Anarchism in Australia arrived within a few years of
anarchism developing as a distinct tendency in the wake of the 1871
Paris Commune. Although a minor school of thought and politics, composed primarily of campaigners and intellectuals, Australian anarchism has formed a significant current throughout the history and literature of the colonies and nation. Anarchism's influence has been industrial and cultural, though its influence has waned from its high point in the early 20th century where anarchist techniques and ideas deeply influenced the official
Australian union movement. In the mid 20th century anarchism's influence was primarily restricted to
urban bohemian cultural movements. In the late 20th century and early 21st century Australian anarchism has been an element in Australia's social justice and protest movements.
History
Anarchism has found both proponents and critics during the short history since the British colonised Australia. International movements, émigrés or home-grown anarchists have all contributed to radical politics during the nation's formation.
Beginnings
The
Melbourne Anarchist Club was officially founded on 1 May 1886 by
David Andrade and others breaking away from the Australasian Secular Association of
Joseph Symes, the journal Honesty being the anarchist club's official organ; and
anarchism became a significant minor current on the Australian left. The current included a diversity of views on economics, ranging from an
individualism influenced by
Benjamin Tucker to the
anarchist communism of
JA Andrews. All regarded themselves as broadly "socialist" however.[1][2] The Anarchists mixed with the seminal literary figures
Henry Lawson and
Mary Gilmore and the labour journalist and utopian socialist
William Lane. The most dramatic event associated with this early Australian anarchism was perhaps the bombing of the "non-union" ship SS Aramac on 27 July 1893 by Australian anarchist and union organiser Larrie Petrie.[3] This incident occurred in the highly charged atmosphere following the defeat of the
1890 Australian maritime dispute and the
1891 Australian shearers' strike, an atmosphere which also produced the Sydney-based direct action group the "Active Service Brigade"[4] Petrie was arrested for attempted murder but charges were dropped after a few months. He later joined Lane's "
New Australia" utopian experiment in
Paraguay.
A major challenge to the principles of these early Australian anarchists was the virulent anti-Chinese racism of the time, of which racism William Lane himself was a leading exponent. On a political level the anarchists opposed the anti-Chinese agitation. "The Chinese, like ourselves, are the victims of monopoly and exploitation" editorialised Honesty "We had far better set to and make our own position better instead of, like a parcel of blind babies, trying to make theirs worse."[5] The anarchists were sometimes more ambivalent on the subject than this statement of principle might suggest; anti-Chinese racism was entrenched in the labour movement of which they were a part, and challenged by few others.[6]
The anarchist tradition was kept alive in Australia by, among others, the prominent agitator and street speaker
Chummy Fleming who died in Melbourne in 1950 and by Italian Anarchists active in Melbourne's Matteotti Club and the North Queensland canefields.[8] William Andrade (1863–1939),
David Andrade's brother and fellow anarchist, became a successful bookseller in Sydney and Melbourne and while he retired from active politics in about 1920 he continued to influence events by allowing various radical groups to use his premises throughout the 1920s and 1930s.[9]
Post-World War II
After World War Two the
Sydney Libertarians developed a distinct brand of "pessimistic" or "permanent protest" anarchism, deeply sceptical of revolution and of any grand scheme of human betterment, yet friendly to the revolutionary unionism of the
IWW. Poet
Harry Hooton associated with this group, and his friend
Germaine Greer belonged to it in her youth. By 1972 she was calling herself an "anarchist communist"[10] and was still identifying herself as "basically" an anarchist in 1999.[11] The Sydney Libertarians were the political tendency around which the "
Sydney Push" social milieu developed, a milieu which included many anarchists.[12]
The Sydney Libertarians, along with the remnant of the Australian IWW and of Italian and Spanish migrant anarchism fed into the Anarchist revival of the sixties and seventies which Australia shared with much of the developed world. Another post-war influence that fed into modern Australian anarchism was the arrival of anarchist refugees from Bulgaria.[13]
The last years of Australian involvement in the Vietnam war was an active period for Australian anarchists, the high-profile draft resister
Michael Matteson in particular became something of a folk hero. The prolific anarchist poet
Pi O began to write. The Brisbane Self-Management Group was formed in 1971,[14] heavily influenced by the councillist writings of the
Socialisme ou Barbarie group and its offshoots. The Anarchist Bookshop in Adelaide began publishing the monthly Black Growth. Anarchists active in inner-city Melbourne played a major part in creating the Fitzroy Legal Service (FLS) in 1972.[15]
In 1974 after successfully campaigning against the
1971 South Africa rugby union tour of AustraliaAnti-apartheid movement activist
Peter McGregor was one of several people who involved themselves in resurrecting the Sydney Anarchist Group to organise an Australian Anarchist conference in Sydney in January 1975. At the time anarchist theory was being intensely debated.[16] A diverse Federation of Australian Anarchists (FAA) was formed at a conference in Sydney in 1975. A walkout from the second conference in Melbourne in 1976 led to the founding of the Libertarian Socialist Federation (LSF), which in turn led to the founding of
Jura Books in 1977.[17]
The end of the 1970s saw the development of a Christian anarchist
Catholic Worker tendency in
Brisbane, the most prominent person in the group being
Ciaron O'Reilly. This tendency exploded into prominence in 1982 because of its part along with other anarchists and assorted radicals in the Brisbane free speech fights during the Queensland premiership of
Joh Bjelke-Petersen.[18] In Melbourne in 1977 the Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed Society (LW) were formed on a theoretical platform similar to the Brisbane Self-Management Group. This Libertarian Workers group engaged very actively in propaganda, which played a major part on making possible the
Australian Anarchist Centenary Celebrations of 1986. Apart from generally respectful publicity the lasting consequences of the Celebrations were the founding of the Anarchist Media Institute, its most visible member being
Joseph Toscano; and the founding of an Australian section of the
International Workers' Association (IWA) called the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (ASF). A major part of the activity of the ASF was its agitation among Melbourne's public transport workers culminating in a significant influence on the Melbourne Tram Dispute of 1990.[19]
In 1982 the paper Rebel Worker began to be published in Sydney as the paper of the Australian IWW. It has since then been published, with varying periodicity but commonly bimonthly, as an independent anarcho-syndicalist paper, as the paper of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation and currently in 2019 as the paper of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Network. The main figure associated with producing it throughout this time has been Sydney anarcho-syndicalist Mark Maguire. This history has been accompanied by a good deal of controversy.[20][21][22][23][24]
1900s: IWW and
AMIEU organises
workers' councils in the meat industry in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.
1916: Two IWW members are executed after being framed for the murder of a police officer in
Tottenham.[26]
1917: The IWW is declared an unlawful organisation by the government and more than 100 of its members are arrested.
1934: Anarchists lead a strike among Italian immigrant sugarcane workers in north Queenslands.[27]
1942: Anarchist immigrant from Italy Francesco Fantin is murdered in an internment camp in South Australia by fascist Giovanni ‘Bruno’ Casotti.[1]
1948: The Southern Advocate for Workers Councils is published in Melbourne, advocating for libertarian socialist and
council communist perspectives until 1949.[28]
1940s: The left-libertarian
Sydney Push is formed, a collection of people who meet in pubs and discuss political theory and philosophy, with some anarchist.
1966: The Australian New Zealand Anarchist Conference (ANZAC) is held in Sydney.[29]
1971: Anarchists begin to aid the
green bans in Sydney.[30]
1971: Anarchist Julian Ripley is allegedly framed by police for bombing the Labour and National Service building.[31]
1977: Libertarian Workers for a Self-Managed Society founded in Melbourne.
1982: A split occurs in Jura Books, with some members forming a new bookshop dubbed "Black Rose".[32]
1982: The Melbourne Anarchist Centre is created in Collingwood, Melbourne.
1982: Anarchists break into
Pine Gap and spraypaint "No To This Madness" and the circle-A as the base of a radar dome.[6]
1985: An anarchist, two communists and a social democrat break into Pine Gap and prevent a
Galaxy C-5 plane from landing on schedule. They are then chased and subdued by local police, base security and
CIA officers.[3]
1986: The Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation is founded.
1990: Anarcho-syndicalists lead a strike among Melbourne tramworkers that results in trams blocking traffic in the city and workers taking over tram depots with community support. However, the strike fails.[33]
1996: A new anarchist bookshop opened in
Brunswick, Melbourne suffers several attacks from neo-nazis.[34]
1997:
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin completed a speaking tour of Australia organised by local anarchists, despite government opposition.
1998: Anarchists are active in the movement to stop uranium mining on aboriginal land at the Jabiluka Blockade.[35]
1999: An anarcho-syndicalist conference is held in Carlton, Melbourne with international attendance from the UK, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.[36]
2003:
Mutiny Collective formed in Sydney over anger at the
Iraq War and an interest in anti-war direct action.
2008: Mutiny Collective was one of several antiwar groups planning to protest a military arms fair in Adelaide. The fair was canceled as a result. Labor premier
Kevin Foley accused all the intending protestors of being "these feral anarchists" and that "These are feral, low-life people who want society to be in a state of near anarchy for their perverse pleasure,"
2019: The Melbourne Anarchist Club clubhouse is shut down after factional fighting.[37]
^Bob James Anarchism and State Violence in Sydney and Melbourne 1886–1896 An argument about Australian labor history, 1986, MA Thesis held at La Trobe University Melbourne. (Also a published book) Partially online at
http://www.takver.com/history/aasv/index.htmArchived 5 October 2007 at the
Wayback Machine with contemporary articles by JA Andrews on Active Service Brigade)
^quoted in Andrew Markus, "White Australia? Socialists and Anarchists" Arena nos 32–33 (Double Issue), 1973
^
abAndrew Markus, "White Australia? Socialists and Anarchists" Arena nos 32–33 (Double Issue), 1973
^Germaine Greer; Ian Turner and Chris Hector (Autumn 1972) [Recorded February 1972].
"Greer on Revolution Germaine on Love". Overland.
Archived from the original on 30 October 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2007. I am much more political now than I was then – I'm an anarchist still, but I'd say now I am an anarchist communist which I wasn't then .....The libertarians may have a good deal of intellectual prestige in Sydney, but seeing that they speak in self-evident truths and
tautologies most of the time it's not difficult for them to get intellectual recognition. What disappoints me most about all the radical groups in Australia is that they have not yet managed to make the Marxist dialogue a part of the cultural life of the country as a whole, which it is say for example in India – it's something you expect to see discussed in the daily papers.
^"Germaine Greer". Sydney Libertarians and the Push. 9 September 2003.
Archived from the original on 1 July 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007. "I'm an anarchist basically. I don't think the future lies in constraining people into doing stuff they are not good at and don't want to do.
^Anne Coombs, Sex and Anarchy – the life and death of the Sydney Push Viking Penguin, 1996
^Bob James, "Bulgarian Anarchists in Sydney" in Anarchism in Australia. An Anthology Prepared for the Australian Anarchist Centennial Celebration, Melbourne 1–4 May 1986 in a limited edition of 50 printed copies by Bob James. Online at
http://www.takver.com/history/aia/aia00028.htmArchived 1 July 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
^"The Split, A Monash Anarchist Perspective" in Bob James (ed)Anarchism in Australia. An Anthology Prepared for the Australian Anarchist Centennial Celebration, Melbourne 1–4 May 1986, online at
http://www.takver.com/history/aia/aia00045.htmArchived 5 October 2007 at the
Wayback Machine