The Motivation to Protest
Lyn Hovey
It was not our place to go and tell another country what government they should have… And, and it was, you know, it just seemed amazing that we were there fighting for - in somebody else's war.
Alexandra Pierce
There were a variety of motivations for why women got involved in protesting against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and against the National Service Act, and that’s the focus of this episode. Some women protested against both of those right from the start, and saw them as inextricably linked. Some were, at least initially, more concerned with National Service, again for a variety of reasons, while for others it was the war itself that incensed and provoked them. The issue of motivation is one that books about Australia in this period particularly seem to gloss over, or authors dismissively lump everyone into easy categories.
I’ve loosely grouped these excerpts together to give a sense of the range of perspectives. We’ll start with some of the reasons for objecting to the war itself, and then hear about reasons for objecting to National Service, although for some women the ideas are so intertwined that trying to keep them separate doesn’t actually make sense. I should point out that I don’t mention the names of every person you’ll hear, but you will find a complete list of names and some biographical info on the website.
First, there were four women whose attitudes were influenced by ideas of pacifism, or the concept of a just war.
Ceci Cairns
Well, I was – I came from a family – my father was a conscientious objector in the Second World War. And my family were Labor Party supporters. My father probably would have been a Communist, except he had differences with the way the Communists were behaving in Europe, and he never joined the Communist Party. But he was – he basically believed in, sort of, socialism, and in peace, and he was totally anti-war, obviously. And he was an official conscientious objector. Which meant you were officially in the army. Bizarrely, he has an army record. But they went off somewhere or other, to a camp, I think it was, and they trained to be nurses. That’s what he did in the Second World War.
And so I come from that sort of background, which I’m still dedicated to, that idea of freedom and peace, and anti-war. I mean, I’m anti the whole idea of armies anyway, I think they should be – I mean, I think the way they’re trained, which is to kill – basically to kill people, they have to be trained to – they have to be brainwashed into thinking the people they kill aren’t actually human beings like them. And so they become monsters without even realising. So perfectly normal people can become terrible people. As we keep finding out about army generals and things, who go wrong. And so that’s my position. I very deeply feel all that…. So that’s my kind of position…. I came at it because I wanted justice for everyone, and justice for the Vietnamese. I wanted justice for the young men who were coerced into being in the army. The cruelty for those young men, putting them in a situation that they had no idea what they were going into, just seemed to me so unjust.
Faye Findlay
Well, I was brought up as a Christian, you know, I was baptised. And, you know, in my early teens, I was, I chose to be confirmed. So, my values were, you don't hurt people. Or you try not to hurt people? Yes. So that's probably how it initiated.
Alexandra Pierce
Would you have said you were opposed to all war? Or was there something specific about the Vietnam War?
Faye Findlay
No, I think I'd be a pacifist anyway. Though of course, when, when I was at age that if I had been a boy, I could have gone into the ballot. You know, I was conscious of the fact that you know, I'd have to - well, you know, I mean I know I wasn't a boy, but steel myself choose to, to say that I was a pacifist that, you know, no, I don't want to be subscripted [sic]. You know, and I would be prepared to go to jail if that was the consequence type of thing.
Alexandra Pierce
So you were obviously opposed to conscription at the time as well.
Faye Findlay
Yeah. Yeah. Particularly when it crystallised - and, and now we're going to send them to Vietnam.
Melita Alford
There was a discussion in my sort of social group, which was the Christian Union at the university. There was an awareness that some of the guys were being conscripted, and that they - so there was an awareness of conscription as a thing, and that it actually touched us, affected us. There was not a lot of discussion about conscription per se being a bad thing. But just maybe a frightening thing because it was so close to us. But the war itself, that - within the Christian Union, there was all the discussion about just war and the philosophy of - Christian philosophy of war, and it was pretty clear that this was not a just war. So it came more from a theoretical point of view of looking at, well, we're in the middle of this war in our lifetime. And should we be?
Alexandra Pierce
So what were the reasons for thinking that it was not just?
Melita Alford
Well, I, I mean, now I have to think about that, retrospectively, and that, that raises questions about being an invading force, as opposed to a rescuing or a peacekeeping force.
Alexandra Pierce
How did you feel about conscription? Did it kind of just get tied into your attitude towards the Vietnam War?
Marion Harper
Well, I guess we would have been opposed to conscription really, generally, even if it wasn't the Vietnam War. Because we don't believe - we don't, we don't believe in predatory wars. We believe in this - two kinds of wars, we always believed; what we call just and unjust wars. So a just war is where people struggle to throw off an oppressor - a colonial oppressor - and unjust wars are where a wealthier nation goes into another country, and takes control. So we always saw those kinds of wars as unjust wars. Yeah.
Alexandra Pierce
The following women discuss arguments against Australia’s involvement for reasons centring on problems of colonialism, and the idea of independence for Vietnam.
Andra Jackson
… I thought the French had been in in there and I thought they were colonialist power. And I felt that America then stepped in, and carried on exactly the same relationship of oppression with the Vietnamese people. I felt that it was a struggle for independence that America shouldn't have been there. And that we shouldn't have joined in. I couldn't see - at that stage, Vietnam was a country that we'd hardly ever heard of - maybe that was the first time I'd heard of it, in connection with the war. So I couldn't see why we would be there.
Alexandra Pierce
What sorts of things were your parents discussing or was being discussed around the dinner table about the Vietnam War?
Janet McCalman
I mean, I just think they saw it as the hot part of the Cold War, of the West and capitalism trying to suppress national liberation and a communist movement. …
I just saw - I wanted the North Vietnamese to win. I wanted the Vietcong to win. So this was to me a war of liberation, I saw the South Vietnamese as corrupt. And I think since that I actually know a little bit about it now, which I didn't, you know, the legacy the French left was so appalling, and the fact that America would not reach out to Ho Chi Minh, that he was more of a nationalist than he was a communist, and so yet again, America screwed it up, and it could have had - saved a lot of lives if they could have swallowed their capitalist pride and helped Vietnam unite. But they went back to this very, very sleazy group. And the the French were very, very bad colonisers, as were the British. And I did have some awareness of that because my mother was French herself and came from Algeria. So the family was aware of what colonising does. I mean, I think - I still thought the British were better than anyone else. But I now know they weren't. You know, and I think that, at that time, I felt very simplistically just simply wanted the North Vietnamese to win, which made me a traitor, I suppose.
Joan Coxsedge
I was so angry, because what I saw was a defenseless, poor country, being absolutely decimated in the most brutal, terrible ways. And I've never changed my mind since - in fact, the more you learn, the more evil you realise it is, when you realise what they did to the land, and they not only assaulted the people, but they assaulted the land itself. So I saw it is an assault on life - as fundamental as that.
Anne Sgro
I think that the - feeling really angry that here was another country that was seeking to be independent in its own right and first having got rid of the French, then the Americans came in, and - to keep that sort of imperial, colonial control, and with Australia saying, Yep, we'll come in too, and it just was so wrong. It was almost like a David and Goliath kind of battle. And so immense, immense admiration for Vietnamese people and the Vietcong and their determination and their skill at defending their own country and what they believed in.
Jean McLean
But as I say, I was aware of – that the Vietnamese supported the Allies during the war against the Japanese, whereas the French – because they were part of the Vichy French, who were the colonists there, they supported the Japanese. So Ho Chi Minh was a hero.
Alexandra Pierce
Had American support against the Japanese -
Jean McLean
And then, promised that they’d help them have independence, and paid the French to go back in. So it was pretty perfidious.
Alexandra Pierce
One of the accusations sometimes levelled against people who protested against the Vietnam War is that they themselves were Communist, or at least sympathetic to communist ideas. Sometimes that was pure slander, but sometimes it was true, as for the following women.
Carol Goldson
…that was a really, really bad mistake for a country to be getting involved in that.
Alexandra Pierce
Why was it a mistake for you?
Carol Goldson
Well, I guess because we had no business being - getting involved in it. And, and I didn't believe all - by then - the accepted view of it. I didn't, for instance, believe that - in the Domino Theory about if, you know if this country changes its allegiance that, you know, it's just another step towards us all being overrun by the yellow horde.
Alexandra Pierce
At that stage were you kind of sympathetic to communist ideas or more just live and let live.
Carol Goldson
Oh yeah, no, by that time, I'd decided that I certainly I - I believed in socialism. I mean, I'd be, I'd be having tickets on myself if I called myself a Marxist, because I haven't done the study. But yeah, I broadly, I accept Marxist ideas. Yeah. I did from probably from my mid teens. And there was a lot of peer influence involved in that too, not just parental.
Judith Buckrich
My father was a communist. So - he had lived in the United States. So he hadn't been in the Communist Party here. But he was in the Communist Party in the United States. So I was absolutely plugged into the Vietnam War from the beginning.
Alexandra Pierce
And - I mean, I guess it's an obvious question, and probably some obvious answers - but what sorts of things were you talking about? What were the objections to Vietnam War?
Judith Buckrich
Well, I suppose just purely, you know, because my father was an old believer, we just thought that it was, you know, outrageous that the United States had got itself involved in a part of the world that was not their business, and they had no right to be there. And that they were there because, you know, and this often happened with the United States, that there was a legally elected government - that they were actually opposing something that had been legally voted for. And so that was it. But you know then the other thing, really, the thing that I, you know - other people probably have mentioned to you - is that, that was on the news every night. Every night, every single night. And so you couldn't, you know, I really don't understand the people who - just think, how come you weren't aware of it? And it just - well, people were, but it just took them a long time. A longer time.
Alexandra Pierce
So you said 'we' in terms of opposing the Vietnam War. So even in your teens, when you're at school, you were on board with your dad's perspective?
Judith Buckrich
Absolutely.
Marion Harper
I was a member of the Communist Party.
Alexandra Pierce
Right. From - can I ask from what age you were involved in the Communist Party?
Marion Harper
Yes. Let me think. It would have been in 19... Well my daughter was born in ’54, it would have been 1956, was when I joined.
…
Alexandra Pierce
So then, when Australia gets involved in the Vietnam War, what's your reaction to that moment?
Marion Harper
Absolutely opposed to the Vietnam War. We saw it as a power grabbing exercise by the United States on a country that'd been struggling for years against the French.
Alexandra Pierce
Another reason expressed for objecting to Australia’s involvement in Vietnam is the idea that Australia was mindlessly following the United States. These women believed that Australia should be deciding its own foreign policy, rather than blindly following the United States for whatever reason. A note before we get into this - the first speaker, Kay, mentions the Domino Theory or Domino Effect. This was a political theory during the Cold War that one country, particularly in Asia, becoming communist, might have a knock on or domino effect such that other, surrounding countries would also become communist. It was sometimes touted as a reason to stop communism in any country.
Kay Setches
Well, we knew that the American government was lying, lying and lying and lying. We'd been involved with them. They were in - we were in lockstep with that. We wanted an independent foreign policy in the Labor Party then, but we were fighting over what that might look like. I was opposed to it in almost any way you could think of. I was opposed to Australia being involved in a war that was in Vietnam. The Vietnam didn't have anything to do with us I felt; I didn't believe in the theory that they had, which was... the Domino, Domino Effect. I felt it was bullshit.
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Australia only went there to - to kiss American arse, just as they went to Afghanistan, and every other war that it's fought apart from World War Two, in which we were very late to take part. Otherwise, certainly everything postwar that we've done, Korea, and so on, so on. It's all been, you know, as I say, to kiss American arse, and under the misguided belief that if we ever got into any trouble ourselves, then the Americans would come to our aid. And I know full well that the Americans will come to our aid if and only when it suits them politically and financially and diplomatically and every other -ly. … So I never thought that Australia should be engaged. And I certainly didn't think the Americans should be engaged
Jill Reichstein
My journey started when I was doing my matriculation year at a private girls' school in Melbourne. And both my parents were fairly conservative. And I had a history teacher who - or politics, political science teacher - who was wonderful. And she discussed the Vietnam War. So we're talking 1967. And I was outraged. And I really started to get involved and have a look at it. I mean, I knew we were involved in it, but I didn't sort of take a lot of interest. I didn't think we should be sending our soldiers to fight in a war that had nothing really to do with us. And I think I was slightly anti American. And I didn't like the idea of following what Americans did. And I just didn't understand the rationale behind it. I mean, it was a war in a country between the North and the South. Obviously, America was spooked. But I didn't understand the rationale behind it. …
Jean McLean
Well, first of all, Menzies announced in December 1964 that he was going to bring in conscription for overseas service. Now, I had always – and still am – very interested in our region. So I knew a lot about Vietnam, I knew the history of Vietnam, and I knew about the secret war that America was carrying out in Laos and creeping into Vietnam and Cambodia. And Australia had been – Australia asked, actually, whether they could go and kill some people in Vietnam. And they finally invited us – not straight away – the Americans. And then the government said it was through ANZUS. And it wasn’t through ANZUS. Again, if one understood the history of all this – so I knew that this was why he introduced conscription, to join the war in Vietnam. And so I obviously opposed it.
Jane Stewart
I couldn't understand - I thought it was wrong that we went to another country and got involved. I was also pretty anti America. I remember I wanted to go around and blow up there was one McDonald's in Victoria Parade and so I had this great thing I was going to ride there on my bike - don't know where I was gonna get a bomb from - and bomb it. Which was really stupid. But you know, that was, I had a very, there was a very strong anti American sort of - a sort of resentment that they thought they could tell you what to do and tell your politicians what to do. So it was an anti American thing. But it was primarily just like, why on earth would we be involved? And you know, the domino theory, I thought, well, that's a neat image. But it doesn't actually make any sense to me. You know, I - so it was just thinking about those sorts of issues.
Alexandra Pierce
We move now to look at reasons why women objected to the National Service Act, or conscription. One of the reasons was the way that the process was actually undertaken. As you’ll hear these women recall, birth dates were chosen at random, using a barrel that could as easily be used to choose the numbers in a lottery.
Alva Geikie
Oh, well, I thought it was pretty awful. Because, you know, there was - they used to have it on TV, if I remember. They used to show you the numbers coming up. It was like, I don't - I'm not sure if this is true or not. It seems to me it was a bit like you saw it like a lottery, like the lottery is done on the TV. Now whether that's true I can't, I don't really remember. But that was the feeling I got when they were doing it that they had all these little [balls], you know. And if your number came up, your number came up and off you went, you know, it was was pretty disgusting, really.
Joan Coxsedge
I thought the whole thing was grossly unfair, the way young men were picked out on a whim of a - or so it seemed to be, you know, on a capricious bloody marble turning up.
Caroline Hogg
I just know, I was horrified that conscription - and particularly in such a way pulling numbers out of a hat, you know - I mean, it was somehow so disrespectful to the young men who were without a vote, being sent off to fight in a war that I certainly didn't believe in, and they wouldn't have known what it was about.
Finally, there were, of course, sometimes very personal reasons for objecting to the National Service Act in particular, as is the case for these women. The first speaker, Kelley, mentioned living in Ormond, which is a residential college attached to Melbourne University.
Kelley Johnson
But I made a friend whose brother was called up. And she was really upset. But my memory is a bit hazy about it. So my memory of it was that he was called up. And then we went, I went with her to have dinner with her parents. And they were very upset. And suddenly this war got a whole new picture to it. It was about people I knew, I started to get a sense that she wasn't the only one who was being affected. I started thinking about the guys who were living in Ormond, and going to uni, and they were sort of right in line for calling up too. And so there was this thing that it suddenly got a reality about it. I didn't understand the politics of it really. …
For me, I think the National Service came first. But then, I suspect partly because we started hearing more and more and more about what was happening, and also I was more alert to it so I looked for it. It became "we've got to stop this. This is terrible". And I do wonder a bit, you know, sort of thinking about it now, I mean, I think probably the people my age then had been raised by people who'd gone through the Second World War. So there was a sense of both, we don't want Australians to die, like our parents' brothers and sisters did. And we don't want our friends to go off to war.
Alexandra Pierce
So your mum, you said, was opposed to probably war in general, certainly to Australia in Vietnam. Was there more opposition to the war, or to conscription, or did the two things kind of feel almost like the same issue?
Sherryl Garbutt
Well, they were certainly intertwined. You could hardly separate them. I think we were opposed to all of them. My brothers were certainly looking at being conscripted, or not. I know my boyfriend missed out on conscription, but I can’t remember whether my brothers were in the ballot or not. So we used to listen to the ballot fairly keenly, to see which birth dates came out and which ones didn’t. I had a cousin that skipped out all together just after the ballot, one of the ballots, and became a draft dodger. Hooked up with Jeanie McLean, I think, and disappeared for a while. So they were certainly intertwined with a really immediate personal impact.
Jane Stewart
but what I was really aware of was the fact that boys who were being called up didn't have the vote. And you know, the environment I grew up in…it wasn't a political household, I would say, at all. But it was very, there was a very strong sense of right and wrong and morality that, you know, I think my parents and my aunts who I also lived with my grandfather, had a really strong moral compass. And it was just that sense that no, this isn't right. I didn't have - I wasn't involved from a political, it really wasn't a political response. It was a moral response at that time. The politics came later.