tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/labour-history-15565/articlesLabour history – The Conversation2023-11-07T18:02:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2161382023-11-07T18:02:45Z2023-11-07T18:02:45ZSeeing histories of forced First Nations labour: the ‘Nii Ndahlohke / I Work’ art exhibition<p>How do we learn and teach about First Nations labour in ways that connect to local economies and Canadian history education? </p>
<p>In a new exhibition, <a href="https://artwindsoressex.ca/exhibitions/nii-ndahlohke-i-work/"><em>Nii Ndahlohke / I Work</em></a>, at Art Windsor Essex, labour is the central theme for understanding the history and legacies of <a href="https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/entities/65">Mount Elgin Industrial School</a>, an Indian Residential School in southwestern Ontario. </p>
<p>The exhibition brings together artists from the communities whose children attended this institution, and it runs until June 24, 2024. It emerged from the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group, a community-based language and history learning project.</p>
<p>The group has worked together for many years to study and teach Munsee language and history, and supports research and teaching about Munsee people, communities, languages and territories.</p>
<h2>Manual labour demands</h2>
<p>Mount Elgin was located at Chippewas of the Thames First Nation in southwestern Ontario. Like <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/a-national-crime">other Industrial Schools of its era</a>, Mount Elgin was an underfunded religious federal boarding school and a model farm that was expected to generate income to pay for itself. </p>
<p>Students at the school were expected to work at the institute as much as they were expected to attend class. </p>
<p>Their labour was invisible within the school budget. However, the Indian department was aware that Mount Elgin students were not given progressive training in skilled trades and that manual labour demands on students kept them out of the classroom and therefore compromised their education.</p>
<h2>Farm labour, domestic service</h2>
<p>Manual labour prepared students for limited work opportunities: farm labour for boys and men, and domestic service for girls and women. </p>
<p>These jobs supported the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315772288-14/would-like-girls-home-mary-jane-logan-mccallum">surrounding rural and urban settler economies</a> at a time when First Nations were pressured to lease and even surrender reserve land to area farmers to round out meagre incomes. </p>
<p>Significantly, forced labour was a key issue in student resistance at Mount Elgin including running away, setting fires and attempting to ruin farm equipment. It was also a key issue in parents’ letters of complaints to the department and band attempts to intervene in federal schooling. </p>
<p>Hard labour also impacted the children’s health, and poor diet and stress compounded to accelerate the spread and deadliness of diseases like tuberculosis. </p>
<h2>Labour as central theme</h2>
<p><a href="https://artwindsoressex.ca/exhibitions/nii-ndahlohke-i-work/"><em>Nii Ndahloke / I Work</em></a>, addresses histories of student labour at Mount Elgin but also its larger impact on reserve and settler economies of southwestern Ontario in the era. </p>
<p>The show also addresses histories of gendered experiences of Indian education, racism, student illness, intergenerational collaboration and the preservation of different forms of labour and the stories and metaphors that accompany them. </p>
<p>The majority of artists are from First Nations communities in southern Ontario.
Artists featured in the exhibit are: Kaia’tanoron Dumoulin Bush, Jessica Rachel Cook, Nancy Deleary, Gig Fisher, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Judy McCallum, Donna Noah, Mo Thunder and Meg Tucker. </p>
<p>Each of the artists were given three sources in common to inspire their work: a silent film about Mount Elgin entitled <em>The Church in Action in an Indian Residential School</em> (1943) produced by the United Church of Canada to promote its Home Missions work; a basic timeline of the school; and a physical and audio copy of the 2022 book <a href="https://www.niindahlohke.ca/"><em>Nii Ndahlohke: Boys’ and Girls’ Work at Mount Elgin Industrial School, 1890-1915</em></a>. This book is the result of a project developed by the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. </p>
<h2>Artists’ own histories</h2>
<p>The artists’ resulting works range widely and meaningfully address the artist’s own histories. </p>
<p>The exhibit presents the film in a separate room, with hand-sketched images of student uniforms and replica student graffiti from the walls of the last remaining Mount Elgin building, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qpZj2UsDNE">the barn</a>.</p>
<p>As part of the exhibition design, a red line along the wall follows visitors around the exhibit. This line represents a story told to Julie, one of the authors of this story, by our relative Norma Richter, about sewing the red piping featured on the yoke of girls’ uniforms at the school she attended in the 1930s and 40s – one of the only half-interesting things she remembered doing in her years at the school.</p>
<p>It also commemorates Norma’s refusal of work, and the two times she ran away from the school. The representation of the red line grounds the exhibit in family and community history. </p>
<h2>Community-based approach</h2>
<p>The exhibition reflects a different approach to both history and curation. </p>
<p>As well as being a source for this exhibit, <em>Nii Ndahlohke / I Work</em> was created for an audience of local students and for use in the Ontario history curriculum, <a href="https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/social-studies-history-geography-2018.pdf">which, in Grade 8, covers the period 1890 to 1914</a>. </p>
<p>The book is split into two sections, one on boys’ work and one on girls’ work. It also features Munsee language and Munsee artwork highlighting certain sections or themes. </p>
<p>The exhibit amplifies and starkly interprets the history of student labour at Mount Elgin. </p>
<p>We hope people will leave with is a better understanding of the residential school system in Canada as a shared history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Jane Logan McCallum receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Social Science Research Council of Canada, Heritage Canada, Ontario Arts Council. She is affiliated with the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Rae Tucker receives funding from the Social Science Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council. She is affiliated with Art Windsor Essex and the Munsee Delaware History and Language group</span></em></p>Labour is the central theme for understanding history and legacies of Mount Elgin Industrial School, a former Indian Residential School, in a new exhibition at Art Windsor Essex.Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Professor of History, University of WinnipegJulie Rae Tucker, Head of Programs and Projects at Art Windsor Essex and Munsee Delaware History and Language group memberLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1289402019-12-16T13:05:52Z2019-12-16T13:05:52ZWhy did Labour lose in the north of England?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307132/original/file-20191216-124027-56yj0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C54%2C5200%2C3506&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grimsby was one of Labour's big losses on the night. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Conservative strategy of targeting Leave-leaning Labour seats in the North of England has paid off. In the north-east, north-west and Yorkshire and Humber <a href="https://labourlist.org/2019/12/the-60-seats-labour-lost-in-the-2019-general-election/">26 seats</a> switched from Labour to Conservative.</p>
<p>Support for Brexit and the triumph of the Conservative’s dogged focus on their pledge to “get Brexit done” was evidently a key factor in their success in these types of seats in the north, particularly when contrasted with Labour’s commitment to a second referendum and Jeremy Corbyn’s difficultly in outlining his own position on Brexit. The Conservatives won swathes of long-held Labour seats where support for Leave was high in the 2016 EU referendum – places like <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000667">Don Valley</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000569">Bishop Auckland</a>, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000716">Great Grimsby</a>. They also ran Labour close in some of their safest seats like <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000542">Barnsley East</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000740">Hemsworth</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000982">Sunderland Central</a>. Yet the issue of Brexit alone does not account for the party’s dramatic losses.</p>
<h2>Towns and cities</h2>
<p>Labour’s woes in its traditional heartlands are the result of the broader ongoing <a href="https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/411956/1/Jennings_Stoker_PQ_FINAL.pdf">cosmopolitan-communitarian</a> realignment of party support. This has been bubbling under the surface in England for over a decade. We have seen that younger, more formally educated, liberal minded voters are significantly more likely to vote Labour (and Remain) while older, less formally educated, socially conservative voters are increasingly minded to vote Conservative (and Leave).</p>
<p>Given the demographic spread in England, cities, university seats and more affluent suburbs are arguably Labour’s most fertile areas now. Meanwhile post-industrial towns and former mining villages – many of which are in the north – have become trickier terrain for the party. The economically working class – largely the younger “precariat” – might be spread across the country, but the traditional working class (in terms of both economics and culture) remains centred in these areas of industrial heritage.</p>
<p>This political realignment has been having an impact on Labour’s vote share in its traditional heartlands for several decades. That was true even during the electoral success of the Tony Blair years. The party lost <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2012/10/22/labours-lost-votes">5 million votes</a> between 1997 and 2010. Undoubtedly though, this election was the first time these changes have been significantly reflected in the electoral map. Labour held seats liked <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000619">Canterbury</a> and gained <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000887">Putney</a> but lost in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000785">Leigh</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50779155">Rother Valley</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000915">Sedgefield</a> – Blair’s former constituency in the north-east of England. Brexit divides exacerbated this realignment, but a disconnect in values between Labour and its traditional supporters in working-class communities was central to the party’s failure in the north.</p>
<h2>Disconnect with Labour</h2>
<p>This disconnect in values was apparent in a number of ways. First, there was Corbyn’s <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f799e14e-0ae8-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67">personal unpopularity</a>. Polls suggest that he was the most <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/jeremy-corbyn/news/106687/jeremy-corbyn-most-unpopular">unpopular opposition party leader</a> in modern times and this undoubtedly hurt Labour. While Boris Johnson’s own popularity ratings were poor as well, Corbyn failed spectacularly in connecting with voters.</p>
<p>Most significant though is the sense that the Labour Party more broadly no longer represents the values of voters in its heartland seats. This is particularly so when it comes to cultural values. On issues such as immigration and law and order Labour appeared to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/06/difficult-truth-labour-social-conservatives">out of step</a> with much of its traditional voter base whose socially conservative views lead them to support tighter controls on immigration and harsher punishment for offenders.</p>
<p>In terms of economic values, evidence suggests that some of Labour’s economic policies such as nationalisation of key infrastructure and higher tax for the biggest earners were <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/12/labour-economic-policies-are-popular-so-why-arent-">popular</a>. However, when viewed as a whole package, Labour’s economic proposals may have worried voters more adverse to change. Additionally, there is a school of thought that argues the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12639">“post-workerist”</a> ideas flirted with by the party, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/economics-of-a-four-day-working-week-research-shows-it-can-save-businesses-money-126701">a four day week</a>, do not chime with many working-class voters’ perceptions of labourism. It may be that Labour’s vision was too bold for many.</p>
<h2>The new normal?</h2>
<p>When it comes to the impact of all of this on future party politics in the north, if Labour is to stand a chance of regaining many of these seats it must somehow develop an identity and policy platform that can appeal to voters both in traditional heartlands seats in the north and elsewhere as well as to inner city voters and to those in its newer centres of power in more affluent suburbs. This will not be any <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lisa-nandy/lisa-nandy-ippr-speech_b_15216124.html">easy task</a>, especially when it comes to presenting cultural values that appeal to the bulk of voters in all of these different constituencies.</p>
<p>That said, if they wish to retain their gains in the north, the Conservatives must also take steps. Johnson must ensure that he delivers on his promises not just on Brexit but also on, as he puts it, “levelling up” funding and investment on services across the country but particularly in the north. How both of the main parties respond to this radical shake up of the electoral map over the course of the next parliament will determining whether it was a blip – merely voters “lending” their vote to the Conservative’s largely because of Brexit – or whether it is the new reality of England’s electoral geography.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Swift receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p>With historical strongholds lost to the Conservatives, some introspection is needed.Ryan Swift, PhD Researcher in Politics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1029382018-09-12T06:24:39Z2018-09-12T06:24:39ZLabour deselection and reselection rules explained<p>When the rules on <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-leadership-election-rules-latest-twist-in-a-history-of-power-shifts-84650">selecting leaders</a> were changed at Labour’s annual conference in 2017, they were changed in ways that many believed favoured the left-wing factions supporting leader Jeremy Corbyn. This year, the talk is of reforming the rules for selecting parliamentary candidates. Although the party is undertaking its own official <a href="https://labour.org.uk/about/democracy-review-2017/">“democracy review”</a> to rethink its structures, a grassroots campaign is underway to make it easier for activists to replace Labour MPs. Many Corbynistas are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45258341">enthusiastic</a> but centrist MPs are alarmed. So, what is it all about?</p>
<p>The procedures governing the selection of parliamentary candidates are among the most important sections in a party’s rule book. That’s because the process is the interface between the party in public office and the party on the ground. It is about power inside parties. Can local members “control” their constituency MPs or do the latter enjoy autonomy?</p>
<p>The process of candidate selection gives before-the-fact powers to activists. They can screen potential candidates through shortlisting and selection conferences, where candidate positions can be scrutinised. Though important, these powers are not perfect as a selected candidate may, if they become an MP, behave contrary to the wishes of activists. That is less problematic if there exist after-the-fact rules to sanction MPs, such as deselection. But if these rules are hard to operate, the MP’s autonomy increases.</p>
<p>Most people would probably agree that the position of an MP should not be a sinecure. On the other hand, the job of MPs, first and foremost, is to be representatives of voters. That may not be consistent with acting as delegates of their local parties, given that ordinary voters are more likely to hold middle-of-the-road opinions than activists.</p>
<p>When MPs and local members are ideologically aligned, and provided that an MP’s personal conduct does not raise any concerns, the relationship is usually calm. But when there is an ideological schism between MPs and grassroots members, tensions emerge. If these tensions are not restricted to a few local parties but are widespread, as they are in today’s Labour Party, bigger disputes can arise over selection rules as members seek to “democratise” procedures and make the MPs “accountable”.</p>
<h2>The Labour rules</h2>
<p>Labour’s <a href="https://skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Labour-Party-2018-Rule-Book.pdf">current rules</a> state that MPs who wish to be reselected as parliamentary candidates for the following election must face a <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2018/04/what-rule-changes-are-likely-affect-how-labour-selects-its-mps">“trigger ballot”</a>. Local ward and union branches affiliated to the constituency party consult their members on the MP’s reselection. There is then a yes/no vote, with each branch casting one vote. A simple majority of branches is required to reselect the MP. If the MP wins, they become the candidate for the next election, pending (largely routine) endorsement from Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).</p>
<p>Only if the MP loses this preliminary ballot is a full selection contest triggered. A shortlist of candidates, including the MP, is drawn up and put to a local one-member-one-vote secret ballot. The winner becomes Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate.</p>
<p>The current trigger ballot system enhances MPs’ security of tenure. Local opponents of the MP must mobilise against him or her just to start a full selection contest. Doing so is seen as an extremely hostile act towards the MP. That itself will likely deter some potential supporters of other would-be candidates if the priority is party unity. And even if local members are critical of the MP, there might be only ten ward branches, each casting one vote in the trigger ballot. But unions can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/16/trade-unions-lay-groundwork-for-labour-reselection-battles">affiliate dozens of branches</a> and dominate the vote. If MPs have close links to local unions, they may feel safe.</p>
<h2>Proposed changes</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/01/corbynites-labour-rule-changes-remove-mps-hard-left">Several resolutions</a> submitted to Labour’s annual conference propose the introduction of <a href="https://labourlist.org/2018/06/why-labour-members-are-talking-about-mandatory-reselection-again/">mandatory reselection</a> for MPs. The precise details would have to be worked out but it could involve scrapping the trigger ballot and requiring all sitting Labour MPs to automatically face full selection contests against other candidates. </p>
<p>Under mandatory reselection, an MP’s opponents would no longer face the difficult task of lobbying branches to trigger a contest. Once the full contest was underway, a candidate who was more in tune with local party opinion would stand a good chance of defeating the MP in a secret ballot of members. An MP who wanted to maximise their chances of reselection would need to make sure they stayed in tune with local members in the first place.</p>
<p>Labour has been here before. Mandatory reselection was introduced in 1980 after a successful campaign waged by the Bennite left to make Labour MPs answerable to activists for the policies of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/20/howjimcallaghanchangedthe">James Callaghan’s government</a>. Despite predictions of a mass wave of deselections, only a few materialised. After Labour’s defeat in the 1983 general election, the mood turned against the left. The new leader, Neil Kinnock, was determined to weaken the left in the constituency parties with various reforms. One of them would be a prototype of the trigger ballot rule and was intended to water down the effect of mandatory reselection. With Labour’s shift to the centre under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the issue had largely disappeared for a generation.</p>
<p>The situation is very different today. The left controls the leadership, the shadow cabinet, the NEC, the party conference, the biggest affiliated unions and of course the 500,000-strong party membership, cheered on by an entire eco-system of pro-Corbyn blogs and social media. But it does not yet control the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). </p>
<p>Momentum, the left-wing grassroots organisation, has <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/09/five-thoughts-momentum-s-embrace-mandatory-reselection">thrown its support</a> behind mandatory reselection. Some of its leading figures, including founder, Jon Lansman, were part of the Bennite campaign for rule changes in the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>Some centrist MPs have already faced (non-binding) <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45445297">no-confidence votes</a> by their local parties. Deselecting MPs who have failed to sign on to the Corbynite agenda would evoke little internal Labour opposition outside the PLP. Even without this latest campaign, change could still be coming if <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-british-constituency-shake-up-is-no-anti-labour-conspiracy-65286">parliamentary boundaries</a> are redrawn, as planned, creating the chance of selection ballots in numerous constituencies.</p>
<p>After the next general election, the Labour left may finally get a parliamentary party in its own ideological image. Whether it’s also in the image of ordinary Labour voters might be more open to question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Quinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Activists are pushing for changes to ensure MPs have to face a ballot every time they want to stand for a constituency.Tom Quinn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006202018-08-06T15:10:49Z2018-08-06T15:10:49ZPoverty in modern Britain: despite the march of history, much remains the same<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230773/original/file-20180806-191038-15na5rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cash machine doesn't work for everyone.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/301238456">Elena Rostunova/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Having studied the social, political and economic history of 20th-century Britain it’s clear that much has changed, for example technology, political reform, and social and cultural movements. But I’ve also learned how much remains the same even after a century of progress, and how easily changes for the better can be reversed.</p>
<p>The turn of the century in 1900 is a good point to start because it was when major social inequalities became the prominent, urgent political issues they have remained ever since. The trade union movement was increasingly militant, challenging inequalities of income. The Labour party was founded, with a central mission to eliminate the disadvantages of working class people. And women demanded, with increasing determination, the vote and other legal rights and opportunities, partially gaining the vote in 1918.</p>
<h2>Racism</h2>
<p>Racism and anti-racism were prominent, particularly antisemitism directed at the thousands of Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Russia. They congregated in cities, especially in east London, and soon made substantial contributions to the economy. But then, as now, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1905-as-eastern-european-jews-pour-in-u-k-enacts-aliens-act-1.5423217">immigrants were accused</a> of taking jobs and homes from British people, disrupting communities and culture, and reducing living standards. </p>
<p>This led to the first restrictions on immigration to the UK under the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aliens-act">Aliens Act 1905</a>. To remain, immigrants would have to show that they could support themselves and their dependants “decently”, and could “speak, read and write English reasonably well”. The Conservative prime minister, Arthur Balfour, told parliament at the time: “We have the right to keep out everybody who does not add to … the industrial, social and intellectual strength of the community” - which sounds familiar.</p>
<p>The Aliens Act did not apply to immigrants from the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcnmtfr#zqrf34j">vast and still expanding British Empire</a>, including those from the Caribbean, Africa and South or East Asia. People born within the empire had always been defined as citizens of the United Kingdom with full legal resident rights. This remained the case until 1962, although until the recent Windrush Scandal <a href="https://theconversation.com/windrush-scandal-a-historian-on-why-destroying-archives-is-never-a-good-idea-95481">this had been generally forgotten</a> including, evidently, by the Home Office. </p>
<p>But it is not novel for migrants from empire and the Commonwealth to suffer discrimination, including for lacking documentation when required. Even in the early 20th century between the wars, if they came to official notice, for example by claiming unemployment benefit, they could be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices">expelled from the country</a> if they could not prove their place of birth. This was often difficult for poor people who did not routinely have, and could not could easily afford, birth certificates.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&q=anti+semitism&tbm=nws">accusations of antisemitism</a> suggest that racism has not diminished in the past century. Indeed <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/united-kingdom-reluctant-country-immigration">restrictions on immigrants have increased</a> since the 1960s and expressions and incidents of racist intolerance continue despite a succession of anti-discrimination laws since 1968.</p>
<h2>The working poor</h2>
<p>Awareness of the abject conditions in which the urban poor lived around 1900 was brought to light in pioneering works of fact and fiction: Arthur Morrison’s novel A Child of the Jago (1896), set in London’s East End, Jack London’s record of his time living in the same districts, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/slumfiction/jacklondon.html">People of the Abyss</a> (1903), and the painstaking street-by-street surveys of Charles Booth in <a href="https://booth.lse.ac.uk/">London</a> and Seebohm Rowntree in <a href="http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/history/articles/4702608.Seebohm_Rowntree___s_pioneering_work_on_poverty_in_York/">York</a> (1889–1903). These revealed alarming poverty, even among people in full-time work – not just the “idle layabouts” or “undeserving poor” of right-wing mythology. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230297/original/file-20180801-136667-4kdohx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Extract of Charles Booth’s poverty maps showing the Old Nichol slum (darkest shaded areas), the setting for the novel A Child of the Jago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poverty_map_old_nichol_1889.jpg">Charles Booth's Labour and Life of the People/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leo Chiozza Money, an Italian immigrant economist and Liberal politician, revealed in <a href="https://archive.org/details/richesandpovert00monegoog">Riches and Poverty</a> (1905) that income and wealth was concentrated in very few hands: two thirds of private wealth rested with 17,000 property holders out of a population of 44.4m, of whom 90% left no recorded property at death.</p>
<p>Demands for reform grew: the first steps of the modern welfare state, including the introduction of free school meals in 1906, old age pensions in 1908, and National Insurance in 1911.</p>
<h2>What has really changed?</h2>
<p>Gathering these findings into my new book, <a href="http://admin.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-british-history/divided-kingdom-history-britain-1900-present?format=PB">Divided Kingdom: A History of Britain, 1900 to the Present</a>, I was shocked by the similarity between the level and causes of poverty at that time and now. Rowntree had found a quarter of people in the fairly typical city of York living in poverty, 52% of them in families with at least one full-time worker on inadequate pay. He defined poverty as having sufficient income for essentials of food, clothing, fuel, but no more. </p>
<p>The Rowntree Foundation (created in his honour) has published <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/uk-poverty-causes-costs-and-solutions">surveys</a> showing that in 2015-16, about 20% of the UK population lived in poverty, 60% in households including an inadequately paid full-time worker. The Resolution Foundation <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-living-standards-audit-2018/">recently published</a> similar figures for 2017-18, which showed that around 23% of the British population (excluding Northern Ireland) and 33% of children live in poverty.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230755/original/file-20180806-191022-9qidfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poverty in the UK has remained relatively unchanged over 25 years, and persistent poverty has proven persistently hard to dislodge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/incomes_in_uk">IFS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our society is much wealthier now than in 1900. The definition of poverty is less stringent, defined by the <a href="http://www.poverty.ac.uk/definitions-poverty/income-threshold-approach">internationally agreed standard</a> of income below 60% of national median income, since the life chances of those living so far below the average standards of modern society are severely restricted. </p>
<p>But these official figures exclude the large and growing numbers of homeless people living rough on the streets or in hostels – tens of thousands certainly, though exact figures are uncertain. And the <a href="https://theconversation.com/food-bank-use-is-at-a-record-high-heres-what-we-know-about-the-people-using-them-57683">growing use of food banks</a> – unheard of in Britain until recently – should prompt us to ask how many people truly are living in absolute poverty comparable with the 1900s. </p>
<p>The welfare state led to improved living standards and the gradual reduction of wealth and income inequality, reaching its narrowest point in the 1970s when (in contrast to the denigration the decade so often receives) welfare services and benefits were also at their peak, and affordable council housing was still being built. But in part due to the erosion of the welfare state and the sale of council housing without being replaced, poverty and inequality have grown since 1979, although the <a href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6738">shifts were more gradual</a> under the New Labour governments of 1997-2010 than before or since. Today we see a return of the stigmatisation of supposed “shirkers” on benefits, despite many of them being in underpaid work.</p>
<p>Surveys that revealed poverty and inequality in the early 20th century brought the welfare state into being. A century later, similar levels of poverty with similar causes now follow its decline. After all the change and hope, and all the wealth generated in the 20th century, too often it was short-lived, and century-old problems remain or have now returned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pat Thane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lots of things have happened in a century, but poverty has proven persistently hard to treat.Pat Thane, Research Professor in Contemporary British History, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/385922015-04-21T00:42:43Z2015-04-21T00:42:43ZA legend with class: labour and Anzac<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75799/original/image-20150324-17688-lfsug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor has long had leaders, such as former prime minister Paul Keating, capable of speaking the language of Anzac.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Gallipoli centenary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the many wartime legacies – human, political, economic, military – that forged independent nations from former colonies and dominions. The Conversation, in partnership with <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>, is publishing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/griffith-review-enduring-legacies">series of essays</a> exploring the <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/enduring-legacies/">enduring legacies of 20th-century wars</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>For the Australian labour movement, Anzac has been more like a first cousin than a close sibling. There is no missing the family connection: the first Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was an overwhelmingly working-class army, with an ethos instantly recognisable as such. </p>
<p>The AIF’s members valued social egalitarianism while accepting the substance of inequality – just like most of the Australian working class in civilian life, who well understood the difference between a boss and a worker. It nurtured a powerful sense of entitlement – reflecting the idea of a living wage, which had begun to make its mark by the time war broke out, as Justice Higgins’ <a href="http://worksite.actu.org.au/the-harvester-judgement-and-australias-minimum-wage/">Harvester Judgement</a> in 1907 found wider acceptance. </p>
<p>And, just as in civilian life, AIF members were sometimes prepared to withdraw their labour when they believed their rights were being disregarded, or their dignity insulted.</p>
<p>Like the working class of Australia’s cities and towns, the AIF contained its fair share of crooks, crims and ne’er-do-wells. But alongside them were the steady and the respectable – men who saw the demands that war made on them as a test of their <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=760444117947883;res=IELBUS">moral character</a>.</p>
<p>As late as 1916, there was little reason to expect that the history of the relationship between the labour movement and Anzac would be other than a comfortable coupling. Labour was certainly active in early Anzac commemoration. The first Anzac Day occurred not on April 25, 1916, as one might reasonably assume, but on October 13, 1915, in Adelaide. It was a rebadging of Labour Day, and was designed to raise funds for wounded soldiers. The Adelaide Advertiser <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5483778">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The workers readily yielded up the identity of their day, and while celebrating the attainment of brightened conditions of labour took their places in a bigger scheme of things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The South Australian labour newspaper, the Daily Herald, was no less enthusiastic in celebrating:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a grand united community carnival of practical patriotism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But such unity would not long endure. Even in 1915, Anzac Day was marred by the street violence of drunken soldiers. And not everyone in the labour movement appreciated the merging of the traditional festival of labour with the nascent culture of war commemoration. Some trade unionists refused to participate because they objected to the hijacking of their day.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a few imperial patriots, already giving thought to how the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing should be marked, were concerned about the light-hearted spirit of Adelaide’s October Anzac Day, as well as of a number of other fundraising events of the period such as <a href="http://www.ach.familyhistorysa.info/ww1violetday.html">Violet Day</a> and Australia Day.</p>
<p>They wanted a solemn and sacred occasion that would honour the dead, sanctify the cause for which they had given their lives and encourage in others a willingness to serve the Empire. Anzac Day should not be an occasion for fundraising or hedonistic pursuits but, as Brisbane’s Anglican Canon David Garland put it, should become “Australia’s All Souls Day”. </p>
<p>The Queensland Labor premier, TJ Ryan, gave enthusiastic support to the efforts of Garland and his colleagues on Brisbane’s Anzac Day Commemoration Committee to establish Anzac Day as a solemn occasion. He predicted that, to Australians, Gallipoli:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… would always be holy ground … It was the scene of undying deeds of young Australia’s sons and the last resting place of her noble dead. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But by the end of 1916, Ryan was the sole anti-conscriptionist in the country still leading an Australian government. He was rivalled only by his co-religionist, Archbishop Daniel Mannix, in the imperial patriots’ rogues’ gallery.</p>
<h2>Labor’s early moves</h2>
<p>Labor’s stance on defence up to this time was impressive. Its pre-war refusal to contribute a dreadnought – the great battleship of the day – to the Royal Navy arose from nationalism, not pacifism. Labor wanted Australia to have its own navy. It also wanted a citizen army for home defence.</p>
<p>By 1911, it had agreed with London – although quietly – that in the event of a European war, it would raise an expeditionary force for service overseas, even if men could not be compelled under Australia’s Defence Act to fight in it.</p>
<p>As a party that strongly championed White Australia, Labor was also seen as least likely to be complacent about a threat from Asia. It would be able to balance national assertion with imperial obligation – and the 1914 election, which coincided with the European crisis of July–August, was inevitably a referendum on which party could best be trusted to lead Australia in the dangerous times ahead. </p>
<p>Under its leader Andrew Fisher, and with Billy Hughes already recognised as its most dynamic and defence-minded figure, Labor won the election easily.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1294&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75791/original/image-20150324-17688-11uzfjd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1294&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Billy Hughes (with walking stick) initiated a Labor Party split over conscription.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AWM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In October 1916, Hughes initiated the <a href="http://billyhughes.moadoph.gov.au/conscription">conscription crisis</a>, which split the Labor Party and destroyed the government. From then on, Labor would rarely appear comfortable with either defence policy or the Anzac legend. </p>
<p>During the Depression, the Scullin Labor government abolished compulsory military service and drastically cut defence expenditure – for reasons of economy, but the decision was consistent with the party’s ethos.</p>
<p>A majority of the Labor Party had opposed conscription for overseas service during the Great War, but its hostility now extended to compulsion more generally. This spilled over into a suspicion of defence spending and a general discomfort with military affairs.</p>
<p>The shock of the Japanese southward thrust a decade later disturbed this state of affairs. Suddenly, in the face of an unprecedented threat to the Australian continent itself, Labor was well placed to exploit its reputation as the party of white nationalism and brawny manhood, and to revive its reputation as a party capable of giving due weight to defence.</p>
<p>Even before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Labor showed that it had a leader capable of speaking the language of Anzac when the previously anti-conscriptionist John Curtin spoke at the opening of the Australian War Memorial on November 11, 1941. Curtin said the building:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… gives continuity to the Anzac tradition … It is a tribute which a grateful country pays to those who have served it so steadfastly.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Taking a conservative turn</h2>
<p>The labour movement’s apparent alienation from Anzac in the years between 1916 and 1941 has been a salient theme for 20th-century historians. Russel Ward puzzled over it, somewhat indirectly, in his most famous book, <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/the-legend-turns-fifty">The Australian Legend</a>. </p>
<p>In it, Ward identified the pastoral worker in colonial Australia as the main bearer of the values that many liked to think of as Australian – egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, talented at improvisation, loyal to mates. Towards the end of the book, drawing on the writings of Charles Bean, he recognised in the figure of the Anzac a continuation of the values of the noble bushman.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75792/original/image-20150324-17675-9fxpyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russel Ward’s seminal work, The Australian Legend.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OUP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was only in a later work, A Nation for a Continent, that Ward fully acknowledged the Anzac image had been appropriated by the conservatives. Other historians of the nationalist left, such as <a href="http://john.curtin.edu.au/events/speeches/serlebio.html">Geoffrey Serle</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/historian-author-and-activist/2007/02/13/1171128970103.html">Noel McLachlan</a>, also grappled in the 1960s and 1970s with how and why a radical legend had taken such a conservative turn after 1916.</p>
<p>The answer to the question of why the bush legend had, via Anzac, taken a conservative turn seemed to hold a key – possibly even the key – to understanding what, from their radical-nationalist perspective, had gone wrong in Australia between the world wars. Ward’s noble bushman seemed to be radical – to the extent that he had a political leaning – his bush mateship providing fertile soil for the pioneers of the new unionism in the 1880s, his nationalism laying the groundwork for the literature of the Bulletin writers in the 1890s.</p>
<p>In short, the collectivism of Ward’s bush proletariat was understood as a progenitor of the wider culture of nationalism, democracy and egalitarianism, of what Albert Metin called Australia’s “socialism without doctrines”. But the Anzac and the digger seemed a pesky conservative Empire loyalist who had somehow pushed Australia off its natural course. </p>
<p>In this reading, the returned men’s collectivism had found an inferior expression in the bonds between members of an exclusive cast defined by their common experience as soldiers of the king – not as men owing a primary allegiance to a working class more disposed to national than to imperial patriotism.</p>
<p>The radical-nationalist reading of the politics of Anzac had merit. In some contexts, returned men were a force for imperial conservatism. But the association of political conservatism with the Great War digger or Anzac should not be taken for granted. There was no particular reason to imagine that a working-class army immersed in the horrors of the Western Front would lean right rather than left when it returned to Australia.</p>
<h2>Returned servicemen and the unions</h2>
<p>In fact, many leaned left. Returned men were involved in public violence from 1915 and especially in 1919, when so many of them returned to a divided country that was torn by industrial strife and in the grip of a deadly outbreak of Spanish influenza. </p>
<p>At Fremantle in May 1919, conflict on the waterfront led to a bloody clash between strike-breakers, accompanied by the conservative premier Hal Colebatch, and unionists and their supporters – in some instances returned soldiers. Several people were injured and a unionist was killed. Historian Robert Bollard has <a href="http://www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/20/bollard">recently uncovered</a> a rich history of industrial action and radical agitation by returned soldiers in the tense period immediately following the First World War.</p>
<p>The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA) – later the Returned and Services League (RSL) – has sometimes been given the credit or blame for directing the politics of Australia’s returned soldiers away from class struggle of this kind and into more conservative channels. </p>
<p>In 1919, returned soldiers, probably organised by RSSILA officers, were prominent among rioters in Brisbane who responded to a leftist <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/03/28/remembering-brisbanes-anti-russian-red-flag-riots">“red flag” rally</a> by attacking members of the local Russian community. And in Victoria in the same year, members of the Essendon RSSILA travelled to the Western District to tar and feather former Labor politician JK McDougall after an anti-war poem he had originally written in opposition to the Boer War was republished, implying that he was referring to the AIF.</p>
<p>Recent research on the RSSILA’s early history suggests that its political impact should not be reduced to a survey of these kinds of incidents. The league’s first president, William Bolton, was an unquestionably partisan figure who had been elected to the federal parliament as a Nationalist senator in 1917. </p>
<p>Bolton aroused fury among his colleagues in the RSSILA after issuing a statement in May 1919, in the midst of widespread industrial action, that “in order to protect our league from the obvious intrigue of disloyal extremists under cover of industrial strife”, it was necessary:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… for all members to strongly abstain from active participation in any industrial dispute.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was widespread dismay within the organisation over this statement, issued without consultation and, equally seriously, without any apparent understanding of “the awkward position of returned soldiers in time of industrial trouble”. Accused of being unable to devote sufficient time to the organisation he had been involved in founding, it was not long before Bolton was replaced by a very different figure.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1854&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75795/original/image-20150324-17699-12vsul1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1854&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gilbert Dyett led the RSSILA for 27 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AWM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gilbert Dyett had been badly wounded at Gallipoli and returned to Australia as an advocate of voluntary recruitment, but an opponent of conscription. He was a Catholic, secretary to the Victorian Trotting and Racing Association, and a close associate of the controversial entrepreneur, John Wren. </p>
<p>Dyett was also an astute negotiator. Historian Martin Crotty suggests that his success in gaining concessions for returned soldiers from then-prime minister Billy Hughes in 1919 probably helped to keep the RSSILA in one piece.</p>
<p>Eschewing the kind of “law and order” campaign in which his predecessor had tried to entangle the organisation, Dyett emphasised the RSSILA’s role as lobbyist. He valued his access to government, for which he thought his own critics among returned soldiers gave him too little credit.</p>
<p>None of this should be taken as indicating that the RSSILA was therefore politically irrelevant beyond its particular concern with returned soldiers’ interests. Plenty of scope remained within state branches and local sub-branches for conservative politicking. But the divisions within the RSSILA about the issue of political neutrality should guard against hasty conclusions concerning its role in shaping the broader political allegiances of returned soldiers.</p>
<p>During the 1920s, the organisation struggled to gain members. In 1919, it probably had between 100,000 and 120,000 members, a figure that declined rapidly and markedly thereafter, dipping to 25,000 members in 1923, before beginning a slow climb that saw numbers reach around 80,000 by the late 1930s.</p>
<h2>From the Depression to the Hawke era</h2>
<p>There is a complicated story involving the Anzac legend and the left between the 1920s and the 1960s which historians have barely begun to untangle. During the Depression, there appears to have been a reinvigorated effort on the part of the mainstream labour movement to engage with the Great War’s legacy, to articulate a progressive Labor nationalism in which Anzac had a part to play. </p>
<p>It seemed natural enough to identify the suffering of the working class during the Depression with the earlier battles abroad, especially as many of those suffering in the 1930s were returned men. The fight for a more just economic system in the face of a crumbling capitalist system was an extension of the sacrifices made by the Anzacs for the sake of a better world. </p>
<p>But further to the left, activists, speakers and publications associated with the Communist Party (and even, on occasion, with more moderate elements in the labour movement) criticised the “imperial boasting and military boosting” of April 25.</p>
<p>Such criticisms – the preserve of a small minority from the 1920s to the 1950s – became part of mainstream public discourse during the 1960s, especially among the young. The Vietnam War is usually associated with the eclipse of Anzac in the 1960s. Its resurgence in the 1980s is seen as dependent, to some extent, on the bitterness and division engendered by that war giving way to a growing sympathy for the young Australian men whose lives were blighted by their participation in it. </p>
<p>Certainly, the 1980s and early 1990s have recently been recognised as a crucial period in the resurgence of Anzac. It was an era that might be seen as beginning in 1981 with the Peter Weir film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/">Gallipoli</a> and ending with Paul Keating’s 1993 <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/keating.asp">eulogy</a> for the “unknown soldier” at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9LBpsMqNEV0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is ironic that this reinvention and revival occurred during a period of Labor Party dominance. But both Bob Hawke and Keating – Labor’s two prime ministers of the period – would each, in different ways, seek to align the Anzac legend with his sense of national identity. </p>
<p>Hawke came to office in 1983 evoking Curtin’s wartime legend. He was fond of comparing the economic challenges Australia faced to the problems Curtin encountered in 1942. He engaged with Gallipoli and the First World War more gradually, drawn by circumstance and a highly developed political instinct. </p>
<p>In 1984, Hawke responded to a proposal from the Gallipoli Legion of Anzacs by announcing that his government would ask its Turkish counterpart to rename the beach on which the Australians landed on April 25, 1915, as Anzac Cove – a change which occurred in 1985.</p>
<p>But it was the 1990 pilgrimage to Gallipoli that truly gave Hawke an opportunity to put his mark on the legend. In his memoirs, Hawke places his account of the pilgrimage out of chronological sequence, at the end of a chapter on the Gulf War of 1990–91, as if one were comprehensible in light of the other:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I looked back nearly a year later, Gallipoli and the Gulf merged in a swell of pride for my country and its people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hawke was more successful than any other Labor leader, except Curtin, in identifying the Labor Party with “pride for my country”. But the juxtaposition of the two events – the Gallipoli commemoration and the Gulf War – anticipates the ways Anzac would later be used to legitimise the Howard government’s highly contested commitment to the Iraq War.</p>
<p>Fifty-two men, aged between 93 and 104, accompanied Hawke and opposition leader John Hewson on the 1990 trip. Intriguingly, Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg, who wrote Hawke’s addresses for the commemoration, thought Hawke’s bicentennial speeches of a couple of years before “had failed to resonate”. Freudenberg saw Gallipoli as an opportunity for Hawke to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… break the conservative monopoly on the interpretation of Australian military history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This background, recently <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/great-war-and-australia-provisional-title/">explored</a> by Carolyn Holbrook, might lend some support to historian Mark McKenna’s theory that a reinvented Anzac Day emerged in the 1990s out of the failure of the 1988 Bicentenary as an exercise in enacting national unity as a result of Aboriginal dissent. Anzac Day, McKenna argues, emerged “as a less complicated and less divisive alternative” to Australia Day.</p>
<p>Hawke’s two key addresses at Gallipoli on April 25, 1990 – at the Dawn Service and later in the morning at <a href="http://ura.unisa.edu.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1427089962620%7E449&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&adjacency=N&application=DIGITOOL-3&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true">Lone Pine</a> – were well-received. The speech at the Dawn Service borrowed – to put it politely – from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. An agnostic prime minister declared the beach:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>.. sacred because of the bravery and the bloodshed of the Anzacs. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later in the morning, Hawke declared that Anzac’s “meaning can endure only as long as each new generation of Australians finds the will to reinterpret it”. But what he saw in the story of Anzac was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… recognition of the special meaning of Australian mateship.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>More recent times</h2>
<p>As prime minister, Keating elevated war commemoration to at least equal heights as Hawke. But, as is well known, he sought to shift the focus from Gallipoli to Kokoda – from a war fought far from home in defence of an empire to one fought on the doorstep in defence of a nation. </p>
<p>However, Keating’s eulogy to the unknown soldier required reflection on the First World War’s meaning. With historian Don Watson as his speechwriter, Keating delivered a widely admired speech in which he declared the man being reinterred was “all of them” and “one of us”.</p>
<p>The message was egalitarian, democratic, nationalist and, in the context of Keating’s broader concerns and rhetorical armoury of the early 1990s, subtly republican. But, above all, the speech elevated ordinary men and women to war heroes – delivering:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the lesson … that they were not ordinary.</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Keating’s ‘unknown solider’ eulogy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These two streams of rhetoric have arguably been critical in shaping the language of modern Anzac commemoration. There was Hawke’s story of sacrifice and mateship, and Keating’s of the heroic and history-making status of the common man and woman. In each case, the personal was seen to transcend the cause for which the war was fought.</p>
<p>John Howard has been given great credit for his skill in crafting a persuasive political language. Yet, with respect to the Anzac legend, he did not depart significantly from the scripts set down by the two Labor prime ministers who preceded him. </p>
<p>This shared rhetoric of war commemoration should alert us to one of Anzac’s most significant and neglected aspects: that it has functioned since 1916 as a site of social consensus and shared values more than of contestation or disagreement.</p>
<p>However, Anzac is never just about mateship and democracy. It is also always about war and nationhood. </p>
<p>As the political and diplomatic contexts of the First World War became increasingly lost to public memory, the new post-1990 Anzac “consensus” has been forged around amorphous civic values so widely shared that anyone inclined to question them runs close to disqualifying themselves from Australian public culture – or, if you belong to a suspect ethnic or religious group, from the national community entirely. </p>
<p>The defence of Anzac Day commemoration – as common in the 1920s as today – turns on some fairly familiar arguments. It does not glorify war; it does not cultivate hatred; it is about honouring and remembering, not celebrating. Yet a sense of sacred nationhood created through the blood sacrifice of young men remains at its core today, as in 1916.</p>
<p>Is this not to glorify war?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read a longer version of this article and others from the Griffith Review’s latest edition on the enduring legacies of war <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/enduring-legacies/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno receives funding from the ARC. He is an ALP member.</span></em></p>There is a complicated story involving the Anzac legend and the left between the 1920s and the 1960s which historians have barely begun to untangle.Frank Bongiorno, Associate Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.