University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities January 2016 A shelf of Reds Rowan Cahill University of Wollongong, [email protected] Terence H. Irving University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers Recommended Citation Cahill, Rowan and Irving, Terence H., "A shelf of Reds" (2016). Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers. 2634. https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/2634 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] A shelf of Reds Abstract A selection of some of the books by Australian radical historians that have meant a lot to us as scholars and activists writing and exploring radical history for ten years together, and for much longer separately. The books selected have either never made it into the academic history canon or, if they did, are now neglected. Keywords reds, shelf Publication Details R. Cahill & T. H. Irving 2016 A shelf of Reds Radical Sydney/Radical History http://radicalsydney.blogspot.com.au/p/a-shelf-of-reda.html This creative work is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/2634 RADICAL SYDNEY / RADICAL HISTORY: A SHELF OF REDS by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving http://radicalsydney.blogspot.com.au/p/a-shelf-of-reda.html More Next Blog» Create Blog Sign In RADICAL SYDNEY / RADICAL HISTORY Radical Sydney began in June 2010 as a site devoted to the book by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill titled 'Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes', published by UNSW Press (2010). While this function continues, the blog has expanded as a platform for radical writing about history. The blog is regularly archived in the Pandora Web Archive of the National Library of Australia. Search This Blog Translate A SHELF OF REDS by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving Select Language Powered by Translate A selection of some of the books by Australian radical historians that have meant a lot to us as scholars and activists writing and exploring radical history for ten years together, and for much longer separately. The books selected have either never made it into the academic HOME history canon or, if they did, are now neglected. A SHELF OF REDS by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving 'The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed' by Rowan Cahill "Linebaugh: metaphors, rebellion, and socialist dreaming" by Rowan Cahill A SHELF OF REDS 'Radical History: Thinking, Writing and Engagement' by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill 'Radical Academia: Beyond the Audit Culture Treadmill' by Rowan Cahill and Terry by Irving Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving RADICAL RUMINATIONS RADICAL SYDNEY DIARY "Rediscovering Radical History": Essay by Terry Irving These are some of the books by Australian radical historians that have meant a lot to us as scholars and activists writing and exploring radical history for ten years together, "Never Neutral": Essay by Rowan Cahill and for much longer separately. We have selected books that either never made it into the academic history canon or, if they did, are now neglected. In the neo-liberal "Disability and History": Commentary by Joan Hume 'Notes on Radicalism' by Rowan Cahill university the production model of research and post-modern theoreticism have deadened the feeling that drove the authors in our selection - the sense of agency and "Whose side are you on? The mundane decline of labour history": by Humphrey engagement, of being able to make socially useful knowledge in a creative and passionate way. It is hard for scholars on a treadmill, their heads full of buzzwords, to McQueen recognise the value of the kind of books we have chosen; hence the neglect. 'Anthropologists, Spooks, and the Boys Who Went To War' by Rowan Cahill "Martial Matters" by Rowan Cahill SHAPING HISTORIES by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill The books in our selection share some or all of six features that have drawn us to radical history. First, a tradition: over 80 years of radical historical writing, from the 1930s '"Labour History" and its Political Role - A New Landscape' : by Terry Irving to the present. Second, a method: a history of the common people, and the historical dynamic of struggle in movement. Third, a connection with social movements: of 'Wilfred Burchett's Retreat From Moscow' by Rupert Lockwood ‘The triumph of green hearts over sere’: reflections on student radicalism at Sydney writing within movements, of publishing by movements, of addressing movements. Fourth, a breaking of new ground, as in pioneering studies of events, themes and University in the 1910s and the 1960s movements disdained by the ruling historical culture and the leading academic history professionals. Fifth, a battle waged by the authors against indifference on the part of "Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997): Journalist, Communist, Intellectual" by Rowan Cahill commercial publishers, political parties and leading historians. Sixth, and most importantly, an approach to writing that inspires us to think and act: the authors are A RED METAMORPHOSIS by Terry Irving "SOUTHERN TREE OF LIBERTY" REVISITED: TERRY IRVING partisan and passionate, moved by feelings as well as ideas. This is our personal selection, deliberately focused on earlier writings so as to establish the existence of a tradition. Others will no doubt have different favourites. That said, Blog Archive it should be understood there are many present day intellectuals in Australia carrying on the radical history tradition, and we follow their work closely. We have in mind ▼ 2012 (5) people like: Mick Armstrong, Sandra Bloodworth, Rob Bollard, Bob Boughton, Tom Bramble, Verity Burgmann, Carole Ferrier, Di Fieldes, Gary Foley, Heather Goodall, Sarah ▼ June (5) Gregson, Phil GrifLiths, Di Kelly, Julie Kimber, Rick Kuhn, Humphrey McQueen, Tom O’Lincoln, John Rainford, Judith Smart, Jeff Sparrow, Nathan Wise. WHAT'S NEW. What is Radical Sydney about? Sydney is represent... We offer this selection to those intellectuals continuing the tradition of radical history in this country. Meet the authors of Radical Sydney... The authors ... What readers said about Radical Sydney... "By ext... Reviews of Radical Sydney: There have been twenty-... ********** Keith Amos, The New Guard Movement 1931-1935 , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976 . This small book (142 pages) was ground breaking, published at a time when the NSW New Guard tended to be regarded as an eccentric, aberrant and isolated rightist response to the Labor government of NSW Premier J. T. Lang in the 1930s. In the hands of Amos however, the New Guard emerged as a highly organised, well Linanced, and serious fascist organisation, one of a number of right wing secret ‘armies’ that developed between the 1 of 7 18/10/2016 4:16 PM RADICAL SYDNEY / RADICAL HISTORY: A SHELF OF REDS by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving http://radicalsydney.blogspot.com.au/p/a-shelf-of-reda.html wars in Australia. The book was well researched drawing on a wide range of materials including ofLicial sources, private papers, and interviews. Amos was a public school teacher at the time of his book’s publication, and he opened the way for subsequent sustained studies of rightist secret ‘armies’ in Australia between the wars, notably Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuckshop (McPhee Gribble, Fitzroy, 1988), and Andrew Moore, The Secret Army and the Premier (New South Wales University Press, Kensington, 1989). Collectively, these historians established the existence of a plethora of secret rightist paramilitary political formations between the wars, anti-democratic and fascist in character, with connections to serving military personnel, and with membership, organisational and Linancial links to the highest echelons of the Australian ruling class, and with a collective, often overlapping male membership of some 130,000 members at a time when the male population of Australia stood at two million. Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (editors), A Most Valuable Acquisition: A People’s History of Australia since 1788 , McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988; Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (editors), Constructing a Culture: A People’s History of Australia since 1788 , McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988; Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (editors), Making a Life: A People’s History of Australia since 1788 , McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988; Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (editors), Staining the Wattle: A People’s History of Australia since 1788 , McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1988. Edited by academic Verity Burgmann and archivist/literary editor Jenny Lee, this illustrated four-volume People’s History was conceived and published as a critical challenge to the multi-million dollar carnival of celebratory histories and dress-up nationalist re-enactments which marked the 1988 Centenary celebration of the European invasion of Australia. Beginning in 1983 with themed volumes in mind, the editors assembled a large team of specialist contributors, academic and non-academic. The brief was to produce essays on society and culture, with attention to issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality, and to be authoritative, concise, accessible. It was a long, often painful, collaborative creative process. The editors explained their series aimed at recapturing and bringing into history the voices and experiences of those neglected in conventional histories: “Aboriginal people, women, members of ethnic or racial minorities and the working class in general”. The intent was to present readers with ideas and new ways “of exploring the past, comprehending the present, and making the future”. Contributor Andrew Milner, in an essay on the history of Australian radical intellectuals inside and outside the academy, argued that academic intellectuals who conLine themselves to addressing social justice issues amongst niche audiences of fellow academics in the belief they were tending “the tree of liberty”, were delusional and in reality did not change anything; radical intellectual activity had to be part of social movements and the masses.