It’s not fair. I’ve noted that Michael Costa, Keith Windschuttle and Paul Owens are ex-Trots, but what about all those ex-anarchists? Well, when I write ‘ex-anarchist’, I really mean those-who-may-once-have-called-themselves-anarchists but who now… well, no longer do. I think.
Here’s a sample:
Wendy Bacon (1946?–) : Thirty years go, Wendy allegedly wrote ‘The Question is not ‘Organisation or no organisation?’ but ‘what sort of organisation?’. And the same goes for structure’. A veteran of The (Sydney) Push, after having battled censors, bosses, developers and more, the structure Wendy currently contends with is UTS.
Van Badham (1978–) : Another student radical and a member of a fraction known as the Non-Aligned Left (NAL), in 1998 Van was also President of the New South Wales branch of the National Union of Students (NUS). Now Van subverts authority by writing plays: “distinctive voice, uncompromising political themes and razor-sharp wit… have become trademarks of her work”.
Michael Duffy (?) : a hack journo, Michael once worked at either Black Rose or Jura Books in Sydney. Well, that’s his story anyway. Nowadays he’s content being a right-wing Phillip Adams for the Pink Mafia at the ABC and an opinionist for the SMH.
John Flaus (1934–) : Another Push veteran, John is “The barefoot anarchist from working class Sydney who once went to the drive-in without a car.” A w e s o m e. After a long stint as a film buff on 3RRR (and a lot more besides), John’s gravelly voice can now be heard flogging stuff on TV (“Ah McCain, you’ve done it again!”). “I do quite a few voice-overs but I rarely get the opportunity to say something I entirely believe in,” he told the Herald. “I spoke from the heart. I didn’t need to enter into a sort of emotional state other than my own, which is what an actor must do when he or she prepares for a role.” Flaus, 72, left school in 1950. He says he has seen the battles the trade union movement has waged over the years to secure recognition, workplace safety and “the thing our current Prime Minister talks about – he likes to use the expression ‘a fair go'”.”
Germaine Greer (1939–) : You may remember Germaine from such seminal texts as The Female Eunuch (1971), The Obstacle Race (1979), Sex and Destiny (1984), Shakespeare and The Madwoman’s Underclothes (1986), Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), The Change (1991), Slip-Shod Sibyls (1995), the whole woman (1999) and last — but by no means least — The Beautiful Boy (2003). Cranky and opinionated, Germaine was once associated with The Push; a far cry from “the flabby intellectual atmosphere of the Melbourne Drift”, apparently. Recently, Germaine sunk the boot into Steve Irwin, to popular, ah, acclaim.
Drew Hutton (1947–) : In the 1960s and ’70s, Drew was a Brisbane libertarian socialist (‘anarchist’). In 1984, he was one of the founders of the Brisbane Green Party, the second party of its kind in Australia. Worse things happen at sea.
Paddy McGuinness (1938–2008) : *groan* Paddy once hung around The Push. Then in 1963 he pissed off to Europe and got a job working for the KGB-front Moscow Narodny Bank, followed by a stint with the OECD. He returned to Australia and spent decades writing dribble.
Frank Moorhouse (1938–) : Author, but not a grave security risk: “By his own admission, writer Frank Moorhouse has benefited from almost every kind of government patronage – grants, awards, “soft diplomacy” jaunts overseas, even an Order of Australia. So he might have been peeved to find the government meanwhile had ASIO watching him, checking who came to his barbecues, what campaigns he mounted, which motions he moved at fringe meetings – exploring whether he was “an enemy of the state”. Not so. What left him “gravely disappointed” as he leafed through the thick file during his research at the National Archives of Australia was that his youthful anarchist activities ultimately weren’t taken seriously enough to make him a “grave security risk”. “I was furious,” he huffs. “They gravely underestimated the Sydney anarchists movement.”
Margot Nash (?) : Winner of the 1973 Award for Best Title for a Political Organisation, Margot was once a member of the Anarcho-Surrealist-Insurrectionary-Feminist (AS IF) collective. Now she’s a screenwriter and a director with a background as a cinematographer, a film editor and an actor. And an academic.
Richard Neville (1941–) : Another product of The Push, Richard is known for his having started (along with Richard Walsh and Martin Sharpe) Oz in Sydney in 1963. It played a very important role in disseminating ‘counter-cultural’ ideas. He’s also known for having appeared on The Mike Walsh Show (1973–1985), and being a ‘futurist’.
Paul Norton (?) : Used to be a young anarchist; turned into a not-quite-so-young Green… academic.
Jamie Parker (?) : A student activist and student union official (Chairperson) at Macquarie University and NUS (NSW State President, 1995; National Environment Officer, 1996), Jamie has since gone on to forge a career with the Greens, and sits on the Leichhardt Council. (He’s also been known to flog Horny Goat Weed.)
Christos Tsiolkas (1965–) : Christos barracks for Richmond. Despite this handicap, he’s somehow managed to become a writer, among a number of other titles co-authoring Jump Cuts (1996) with Sasha Soldatow (1947–2006). “Soldatow had been drawn to Sydney specifically by the anarchist libertarian tradition, which didn’t exist in Melbourne…”.
Marcus Westbury (1974–) : Culture vulture, TV personality and festival organiser extraordinaire, as a student Marcus was a member of the NAL, whose glorious victory in NUS elections in 1996 was trumpeted in the Workers’ Solidarity Movement paper (No.47, Spring 1996), much to the bemusement of local anarchists.
- A slightly hostile account of ‘The Push’ is available in ‘The Push and Critical Drinkers’ (Ch. 5 of Corrupting the Youth: A History of Australian Philosophy, James Franklin, Macleay Press, 2003). In fact, I wondered at the tone until I remembered that Macleay Press is the vanity publisher for Trot-turned-neo-con Keith Windschuttle. Funny how things come around like that. A more sympathetic account is available via Anne Coombs’ Sex and Anarchy, Viking, 1996 (see John Tranter’s review). See also the Orstalian Gub’mint’s attempts at keepin’ it real for the kidz.
Other notable quotables include John Kinsella, Brian Laver, Brian Martin, Peter McGregor (1947–2008), Ted Murphy, Saul Newman, Paul Nursey-Bray, Val Plumwood (1939–2008) and Ariel Salleh.
Out of curiosity, do you have any reason to think that John Flaus doesn’t still call himself an anarchist? I don’t know the man, but I have recollections of a certain Melbourne anarchist named Caedmon discussing John’s anarchism… though that would have been maybe 1989 or so… Still, no point living in the past, you can’t go back…
No, I don’t. He may well. When Barricade organised a screening of two @ docos at Trades Hall in 2002, he was there, so it appears he still maintains an interest. And yeah, I know Cad, but I’ve never spoken to him about Flaus or his anarchism. And remember, as Mike Brady says: Wherever you go, there you are.
Food for thought.
You are an evil man Andy!
1978 is not Van’s year of birth. No fucking way.
I thought Tsiolkas was always a Stalinist of sorts. Amazing writer.
I dunno. But that’s what the Wikipedia entry reads, and it cites AustLit Agent, which also states 1978 as being her birthdate. Her bio on doollee says only that she was born in Sydney. Her myspace page also claims that she is 29 years old.
Is there any reason you doubt her age grumpy?
As for Christos, I’ve never heard him described as a Stalinist. Jump Cuts contains a series of rather fractured discussions between he and Sasha, and my recollection from having read it is that he was fairly libertarian in his political perspectives. In ‘A capitalist faggot at the end of the millennium: musings on the disappointments of politics’, his contribution to the 1999/2000 edition of the annual compilation of essays published by the Australian Fabian Society, Christos writes that, in the context of a discussion on social equality, “I believe that Marxist and post-Marxist politics still have an important part to play”. For what it’s worth, I also seem to remember Christos as being one of a small number of writers, artists and musicians who had a brief flirtation with the IWW.
Plus: On January 31, 2007, Christos spoke at the launch of Jeff Sparrow’s book Communism: A Love Story (MUP, 2007): “Emma Goldman’s “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution” always sounded to my ears much more stirring than any Leninist call to arms”. In fact, his speech appears to suggest that Christos is not a Stalinist, but someone, like yourself, who remains deeply interested in the potential of the communist project.
Sample chapter of Communism (PDF).
Yeah because she is at least 4 years older than me – I was born in ’78. When I started uni in ’96 she was already into her degree. She is early to mid 30s at least.
Ah. I guess the only solution is to write her and ask. (Maybe she skipped a year or four?)
I take back the Stalinist comment. He is an amazing author.
sorry, mate, but i am still an anarchist vegan pacifist.
john kinsella
G’day John,
Cool. I was gonna throw up the i/view you did in Overland.
Here is the link:
feature | John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan
WEB CONTENT ONLY
published 24 November 2008
ON ANARCHISM
John Kinsella interviewed by Tracy Ryan
Thanks, mate, I appreciate it. Too few anarchists around…
Yeah… it is what it is.
Interested to read yr thoughts on the shit going down in Greece. Not very pacifistic…?
See for example : http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=1550
Funny that Fred Hollows doesn’t make an appearance on this list.
I guess you’re just a straight-up tram-stop liar, Andrew Moran.
Go practice yr reverse parking you big girl’s blouse.
Upon his death in 1993 the Chief Minister of the ACT, Rosemary Follett, described Hollows to her parliamentary colleagues as “an egalitarian and a self-named anarcho-syndicalist who wanted to see an end to the economic disparity which exists between the First and Third Worlds and who believed in no power higher than the best expressions of the human spirit found in personal and social relationships”. ~ Rosemary Follett, ACT Parliamentary Hansard, February 16, 1993