‘to the last man and the last shilling’ — before it became apparent that it actually might come to that. Unionists, who made up the bulk of Labor’s support, started to mutter loudly that fighting foreign wars on behalf of foreign capitalists wasn’t such a bright idea. Then, to make things worse, Ireland staged a rebellion in 1916.
But Ireland, and Britain’s rule of it, had always been a touchy subject in Australia. Now, in the middle of world war, a rebellion broke out in Ireland and in Australia, support for Britain (read England) in the world war ceased to be unquestioned for many.
In the turmoil, the Labor Party split and lost government and spent most of the next 20 years as a political irrelevance, their one triumph the successful campaign against compulsory military service overseas. The ex–Labor prime minister, Billy Hughes, got huge support from the public for doing everything to win the war, and the Liberals, which he now led, claimed centrestage as the ‘natural’ choice for patriotic Australians.
Australia ended the war a far more divided and fractured place than it had been when the war began. The animosity felt between Irish Catholic Australians and the Anglo-Protestant majority would eat away at Australian unity for some 40 years. (See Chapter 13 for more on Australia’s role during World War I and the tensions that emerged at home.)
Dreaming of ‘Australia Unlimited’
By the end of World War I, Australia was profoundly divided and strangely schizoid. Everything was jagged and everyone was on edge — the number of strikes and working days lost peaked just after the war. ‘Patriotism’ was a far more loaded term, with many ex-soldiers resenting ‘disloyals’, who were deemed to have not done everything to support Australia’s involvement in the war. Because these animosities often divided Australian society along religious, ethnic and class lines, the sense of rancour and of a nation divided was acute as the 1920s began.
Yet, the 1920s were also — in classic Charles Dickens ‘best of times, worst of times’ style — a period when Australia emerged as newly cocky about its prowess and capabilities on the world stage. Australia had ‘proved itself’ during World War I, and by the end of the conflict in 1918 had emerged as one of the elite fighting forces on the Western Front. A new expansive optimism began to prevail, which rekindled old dreams of exponential development and progress — and the ideal of ‘Australia Unlimited’ was born (see Chapter 14).
Getting hit by the Great Depression …
After the dreams and excess of the 1920s came a doozie of a global economic depression, which began on the Wall Street stock market in New York and spread rapidly to take in most of the world. Australia, up to its eyeballs in debt at the same time as prices for its major export commodities such as wool and wheat were crashing through the floor, was acutely vulnerable.
When the economic crisis hit, the politicians and bankers proved themselves unable to agree on what measures should be followed. The Labor Party, which had the misfortune of regaining government for the first time since the end of World War I at about the exact same moment as Wall Street crashed, split for a second time within 20 years over the disagreement.
Unemployment trended upward to a peak of around 30 per cent. After the frenetic expansion years of the 1920s, and the pursuit of new enjoyments with new inventions such as automobiles, cinema and radio (see Chapter 14), ordinary people found themselves thrown back upon their own resources. Luxury items that had been considered essentials a few years previously were now eschewed, garden lawns were converted back to vegetable plots and broken items now found themselves being fixed rather than replaced. (See Chapter 15 for more on life in Australia during the Great Depression.)
… And another war
In 1939, Australians faced up to another world war, but this time one fought not only on faraway battlefields (as World War I had been) but also much closer to home. Japan’s downward thrust meant that, for the first time in its history, Australia felt itself to be directly menaced with possible invasion. Darwin and other northern towns were repeatedly bombed but Britain, its hands full defeating Nazi Germany, was unable to send much in the way of help.
Luckily, America’s interests and Australia’s coincided: America needed a geographic base from which to launch a counteroffensive against Japan, and Australia needed the reassuring presence of a great and powerful ally. Australia geared its economy up to full capacity, converting all possible industries to war production. (See Chapter 16 for more on Australia’s involvement in World War II and events back home.)
As the tide of the war turned, the Curtin Government began preparing postwar reconstruction plans. Along with implementing a bold new immigration scheme (for the first time taking in large numbers of European immigrants as well as those from Britain), considerable economic and social progress was made (see Chapter 17). This laid the groundwork that helped sustain an economic boom that proved second only to the long boom of the 19th century for duration (see Chapter 18).
The Postwar Boom Broom
Prosperity unleashed a new generation — the postwar baby boomers — onto the world, coinciding with a social revolution in the 1960s. This younger generation had grown up in an era of prosperity and increasing material affluence — an experience quite unlike the Depression and war years in which their parents had reached maturity. The Beatles, miniskirts and tie-dye psychedelia — you have the 1960s to thank for them. The 1960s also spawned a series of social movements, including:
Vietnam War protests: Many in the baby-boomer generation refused point-blank to serve as conscripts or soldiers in the Vietnam War, which Australia had entered in 1962.
Calls for the end of the White Australia Policy: This policy was aimed at excluding non-whites from immigration into Australia (under the old social homogeneity argument or, as Labor minister Arthur Calwell unfortunately joked, the argument that ‘Two Wongs don’t make a White’.) By the 1960s, the policy was becoming increasingly odious to newly independent non-white nations. The policy was progressively dismantled from 1966.
Campaigns
