Socialist Party Australia - Anti-conscription victory in Oz during WW1

The successful fight against conscription in Australia during World War One and the general shift to the left in this period is important for all workers interested in their history. Anti-consription mass movements, a General Strike, unions calls for One Big Union and Socialism as the central objective of the ALP is not something you learn at school. What follows is a shortened transcript of the lead-off at the two Melbourne branch meetings last week on this issue, making up part 3 of their sessions on the history of Revolution and Counter-Revolution.

We are not against or for conscription as a matter of principal, it depends on the circumstances. We oppose conscription of young people to fight in imperialist wars. We would support conscription to defend a workers' state against imperialism (eg Red Army in young Soviet Union, during Spanish Civil War). In capitalist countries where conscription is a fact of life, we would not actively oppose it but rather get our members to go into the army and agitate.

Ausralia was founded as a penal colony and this effected the consciousness of the masses. They were anti-establishment, anti-military state. The capitalist state was weak and divided. There were problems even for the bosses to keep workers working, especially during the gold rush!

Australia, isolated from the world, needed no armies - let alone conscript armies, thought many workers.

From the 1880s the situation changed with the age of imperialism and manufacturing in Australia. War transformed technology making it necessary for mass armies to fight modern wars. This necessitated conscription as far as the ruling class was concerned.

The White Australia Policy - the glue that tied the local capitalists to the leaders of the workers' movement - encouraged racism. During the Sudan war in the 1880s and later during the Boer War, there were many youth volunteering to fight, meaning conscription in Australia was unnecessary.

The ruling class wanted an Australian conscript army to be at the service of British imperialism.

Fisher, the ALP Prime Minister at the start of the war declared: "we will fight to the last man and last shilling".

In 1911 cadet training was introduced, starting at 14, at 18 youth joined the citizens army. 27,000 people were prosecuted for not registering.

In August 1914 the war began and in Europe the forces of the Second International betrayed workers by supporting their respective bourgeoisie and sending their members to fight the enemy. Only a handful of internationalists such as Luxumburg, Trotsky, and Lenin stood against the tide.

In Australia there was a pro-war mood at the start of the war. 53,000 people enrolled voluntarily with 23,000 of them being trade unionists.

Soon, like in Europe, the mood changed as workers died and got injured, inflation increased, and living standards plummeted. The mood strengthened after the failed Easter Uprising in Dublin in Easter 1916, with the victorious British forces executing the leaders, including the socialist James Connolly.

The driving force behind the growing anti-war mood were the International Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies. This syndicalist group had come out of the US and was extremely active amongst workers.

Of their leaflets declared: “LET THOSE WHO OWN AUSTRALIA DO THE FIGHTING “Put the wealthiest in the front ranks; the middle class next; follow these with politicians, lawyers, sky pilots and judges. Answer the declaration of war with the call for a GENERAL STRIKE … Don’t go to Hell in order to give piratical, plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of Heaven.

“WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! DON’T BECOME MURDERERS! DON’T JOIN THE ARMY OR NAVY!”

The IWW were not armed with a political perspective beyond organising on the shopfloor, so while they were clearly anti-racist (during this period that is say feat!) and internationalist, they allowed de facto the ALP to dominate the political sphere. However their work was instrumental to the anti-conscription victories.

Other forces in this movement were the Irish population/Catholic Church (influential in the ALP) who opposed the war as they opposed supporting England and a certain racist component who argued that sending Australian troops to Europe would leave the continent vulnerable to the Yellow Peril from Japan.

The propaganda of the IWW and others plus the disasters in Europe led to a drop-off in volunteers and a bigger need by the ruling class for conscription.

In 1916 a strike wave began with a huge 1.5 million working days lost. The Broken Hill Miners struck with the slogan: “if you want a 44-hour week, just take it”. The unions in NSW set up Industrial Sections inside the ALP to fight for socialism and union causes in general. At that time, of course, the ALP was a bourgeois workers’ party unlike now when it is a bourgeois party out and out.

There were stopworks against conscription in the September 1916. The Labor Volunteer Army was established to protect pickets and anti-conscription rallies and meetings, dishing out many beatings to pro-war diggers who attack these events. The IWW grew to 4,000 members with its paper Direct Action selling 15,000 each issue.

In 1916 the first conscription referendum was narrowly lost by the Billy Hughes-led ALP Federal government. In late 1916 the unions expelled Hughes from the party while still PM because of his continued agitation for conscription. He promptly linked up with the capitalist parties to form the Nationalist Party and stay as Prime Minister – albeit leading the Right instead of the ALP.

In 1917 the movement moved to a new higher level with the General Strike in NSW which began with the Randwick Workshop workers were made by management to accept a card system to make them work faster. The struck and were supported by the coal miners and wharfies and many other workers. This was Australia’s first General Strike. However without the rank and file leader not having a clear perspective and programme to spread the strike and organise against the scabs and state repression, the strike was defeated. This led to greater repression against the IWW including a set-up where 12 members were charged with planning to burn down Sydney!

Hughes called a second referendum for conscription which led to bitter rallies. One rally in Queensland led to Hughes being attacked by workers. The police refused to defend the Prime Minister and when he returned to Canberra he established the Australian Federal Police.

A taste of how the growing anti-war mood was developing comes from this letter from a digger in the frontline to his loved one in Australia:
Victor Voules Brown wrote:
"Last time you wrote you wanted to know why it was the troops in France did not vote for conscription. I told you as short as I could perhaps it was censored so will tell you again. To cut it short the boys in France have had such a doing of it, that they consider it murder (or near enough to it) to compel anymore to come from Aussie. And then again they consider once conscription is brought in it is the end of a free Australia (No doubt about it John Australia is the finest country in the world to my idea. When the vote for conscription took place I was in Codford & I voted yes, but dinkum I am like the rest now I have seen it, & wouldn’t compel anyone (barring the few rotters of single chaps that won't come. And of course to get them one would have to get a lot of others, so under the circumstances let them stop at home. It is no good for a peaceful life over there & I can tell you I am not looking forward to the next dose".

The referendum was defeated by an even bigger majority.

The General Strike defeat led to a turn by workers to the political front. Unions began agitating for One Big Union (OBU) in the ALP and in the class in general. At the 1919 ALP Conference advocates for OBU and for the party to make socialism the single policy at the next election narrowly lost by 127-112 votes. Unfortunately instead of building on this powerful position, they left and established the illfated Industrial Socialist Labor Party.

Nevertheless the ALP continued to move to the left, influenced by the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Socialist Objective was introduced, later watered down by the rightwing.

By the early 1920s the strike wave had ebbed and the rightwing bureaucrats had re-established an uneasy control over the party. The Communist Party was established and Lenin encouraged them to enter into the ALP to influence it to the left in a period where building the revolutionary alternative after the peaks of the past were temporarily over. They had to prefer for the next wave of struggle which came during the depression of the 1930s.