Transcript of the round-table discussion “September Revolt: Could It Happen Again?” held September 8th, 2003 at the University of Melbourne

Moderator: Thank you, everyone, for coming to tonight’s discussion. Before we begin, I’d like to introduce our audience to the participants at our round table. First. from the Australian Broadcast Corporation, distinguished newsreader and author James Chester....(applause) Brig. General Colin Thornley, commandant of the Royal Military College in Duntroon…(mixed applause and catcalls; in the background we can hear a heckler arguing with campus security guards as he’s being escorted out of the room) Susan Woods, co-founder and current assistant director of the Australian National Indigenous Rights Alliance...(applause and cheers) former ASIO executive officer Cameron Mansfield…(silence)Professor Ian Travers- Shibe of our university’s own history department....(applause)...and last but not least, Lance Sharkey biographer Dr. Marianna Bedingfield of Sydney University. (muted applause)

Now then, does anyone have any questions before we begin our discussion? (Short pause) Yes, the young man in the third row with the Midnight Oil shirt?

Audience member #1: How long will this last? I’ve got, like, a million questions about the Revolt and I don’t know if I can get them all out before I have to go home....

Professor Travers-Shibe: The round table itself is scheduled to last about two hours, but there will be a variety of other events held throughout the campus this week to mark the anniversary of the Revolt, so rest assured you’ll have more than sufficient opportunity to learn whatever you want to know about the Revolt era....especially if my esteemed colleague Dr. Bedingfield is her usual garrulous self tonight. (Laughter) The gentleman in the light blue jacket?

Audience member #2: How were the members of your round table panel selected?

Professor Travers-Shibe: Mostly by invitation. The people here with me at the podium tonight were chosen first for their insights into the September Revolt era and second for their contributions to their respective fields. I was asked to participate because of my work as a history instructor in general and in particular because of my role as the main archivist of this university’s collection of documents and other material pertaining to the Revolt and its aftermath. The man in the RAN uniform?

Audience member #3: Will the Sharkey trial be covered at this seminar?

Professor Bedingfield: This seminar will focus mostly on the social, political, and military consequences of the September Revolt, but if you’re interested the Canberra University’s law faculty is giving a lecture tomorrow on the legal issues raised by the Sharkey trial. You can also find useful links regarding these issues at the faculty’s official website. Now then, we only have time for one more question before it’s time to start our discussion....Well, I see we have a representative of the student newspaper with us. Your question, Miss....?

Audience member #4: Victoria Storin, Professor. What would you say the Revolt means to you personally?

Professor Bedingfield: I was a schoolgirl when Prime Minister Menzies was assassinated, and I vividly remember my parents being absolutely terrified we were about to have a civil war in this country. So for me, the Revolt means a time when the very existence of Australia was often in doubt.

(brief pause)

Now then, if there are no further questions, let’s begin our round table discussion. Our first topic will be the matter of whether the current political climate in this country enables radicals on either end of the ideological spectrum to incite armed insurrection against the national government in Canberra.

Brigadier Thornley: I would have to say no. I’ve read some of these paperbacks that have come out recently fantasizing about the idea of a civil insurrection in Australia in the near future, and they strike me as being absurdly unrealistic at best....when the September Revolt collapsed it essentially poisoned the well, so to speak, for any sort of armed insurgency against the government after 1948.

Woods: I don’t think it’s possible either, which might be one of the few things that I agree with Brig. Thornley about. (Laughter from the audience). The political climate that exists now in this country makes it very difficult if not impossible for extremists of any kind to launch an armed uprising, and quite frankly it’s always been my belief that non-violent protest is a much more effective tool for bringing about lasting social and political change.

Chester: I’m not so sure that a new September Revolt is entirely impossible...you might recall that case five years ago in which two Queenslanders were arrested and charged with sedition after making an Internet broadcast that called for a far right coup against the incumbent prime minister. Under police questioning, one of the plotters revealed that he and his colleague had a contact list of at least two dozen people who supported their plans for insurrection. Brigadier Thornley: That’s hardly enough to even occupy a mid-sized police station, let alone pose a serious threat to the federal government….

Professor Bedingfield: …But still enough to cause a great deal of chaos and terror. As past insurrections both successful and failed have shown us, it only requires a handful of people to throw the balance of a political structure into question. Consider-- to name just one very famous example-- how significantly Great Britain’s prestige was tarnished both at home and abroad after it lost the American War of Independence. When the American colonists began their uprising Britain’s position as the world’s leading superpower was virtually undisputed, but by the time the rebellion ended nearly eight years later France and Spain had started to challenge the British once again for pre-eminence in Europe and elsewhere.

Chester: Even before the American Revolution ended, I would submit Britain’s global standing was beginning to falter....

Bedingfield: The historical evidence suggests Britain’s superpower status was largely secure in the years between 1763 and 1778...

Professor Travers-Shibe: That’s a debate for another time, I think. Let us stick with the topic at hand....We’ve yet to hear Mr. Mansfield’s take on the question of whether another September Revolt is still possible today.

Mansfield: Professor Bedingfield raises a rather interesting point, I should say. While the numbers may not exist for a full-scale takeover of the federal government, I certainly have to agree with her that just a small number of insurgents acting under the right conditions could make things rather difficult for society as a whole. From there, who knows what could happen?

Brigadier Thornley: That’s a rather disturbing thought. As one who has personally witnessed the devastating consequences of civil war elsewhere, I can quite honestly state that a similar conflict here at home would be little short of catastrophic....

Professor Travers-Shibe: To say the least-- we’ve only just finished picking up the pieces from the last one! (general laughter)

Brigadier Thornley(after a brief pause): If we could return to more serious matters now, I’d say that for a full-blown coup in this country to succeed one would require vast numbers of both personnel and weapons, and both items are in short supply at the moment. If Lance Sharkey were to attempt his famous raid on Parliament House today, he’d be fortunate to find even two or three men who’d be willing to accompany him on such a project....

Woods: He wasn’t exactly the most popular kid in the class to begin with...Miranda Glennis ended up resigning the CPA partly because she couldn’t stand to be around him, he was so bloody arrogant. He thought he could walk on water....

Chester: He may have been arrogant, but he was also a fairly effective political organizer. With the variety of online media that are available today Sharkey could easily, if he was alive now, co-ordinate a mass movement to agitate for the formation of a Marxist government in this country.

Brigadier Thornley: But could he hold it together?

Mansfield: That’s a question destined to remain a matter of speculation....The political climate in this country, as others in this panel have rightly pointed out, is greatly different from the one Sharkey and his associates operated in back in 1948.

Chester: That’s understating matters a bit...To touch further on a point that’s been hinted at at earlier in this round table, Marxism has been in disrepute in this country over the last five and a half decades. I’ve been in the television news business almost forty news now, and in that time I could count on my fingertips the number of people that I’ve met who would openly admit to being Communists.

Woods: You’re a jump ahead of me then, Mr. Chester-- I haven’t met anyone who’ll come right out and say they’re Communists. The last time that I asked someone if they believed in Marxism, he looked at me like I’d just come down from Mars or something. The September Revolt basically destroyed any credibility the Australian Communist Party might have had-- poisoned the well, you might say.

Brigadier Thornley: An interesting analogy, Ms. Woods...I must confess that one’s never occurred to me before.

Professor Bedingfield: Or me either, Brigadier.

Chester: It’s certainly crossed my mind once or twice, and I would say it’s a particularly apt metaphor for the disrepute into which Marxist ideology has fallen since Sharkey’s coup plan was foiled. The conspicuous feature of every attempt to revive Marxism in this country over the past thirty years has been the rapidity with which those attempts have collapsed. Perhaps you remember the effort in 1974 to create what was called a Socialist Unity Party? Brigadier Thornley: I’m not sure I do.

Chester: The Socialist Unity Party was conceived as an heir to the defunct socialist and Marxist political factions which had been eliminated by the Menzies government after the September Revolt collapsed....at length it surfaced that some of the group’s founders had ties to the old CPA and the venture fell apart. No one’s been brave enough or crazy enough to try anything like it since...

Professor Travers-Shibe: What would you all say about the likelihood of recent developments in the Iraq war changing the state of affairs Mr. Chester has just described?

Brigadier Thornley: I’d say there’s little chance of developments in Iraq causing any significant change in existing attitudes toward Marxism. After nearly sixty years, even the most die-hard leftist radicals in this country are reluctant to have anything to do with Marxism. It would in all likelihood take something on the order of World War III to motivate anyone to even think about embracing Communism again...

Woods: Or another Depression. It’s usually a bad economy that motivates people to become Communists....

Professor Bedingfield: Or fascists. Of course, there aren’t many of that sort left in Australia either.. Brig. Thornley: A fortunate thing for all of us.