Victoria Police Memorialisation: Commemoration and Remembrance by Christopher Richard Linke, MA Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University June, 2018 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Associate Professor Darren Palmer and my associate supervisors Dr Ian Warren and Dr Richard Evans for their patient and supportive ethos. Darren Palmer’s expertise and guidance on the literature and theories concerning policing and police memorialisation have been invaluable to the completion of this thesis. He is one of the few scholars internationally who has this expertise on police memorialisation and its’ ties to police legitimacy. I have benefitted significantly from his input and advice and his detailed comments on chapter drafts and the full thesis in ways that enriched the final thesis. Cooperation from Victoria Police was essential for this research and I am very grateful to have been granted special access to the archives, office space, Police History Unit and Museum. Special thanks to members of Victoria Police: David Ballek (Research Coordinating Committee), Grant Taylor, (Honours & Awards) and Sergeant Terry Claven, (Victoria Police Museum). I was also very fortunate to have been granted interviews with Jim Pilmer, Stuart King, Bill Severino, Kevin Scott, Mick Miller (ex-members of the Victoria Police Memorial Committee); Anton Hasell (Memorial co-Designer); Rohan Story (ex-National Trust); Helen Page and Elizabeth Peck (Australian Garden History Society) – a very big thanks to you all. Additional help from Felicity Watson (National Trust); Katherine Smart (Melbourne City Council); and Jessie Hennessy (Springvale Botanical Cemetery) was greatly appreciated. Many thanks also to my partner Virginia, for staying by my side through another thesis. ii Abstract There are multi-faceted reasons for the construction of memorials to police officers killed while on duty. Memorials to the dead provide a place for people to grieve the loss of individuals, as well as fulfilling the State’s obligations to remember those who have given their lives in service to the nation. This thesis research examines how police memorials, which can be seen as symbolic representations of policing, have proliferated in a time when it has been argued that police legitimacy is declining in Western democracies. Police legitimacy is influenced by tensions between the need for a publicly funded police force and public perceptions of discrepancies in how policing is conducted at the organisational level and by individual police personnel. Moreover, public police compete with private security as providers of law and order. Police memorials have begun to appear in Australia as one possible affirmation of legitimacy within this context of competing modes and approaches to undertaking contemporary law enforcement. The research outlines the nature of the relationship between public policing, legitimacy and memorialisation, with a focus on Victoria Police memorials and remembrance. iii Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................... i Abstract ..................................................................................................................ii Figures ................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE: Literature Review ................................................................ 16 Introduction........................................................................................................ 16 Memory Studies and War Remembrance Literature ...................................... 17 Memory Theory ................................................................................................... 19 Scale: From Personal to Global Memory .......................................................... 19 Personal Memory ............................................................................................... 20 Collective Memory ............................................................................................ 21 Whose Memories are Memorialised? ................................................................ 23 Forms of Memorialisation ................................................................................. 24 The Political, Social and Cultural Contexts Shaping Memorialisation .......... 25 Manning (1977, 1997, 1992) ............................................................................... 28 Mulcahy (2000; 2006): Royal Ulster Constabulary Remembrance ................ 34 Museums and Historical Commemoration ....................................................... 39 Police History and Memory ................................................................................ 41 Police Legitimacy ................................................................................................. 44 Defining Police Legitimacy ............................................................................... 45 Why is Legitimacy important for Police? .......................................................... 47 Challenges to Police Legitimacy ....................................................................... 48 Decline of the Service and Crime Prevention Roles ......................................... 49 Private Security .................................................................................................. 55 Managerialism ................................................................................................... 59 Procedural Justice .............................................................................................. 61 Symbolic Representations ................................................................................... 63 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 65 CHAPTER TWO: An Historical Overview of Australian Police Commemoration and Memorialisation ............................................................. 67 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 67 iv National Police Remembrance Day and Blue Ribbon Day .............................. 68 The Meaning of Annual Police Remembrance ................................................. 77 Press Coverage National Police Remembrance Day ........................................ 80 Military Reflections ............................................................................................. 83 Police and Military ‘Casualties’ ........................................................................ 85 Dangers of Police Work ...................................................................................... 87 High Diction ......................................................................................................... 91 The Australian National Police Memorial ........................................................ 93 Concluding Comments ........................................................................................ 98 CHAPTER THREE: Victoria Police Memorialisation .................................. 101 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 101 Victoria’s First Police Memorial 1880 ............................................................. 106 The Victoria Police Museum 1902 ................................................................... 116 Guarding Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance ........................................... 120 Early Police Memory Work: Pioneer Police Memorial 1972 ........................ 124 ‘I’m sorry Sir, there’s no file’: Re-Constituting Victoria Police Remembrance. ................................................................................................... 126 The Victoria Police Chapel of Remembrance 1988 ........................................ 128 Reactivating and Rededicating the Mansfield Police Memorial 1993-94 ..... 130 The Necropolis Police Memorial 1999 ............................................................. 132 Stringybark Creek Memorial 2001 .................................................................. 135 Reasserting the ‘Right’ Remembrance ............................................................ 137 Bones and Graves 2011 ..................................................................................... 141 Forgotten Hero ................................................................................................. 144 Re-dedication of the Mansfield Police Graves 2013 ....................................... 148 Concluding Remarks ......................................................................................... 150 CHAPTER FOUR: The Victoria Police Memorial…………………........…152 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 152 Conception of the Memorial ............................................................................. 155 Deciding What and Who the Memorial will Commemorate ......................... 162 Finding the Site of Memory: the Search for the Memorial’s Location ........ 168 Design Development .......................................................................................... 173 Funding the