May 1970: the Moratorium
Carol Goldson
Oh, it was - it was amazing. Yeah, I'd never - I mean, I'd been on lots of demonstrations, but they were usually pretty low key, you know, pretty small affairs. I guess the LBJ demonstrations were the most serious ones I'd ever been on. In terms of numbers involved and the high level of activity. I mean, some of them got quite violent. Yeah, that moratorium, that first one was fantastic. It just - the numbers, and the variety of people that were present. It wasn't just young people. And it wasn't just left wing people. And it wasn't just working class people. There were all sorts. It really did feel like being, you know, part of a mass movement. And that was pretty rare. All of the campaigns that I'd been involved in previously, they'd all been sort of a bit - very minority sort of things, and definitely not part of the mainstream at all. So yeah, it was - it was a different feeling altogether.
Alexandra
On the 8th of May, 1970, tens of thousands of people gathered in the middle of Melbourne, in the middle of the day. Depending on who you ask, between 60 and 100 thousand people were actively involved. This was the first moratorium, a day for people to, to quote their slogan, stop work to stop the war – that is, the Vietnam War. It was intended to be a day for people to show their opposition to both the Vietnam War and the National Service Act. As an aside, this wasn’t exclusive to Melbourne; moratorium marches happened in most capital cities over the same weekend. By this time, my father was in Vietnam, having been conscripted through the National Service Act; as I mentioned in the introductory episode, family lore says that his father, my grandpa, marched in the Adelaide moratorium.
The population of Melbourne at this time was around 2.5 million people. For context, the 2003 rally against the Iraq war also drew around 100,000 people, when the population was 3.6 million people
There had been a massive moratorium march in America in November 1969, and there was a sense amongst Australian anti-war groups that such a thing might have a similar response in Australia. Organisers launched a massive advertising campaign, especially in Melbourne and Sydney, with Dr Jim Cairns writing pieces for publication in major newspapers in the weeks leading up to it. The media was full of discussion about the upcoming event, with statements from staunch anti-Communist Bartholomew Santamaria forecasting terrible violence. There was also commentary from politicians, with Billy Snedden – the federal minister for labour and national service at the time – declaring in parliament that the anti-war movement were, and I quote, a pack of “political bikies pack-raping democracy”. Most of the organisers of the moratorium were determined that there would be no violence from their side.
Moratorium marches were held all over Australia, but the largest by far was in Melbourne, and many women were involved in organising the march, as well as attending it.In this episode, I’ve collated recollections together, so that you can hear women’s responses in their own words. We start with women who were involved in organising the march, and then move to individual experiences. If you’d like to know exactly who is speaking when, you can check out the website, which has a detailed list of credits and short biographies of every speaker. We begin with Jean McLean, who was a key organiser of the moratorium: the ‘he’ that Jean McLean mentions at the start is Jim Cairns, a federal Labor politician who had been speaking against conscription in particular basically from the start. I should also note that one or two people mention CICD, which stands for Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament, who were a significant group in the organising of anti-war events.
Jean McLean
He was the chair of the moratorium. And so, you know, we had to do the work, because he was in Parliament. You know, but he’d come to address meetings. But he was a very important figurehead, because he spoke very, very well against war. So anyway, the moratorium movement in Melbourne – we started with a meeting of all the different groups. Save Our Sons, the Youth Campaign Against Conscription, all the different groups. We met in Richmond Town Hall. And we worked out programs, including – like, we used to go and – I was – Jim was the chair, I was deputy chair, Bernie Taft was another deputy chair. And Harry Van Moorst was – for one of them was the deputy chair.
Anyway, we’d have meetings, and – we’d go and address people at – through working with the trade union movement – at all the factory doors. Sometimes we were allowed in the dining room, depending on the make-up of the factories. Others, we had to speak at the gates. But we did that. We went, you know, addressed hundreds of meetings. We went and distributed leaflets. We raised funds. So that by the time May the 8th turned up, there were just hundreds and hundreds of people.
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
I became the person who coordinated and helped to generate new local groups. And we ended up with 20 of them –
Alexandra
Local moratorium committees?
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Yeah, yeah, they were moratorium committees, they weren't CICD groups, and they weren't Peace Council groups. Like I lived in Kew at the time, I had a brief period living in the suburbs. In the Kew group, there were women who I knew voted Liberal and stuff like that. I can't remember if each time there was a big meeting, people sent delegates ... they might have I can't remember that. But that was pretty big deal. And mostly what people in the suburban groups did was they'd go to the shopping centres, invariably on a Saturday and sometimes you know, if there were enough people around or it was a busy day, they might go during the week, but definitely on Saturday. They'd hand out leaflets, they'd talk to people, they'd set up a little stall, they'd talk to people, they'd hand out leaflets, they'd invite people to come to meetings or, you know, whatever - things like that; they'd get speakers to come to local halls or to someone's house to talk about what was going on, what was being planned, you know, why it was important to do it. And so on.
Andra Jackson
I went to the meetings, with, if I recall correctly, the - as a delegate for the Labor Club - if I recall correctly, the meetings were in a hotel and - upstairs lounge of a big hotel in the city - and Jim Cairns, the late Jim Cairns, chaired the meeting. And there were groups from a wide range of backgrounds and philosophies that yes - and we within the Labor Club had debates about whether the moratoriums was just, you know, bourgeoise, middle class movement, and should we take part in it, but we did.
Alexandra
Yeah. So as the delegate to that, was that something that you volunteered for? Did somebody ask you to go along as the delegate?
Andra Jackson
It was probably a bit of both. But the idea was that we'd try and influence the movement - the moratorium movement - and pull it a bit more to the left. That was always the strategy when we worked in with other groups that were off-campus, to be an influence within them.
Alexandra
Do you think you succeeded with the moratorium committees?
Andra Jackson
Well, I think, yeah, I think we were an influence, because we did put our views. Yeah, yeah. And we certainly were allowed to - all - we took, you know, Vietcong flags and made our presence felt.
Christine Ross
And I was part of an organising committee in my local area, because Jim Cairns and people like that were sort of behind organising cells, if you like - people all over the place to try and get everybody together. And so yeah, I went along there religiously every week, I think it was, to plan - you know, what we would do and how we'd manage it.
Alexandra
How big was the local group? Are we talking like a dozen people?
Christine Ross
Oh, once again, I don't know that I want to be quoted on that, but probably at least a dozen I suppose. There was people from all over, you know, there'd probably - maybe 15 or so people, which is, you know, reasonable size, for just one small group, in Oakley.
Alexandra
In those local committees was it - did it feel like it was either mostly men or mostly women? Or was it just mixed?
Christine Ross
It was a bit of a mixture. There were a few more older people, you know, pacifists and stuff that I sort of recall - because you know, we had by that time, we'd been pretty militant at demonstrations. And I think they were a bit wary of these young radicals. You know, they didn't want us to do anything like we'd done in 1968. You know, they wanted it to be a peaceful match. Which it was.
Frances Newell
Well, I think what was interesting about that period - 1968, 1969, 1970 - was that you had people from very different philosophical and ideological backgrounds, who were able to more or less agree on a set of strategies for opposing the war. The motivations might have been different. And sometimes the actions were different. But sometimes everybody could come together for the one action as we did for the Vietnam Moratorium.
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Dad had been saying to colleagues and comrades, we will have 40,000 people at this. "Oh Sam [Goldbloom], for goodness sake, don't you know, don't be silly. That's, you know, so optimistic." "You'll see" - "no you'll see." I bumped into him - he was sort of racing up to Treasury Gardens. When I was - you know, people were still sort of moving down Bourke Street. "Dad, Dad!" - Turns around, comes over and he puts his arm around my shoulder. "Look at this," he says, "they said - I told them" ... and what did he say, I'm just trying to remember how it went... oh he said, that's right, he said "20,000 my arse. Look at this," he said - and he's such - "gotta go and he went off up Bourke Street to the Treasury Gardens.
Liz Aird
That was amazing. That was wonderful. Because that was so big that they couldn't pick anyone off. That's - it's a thing I learned. You've got to have a big demonstration in order to not be in danger. You know, with those smaller ones, you could feel the hostility from the police. And I don't think it came from the police, you know, it was from much higher up. And you could feel it, and you could feel it as soon as you arrived. The way the horses were, the way they were positioned, the way they moved around. But at the moratoria - you couldn't, that was too big for them. And so they just had to stand by and watch. And it was sort of wonderful. It was great that you had those leaders leading the march, like Jim Cairns and Sam Goldbloom. So it was - it was really good that you knew that you were safe in that. And it was great when you went to a demonstration and you didn't see people you knew because there was so many people there. That's when I knew it was really good.
Shirley Winton
Well, it was - it was amazing, because was amazing because there were, you know, there was the first time in, for me anyway, to be in, to be in there, where there was such a broad, not just, you know, a small group of Monash Labor Club, and a few other students from other universities, but you really had a sense that this was a real genuine mass movement. And that was just so lifting and inspiring and, and, you know, when we were - a group of us, and there was, again, a group of women and one of us, one of my friends was holding an NLF flag. And, and people around us were just, you know, like, were smiling at us, you know, people were saying hello to strangers and saying, you know, saying how great this is. And it was, it was almost like the moratorium, was like a release of pressure, generally, about the social, socially oppressive environment. You know, and, yeah, it was incredibly, incredibly inspiring. And also, we felt so powerful. It's like, there's so many of us and it's - and everyone is united. And … I was working… And I took a day off work to attend the moratorium and no one batted an eyelid at my work.
Alexandra
Were there other people from your work who also went?
Shirley Winton
Two others who went. But it was kind of like an expected thing that, you know, people are going to go because, you know, we've had enough.
Jan Muller
Come the moratorium day, the other teacher, the other woman teacher in the school said, "Oh, do you know what time we're finishing up for the holidays?" And I said, "I don't know, but I hope it's early." And she said, "Yes, so do I." And it – so it turned out that we were both wanting to go into the city to the moratorium. It hadn't come out before then! Neither of us knew the other's politics. And of course, the principal, the headmaster, he was called, he was a conservative old bugger, and so we weren't gonna let on to him. But we hadn't let on to each other, either. We'd had lunch together every day in the lunchroom. And we had never – we didn't have an inkling that either of us were supporting the moratorium.
Janet McCalman
It was an incredible surprise, and delightful surprise that - and the moment that you know the university people had come down from the top of Bourke Street by Parliament House, and the unions come up from West Melbourne, and suddenly, when we all saw each end of Bourke Street packed, I mean, ever since I've used that as my measure of how many people were in a demo, but it was extraordinary feeling of, of, of solidarity and of not being alone. And that the rest of the community, a lot of part of the community was feeling the same. I mean, in anticipation of it, there was a very big fear that there was going to be major violence. And my mother used to work in a laundrette in Prahran, East Prahran. And the owner of the laundrette's son was in the army. And while she was working, the day before, he'd come in and talked about how they were preparing to attack if they got the chance, or need - were needed, and how the strategy was that they were to fill up all the lanes along Bourke Street, which is why, one of the reasons why the Melbourne grid's designed that way, as a way you control restive natives that you can have possies of police and troops down side streets. They went prepared and they were expecting to be able to attack the demonstrators. And the police probably the same, I'm not sure but - and so, you know, she was very nervous. But she went on her own from home, my father went from work and I went from the university. But nothing happened because the numbers were far too big. No one expected it to be so big. And there hadn't been a demonstration of that size before, I think, ever in Melbourne, a political one. I mean, there'd been riots, there'd been bread riots, there'd been big riots over - in the 1920s. But nothing like this. So, you know, it's just too many people. And it was peaceful, and it just overwhelmed. So I think it was a very emotional day. And people felt suddenly that they could declare themselves; my parents' neighbour, he came home from work early, he saw my mum, and they said, did you go on a walk today? I went on a walk - you know. And so there's the sense that people had been hiding their views. Because you'd always had to hide your left wing views, you couldn't be open about it.
Kaye Lovett
So we went to Melbourne for the moratorium. We didn't know what was going to happen because people like bloody Snedden talked about people pack-raping democracy. And you know, we thought we could get bashed by the police or anything, you know. But we went. And it was, of course, it was just amazing. It was probably one of the best experiences of my whole life. There was 100,000 people in the street. So that was amazing. I wasn't in the least bit intimidating, because the sheer weight of numbers - we were just so thrilled, and the range of people: all classes and you know, all that sort of thing. It was fantastic. It was the biggest demonstration of democracy in action I've ever seen. It was wonderful.
Jenny Gerrand
It was quite fun. And when we had to lie down, we're all lying on the ground. And I suppose symbolising all the people killed, I who don't know what it was. This man, part - half drunk, rolled out of the pub and started singing in the most beautiful opera voice, "I have often walked on this street before". It was quite funny. So we felt safe. There was no danger. No, we didn't have a prime minister then saying, oh, aren't you lucky, you're not being shot. So we felt safe. That was one thing nobody thought there was nothing about violence. I found it a bit life affirming, perhaps.
Andra Jackson
I think we didn't expect the numbers that we did get, and the people, the range of backgrounds that people came from. It was the first time we really had a sense that we had been effective, and that we'd reached out to, you know, a wide range of community members, for example, when my mother marched, she was marching next to someone she hadn't met before, who was a policeman's wife. There were students, you know, young people, old people. It was - it was just overwhelming that so many people, over a number of years, had had their opinions changed and had come across to oppose the war.
Christine Ross
It was spectacular - was the biggest thing I've ever had anything to do with. The people just marched for, for miles. We used to go to the May Day demonstrations or marches. Mostly, they were socialist or communist party people who were running those. And they were always pretty good. And I was pretty impressed with, you know, the Albanian dances and all that sort of colourful stuff that used to go on. But the moratorium was a different thing altogether.
Alexandra
Did you go with other students from La Trobe?
Deborah Towns
Yeah, we would have gone in a bus, in the bus. I'm pretty sure buses were organised, probably by the student unions and so on. And no, we went in a great big group. And look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I can remember standing on a seat I think, there was a seat up near, outside Parliament House on the other side of the road. So I would have been the corner of Bourke Street and Spring Street. Because I'm - when I'm passionate about something I really go. And I don't know if it was true, but the story was, the government or the police were deliberately redirecting trucks or trying to get trucks to turn left from Spring Street down Bourke Street to stop us from sitting down and marching because there was - many thousands there, I understand 100,000 sat down eventually, and the trucks being directed to go down and, you know, to, to not mow us down, but obviously to threaten us and everything. And I remember standing up there on the seat with somebody else and saying - pointing at them, and "go away" and you know, "don't do this" and "think of" - you know, whatever and I just remember standing up there and doing that - I didn't have a loud hailer. But none of the trucks drove down. They didn't, they kept on going. But I understood there was a whole lot of trucks there. And we were told it - "oh look they're deliberately sending the trucks down to mow us down" and everything.
Alexandra
What made you decide to go - ?
Faye Findlay
I suppose some of it would be Jim Cairns. … Jim Cairns and the emphasis on peace, spoke to me. … So that even though I was a timid little person, you know, and a loner, I went to the march because I thought that was the right thing to do. And I do have the recollections of looking across the street to the wall-to-wall people, and thinking this is significant. I mean, I've been to many marches since then. But that's, that's been the biggest one, and perhaps the most impactful.
Alexandra
So it wasn't a scary experience to be there with so many people?
Faye Findlay
I was always on the gutter edge, you know, I'm never literally in the centre of things, you know, I always want to know that I could slip into a store or - but though on that particular day, you kind of couldn't move except with the flow of people.
Alva Geikie
I just remember attempting to count them. Because I knew the papers always underestimated things. And it was either - it might have been afterwards, when it had come out in the paper that so many people were involved. And I thought that doesn't sound right to me. And so I sort of counted, however many I thought would go - like it was Spring Street down to Myers. That's how it was. It was just incredible. 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people. Yeah, and I reckoned there'd been about 100,000 people there and I think there probably were but I don't think the paper said that … I think the papers well underestimated and of course they underestimate anything that's a complaint. They underestimated the Women's Liberation Movement demos as well, it suits them to underestimate things like that. … It was wonderful - it was absolutely fantastic. You know, to think that so many people sort of agreed with what you were thinking and had thought for a long, long time, and were prepared to come out, because a lot of people might think it but they don't come out necessarily, but I think - see, the picture started coming of all those children being bombed and running away from the war. And as I said, there was so much publicity, so many photos came out, and people were just getting horrified. And and so to go on those marches, it was, it was a wonderful thing. … You know, it was exhilarating to be there; didn't feel a bit frightened at all. Everybody was smiling and happy. And - they weren't happy about the war, but they were happy about the protest. And ASIO was there, of course, taking all the pictures.
Alexandra
Do you remember how you heard about the moratorium coming up?
Mairi Neill
I think it was everywhere - it was on - it was always - it was discussed on the news. But I think we probably would have got a you know, information in through - because my brother, my brother who was at RMIT at the time, he would have brought information in. But I think it was everywhere.
Alexandra
How did you make the decision that you should ditch school and go to the moratorium? How do you come to that choice?
Mairi Neill
I just, I just felt I had to do that - that we had to show as much – it’d come, it’d come at a time, listening to Jim Cairns, he made a lot of sense. … Oh, it was wonderful. That - no, it was wonderful - like I mean, the atmosphere was just amazing. I mean, I'm, I was very honest in that piece that I wrote, like stepping off the train like, wow. But there was - there was a group of you know, and they were - had been drinking or whatever outside Young and Jackson's - and they was like skinheads or whatever. And I mean, they were looking - and we were called all sorts of names. But you know, you just - yeah. And I wasn't actually someone that - because we lived at Croydon, I mean, going into the city was a real big Oh, you know, put on your best clothes. And if - it was a special outing. I would say that probably my mum had to give me the train fare. I didn't have any money of my own. So I had to work my way up to RMIT. And of course, the students there, they were in the - all the different clubs were going to be marching as their own thing. But I was to meet my brother. And of course, he was nowhere in sight. So that's why I ended up - I joined another group of students that turned out it was Monash - it was Albert Langer. And if there was going to be any trouble that day, it was - and they did; when we got to, when we got past the stock exchange, they had flour bombs all ready. And they did, they threw flour bombs, but the police ignored them. And everybody else said, No, don't stop, don't stop, keep going. So I think it was, there was only about two, you know, flour bombs. And I think they were even - you know, everybody could - was gobsmacked about how many. I mean, that was - there was 100,000 people. Like when you look at the city of - I think Jim Cairns - I think everybody was overwhelmed. And when we got down to sit in Bourke Street, like I worked my way up, because I was on my own then. So I just, oh, this is good. Elbowed my way, didn't had, didn't know - you know, I didn't have to be with anybody, didn't have to hold any banners, didn't have to do anything. So I managed to get right up sitting as close as possible to when - right in the centre of Bourke Street. And it was, it was just amazing.
Sue Garner
So the EU [Evangelical Union] room was on the third floor of the Union Building, and we had our own room, which we - which all our social time was spent, we met there. And the leader of it was, of our little group was Ross Langmead, who has since passed away, and he led us with a guitar. So he was very much into protest songs, Peter, Paul and Mary, into that sort of stuff. And so we marched behind the - Christians for peace involved lots of different Christian groups. So church groups, lots of different Christian groups, but we had our own Melbourne Uni EU group. For - I can't actually remember how many people, I would say 20, but I really can't remember. But we were behind him playing his guitar walking down. So we met at the EU building, and we had banners. I was too scared to carry a banner. Because I felt like I was doing the wrong thing. Like I felt really naughty.
Alexandra
Why did you do it then?
Sue Garner
Because I respected the people that I'd met at EU. So this is May 1970, I'd only been there since February, but I respected their opinions enormously. But my sister who's more conservative than I am, even though they were originally her friends, she didn't march; she said "Sue, it's not the right thing to do because it's against the law". Whereas I decided to because I thought it was important…. So we met on the third floor, we walked down through the Union - people watched us, whatever. And then of course, we then just walked down Swanston Street, which is where everyone walked. I was thinking last night whether it was Elizabeth Street, but I think it's Swanston Street -
Alexandra
I think it was Swanston and then the big sitting down was mostly in Bourke Street I understand.
Sue Garner
That's right. Yes, I remember, yes. So the Union was sort of like in the middle of Melbourne Uni, so you've got - we could have gone the Elizabeth Street way or the Swanston, so we walked through into the Swanson Street way and walked down Swanston Street and singing, actually Christian songs, which is a bit random. … And then the sit down was like, a bit frightening. … And, and I was terrified that I might be arrested. … I felt terrified at the beginning. While we were marching, I found it quite exhilarating. And looking around and looking beyond my small group, our Melbourne Uni group, looking around and seeing other groups. And I was interested to see that there were, as I said, some were church groups, some were political groups. It was probably - probably one of the first things I did that extended, that broadened my mind, beyond my upbringing, because my upbringing was extremely conservative. … Marching in that moratorium, I feel proud that I was actually looking at other people that I would never have come across in my normal world.
Alexandra
What was it like to be a marshal? What sorts of things did you end up having to do on the day?
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Not much. "Move forward, move forward!" Because people kept coming - we ended up almost to Elizabeth Street. And over to Flinders Street, and almost to Lonsdale Street, and all the way up to the Treasury Gardens. It was phenomenonal.
Alexandra
So you didn't experience any - like there were no problems? I know beforehand there were lots of discussions about there was going to be violence and so on. Was it Snedden...?
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Oh Snedden. And who was it, Bolte I think was the premier then? Yeah, moron.
Alexandra
No problems that you saw?
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
How could you make problems with 100,000 people? You'd have a riot, you couldn't possibly... people just moved, there was nothing much for a marshal to do. All you could do was keep people moving down. So this was after the speeches. I can't remember the sequence actually. Maybe it was before the speeches, there were just so many people, you had to move them; they couldn't fit in the Garden. So all you could do is just keep people moving. And the street was just - the complete width of the street. I mean, there were just people hanging out of windows, office and shop windows, there were people on the street, some people joined in and lots of people applauding.
Alexandra
And the crowd was really varied, I understand? Like from the photos, it looks like there is a really big cross section of population - in terms of types of people.
Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo
Oh, you know, the ladies in the Kew branch of the Victorian Moratorium Committee, very well groomed, well heeled, expensive haircuts, and you go somewhere else and they, you know, just working class stiffs and long haired uni students. Yeah, that was the thing about it. That it was... people were mightily pissed off. They wanted the kids to come home - well, the whole lot to come home. It went across the board.
Joan Coxsedge
And I think it certainly was a very important component in our involvement and Whitlam certainly picked it up. I don't know how he - I don't really know how anti war... I mean, he was; he was, he probably was a very decent man, I think. But it certainly helped that there were a lot of people every time he'd mention the word moratorium or Vietnam, the response when he talked around when he was campaigning was immediate - he got the message loud and clear that this was a very important issue for people, which it was, which is why he did good things when he got elected in '72.