‘Not on Your Life’: Cabinet and Liberalisation of the White Australia Policy, 1964–67

The liberalisation of the White Australia policy in the mid-1960s was a seminal event in Australian history. It marked the beginning of the end for the racial conception of society which had defined the federation since the late-nineteenth century. Cabinet’s discussions of the proposed changes during these years demonstrate that most Australian political leaders were not only fundamentally opposed to reform but also unconvinced by arguments emphasising the policy’s administrative inconsistencies, lack of humanitarianism and racially discriminatory features. Nor were they entirely swayed by arguments of diplomatic expediency, which had been advanced by senior Immigration and External Affairs officials since the 1950s. The decline of British race patriotism in the early 1960s weakened the ideological foundations of White Australia and allowed policy-makers to reconsider its foreign policy implications, especially in terms of Australia’s relations with Asia. Although cautious, the reforms of the mid-1960s represented an important break with the policy’s fundamental principles and provided the groundwork for further liberalisation and the formal abolition of White Australia in the 1970s.     

Disguised anti-colonialism: Protest against the White Australia Policy in Malaya and Singapore, 1947–1962

A manifestation of the anti-colonialist sentiment in Malaya and Singapore during the post-war period of decolonisation was the vociferous protest against the White Australia Policy. Australia's restrictive immigration policy was seen as an offensive colour bar, similar to the various racial restrictions that British authorities placed on their colonial subjects, which symbolised white dominance. By protesting against the White Australia Policy, the colonial subjects of the British in Malaya and Singapore were indirectly attacking white colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Antagonism towards the White Australia Policy became less vocal as Malaya and Singapore proceeded towards self-government and independence, when many of the colonial colour bars were removed. However, low-key resentment against what was seen as a symbol of white colonialism still persisted in relations with Australia.     

Who Pays the Ferryman? Industry Policy and Shipbuilding in Australia

The lightweight fast ferry industry that has emerged in Australia over the last couple of decades has been a remarkable and surprising success story. Given the contraction of manufacturing in general and traditional shipbuilding in particular, its growth is all the more noteworthy. This paper analyses the evolution of the industry and considers the impact of industry policy on its development. Although the effectiveness of industry policy in Australia has generally been undermined by a lack of political support and inadequate integration with other government policies, it was, nevertheless, an important part of this industry's expansion.     

Rethinking the Rise and Fall of the Malayan Security Service, 1946–48

An item of conventional wisdom in our understanding of the Malayan First Emergency is that the original security organisation, the Malayan Security Service (MSS), was a comprehensive failure, prompting its dissolution and replacement with the Malayan Special Branch. This article challenges that orthodoxy, arguing first that MSS actually produced accurate assessments of Malayan Communist capabilities and intentions prior to 1948 although the actual outbreak of violence did come as a tactical surprise. Second, recently released documents show that the abolition of the MSS arose instead from a protracted turf war over the control of intelligence in Malaya with the Security Service (MI5), particularly in the person of the latter's director general, Sir Percy Sillitoe . An outsider to the intelligence and defence communities, Sillitoe was disinclined to manage inter-agency disputes in the joint fashion that had developed during the Second World War, and instead marshalled opposition to the MSS in Whitehall that resulted it being dismantled. This in turn led to a breakdown in security intelligence activity, at the very start of the Emergency, that would not be fully resolved until the Malayan Special Branch became fully operational nearly four years later.     

Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Too many Scotlands? Place,the SNP,and the future of nationalist mobilization

Scottish nationalism has always had a ‘geographical problem’ in the sense that support for its central goal, the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom, has had much more backing in some regions and localities than it has had in others. In the 1970s and 1980s the geographical pattern to this support, at least as expressed in votes for the Scottish National Party (SNP), seemed very clear. Suddenly the picture changed between 2011 and 2016, to the extent that the whole of Scotland, notwithstanding the overall ‘No’ vote on Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum, seemed to be lining up to some degree or another in the ‘nationalist column.’ As quickly, this proved ephemeral. As of 2017, the future of the central goal of Scottish nationalism is once more in doubt because of a new geography of support and disaffection that seems to reflect a number of recent trends in attitudes towards voting for the SNP. The article maps the course of the older and newer geographies of Scottish nationalism in terms of the overall political economy of the country, given its proponents’ heavy emphasis on economic themes, and the ways this is refracted through place-to-place social and economic differences across the country.     

General Cariappa encounters ‘White Australia’: Australia,India and the commonwealth in the 1950s

There have been a number of studies of the White Australia policy and some examination of white Australia's relationship to the new, multiracial Commonwealth that emerged after the Second World War. Drawing extensively on Indian sources, this article examines how Australia was viewed by India's high commissioner to Australia and New Zealand, General K. M. Cariappa. In the period from September 1953 to April 1956 he sparked considerable controversy by suggesting that the White Australia policy ran the risk of alienating Asian opinion and undermining the Commonwealth ideal in India and Pakistan. Cariappa maintained a high public profile throughout his stay in Australia and was widely regarded as one of the most prominent diplomats posted to Canberra in the 1950s.     

The law,the citizen,and the state in nineteenth‐century Australia

The Invisible State: The Formation of the Australian State 1788–1901 by Alastair Davidson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xviii + 329. £40.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–36658–5.

The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales by David Neal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 266. £30.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–37264‐X.

Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales, 1810–1830 by Paula J. Byrne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv + 301. £37.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–40379–0.     

Contesting Foreign Policy: Disagreement between the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War on the Shatt al-Arab Dispute with Iran, 1912–13

The Shatt al-Arab question has been the subject of several studies, most of which concentrate on the internationalization of the subject. However, few, if any, works have analyzed how this territorial dispute was perceived within Ottoman bureaucratic circles. When the Ottoman Empire reinstated a constitutional monarchy in 1908, the Ottoman–Iranian border dispute regarding the Shatt al-Arab had to be readdressed, with international players involved in the process. Considering the role of foreign factors, this study focuses on the contesting interests of the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War on the Shatt al-Arab question (1912–13) and considers how these interests shaped foreign policy in the process of negotiating a resolution.     

White skin,black heart? 1 The politics of belonging and Native Title in Australia

This paper explores the ways in which local communities are articulating, negotiating and contesting relationships with place. It does this through a case study of place contestation in the Barmah-Millewa Forest, in south-eastern Australia. A Native Title Claim by the local indigenous community to land and inland waters was heard in the Australian Federal Court while this research was conducted. This has provided an avenue through which to explore the politics of place and identity in contemporary Australia. Recent theoretical discussions of place and identity and their manifestations in Australia are discussed in this paper. Through the case study, the paper demonstrates the complex and problematic ways in which place and identity can be constructed in Native Title Claims, and the intense and unsettling politics of claims to 'belonging' that result. It argues that whilst there is a need to recognize the desire for profound attachments to place of all Australians, we must be mindful of the political ramifications of the particular responses of local communities. The paper concludes that ongoing interdisciplinary and theoretically informed empirical research is necessary to understand the complex context of people-place relationships in settler societies.     

The dismantling of the White Australia policy: elite conspiracy or will of the Australian people?

The White Australia policy was both an immigration policy and a nationalist doctrine which reflected Australia's desire to maintain itself as a white, British nation. Its abolition in 1973 created the conditions for the multicultural society Australia has become. Nevertheless, sporadic immigration controversies during the past two decades suggest the residual influence of this doctrine. Some commentators even claim that contemporary conflicts are the legacy of a reform process implemented by political leaders without the knowledge and consent of the Australian people. This article examines the factors and processes which compelled the dismantling of White Australia. It shows that assertions of an elite conspiracy to abolish it are exaggerated, failing to take into account the incrementalist nature of the public policy process in Australia and general public acceptance of policy reform.     

The communist party of Australia and the eighty‐one parties conference

In November 1960 a conference of eighty‐one communist parties convened in Moscow to try to resolve serious differences which had arisen between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Communist Party of China (CPC or CCP). It was ‘probably the most important gathering of its kind in the entire history of Communism’ (Zagoria 1962:343).

Several years later the position adopted at that conference by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) became the subject of an acrimonious and inconclusive controversy between pro‐Soviet and pro‐Chinese elements in the Australian party.

Of various scholars who commented on the CPA's stance, almost all ([Rigby] 1964:37; Mayo‐Wren 1981:87; Turner 1961:7; Turner 1965:154) claimed categorically that the CPA's delegates, Sharkey and Dixon, backed China. However in one exhaustive account of the conference (Griffith 1962) the CPA did not appear among the CPC's partisans. Most observers outside Australia relied heavily on Kremlinologist Edward Crankshaw. Crankshaw originally omitted the CPA from his list of pro‐Chinese parties (1962:10) but later revised his account (1963:61; 1965:120, 134).¹

In the standard historical work on the CPA Davidson (1969:160,152) qualified the notion that the CPA had supported China. ‘After a careful study of various views’ he concluded:

At the conference of eighty‐one communist parties in Moscow in 1960 the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) supported the Chinese interpretation of Marxist‐Leninist doctrine in preference to that of the Soviet party. Previous emphasis on the CPA's commitment to international communist unity has tended to obscure and even deny this.     

Walking the Thin Line: India's Anti-Racist Diplomatic Practice in South Africa,Canada, and Australia, 1946–55

Historians of India's foreign policy have often failed to see beyond the ‘Great man’ Jawaharlal Nehru. This Nehru-centric vision is not only misleading, but also unfair to Nehru. Here, we seek to take the gaze off Nehru and New Delhi so as to view Indian foreign policy from different locations. We examine the ways in which India's diplomats in Australia, Canada, and South Africa resisted racial discrimination. India's anti-racist diplomacy has most often been viewed as pointless moralistic ranting: the domain of the ‘hypersensitive, emotional’ Indian. We argue, however, based on largely unexamined archival material and an emphasis on the practice of Indian diplomacy, that India's diplomats in these bastions of settler-colonial racism were tactful, strategic, and effective in challenging racist, colonial practices and bringing an anti-racist discourse to international politics. Nehruvian foreign-policy discourse, and its goal of an anti-racist world order, then, was tempered by its diplomatic practices. In particular, this occurred outside of New Delhi in places where India's hopes for productive international relationships clashed with its Nehruvian worldview.