The DHLA held its
12th AGM and the 3rd Margaret Jones Memorial Lecture at Minhs
Restaurant in Dulwich Hill on January 30. Andrew Moore, Associate
Professor of History at the University of Western Sydney (and
author of The Secret Army and the Premier), gave the
talk. About 20 members and guests attended.
Andrew began by explaining
the reason for his talk. He had, suddenly and unexpectedly,
found himself recently an unwilling combatant in the history
wars (a term coined by Professor Stuart Macintyre to categorise
the academic reaction to what historian Geoffrey Blainey first
called the black armband version of [Australian] history).
(This latter term was intended by Blainey normally regarded
as a right-wing historian to criticise the contemporary
theme of guilt in the historical treatment of the role of Aboriginal
matters in Australian history.)
Andrews portrayal
of right-wing extremism in (mainly) the between-wars period
as tending towards fascism had come under criticism by, again,
a mainly right-wing source, spearheaded by ex-Liberal staffer
(and now head of a Sydney think-tank, The Sydney Institute)
Gerard Henderson.
Henderson had written
that Andrews portrayal (in, for example, The Secret
Army and the Premier) was biassed by Andrew's openly Labor
point of view. Henderson questioned Andrews main assertion/conclusion
that right-wing para-military activity, often behind the scene,
had been a major factor in Australian politics and society in
the between-war years. According to Henderson there was no fascist
activity in inter-war Australia, and no danger of civil war
in 1932, the year Governor Game dismissed Premier Lang.
This view was subsequently
taken up by an academic historian, Richard Evans. Writing in
the the scholarly journal History Australia in 2008,
Evans had said that Andrew had greatly exaggerated the role
and importance of para-military right-wing activity in the period
under question, and that in fact what Andrew had called the
Old Guard did not really exist. Andrew, he argued, was
conflating minor, sporadic anti-Labor activism, often by ex-servicemen,
into an organisation that had no substantive existence.
Needless to say,
this undermined much of Andrews academic work indeed,
his lifes work - and constituted a direct refutation and
denial of, among other things, The Darroch Thesis (that DH Lawrence
ran across a secret army in Sydney in 1922, and that his Australian
novel Kangaroo was a thinly-fictionalised account of
that encounter).
Andrew began his
talk by confessing that it was he who had first coined the term
The Darroch Thesis (in an exchange with Lawrence
scholar Dr Bruce Steele in Overland). He outlined the
present dispute and reiterated his position as a now combatant
in the history wars. He strongly reasserted his belief in the
Darroch Thesis.
He then gave a brief
sketch of the evidence that supported his account of the Old
Guard and their between-wars activity. He said that it had been
born out of the activities of the farmers army
that had been recruited in 1917 to combat a transport strike
in NSW. He told of how this organisation was turned into a standing
reserve of secret soldiers that would be reactivated by its
leaders whenever Labor activity appeared to become threatening.
Robert Whitelaw (right) and John Ruffells listen to Andrew's
talk
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He mentioned that
Jack Scott was one of its leaders, and he supported Darrochs
identification of him as one of the characters portrayed by
Lawrence in Kangaroo. He told how this organisation spawned
Eric Campbells New Guard in 1931, and that it continued
on into the late 1930s after Lang was sacked.
Andrew said that
the contrast between the scant evidence Evans and Henderson
were advancing, and the overwhelming evidence for the existence
of the Old Guard, was so great that it was hardly worth serious
attention.
Robert Darroch himself
then reported on the latest developments in the Darroch Thesis
saga (see Secret Army Diary - cf. DHLA home page). Then the
societys AGM was held, with all the existing office-holders
being re-elected, en bloc, by acclamation.
And thus yet another
pleasant DHLA function came to a satisfactory conclusion.
(Members may be
interested in reading the full text of Andrew's response to
Richard Evans in History Australia, December 2009. The
title of his article is Superintendent MacKay and the
curious case of the vanishing secret army: a response to Richard
Evans. It is available online via Monash University E-Press.)
R