The Brisbane Protests 1965-72

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse, in the broadest light, the very specific subject matter of the Brisbane Protests of 1965 to 1972. Additionally the thesis reflects on the limitations of the relevant social movement theorists in regard to understanding these Brisbane events in the light of general theory and historical analyses. The question that the thesis seeks to answer is how to provide a coherent account of the myriad of groups and protests that flourished in Brisbane in the period 1965 to 1972. These protesters’ relationship to global events, yet specificity within a context and diversity in their internal differences and their outcomes, both short- and long- term, prevent ready categorisation within theoretical understandings or inclusive historical analyses. The thesis finds important new historical detail set in contexts infrequently analysed in literature about protest activities. Using this deficit to assess the various strengths and weaknesses of several major social movement theorists, it articulates not only their separate and collective value but also the need for their supplementation by other general theory, as well as general historical and more localised geo-political perspectives. Analytically the thesis relies firstly on three social movement theorists, Tarrow, Melucci and Habermas, the further application of some general theory in Global Systems Theory and feminism. These other general insights prove of specific analytical relevance while they also point to necessarily more universal critiques of the social movement theories. The first analytical frame of the thesis comprises of these theories. Secondly through using the historical concept of post-totalitarianism, a second analytical frame contains an hypothesis about a re-awakened Romanticism tangential but related to this post-totalitarian influence. This historical explanation of post-totalitarianism operates as a ‘catch-all’ explanation of the important directions of social and political change affecting the international community in the Cold War era prior to and contemporaneous with the protests. While the new left’s contemporaneous links to the Brisbane protests appear important, these are far from exclusive given that several other, ultimately more historically important in hindsight movements such as the women’s movement have roots in the times, as do a plethora of other activities of the Brisbane Protests. These protests cannot readily fit the description of that of a local chapter of the new left. Instead the wider and more diverse incorporation of these events under radical Romantic post-totalitarianism proves valuable analytically. In addition, this Romantic form of post-totalitarianism captures the considerable ambiguity in the literature about the new left. Amenable to the understanding of both radical humanist practices and to degeneration from such ideals, of which the latter, in particular, is now pervasively represented in the scholarship as description of the fate of the new left, radical Romantic post-totalitarianism conceptually defines the range and complexity of the influences on the Brisbane Protests more adequately than the literature focused upon the international new left. The contradictory associations with on one hand, ideological rigidity and terrorism described in this thesis as the ‘official’ new left and on the other hand post-totalitarianism and other aspects of Romanticism (other than terrorist or just insurrectionary association) alone suggest the new left’s problematic status as a general explanation of the Brisbane Protests. Radical post-totalitarian Romanticism incorporates an international influence linked to post-war and Cold War consciousness and new emerging critiques of the global status quo as well as the ambiguity of manifestations of movements connected to this Western based but also third-world influenced consciousness. These influences and their potentials will be explored within the post-war world although these are also derivative of early streams of reflection about, particularly, industrial societies. At the same time the connection of the women’s and the Indigenous movements to the new left has an analytic framework in which differences and similarities can benefit from new perspectives. The thesis holds that the immediate context and movement-relevant clashes over the understanding of and changes in the dynamics of the Cold War period rest on the notional division of protagonists for change into post-totalitarians and radical Romantic post-totalitarians. The former view represents supporters and sometime-allies; the latter that of the often newer in formation, very loosely organised protesters. This clash provides a schematic overview, however social movement analyses, while of critical value, must then be further related to the idiosyncratic national formation of countries like Australia. Thirdly, the analysis includes reconstructions of various interpretations of the specifically fragile character of the Australian nation identity beyond its core-peripherality in its subsumption of culture and politics in orientations to national survival through alliance and the absence of ideological discourse and division. Its general culture rests on a patriarchal, materialistic utilitarianism. Queensland’s partly idiosyncratic position within this national context is the final focus of this third frame. Beyond the Janus-face of coreperipherality represented by these national and state jurisdictions the thesis is examines further specificity at the State level also. While the thesis concludes that these three frames are necessary components of the explanation of the civil liberties, anti-war, anti-suburban including cultural production, Romantic university, gender and race movements, it finds that these social movements of the Brisbane Protests must be described, beyond their relationship, which is partial and complex, to theories of Western social movement formation, as discrete historical formations of radical Romantic post-totalitarianism. Yet this perspective also requires supplementation by framing based upon recognition of Australia’s semi-peripheral status and materialistic utilitarianism, which contribute to a protester-initiated cultural and political national identity crisis rather than just a political crisis. As well this frame relies on the assertion that Queensland’s debilitated public sphere, in the light of movements elsewhere, proved conducive to a dominant role for university-based people in initiating and broadening the disputes with the use of immanent critique, and culturally rich and inclusive outlooks in theoretical and organisational practices. In various alliances including between university groups, few workers, and the deeply culturally stratified Indigenous and women, both of whose movements eventually proved the most efficacious while fracturing the illusion that this was a united effort without deep differences the radical Romantic posttotalitarians made use of resources, including pre-formed and somewhat idiosyncratic domestic and urban spaces. All these factors coalesced to produce partly generation reliant changes in oppressive conditions. Therefore the thesis argues that general theory and historical analyses are both critical to the explanation and provide a sufficiently rich tapestry of generality and exception to provide an analytic model. Despite the insights gained from Tarrow’s view of political processes, Melucci’s view of experimental spaces, identity and sites of conflict in new types of training and Habermas’ sense of the breadth of rationalising processes, operating in the background yet influential on the outcomes of social movements, the theoretical conclusion points to problems with some of their terminology like that of ‘democracy’, ‘solidarity’, ‘post-industrial’, ‘new’ or ‘and offensive’ and ‘lifeworld and system’. It finds, rather, that semi-peripheral countries require different understandings pitched variously at formations of national identity, and that there are analytical problems, when using their insights, in understanding ‘democracies’ exhibiting very truncated and deformed public spheres. The thesis argues for a concept of cultural stratification to deal with the particular features, status and character of movements of the racial and gender colonies. It finds that movements are gendered in regard to solidarity as well as ‘interests’. Further it argues the Indigenous have a distinct location within the process of modernisation due to their experiences of both sporadic inclusion and cultural and physical genocide. It indicates that there are significant potentials for protest in circumstances where there is a contradictory duality within a single nation, of general modernising rationalisations and, within this, oppressive ‘pockets’ of legal frameworks, political systems and cultural norms. Social movements have discrete places in historical and sociological processes. The analysis of these requires further recognition of the complexity of social change happening through and within them than is afforded by Tarrow, Melucci and Habermas. Much as their contributions are of great value, Global Systems Theory, and feminism suggest the limitations of these social movement theories at the general level, while historical analyses suggest more specific limitations in understanding the case of the Brisbane Protests as part of, particularly, Western post -war movements.