There’s a detailed account of the events referred to in the article above  in the the Wikipedia entry for Sir John Kerr.

Anita, these events occurred 30 years ago  and  in addition to this, a significant proportion of people reading this forum are not Australians and therefore probably don’t have the foggiest about the 1975 constitutional crisis that led to the sacking of Gough Whitlam’s government!  I think we should try not to be too parochial…..and this invloves making sure that we provide the necessary background information when posting about events which are not ‘public knowledge’.

Anyway.... back to the dismissal of Gough Whitlam....

I notice that the “left” is still referring to what happened as a “coup” eg the following  was posted on the GreenLeft website Just recently (November 11):

The enduring political significance of the coup lies in the fact that it demonstrated, in a particularly dramatic form, how ruthlessly the ruling class is prepared to defend its interests. Behind the assiduously cultivated façade of parliamentary democracy lies the organised violence of the capitalist state, ready to be called upon when needed.

• Never mind that all John Kerr really did was to insist that an immediate  general election be held.  
• Never mind that prior to this he had given  Whitlam the opportunity to call a general election himself - and Whitlam had refused. 
• And never mind that when the election happened the Labour Party  suffered a landslide defeat.

The pseudo- left dismissal of  the recent Iraqi elections is a continuation of the same style of thinking.   It indicates  a  deep misunderstanding  of the meanings of  words like "fascist", "coup" and "democracy" as well a contempt for people  as gullible victims of manipulation.

Governments should have to face the electorate more often, not less often

Well of course populism can be a problem. The majority isn’t always right, people embrace all sorts of backward ideas etc etc.  But the solution can’t be to support having  restrictions on the democratic process.  If there is popular support for backward or reactionary policies then it's up to progressive people to fight for better ideas. The way I see it, the more opportunities for people to have their say, the more opportunities are provided for genuine struggle and the overall lifting of the general level of debate and understanding.

I remember this happening  on a  small scale in the Melbourne Moratorium debates in Richmond Town Hall (1970's).  As far as I know, the Melbourne Moratorium was run differently from the Moratoriums in other Australian  cities because rather than being organised  from on high by a committee,  the major decisions were taken by open public meetings where policy issues were subject to a debate followed by a vote.

As a consequence the  Melbourne moratorium policies were far to the left of anywhere else in Australia – eg here the USwas clearly labeled as an imperialist aggressor whereas in other places the policies were mainly pacifist.  When there is genuine debate about things, the better ideas do tend to win out.  It is lack of discussion and lack of opportunity to engage in any sort of democratic process which leads to the persistence of reactionary ideas.

If the voting system here in Australia was based on proportional representation this would break the current two party system but it would also have the effect of giving representation to all sorts of smallish groups – many of them with more reactionary policies than  either Labour or Liberal. It would also lead to more unstable government.  But I’d see both these things as good relative to the situation we have now. Anything which opens things up and gives people more of a  chance to engage with the issues of the day has to be a good thing from a progressive perspective.

I think this has been happening in Iraq.  Opponents of regime change have talked endlessly of the dangers of democracy in Iraq claiming that the result would be an Islamic state. the Iraqis aren't ready for democracy, there's no chance of the Shia, Kurds and Sunnis working things out, what they need is a strong leader etc etc.

If there  was to be an election in the  US  aimed at trying to bring down  Bush and his policies  then  the issues wouod have to be fought out.    I think that would  be a good thing.  

Great to see Anita republishing stuff from "Red Politics". Already seems to have raised the level of discussion by provoking deeper thought on both imperialism and "The Dismissal". Hope this stuff gets properly integrated into the folder navigation structure of the site for permanent reference rather than lost in more ephemeral forum discussions. Also hope to see us starting to write articles like that from a current perspective (and David, who wrote both of those and many other excellent articles more than a decade ago, adding some more).

This topic has already branched into two additional issues of more contemporary and global (non-Australian) significance - "Revolutionary Democracy" (including the dialectics of leadership and mass line in broad struggles we have had experience of such as the student movement and Vietnam solidarity movement and "Constitutional Reform" (including electoral systems).

I'd like to see both of those separated out into topics of their own (and will do so myself if not beaten to it). Bill's points about populism, majoritarianism, biting the bullet and not being limited by process is of even deeper relevance to how revolutionary democrats build mass movements (and how they organize themselves) than it is to how governments should be organized in modern western societies. We didn't achieve the wider extended democracy favourable to left politics that keza refers to in either the student movement or the Vietnam war protests by accepting majority rule - we were a very small minority and loudly denounced as undemocratic by our opponents - but we avoided isolation by tight leadership following a mass line.

On "The Dismissal" itself, that's precisely what the ALP did not do. Looking through the wikipedia article, their "radical" reforms - hysterically opposed by the conservative opposition at the time - were pretty tame then and are conventional wisdom now. When Harold Holt was denouncing Whitlam for betraying the American alliance by proposing to recognize China, Kissinger was already in secret negotiations with Peking.

The ALP government tore itself apart with no tight leadership and made no serious effort to mobilize the masses for its reform program. Instead they absorbed much of what had previously been anti-government and anti-system activism into a new caste of do gooders funded by government - completely gutting the activist movement that had been developing against their more conservative predecessors.

The sordid constitutional maneuverings on all sides were pathetic - bribing an opposition senator with an ambassadorial post to Ireland to gain a vote for the government, state governments appointing replacement senators opposed to the party of deceased senators to gain a vote for the opposition, the governor-general not warning the Prime Minister of his intention to dismiss him etc etc.

But on the fundamental issue, Fraser was open and above board in declaring his intention to bring down the government by blocking supply and mobilized the people in opposition to government policies, while Whitlam made no attempt to mobilize the people in defence of his policies but instead tried to minimize the landslide against his government by demagogic attempts to deflect popular anger through making the decision to call an election the central issue.

In the USA the Executive government with a fixed term in office is often dominated by one party while Congress is dominated by another and conflicts between the two occasionally result in the Federal Government grinding to a halt due to supply being cut by Congress.

Australia (wisely or not) deliberately chose the Westminster system of the executive being responsible to Parliament instead of fixed term governments. Whitlam tried to "crash through" in a system where the ultimate result of the opposition refusing to back down could only be a crash (before or after supply ran out, depending on the Governor-General).

Instead of defending his program, Whitlam tried to deflect attention of ALP supporters from his leadership failure by demagoguery against "colonial relics". This worked and there is still deep anger among ALP supporters about this "betrayal of democracy" by holding an election, while Whitlam remains a party hero.

Its complete and utter phoniness was highlighted by the "Republican" fiasco in which the ALP proposed to remove the colonial relic while retaining EXACTLY the same system that led to the Dismissal.

In reality the only "colonial relic" involved was the ALP which, for the first time in Australian history actually appealed to the British (Labor) government to directly intervene in Australian affairs when the Speaker of the House asked the Queen to act on the advice of her imperial British Ministers rather than her Australian Ministers to refuse to hold the election advised by her Australian Ministers. Naturally the British government and the Queen did no such thing (and in fairness the ALP could not have imagined that they would but was just engaged in more demagoguery in appealing to the Queen).

I was outside Australia during the whole period leading up to The Dismissal and so missed out on the developing atmosphere. But it was quite stunning on coming back to find so much latent support for the ALP among leftists who had previously been completely contemptuous of it - with genuine anger about how "our" party had been viciously deposed by such undemocratic means as holding a (CIA inspired, fascist, etc etc) election at which it had been undemocratically rejected by a landslide due to the ignorance of the unwashed masses about the importance of governmental stability!

This really was an early warning about the tendencies that have now shown themselves more fully in the current collapse of the left in the face of the pseudo-left. Perhaps that historical event, as well as the Red Eureka Movement discussion about international questions was a factor in why there seems to be greater clarity about the pseudos in Australia than elsewhere.

I was outside Australia during the whole period leading up to The Dismissal and so missed out on the developing atmosphere. But it was quite stunning on coming back to find so much latent support for the ALP among leftists who had previously been completely contemptuous of it - with genuine anger about how "our" party had been viciously deposed by such undemocratic means as holding a (CIA inspired, fascist, etc etc) election at which it had been undemocratically rejected by a landslide due to the ignorance of the unwashed masses about the importance of governmental stability!

I was a member of the CPA(ML) at the time, in 1975, and the party line was that it was indeed a semi-fascist coup. But this was not seen, as I recall it, only in terms of CIA involvement but in terms of superpower contention. Whitlam had recognized Soviet domination of the Baltic states and had been friendly to the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society. There was also some minor stuff happening with the Moscow Narodny bank in Australia which was also meant to clinch the argument. I don't think Whitlam ever threatened the US bases in Australia but rather sought joint US-Australia control over Pine Gap. The CIA didn't need to do much, as world events such as the oil crisis, plus the Labor government's own incompetence as a manager of capitalism, brought it down. Whitlam lost the plot, even in his own social democratic terms, and turned to the fascist regime in Iraq to raise election funds which he could never raise from the Australian working people.

I look back on the semi-fascist coup analysis now with a sense of bewilderment. The writ by which Whitlam was sacked specified that a caretaker government be appointed and that an election be held. There's nothing fascistic about that. Why then did people who had good leftwing credentials pursue that line?

I think part of the reason relates to the fact that the struggles over the big issues like Vietnam, censorship, White Australia Policy, and apartheid, in which the Left did win ground, had been more or less successful. The resultant absence of issues, or vacuum, led to frustration and recrimination within the Left and a desire, by some of us, including me, to try to keep something alive that was really gone.

The religious type of analysis that saw dialectics in terms of constant progress with people's struggles intensifying and going from victory to victory with every new year's issue of Vanguard led those who accepted it into a dead end. When people close their minds, as I did, to debate and exchange of ideas, and instead conglomerate within a very small sect (within a sect), then they can't possibly understand revolutionary theory and they have lost touch with reality. ("All that is real is rational"). They become self-satisfied opponents of everyone else, praised and egged on by respected veterans.

People like me applied themselves to the 'semi-fascist coup' issue with similar dedication as we applied ourselves to supporting the Vietnamese liberation struggle, the struggle against apartheid, etc. Being militantly active was part of the religious ritual, evidence of our 'superiority' - ie, we were making real sacrifices on demonstrations - and a substitute for critical thinking. I look back on it with regret and embarrassment but also think it a big pity as there were some astute minds zombified by that sect. Very few of them today take a progressive line on things like Iraq and globalisation.

Yes, there were people saying good things and the republication of the 'Red Eureka' material on this site shows that its analysis was pretty good and stands up well to this day.

On Whitlam, it interests me that the reforms that are applauded and held up by his supporters generally do not include those that were most significant. Sometimes, the claims made for him are not even accurate. I have written a few times over the years to the ABC to get them to correct the oft-quoted claim that Whitlam withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam. This is a nonsense, as the ground troops were withdrawn by Gorton by Christmas 1971 - a tribute to the effectiveness of the Vietnamese struggle and that of its Australian supporters, and also indicative of Australian governmental subservience to US policy changes. There was only a small Australian military group left in South Vietnam in 1972). Even the claim that Whitlam abolished conscription is wrong - he merely suspended the National Service Act by regulation (which was a good thing, as it freed the few remaining imprisoned draft resisters). (It was rescinded many years later).

The recognition of China would have happened anyway - my old friend Joe Forace, late lamented, was Malta's High Commisisoner to Australia and Ambassador to China and was the go-between for Liberal Prime Minister McMahon with Chou En Lai. The McMahon Government did much groundwork - Joe used to say that Whitlam merely signed on the line.

Similarly the White Australia Policy had been gradually 'liberalised' allowing for categories of Asians to settle here permanently. McMahon would also have done what Whitlam did in abolishing al racial criteria - maybe he would have been slower. Who knows?

Even the multicultural thing is not entirely a Whitlam era acheivement. Grants had been given to migrant/ethnic community organisations prior to Whitlam. Fraser did much more than Whitlam to institutionalise multiculturalism.

The most significant Whitlam reform - the one that his fans seem to want to ignore - was his government's reversal of nearly 75 years of national protectionist policy. Whitlam was nearly roasted alive by the reactionary unions when he slashed tariffs by 25 percent. And his government was the first to tell the rural sector that they had to get real and could no longer expect to be propped up by government funding regardless of competitiveness. Remember the good ole days when margarine was controversial and the Country Party was warning everyone that it was produced by soap manufacturers?

So, in sum, I think Whitlam's acheivements tend to be overblown and his real ones overlooked.

The Australian people voted against him, in an election that had to happen because of the nature of the writs creating the dismissal. Lots of former revoultionary leftists joined the ALP at the time, which probably made more sense than remaining in the CPA(ML).

Barry