CAROLYN COLLINS Save Our Sons: Women, dissent and conscription during the Vietnam War; MEREDITH BURGMANN and NADIA WHEATLEY Radicals: Remembering the Sixties. Reviewed by Kathy Gollan
Save Our Sons and Radicals remind us that the anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s were many and varied, and so too were their campaigns.
These two books canvass the decade 1965-75, during which the Vietnam War dominated political life in Australia. We had soldiers fighting there for most of that time, with over 500 casualties. The war and conscription dominated political life and cast a shadow over the lives of young men who came to majority in that time. Many of them were radicalised as a consequence, and so were their mothers.
The front cover of Save our Sons: Women, dissent and conscription during the Vietnam War is a photo of SOS demonstrators walking down a main street with their banner, their sensible shoes and large black handbags exuding 1950s respectability. The few bystanders, their arms crossed, are clearly unimpressed.
And yet, as Carolyn Collins shows in this engaging and comprehensive history, Save Our Sons was a politically sophisticated movement that engaged in daring, innovative protests. A wide cross-section of women was attracted to SOS, its influence eddying out over many lives during its eight energetic years. Not only that, it achieved its aim when conscription was abolished in 1973.
From the time of Lysistrata, women have been ambivalent about the value of war as a solution to anything. As mothers, they have been expected to sacrifice their sons to whatever war the ruling class deemed necessary. But not without a fight; as the popular anti-war song of 1914 puts it:
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?
In World War I that song was performed by women lobbying for the No vote during the fiercely fought conscription referendums, until it was banned.
So the idea that women, as mothers, should oppose conscription and war was already well established when Australia first became involved in Vietnam in the early 1960s. Conscription was introduced in November 1964. The National Service Scheme was not unpopular with the Australian public, but the decision to send conscripts overseas to fight was. In the case of women, they were two to one against it.
Collins makes judicious use of newsletters, interviews with surviving members and the children of others, as well as ASIO records, to tell the story of Save Our Sons. In May 1965 nine women met in Sydney to set up an organisation to oppose conscription. It quickly spread to other cities. The women came from a range of backgrounds. Some were experienced peace activists, others became involved because their sons were of conscription age. Some women who had lost family in the previous war, only 20 years earlier, were determined not to go through it again. Some were immigrants who had come to Australia because they saw it as a country of peace. Others had strong working-class and union roots. There were Quaker pacifists, and those who only opposed conscription, but not the war. Some were communists, others were Liberal voters.
Not all were the apolitical middle-class mothers popularly associated with SOS. Respectability was a carefully curated image. The group’s aim was limited to that of preventing conscripts being sent to fight overseas. None of the long-term peace activists who were part of the founding group took a public role initially, in order to avoid the taint of communism. It worked, and many conservative women joined and had their first experience of direct action through SOS.
Irene Miller recalled going out at night with ‘two or three middle-class mums’ to plaster anti-war posters around Melbourne. One would drive and keep watch, one would ‘paste up’ in the back of a Holden station wagon and the other would use a long-handled broom to ‘plonk’ the poster on the wall. Sometimes they went with student protesters. Miller recalled these outings as extremely frightening but exhilarating.
The signature action of SOS was the silent vigil, with its emphasis on orderly, quiet and dignified behaviour. Brisbane SOS held 30 silent vigils in six months, the participants wearing their slogans on their clothes because holding placards was illegal in Queensland. At every intake of conscripts they were there at the army barracks, often dressed in black, silently handing out leaflets that explained alternatives to conscription.
Collins has made good use of ASIO archives to show that even that organisation, obsessed as it was with tracking communist influence, had difficulty pigeonholing the women of SOS:
ASIO [reported] that ‘although a number of persons with widely different political views are associated with the movement, the driving force is the communist front organisation, the Union of Australian Women’. Reports in later years actually came to the opposite conclusion, noting the involvement of a number of CPA and UAW women but determining that there was no proof that SOS itself was a front.
And over time SOS became more radical. After the 1966 federal election in which the Coalition was returned with a record majority, SOS changed its tactics. Petitions, vigils, letter writing and lobbying were joined by more courageous and inventive forms of protest. A group of women hijacked the spotlight at the 1967 Melbourne Cup with miniskirts and capes with messages including ‘Gamble On Horses Not With Lives’. Even more dramatic was the appearance at a Billy Graham evangelical meeting at the Myer Music Bowl. Graham was in the middle of his sermon when women filed silently on to the stage in front of the huge crowd and whipped out anti-war banners from under their coats. In New South Wales, an anti-conscription caravan toured country towns, facing disruption and intimidation from the RSL and army men.
In 1970 SOS members were closely involved in organising the first and second Moratoriums against the war, with SOS convenor Jean McLean being the deputy chair of the Victorian Moratorium committee. They did not appreciate the Minister for National Service, Billy Snedden, describing them as ‘political bikies pack-raping democracy’. They were also, having worked only with women up till then, dismayed by the male organisers’ lack of appreciation.
By 1971 they were still no closer to their goal. The newsletters became more strident, to the consternation of the more conservative members. There were discussions about how to fill in false national service registration forms, and the pros and cons of non-violent civil disobedience. In violation of the Crimes Act, SOS women encouraged young men not to register. Just before Easter of that year, to everyone’s astonishment, five SOS women were arrested and jailed for 14 days for ‘wilful trespass’ following a sit-in outside the Department of Labour and National Service.
The media, delighted to have a story over the normally quiet Easter period, initially emphasised the fact that the women were all members of the ALP. Later reports downplayed this angle, highlighting instead that the women had 25 children between them who would be without their mothers at Easter.
Continual protests outside the jail brought the anti-conscription campaign new attention. The jailing of the Fairlea Five, as they were known, is considered by some to have been pivotal in galvanising opposition to the war.
The election of the Whitlam government signalled an end to conscription, which was officially abolished in 1973. SOS branches around the country rolled up their banners.
The final chapter of Save Our Sons considers the influence of the organisation across many fronts. It gave financial and practical support to draft dodgers, helping establish a series of safe houses to hide them from the authorities. It brought middle-class women out of their houses and onto the streets, changing their lives for ever. Margaret Reynolds (who also has a chapter in Radicals) saw herself as just an academic’s wife when she joined the Townsville branch of SOS. She learned valuable organising skills and went on to become a senator for Queensland in federal parliament.
The women of SOS were criticised and patronised, called selfish and overly protective, as well as communist. Younger women, caught up with the emergence of second wave feminism, found their maternal rhetoric old-fashioned. But they achieved their aim, and although there were personal and political disagreements and resignations as a result, they largely avoided the bitter infighting of other opposition groups. Most women involved with Save Our Sons were driven simply by the desire to right a fundamental wrong – for the sake of their sons, or other mothers’ sons, or because, in the words of one of their best-known slogans – ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things’. This important history does full justice to a small but mighty organisation and its dedicated members.
The radicalising effect of the Vietnam War and conscription is also one of the themes of Radicals: Remembering the Sixties by Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley, a compilation of portraits of 20 Australian men and women who were young activists between 1965-75. Beautifully written by two well-known Australians, enthusiastic activists themselves, Radicals is an insightful and engaging book about a decade that saw a ferment of activism around Aboriginal rights, anti-apartheid, censorship, multiculturalism, feminism and gay rights.
As well as being activists, the participants in the book share another trait: they all had an awakening, a revelation that involved rejecting the views of their families or social group. In an era ever more burdened by fake news and irrational beliefs, the question of what makes people change their minds is of particular interest.
In the middle of 23 years of conservative government presided over by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, growing up in the 1950s was intellectually and socially stifling. As the authors write:
To our parents, however, this social and political stasis seemed wonderfully safe. They had suffered the double-whammy of coming of age through the Great Depression and the Second World War. Unlike their generation, we had shoes on our feet, food on our plates, fillings in our teeth, peace in our time (kind of), and most of all – we had education! What did we have to grumble about?
But grumble they did. Whether it’s drinking Moet with Geoffrey Robertson at the Opera House bar, or coffee with Margret RoadKnight in her ‘home for impoverished thespians’, our interlocutors spar and banter with each participant to draw out what it was that set them along their path of radical protest. Along the way a multifaceted picture emerges of this extraordinary decade, with some surprising insights.
The Vietnam War was the crucible in which much activism was forged, especially for the young men who were faced with the possibility of fighting there. But for many of the participants, other events were more important. For Helen Voysey, who became known as the schoolgirl radical, it was the Cuban Missile Crisis that terrified her as a ten year old. For David Marr it was the Dismissal. Others experienced their awakening through the arts – radical playwrights for John Derum, anti-nuclear folk songs for Margret RoadKnight. For Robbie Swan, founder of the Sex Party, it was LSD and hash.
Many refer to influential teachers who opened their eyes to other ways of thinking. Some were spurred on by injustices in their teenage years, rebelling against bans on long hair, sideburns or short skirts. Geoffrey Robertson was enraged at having to read an expurgated edition of Shakespeare at his state school, when private school students were given the complete play.
For Gary Foley it was the injustice of a police bashing for talking to a white girl, closely followed by the gift of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. As Burgmann points out, this combination of a traumatic personal experience closely followed by an explanation of its theoretical underpinnings is a classic path to a radical awakening. Foley became one of the leaders of the Aboriginal rights movement and a founder of the Aboriginal Legal Service.
Most of these young radicals had families who, whatever their misgivings, stood by their children when their activism landed them in trouble. But for Nadia Wheatley, estranged from her relatives, the protest movement was to become her family, as she realised at her first demonstration when she was tossed down the steps of a building that was being occupied and into the arms of fellow activists.
Struggling to my feet, I felt as if an enormous burden had been lifted from me … It was an unaccustomed feeling, which I can only describe as happiness … After being accustomed for so long to being alone, I loved the physical contact of demonstrations, the sense of being held in an embrace that went beyond the sexual. Feeling other people in solidarity with me, and myself in solidarity with other people: this made me feel safe.
Two years later, just turned 20, she became infamous for (accidentally) throwing a tomato at the one-legged Governor of New South Wales, Sir Roden Cutler, and narrowly avoided being ‘sent down’ from university.
The chapters bring to light many examples of how this decade was different. Unions got involved in community campaigns outside wages and conditions. Who knew that one little union, the Furnishing Trades Union, had played such a role in saving iconic Fraser Island from sand mining in 1975?
An American company, Dillingham’s, which was involved in the destruction of Fraser Island, was constructing a building in Bourke Street in the city. Work was nearing completion, and the building’s windows required glazing. Because glazing was furnishing trades work, the union put a ban on it, and Dillingham’s could not finish the project. This sort of targeted industrial action was very effective at the time.
This story is in the chapter about Peter Batchelor, who was studying economics, but found his vacation job in a mattress factory to be more relevant to real life than the ideological disputes between Marxists and Maoists at the university. So he dropped out to continue his factory work, eventually becoming an organiser with the Furnishing Trades Union and much later Victorian Minister for Transport.
Religious observance was much more common then and most households went to church. For Catholic families it was all-encompassing. As Burgmann observes, interviewees of Catholic backgrounds invariably referred to it, whereas for those from Protestant families it hardly rated a mention. Resolving their questions of faith was, for the Catholics, often a precursor to becoming politically active.
The most interesting chapters inevitably are those that chart the longest journey from conservative to radical. Peter Manning, from a Liberal-voting Catholic family, was still a believer when he arrived at university. He became president of the Catholic DLP club and wrote articles arguing for a greater military presence in Vietnam. At the same time, those being more convivial times, he was having conversations with his enemies on campus, the communist and anarchist students, and beginning to doubt the DLP doctrine of better dead than red. But it was Father Ted Kennedy, a radical priest who gently exposed him to the philosophies of liberation theology, who really opened his mind. Then he turned 20 and the possibility of conscription, and fighting in a war he no longer believed in, landed in his life. As with Gary Foley, it was a searing personal experience allied with a trusted elder putting it in a philosophical context that cemented Manning’s radicalisation.
Opposing the system is a difficult, thankless, and – in a self-satisfied country such as ours – possibly fruitless task. That decade of activism has been followed by a 40-year conservative drift in economic and political life. But the activists who grace the pages of Radicals remain optimistic. Even Albert Langer, once a firebrand Maoist from Monash University and now living under an assumed name, assures Nadia Wheatley that a new radical wave is just around the corner.
Contrary to popular perception, these radicals were not tortured depressives, alienated from themselves and their families. And yes, there was plenty of sex and drugs and arrests, but not enough to hold them back, with Queen’s birthday honours and professorships scattered like confetti through the group, and four going on to achieve high political office. In the sunset phase of their lives, they still maintain the rage while radiating a sense of achievement and of lives well lived. And enjoyed. It’s to be hoped that today’s young climate activists, struggling with even greater challenges than their forebears, don’t get overwhelmed by the task, and that one day they too can say, in the words of Radicals’ concluding sentence, ‘We like to think we have had a go … anyway, we had fun along the way.’
Carolyn Collins Save Our Sons: Women, dissent and conscription during the Vietnam War Monash University Publishing 2021 PB 160pp $34.95
Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley Radicals: Remembering the Sixties NewSouth 2021 PB 432pp $39.99
Kathy Gollan is a former executive producer and editor for ABC Radio National.
You can buy Save Our Sons from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
You can buy Radicals: Remembering the Sixties from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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