In Toowong Cemetery there is a tomb known as the Temple of Peace which in November last year turned 90. Designed and raised by Industrial Workers of the World radical Richard Ramo, the temple commemorates his three sons killed at Gallipoli, Belgium and the Western Front. Its dedication ceremony in 1924 was attended by thousands to listen as Ramo called for global working class unity and an end to war. Inscribed across the monument are slogans including “There is no Heaven! We shall not meet again. Make thy Heaven here and thou shalt not have lived in vain.”
Yet the authenticity of this monument has come under attack, first from Murdoch’s Sunday Mail in 2001 and again last year by the ABC, which picked up the claim, put forth by former Australian War Memorial curator Judith McKay, that two of the sons never died in the war and that a fourth adopted son, also buried at the temple, was in fact Ramo’s homosexual lover. As the Spring Hill Voice pointed out, however, there “is nothing ‘mysterious’ about Toowong's Temple of Peace - unless you’re a fascist, war mongering historical revisionist.”
That we should see attacks on what little there is commemorating anarchist, socialist, pacifist and other efforts to halt the First World War, one of the most brutal and sadistic conflicts in human history, is unsurprising and even expected. Meanwhile, some A$140 million is being spent by the government, with private donations, to commemorate the landing at Gallipoli this year. This in itself is problematic- while other countries commemorate the end of the WWI, the landing at Gallipoli is being commemorated in Australia, that is, the beginning of Australia’s involvement in the war. For those who aren’t familiar with the landing at Gallipoli, it was undertaken by the British on the initiative of then-Minister of War Winston Churchill at the request of the soon-to-be-overthrown Russian Tsar Nicholas II in order to relieve pressure on the Eastern Front. Australian and New Zealand troops were considered by the British to be a colonial auxiliary army. The force that landed at Gallipoli was eventually defeated after eight months by Turkish troops, some under the command of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk who would later become the first President of Turkey. It is this minor campaign, in the grand scheme of World War One, to which Australia apparently owes its national identity, where being Australian became associated with bravery, sacrifice and mateship, as if those attributes cannot be found in any other people around the world.
The reality of the First World War was recognised by groups such as the anarcho-syndicalist influenced Industrial Workers of the World; it was an inter-imperialist struggle between the capitalist powers to gain dominance over global markets and the profits reaped through the exploitation of colonies in what is now called the Global South. The conflict cost the lives of over ten million people and laid the foundations of the even bloodier Second World War. Yet Australians did not mindlessly support the war as the dominant narrative today suggests. When the Labor Prime Minister at the time, Billy Hughes, attempted to introduce conscription, he was met with the threat of a general strike and was twice defeated when bringing the proposal to public referendum. Despite this, anti-conscription activists were mercilessly prosecuted. Tom Barker, the editor of the IWW’s Direct Action, produced a now famous poster reading “TO ARMS! Capitalists, Parsons, Politicians, Landlords, Newspaper Editors and other Stay-At-Home-Patriots- Your country needs YOU in the trenches!! WORKERS! Follow your masters!” The poster was described by NSW’s parliament as “a more serious matter than Germans in our midst” and subsequently Barker was held in jail for a week and fined £50 (today roughly $4000). Unrepentant, Barker not long afterwards published a cartoon by Syd Nicholls that portrayed a crucified soldier with a capitalist collecting his blood in a skull labelled ‘war profit- wage slave extract’, captioned with the subtlety renowned for the time, “Long Live the War! Hip, Hip ’Ooray! Fill ‘Em Up Again!” This time, Barker was sentenced to twelve months hard labour under the War Precautions Act. A further twelve IWW members were charged in 1916 in the lead up to the first conscription referendum in a blatant attempt to intimidate the public, with Hughes stating that the IWW “must be attacked with the ferocity of a Bengal tiger.” In an attempt to associate the IWW with criminality, the murder of a policeman was pinned on two members of the Tottenham branch of the IWW, Frank Franz, a 28 year-old married labourer, and Roland Nicholas Kennedy, a 20 year-old copper miner. Both were executed despite the fact that the only ‘evidence’ linking them to the murder was their membership to the militantly anti-conscription IWW, with Kennedy being hanged even though the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence! Just as today, the mainstream media played its role as the justifier of injustice, screaming hysterically in the Sydney Mirror, “the I.W.W. is dominated on the one hand by German money and German influence and, on the other hand by a gang of America and other foreign criminals who will stop at nothing to achieve their wicked ends”. Although the IWW was decimated by state oppression, others took up the struggle against the war, including the Women’s Peace Army, with its slogan “We War against War!” and Arch Bishop Mannix of Melbourne’s Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, all of this is today obliterated from the history books. The Department of Veteran Affairs, with its budget of $6 billion for school programs, would never be caught discussing the role that the anti-conscription movement played in preventing the deaths of thousands of young Australians, let alone the fact that even veterans of Gallipoli refused to take part in Anzac ceremonies out of disgust for the war. To question Anzac Day, as Marilyn Lake wrote in What’s Wrong with Anzac? (2010), is to “court the charge of treason”. Nevertheless, there have been no shortage of challenges to the dominant myth of Anzac Day, that war, in particular the attack at Gallipoli, is the foundation of Australian identity. Feminist groups have taken an important role in this challenge, pointing out the role of war in perpetuating dominant masculine narratives and the frequency of rape in war. In the 1970’s, Women Against Rape in War attempted to claim Anzac Day as a day of mourning, attacking the celebration and glorification of war. In 1980s, the Anti-Anzac Day Collective called for the complete abolition of Anzac Day. When they attempted to raise anti-war banners at the Shrine of Remembrance in 1984, 17 women were arrested by police. The reaction of the establishment was, of course, to resort to personal smear, with Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton claiming, “If one looked at them, I wonder how rape would be possible.”
To call into question the Anzac’s role as the foundation of Australian identity begs the question, what is Australian identity? Indeed, the establishment is extremely protective of the narrative as it currently exists. The federal Minister for Education and Training, Christopher Pyne has, for example, stated his intention to put an end to the so-called ‘black armband’ view of history in schools in favour of stronger emphasis on British history in Australia and Anzac Day. Instead of serious discussion concerning the genocide committed against Australia’s First People, we are to hear endless repetitions of the story of Simpson and his donkey. Gallipoli and the Anzac ‘tradition’ have been used to drum up support for every war Australia has participated in since, no matter how unjust; Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others, but of course nothing is mentioned of the trauma, death and grief that inevitably results from such conflicts, including to Australian soldiers. In April last year, the ADF reported that 8% of its troops have PTSD. Iraq veteran Chad Dobbs claimed the number was far higher, but few were willing to admit it, citing himself as an example; “When I put my hand up, I was basically told to ‘fuck off’. The second time I did, I was told I was lying.” Meanwhile, the history of the anti-war movement is distorted or cast aside, smeared, omitted and belittled. With nationalism on the march again worldwide, we would do well to pay attention to the message the Temple of Peace offers; “Our last message to the mothers of all nations: ‘bring peace on Earth; save thy sons and daughters from the god of war; and all generations will call ye blessed.’”
The portion on the IWW’s anti-conscription struggle was influenced heavily by Joe Toscano of the Anarchist Media Institute’s pamphlet The Anzac Myth.
Help with designing an IWW anniversary plaque
