Axis of Hope: papers

Tom Uren: Australian Peace Movements, Then and Now

Tom Uren is an activist and a former federal Labor minister.

Chairperson and our distinguished guests and fellow speaker and comrades and friends. Well, it's a privilege for me to be here tonight. I'm only going to speak from twelve to fifteen minutes and I was asked to make a thumb-sketch approach to my involvement in the anti-war movement and the peace movement. And may I say at the outset, I'd like to pay my respect to the Eora people, our indigenous people that own this land.

As a young person, I was twenty years of age, I was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese militarists on the western end or the western part of Timor. I spent the next three and a half years in incarceration and the first year was in what was then the Dutch East Indies, of course we now know it as Indonesia. The next year and a half I spent on the Burma-Thailand Railway and to top off the Cooks' Tour, the last year of the war they took me to Japan. In the last three months of that war, of that year, I was at a place called [Imuta], about eighty kilometres as the crow flies from Nagasaki. And I saw the discolouration of the sky of the second dropping of the bomb on humankind. Now, at the time, as a young soldier, I was glad the war was over. We were all very ill and we wanted to get home. But as I've grown to understand the outcome of nuclear arms and nuclear war and the nuclear industry, I believe that the dropping of that bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a crime against humanity.

I was elected to the Federal Parliament in 1958, in fact I remained a minister, it's true, until 87, but I never retired as a member until 1990. My first experience about the peace movement, anti-war movement, I was always anti-war, but I was never part of a collective struggle. And my first experience was when Jim Cairns invited me to participate in the Melbourne anti-nuclear conference in Melbourne in 59. I might say, I've been a part of the peace movement or anti-war movement the rest of my life. The two main speakers, I might say, at that conference at that time were J. B. Priestley and his wife [Chiceva] Hawkes. There was some great controversy about the conference in those days as they kept saying it was a communist front organisation and we'd talk about a peace conference, they'd always talk about peace in inverted commas. In those days, nuclear testing in the atmosphere, if the British or Americans exploded a bomb, they were clean bombs. But if the Russians or the Soviet Union as it was then, exploded their bombs, they were dirty bombs, [inaudible two or three words] and other such things contaminated and of course created cancer to so many people. The peace movement continued to oppose all testing in the atmosphere and in 1963 a partial test ban treaty was agreed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. China and France continued to test. Finally we were able to achieve cessation of all tests in the atmosphere and, of course, the underground tests. And, of course, the last great victory, of course, was the stopping of the French testing in the Pacific Islands.

Now, another great struggle of our peace movement and anti-war movement was the White Australia Policy. When I joined the parliament in 58, we had a White Australia Policy. In fact, the Labor Party never changed its policy until 1965 and the first step to break that down was made by Holt in 1966. When the Whitlam Government took over in 72 to 75, we of course developed it further and opened it up much more. And that, in fact from 75 until the last federal election, when Howard used the Tampa and the children overboard [lure] of both religious and every basis of racism, we were, both sides of politics worked hard towards moving towards a unified policy of not having discrimination on religion, race or creed. And that, I've said before, I said on Palm Sunday, that I believe that Howard will carry that scar the rest of his days, as he will as a criminal in sending out people in this unauthorised war in Iraq. [APPLAUSE].

Now, the anti-war movement and peace movement against US and Australia's involvement in Vietnam, a lot of people don't realise but the first involvement was the adviser of 1962, May 62. And that only the peace movement and some people of the Parliamentary Labor Party played a prominent roles to oppose that then. In fact, the Labor Party, and most political parties, took it as nothing wrong with this situation. In fact, the sad thing about it was that the Labor Party, in February of 1965, in a caucus meeting, supported the bombing of Hanoi and [Huy Fong] by the Americans. But the change came about when conscripts and the first battalion was sent and there was a speech made by Arthur Calwell on the 4th of May 1965 and progressively we've fought that struggle. And against that opposition. But you have to understand the hysteria, the whole question of hate that was created leading up to the 1966 election. I have never seen such [inaudible one word] and violence and hate spewing out. There was the whole threat, the red, big red pamphlets with Asia, the arrows coming down, a line across, where do you draw the line. Do you draw it in Vietnam or do we have it here? One pamphlet from the Liberal Party put out a pamphlet showing the, a digger, an Australian digger with a flash hat, pulling a rickshaw with a beautiful blonde woman in the back and a sinister Asian with his arm around him. It was so bad that even the Liberal Party had to withdraw it. [laughter].

So, it's been that [viscousness] we had to overcome. Now, I must say, that the peace movement accelerated the whole question and there has been, I think, a move forward and I think to a great extent, between 66 and 69, you know, it was a disastrous election of 1966, a racist, again, militarist role government at the time. But I think that from 1966 to 69 the peace movement made real progress. But really it was from 69, really the early 70s, when the culmination came forward and, of course, the first great rally that came about right throughout Australia was in May in 1970. We, it peaked in Melbourne, of course, with about 100,000 at that time. Cairns called all the people of Australia out on the street to express themselves and Melbourne showed it greater than anyone else. But here in Sydney I thought Amanda chairing that meeting the other day, when the people were there, what we did on Friday afternoon, the same ñ it would've been similar crowds, in fact, I think, Amanda underestimated the crowd of being 20,000 ñ back in the Vietnam days we said it was 35,000. [laughter]. But, be as it may, they sat down, in the street and there were speakers that dialogued and we discussed the issue against our involvement in the war all Friday afternoon and all the traffic of course were blocked out. There were two other great rallies. One was September of 1970, when Askin government refused the people to allow to take the streets and pushed them back on the footpath. That was the only time I've seen violence in Sydney over demonstrations, because we were non-violent in our activities. The last great rally, of course, was in May of 1971 and then, of course, as I say, it led up to the 1972 election and the election of a Labor government. So I really feel proud that I was a part of that movement and I'm proud of the peace movement that the role they played then and I'm quite sure and feel proud of what the role you're going to do in the future.

The two other great functions that we were and that was that there was the anti-apartheid struggle in the late 70s and the claiming for Nelson Mandela, his freedom. There was the anti-uranium movement of the mid 1970s and the early 1980s. We had the anti- march laws in Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland, where only three people could assemble on the street and so many of us went to jail time and time again, until that, in the end, it became chaos that they couldn't control it and therefore they, really the law was not used, until recently the Fitzgerald Report, of course, abolished it completely or recommended that it be abolished.

Now, in the early days of the 1980s, there was other great rallies that occurred. I might say, during the Vietnam War, until the Moratoriums, the churches on the whole supported the establishment and they never became involved until right to the death position of that. Now, in the nuclear demonstrations, because of the fear of war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 80s, I can recall Palm Sunday of 1982, Patrick White made one of the great contributions of my time when he read at that time, it was, there was drizzling rain and he spoke for about a half an hour and he gave a message to humanity. And not a person moved, externally, but so many people were moved internally. We were very fortunate to have such a great and wonderful person. But we came to its epitome and in 1984, when a 170,000 people assembled in Sydney alone on the anti-nuclear movement and there's no argument about that. Now, so much so, that even a bloke like Hawke brought in a legislation of a nuclear free zone in the Southern Hemisphere, following that great demonstrations.

Of course, in the last Iraq war of 1990 and 1991, we played an important role too. I went to Iraq in November and December of 1990 to bring back the hostages. I'll never forget, as long as I live, that on the 2nd of December, 1990, there were demonstrations by the Iraqi people in every city in Iraq because the decision had been made that they had to withdraw from Kuwait by the 15th of January 1991, otherwise there would be military action. And it was the hate, the hate that was spewing out of those people that demonstrated and particularly the young people. At that time I thought and I wrote in my book, I'm quite sure that what is occurring is that the hate and the feeling about, not only about America but the West as a whole, by the Muslim and Arab youth of the future. Of course, we all know what has evolved since those years. But a lot of ñ they forget of what occurred. And in many cases, because they've been able to manipulate many of those governments in the Middle East and that, the rank and file, the grassroots are very, very active indeed. And they're explosive in itself.

Now, let me conclude with our Palm, with our recent Sunday march on February the 16th. It was the most momentous and expressive demonstration I have ever been involved in in the anti-war activities in the last forty-four years of my activities. There was far in excess of 300,000 people and I say expressive, because people had to wait so long to participate in the march. I marched right round and instead of going down to the Domain, I walked back into the park itself and the people remained so quietly, but they were determined, they wanted to make their protest against Bush's sectarian crusade of war. And I was, I mean, I was very, very deeply impressed. It's the, it was the patience of those people, so determined, that really was so moving. So, but, the thing I think we've got to get out of this is that not only the demonstration that occurred here in Australia by the peace movement, anti-war movement, in every city of Australia, but also the world over. And I wrote a letter recently to The Australian, when they started to say the left wing was taking over and I said, well, look, I said, you don't understand what's going on. Three times in my life that I've seen that the people have taken over the movement, the first being May Moratorium of 1970, the second was the great marches of 84 and the anti nuclear march and this one, above everything else. I suppose I should've mentioned the great march of the Sorry people, the march we did across Sydney harbour bridge which was a great heart lifting thing, in fact it was on my birthday, the 28th May, 2000. But it was a great experience.

But this march, with all due respects to every other gathering, there's never been a movement like it. And even yesterday's contribution was breathtaking in itself. I've always believed that if you really want to achieve any real issue, you've got to have the strength and the power of people to do it. And there is something about what's occurring now, not only in our peace movement in Australia, but the world over, that we are going to move mountains and we are going to achieve peace in the long term, because this is an evil group, these are Christian fundamentalists and they are crusaders and what really worries me about the present government of the United States is they are so pure, they know what they're going to do and they've been having it planned for some time. Now, we the people, have got to be the ones to stop it. Anyway, thanks very much and thanks for your patience.