THE GOOD OLD FIFTIES

Don’t you just love listening to John Howard praising the Australia of the 1950s?

He wants you to think it was a conservative wonderland with white Aussie Mum in the kitchen, white Aussie Dad obediently at work and a couple of white Aussie heterosexual kids playing cricket in the back yard, all girt by a white picket fence. He paints a picture of a safe world where everyone knew their place on board the good ship Australia as it sailed into the future under Captain Menzies. Captain Menzies was a loving servant of Our Queen and a compliant friend of the United States. We were all one big happy family.

But there was much more to the fifties. There were plenty of ratbags and stirrers in those days. Operating in a Cold War climate, their work was hard and risky. They were ostracised in their communities for being ‘pinkos’ and persecuted by the Government. It was a time of bigotry and fear. Their contribution is often taken for granted today. Let’s have a look at some of the social and political movements of the time.

Womens’ rights

The Union of Australian Women (UAW) was established at a conference in Sydney in August 1950, linked to the Communist Party. The New South Wales branch was the first to be formed, with other state branches forming in quick succession. The state branches came together in 1956 to establish a national organisation. Foundation members included communists, Labor Party supporters, Christian activists and members of the New Housewives' Association. Early goals included improving the status of women and children, equal pay for women, abortion law reform, disarmament and a halt to nuclear testing and mining, equal distribution of wealth, increased welfare services, equality for Indigenous Australians, and opposition to the White Australia Policy.

Indigenous rights

The Pilbara strike of 1946 for wages and improved conditions for Aborigines provided a model of solidarity for black and white unionists and sparked a series of similar actions for Aboriginal rights in Victoria and the NT in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Aboriginal organisations were formed in all states in the 1950s to press for civil rights as well as land rights. Initially these organisations were co-ordinated by both Aborigines and whites, but as time went by they came more and more under the control of indigenous activists. In the late 50s Faith Bandler began a 10-year campaign towards the 1967 referendum which enabled indigenous Australians to come under Commonwealth laws.

Peace & Disarmament

With so many countries ravaged by World War Two, peace and disarmament campaigns forged a powerful international people’s movement. People were frightened by the spectre of the atom bomb, its power revealed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first world peace conference was held in Paris in 1949. It sponsored an international petition against the atom bomb signed by 50,000 Australians. The Australian Peace Council was started in 1949 by three clergymen, one of whom was Frank Hartley, ‘the pink parson.’ The first Australian Peace Conference was held in Melbourne in 1950. Liberal Minster for Immigration Harold Holt claimed the international peace movement was driven by the Soviet Union in order to spread the influence of Communism. The Labor Party was also opposed to the peace movement, seeing it as a communist front. In 1950 a delegation of 25 Australians led by Jessie Street went to the second world peace conference in Warsaw, defying Harold Holt’s ban on their passports. Among them were Clarence Environment Centre life members Jim and Margaret Knight. The CEC was established from a donation of funds left from Grafton People for Peace, a group set up by Margaret and Jim. The peace groups agitated against Britain’s atomic testing at Woomera and Maralinga, and against the French tests in the Pacific Islands. They were strongly linked to the union movement and women’s groups.

Labour movements

In 1956, union membership in Australia was 1,690,200 - around 63% of the workforce. Today it’s about 20%. From the 1950s to the 1990s, building unions -now amalgamated into the CFMEU - opposed Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, were bitter opponents of nuclear weapons and their testing, supported indigenous civil rights and land rights, promoted environmental issues and heritage protection, and supported student and community groups across the whole spectrum of social issues including education, health, welfare and housing Many unions supported the peace movement.

Communist Party of Australia

By the end of World War Two the Australian Communist Party had 10,000 members and had peaked at 3.6% of the vote. Many people saw communism as a way towards social justice and a more positive future. In 1952 Menzies introduced a referendum proposing the banning of the party. The poet Dorothy Hewett in her autobiography ‘Wild Card’ describes her work in the Party at that time: writing leaflets, some of them illegal, cutting stencils, printing in Redfern backyard sheds, selling Tribune door to door, expecting to be arrested if the referendum received a YES. Expecting the worst, they burnt literature. The NO vote narrowly prevailed. The communist bogey provided a great standby for the 23 years of Liberal government from 1949 to 1972, both in scaring the population and smothering dissent. In 1951 Menzies reported to Cabinet on known and suspected communists in the public service.