stays largely for their own use. Using their imagination, over a few times a week so they can work on designs they would improvise stunning designs when their and make samples until midnight. Ameneh shares fingers could move through the colours freely with- Azin’s opinion about how an art business should out being chased by deadlines and having to satisfy look: market demands. Now, most carpet merchants tend to hire rural Exploitation might lead to a lucrative industry housewives. The product and the conditions of for a boss, but it ruins the art and the work are not as good as before, since the laborious, workers. So I find it hard to say which one monotonous job is based on no other motivation is more important, to be creative or to work but material survival. The payments are also unfair. under fair conditions. Handcrafts cannot Azin notes: “The dealers don’t mind if carpet-mak- flourish under cruel conditions. ing as an art is declining, since the cheap workforce makes the trade profitable anyway.” Azin and Ameneh have to research the mar- She intends to go to one of the villages around ket and inquire about the prices of wool, silk and Isfahan the next day and meet some potential other raw materials. Their savings, with some help members of her new co-operative. The fact that from Amir, will provide the initial budget. Setting tomorrow is a national holiday, the anniversary of it all up seems a laborious process. But Azin is the 1979 revolution, doesn’t affect her plans. “They determined: will be working. You barely find time to look at the calendar if you have to work constantly.” It oe used t b impossible for me to maintain a job. I couldn’t stand the mechanical Giacomo Sini has a degree in social sciences from relations out there and would always move Pisa University. He has visited some fifty countries from one employer to another. Now I have photographing social and political conditions, especially recovered my enthusiasm, and want to use the conflict regions in Syria, Lebanon and Kurdistan.

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Thee- Br ak Up of Australia THE Real agenda Behind Aboriginal recognition Keith Windschuttle

The Hidden Agenda of The Academic Assault Aboriginal Sovereignty on n the Co stitution

Australian voters are not being told the truth University-based lawyers are misleading the about the proposal for constitutional recognition of Australian people by claiming our Constitution was indigenous people. The goal of Aboriginal political drafted to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists today is to gain ‘sovereignty’ and create peoples from the Australian nation. This is a myth. a black state, equivalent to the existing states. At Federation in 1901, our Constitution made Its territory, comprising all land defined as native Australia the most democratic country in the world. title, will soon amount to more than 60 per cent The great majority of Aboriginal people have always of the whole Australian continent. had the same political rights as other Australians, Constitutional recognition, if passed, would be including the right to vote. Claims that the its ‘launching pad’. Recognition will not make our Constitution denied them full citizenship are nation complete; it will divide us permanently. political fabrications.

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