Cross-posted from Skepticlawyer.
Today my daughter was playing with her pink superball while my son was asleep (it’s small, so she’s only allowed to get it out while he’s sleeping). I heard her mutter to her toys while brandishing the pink superball, “This is the Prime Minister, and if you do something he doesn’t like, he will bounce in your eye.” My husband has pointed out that she may have learned the concept from a book entitled Blossom Possum (beautifully illustrated by Rafe Champion’s late wife, as it happens). I have also tried to explain to her what a Prime Minister does, but given the actions of the superball, I’m not sure if she quite “got it”.
Anyway, after I posted this incident on my Facebook page, the post started off a string of reminiscences about people’s childhood political memories. It transpires that an amazing number of my friends just loved Bob Hawke when they were kids. I don’t know if that means my friends’ families were generally Labor-leaning, or that Bob had a special appeal which made him loved by kids? When my sister was a little girl, she loved Bob. One general election, she asked Dad who he voted for, and Dad teasingly said he voted for Andrew Peacock because the Liberals gave him a shortbread round (actually he’d bought it at the school stall at the voting booth). My sister sobbed and sobbed, and said, “Now the forests will die because you haven’t voted for Bob!”
Mark Bahnisch commented that when he was in Grade 2, he wrote a poem about Gough Whitlam. Then Mark and I decided that we should write a joint post about what everyone’s earliest political memories are. I remember that I never liked Joh Bjelke-Petersen as a child. In addition, with a child’s merciless observation, I noted his head was shaped like a peanut, and thus I thought it was extraordinary that he was an ex-peanut farmer. Like my sister, I also loved Bob Hawke when I was little.
Do you remember whether you liked particular politicians when you were young? Or did you dislike particular politicians?
The other day, while I was doing fluffy bunny stuff, or something like that, I remembered that it was Joh’s hand who signed my paper. Or something along those lines. It may or may not be historically accurate, but it’s literary, kinda, sorta.
If your intention is to have a go at Skepticlawyer, SJ, I’d point out that this post is not by her, but by her co-blogger. Ok? Not that it’s ok to put up pointless ad hominems. Check the comments policy. I’m really pissed off, in fact, that you chose to make the first comment on this thread something like that, when I think a lot of people would be really interested in genuine responses. Take it somewhere else, please.
My first political memory comes from satire. Firstly, the Joh for Canberra campaign in 1987. I would have been in my first year of high school then, and I remember a song leading with, “Joh’s marching on to Canberra/Queensland’s had him long enough.” Some lines just wouldn’t fly today – I seem to recall one that went, “When Hitler’s troops marched into Poland/They didn’t have this much fun!”
This isn’t a political memory exactly, but I do remember, “Any boss who sacks a worker today is a bum!”
But I think my first real political memory is Peacock’s “It’s not right, is it?” campaign ad – again, the satire.
Woman – “I want another baby.”
Man – “But we can’t afford it!”
Peacock – “It’s not right, is it. But there is an answer. If anyone has this answer, please send it to the Liberal Party, care of Tony Eggleston (?), Canberra.”
My memories could be flawed, of course, but I like this memory too much to want to risk shattering it.
I was raised a Liberal, by a Liberal family. That didn’t exactly take (Fightback killed off any last vestiges of that inclination). I don’t remember liking or disliking any politicians in particular. I remember the contempt for Joh, and the dislike for Keating, but I don’t remember sharing it. These weren’t real people; they were TV people, important people. Like or dislike would have been a category error.
I come from a long line of Labor supporters. Earliest genuine political memory was watching the 1987 election night coverage and being upset when Howard lost – for some reason at that time I thought of myself as a budding young conservative – perhaps it was also because even then I liked being contrarian within my family. Anyway, my dalliance with the Liberal party didn’t last long – by my late high school years I had PJK’s photo on my bedroom wall…
Ok showing my age time.
I lived in Broken Hill when the New Queen Eliz came and visited us. Back in 1953 I reckon.
I remember all the schoolkids given Union Jack flags and being told to wave them and cheer when she passed by our school group at the local sports oval.
Hmmm.
Why?
Then we shifted residence back to my original hometown and I arrived just in time to see Liz again.
Same scenario. Deju vu almost.
Again we kids were given little Union Jack flags and told to wave and cheer when she drove by.
Nup, not this time for this little black duck.
I remember the green ‘Joh for PM’ bumper stickers inserted in one of local rags. Not long afterwards, an identical green ‘Alf for PM’ bumper sticker appeared in the same paper.
Spot the Queenslander.
Point taken, Mark, and please accept my sincerest apologies, Leagle Eagle.
Thanks, SJ.
balled my eyes out during a live cross of Robert Kennedy’s assasination, would have been 10 at the time
I’m with you on this one, hannah’s dad. I remember being carted off in a bus to wave flags at the queen in Melbourne. I remember our bus had a minor accident on the way home.
I remember when Harold Holt disappeared. One year I went to the Lord Mayors Camp at Portsea, and swam at a beach near where he disappeared, but I don’t remember if it was before or after.
I remember the assignation of JFK. It was the day my brother was born. Well sort of, for years we celebrated his birthday on the wrong day because we forgot the time difference. Naturally enough, I remember the subsequent assignations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Not exactly politics, but I remember the execution of Ronald Ryan.
I grew up with the constant barrage of Vietnam War on the 7 o’clock news.
I grew up in a conservative household; my parents supported Bolte and Bjelke-Petersen.
No wonder I grew up so radical.
I was an adult by the time Hawke entered politics. We thought he would save the world. At least he save the Franklin.
I might pop in a bit later with my childhood recollections, but I’ve got some very vidid memories of election nights. 83 when Hawke was voted in – I can remember the pizza and beer Brian and I had (ham and pineapple!), and 93 being chatted up by both a Confederate Action Party (sort of a precursor to One Nation) polling booth worker and an ABC reporter in one night!
Just quickly, I can remember the Courier Mail ‘Leahy’ cartoons during 1987, towards the end of Joh, featuring him regularly in a South American banana-republic military dictator uniform and a Mickey Mouse cap (this no doubt around the time he was in Disneyland while Bill Gunn announced the Fitzgerald Inquiry).
Obviously both Hawke and to some extent Keating (Treasurer Keating) are in there as well, since I was getting on to eight or so by 1985. I have absolutely no contemporary memory of Fraser.
My earliest memories are from my mum. She was a Liberal, probably largely in reaction to her Stalinist father. I remember going with my mum as a nipper when she was handing out for the Libs somewhere in the Ashgrove region, organised by John Moore. She always recounted being initially shocked when she heard Moore describe the real enemies as not the ALP but the Nats, but eventually came to agree with the statement. Of course she turned into an archteypical Dems voter, BTAS…
John Moore, I think, Martin, was President of the Queensland Liberal Party when tensions between the Nats and Libs in state parliament were very high indeed.
My earliest political memory is having an argument with my Liberal uncle in his apartment in Hurstville in Sydney in 1974, about why Snedden was hopeless, and why Gough would win the election. I wish I could remember what I put forward to support those views! I was 6.
I can also remember very clearly our Grade 3 teacher telling us Gough had been sacked. And rocks being thrown through the back window of Mum’s VW beetle because the Kenmore denizens objected to her ‘Shame, Fraser, Shame’ sticker.
I might add as well that there’s some interesting stuff in the polsci/voting behaviour literature about this. If Paul Norton happens along, he might give a more up to date or accurate take, because it’s the best part of a decade since I looked at it. But my recollection is not many people do change their views from when they’re young. Around 75% of people vote the same way every election from the time they’re old enough to when they shuffle off the mortal coil, and mostly, that partisan preference is the same as their parents’. It gets a bit different when the parents have different beliefs, and in particular when they talk about them. But if they have different beliefs, and don’t talk about politics much, and the child grows up with both parents, believe it or not it’s the father’s political preference that tends to stick.
The studies show not much change at all over decades in these patterns, either.
Among other things, it does show that the claim that we’re all making up our minds afresh every election as a rational choice is complete rubbish.
Most political decisions are actually emotionally driven.
Incidentally, one thing that I also remembered when LE put her status up on FB was that Bob Connell and another researcher wrote an excellent book in the late 60s or early 70s based on large scale interviews with and surveys of kids from preschool age up on what they knew/thought of politics. It’s an absolutely fascinating read. It’s the sort of research project that really should be repeated.
Holy crap, Mark, I doubt I’d have known what politics was at 6
I was a bit of a political junkie from a very young age, SL!
I remember driving past Brian Burke’s house on a regular basis. It seemed like an impressive scary castle, but I think that’s probably just my imagination…
I also loved Hawkie.
Although things are mutable. I seem to recall some British research that suggested that, ceteris paribus, a preponderance of daughters shifted a father’s politics to the left while a preponderance of sons did the opposite.
May well be the case, Martin. As I said, it’s a long long time since I had a look at the literature. I think the classic Australian studies were done in the 70s.
My first imaginary speechwriting (back when, at 15, I still identified as liberal!) was a response to the 1987 ALP election jingle of “no-one ever got anywhere changing horses in mid-stream” (spoken in full Hawkean drawl) “well of course they did if the bloody horse was drowning”.
I remember Whitlam being sacked, and yelling it out of the school bus on the way home from Annerley to Highgate Hill – with stunned looking people mouthing back “i know!!”. So, 7 years old is my first political memory. The ALP then produced these cartoon books for the 1975 election – explaining what had happened, for kids – my dad had stacks of em for distribution.
It’s funny the urge, or even need, to communicate that sort of news to strangers, isn’t it? I can remember being down in the carpark of the convenience store on Boundary St just up from the Vulture Street corner in August 97 and about 3 people told me that Princess Diana had died. And on election night 07, some friends and I were at a pub in Redfern at the 2SER party, and we all seemed to want to yell out the election result to everyone driving past on that motorway thingy that comes from the airport when we were out on the footpath having a ciggie. Contrary to Howard’s tripe about aspirationals, the folks in the utes and Ford Falcons seemed a lot happier than those in the Mercs and Beemers!
Handing out leaflets in the 60′s for the Defense of Govt Schools campaign at some election when I was about five – this memory is patchy and scratchy.
Walking around streets doing letterboxing for the ALP for whatever election(s) and was surprised to see first hand that my father was totally unafraid of dogs – unlike us kids who never had dogs as pets and back then you’d have to often encounter (or not by taking another route) very territorial dogs who used to be allowed to roam outside their houses – but he’d pat the most psycho hounds without a problem.
At some opening of something local – I snuck up behind Gough and held on to the back of the bottom of his suit coat while he was chatting to some peeps, must have been about 10.
On 11-11-75, a girl had a little AM tranny in our Second Form (Yr
class and heard about the dismissal. About ten of us then ran through the corridors of Sydney Girls High rather hysterically screaming that “the Government has fallen”. We then ran out of the school and we ended up just walking up Oxford Street and smoking cigarettes – not sure of what to do. We should have headed to the Domain with everyone else, but we weren’t that sophisticated. The Principal banned the wearing of political campaign badges across the school as the divisions were so bitter that many friendship groups were being effected and girls were crying and fighting over the election, which may have never happened before and probably since.
Speaking of the Domain, my father used to take us on outings to the city on weekends, to give mum a break I suppose, and after visiting either the Botanical Gardens, Hyde Park, the War Memorial, Art Gallery etc we’d go to the Domain and listen to whoever was up on their soap boxes or wooden fruit crates & ladders etc. at Speakers Corner. I wish my memories of the speakers, their speeches, the banter and the hecklers were more intact – they are just merely childhood impressions unfortunately. I don’t recall going there as a teenager with friends & I’m not sure when it all finished up.
so an 8 and ) = sunglasses smiley.
did not know that.
I have vague memories of Hawke in the late 80s. It wasn’t really a political memory. Being born in 1980, Hawke had “always” been Prime Minister.
I have a vague memory of being really confused by Malcolm Fraser, and asking my father (staunch ALP) why this pommie bloke was our Prime Minister. I’d never heard anyone speak like that aside from the English.
I too liked Hawke as a kid.
I grew up on a dairy farm in Gippsland in a Catholic household and was 9 when Labor split in 1955. The result was nothing about politics was allowed into the house. The ALP was the devil and you would burn in hell if you even mentioned it. We lived a life of the Sun News Pictorial and football predictions from Wednesday to Saturday and football post-mortems from Saturday to Wednesday in winter, and summers of lazy cricket games at the local oval timed to finish before the evening’s milking. So my political awakening was delayed relative to others here with political memories from the age of 5.
For me the competing influences of the church and state were played out as we were taken out of the local state primary school, a mile walk down the gravel road through gums trees, and put into the overcrowded St Lawrences Catholic School in Leongatha where we had to catch a bus. Classes of 70 or 80 students were taught by harried Sisters of St Joseph. Mum would get frustrated with conditions in the Catholic school and return us to the state primary. Then the priest would be visiting the farm and threatening my parents with ex-communication. So we would return to the Catholic school….
The first political book I had access to was BA Santamaria’s The Price of Freedom. The Movement – After Ten Years. I see it was published by Campion Press in 1964. But I am sure I must have read an earlier version when I was about 16. Because by 17 I have dramatically made my break with the Church telling a priest in the confessional that I was not going to confess because he was just a man and I was only there because my mother had forced me to be there.
While I soon questioned the lesson of the book on The Movement, the sort of analysis fascinated me and I then began to read all I could of social and political life. When I got to Melbourne University in 1996 I joined the Labour Party Club and first saw Whitlam at a dinner that year.
I was at the Adelphi theater in Carlton when a special announcement accompanied by a slide of John Curtin informed the patrons of his death. I recall being very sad and stood with everyone while the National Anthem played.[God Save The King!] I wont go into why I was on my own at a picture theater at night but I do remember how popular Curtin had been because of his support for Australia’s interests as opposed to those of Churchill. I was born in ’38 so was close to 7yr old.
OK, yep, the 1983 election result, but my memory is very different from yours Mark. Quite an interesting set of reflections this post has sparked!
So, I was 8 years old. I remember sitting in the back seat of the car while my dad drove home from the polling place at my primary school. I recall feeling strange being at school on a Saturday, and that the familiar environment of the school seemed so alien, and yet mysterious and adventurous, with so many grown-ups around doing grown-up things that made no sense to me.
My dad told me he’d voted Liberal, and hoped that Fraser would win. I lived in one of those areas of Sydney where voting Liberal is as natural, and attracts as much thought, as regular bowel movements.
That night, I remember hearing that Fraser had shed a few tears when conceding. It was the first time I had ever heard about a grown man crying in public. The very idea had never occurred to me before, and it blew my tiny little mind. I recall being similarly incredulous when Hawke wept about his daughter’s troubles a couple of years later.
Result: I felt sad that Fraser had lost. A child-like identification with my father’s choice, and a child-like empathy for the emotions of somebody who had suffered a setback. Obviously I had no conception of the politics involved, I just experienced the whole thing based on emotion and empathy, as children do.
Apart from that, around the same time I recall my parents would play cassette tapes in the car: an incessant loop of Tom Lehrer, Max Gillies and The Bushwhackers. Again, I had no idea of the politics involved and didn’t understand the names or concepts, at least at first. But it probably explains a lot. What a strange family we were. I think I was 12 before I heard any Cold Chisel.
Sitting in front of a black and white TV while the result that the Libs won the election in 1969 was worked out.
The world seemed to be changing just not in Australia.
The bitter disappointment of my mother who is a committed and demagogic socialist(still).Her joy at the result in 1972 was a helpful antidote.
My first political memory was the 1949 Coal strike. I was five, I think, and it was great fun, with my mother lighting candles at every blackout. I came from a Labor family. I don’t think I ever got over my father being really angry about Chifley sending the troops into the mines.
My father hated Menzies. It was from him that I first heard about the Brisbane Line and how Menzies was going to sell out Australia to the Japs. He used to call Menzies Pig-Iron Bob, and used to talk about how if if it wasn’t for the union we would have been getting Australian pig-iron back as bullets to kill Australian soldiers. (Not talking history here, but my father’s recollection.)
My first really definite political memory (I don’t count Lizzie’s visit, which I don’t remember much of, except we hardly saw her) was a front=page newspaper report of Mrs. Petrov being stopped from being taken back to USSR by the KGB. While it didn’t shake my father’s devotion to the ALP, it did resault in a long talk about how the Communists put priests, brothers and nuns up before the wall and shot them, or they would, if they ever came to Australia. I know my father refused to have anything to do with the DLP and apparently changed parishes over it because of a dispute about it with the parish priest. The only time the Split was ever mentioned at the dinner table I can remember was my father saying to my mother, “We’re Labor, and that’s that!”
I also remember my parents going up to vote in the referendum to ban the Communist Party. I think its the only time in their lives either of them supported the Liberal Party.
I also remember when I was about 14 meeting my first Communist and getting involved with the Realist Writers’ Group. They were among the nicest people I ever met. I never joined the party (it would have broken my father’s heart) but from then on I was certainly a fellow-traveller going to various Communist groups ot groups sympathetic to the CPA.
I’ve really enjoyed reading peoples experiences. Particularly about the split and the dismissal.
I guess my political awakening was a during my teens; I was already a Green Left Weekly subscriber and quite a few of my friends were One Nation supporters.
We argued politics every day.
I can remember election night 1980 when I must have been 8 or nine years old. I was weirdly fascinated by all the flashing numbers and moving graphs of a close result. Malcolm Fraser was the super-baddie for me in them days.
Politics:
“interrelationships in a specific field: the totality of interrelationships in a particular area of life involving power, authority, or influence, and capable of manipulation”
Microsoft® Encarta® Premium Suite 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
There is an interesting little survey/experiment going on in this thread as to the interpretation of the meaning and significance of the word,concept and process of politics.
OK its been skewed by the OP which has sort of steered us in the direction of equating ‘politics’ with “parliamentary/personality/party’ rather than looking at it in the alternate sense from the Encarta definition above.
Most of the comments have talked about personalities, Jo, Bob, Peacock, Mal for example.
Fewer about the process and institutions eg unions, monarchy, church/state.
From a blog site ‘left of centre’ I reckon I expected a few more of the latter.
I remember when Wayne Goss took over from Mike Ahern – I liked Wayne because he had kids, and seemed more like my dad. But my first actually “political” memory was 1993 and fightback.
My parents were actually swinging voters in those days (my memory of the research is they make up around 10% of the population, Mark, but it’s been years for me too!), and I remember asking them how they were voting for.
They both grudgingly said, “Keating.”, and then something to the effect that they didn’t want to because he was such an arsehole (my language, not theirs), but they felt they didn’t have a choice. A conversation with my then-best friend’s parents revealed similar sentiments. I thought it was funny, because they both seemed kind of cold and stentorian to me.
Mercurius, now that you mention it, I also remember Fraser crying after he lost. I must have been about eight as well. I was just really shocked that a man was crying on TV. Mum and Dad were grimly pleased, from what I recall: they hadn’t forgiven him for the dismissal of Whitlam. I asked Dad why Fraser was crying, and Dad said, “Because he wanted to win something important but he lost.” I felt a bit sorry for him, but a bit confused too. What could be that important?
I remember the America’s Cup victory and Bob Hawke saying any boss who sacked a worker for not turning up was a bastard. It was such an exciting day, and it seemed to me like that was exactly the right thing to say.
I was a bit scared of Keating. He was interesting, but kind of sharp and unpredictable from a kid’s point of view.
Paul Burns @34, my parents also loathed “old Pig Iron” along with their parents. My paternal grandmother really hated him, but I was never told exactly why. I guess she just hated the Liberals. She and her family migrated to Australia from Scotland pre-WW1, her future husband from England on the same ship, where they met. His ancestry was Irish, although I’m not 100% this was right. I’ll research it one day.
Anyway, Grandma told us that migrants were coerced into voting Liberal while en route, told that if they didn’t vote Liberal, they would be deported or something similar. On reflection, I think she meant refugees from Europe after WW2; quite a few Greek families lived in the street and she used to talk to the lady across the road quite a bit.
Politics was often discussed at our house; both my parents had a strong sense of social justice mainly because of the Depression and the devastating effect it had on ordinary people, I think.
At least one man in their street committed suicide, which had a big impact on my father. His father, who was a communist, was the only man in the street who had a job for the duration of the Depression, which has often struck me as ironic. After the war, my aunt was briefly the secretary of the SA branch of the Communist Party.
Don’t worry, Hannah’s Dad, we’re all in the same boat, if not the same time warp.
My earliest political memories in a house with no books and little conversation came from our outdoor lav’ where pieces of the torn up Daily Mirror hung on a string next to the chain from the cistern. I often sat out there, knickers down and legs dangling, and looked at pictures and cartoons like Churchill with his fat cigar and scrawny Stafford Cripps, later so lampoonable as the “austerity” Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I was four when WWII broke out and I can still see women running out onto our terraced street, waving and pointing at the sky where two tiny planes were having a “dog fight” someone said. Puffs of smoke came out of one which spiralled down and the women pulled up their pinnies to their faces and sobbed.
As I learned to read and write I loved picking out the words and sentences on our lavatory paper. Indoors I watched my big brothers at our kitchen table copying out the black arrows on maps showing our troops advance their tanks on the Western Front.
Immediately Post War I was old enough to understand and bless Nye Bevan, architect of the National Health Act, when my mum became beautiful to me with her new false teeth. Till then she’d been hollow cheeked and thin mouthed, not unusually having “lost a tooth for every child”.
Times were certainly changing and it was all about the lovely Labour Party winning against those terrible Tories.
When I was a kid, there wasn’t any politics (at least not in our house). There was Menzies in Canberra, and Playford here, and that was it. I only started getting engaged when I was about 13 or 14 – Vietnam and conscription.
I do remember getting herded somewhere hot with a teeny tiny flag to wave at Her Majesty when I was very young. I think I’d started school, but only just.
Thinking about this, I’ve just had a funny memory, which is that I genuinely thought Ronald Regan’s name was Ronald Raygun. I think I might have been confused because of the Star Wars programme or something.
I also remember that I was very very scared about nuclear war breaking out, and about the Russians doing something crazy.
My first awareness of strikes came, strangely enough, from a story from my mother when I was a little kid.
I used to put my spare coins, pennies and ha’pennies, in a steel cylinder on the floor in my bedroom, it was my piggy bank.
Later I learned it was the empty casing of a 3 or 4 inch artillery shell which mum had made when she worked in a munitions factory during WW2 as a machinist 3rd class [and there are pile of stories associated with the social phenonomem of women working during the war].
The shell was a reject and she explained to me how it was one of thousands that came to be rejected.
At the end of the assembly line an inspector, a bloke, from the company contracted by the government to manufacture the shells [the company is still around god bless it], would randomly test the specifications of the shells and give them the OK or not.
Rejects were scrapped but, and this is the important point, the company was still paid for making them.
The women on the line, one was mum, noticed at one stage that all inspections were resulting in rejection but because it was random, the uninspected shells were passing and being sent off to the ‘front’.
And they were certainly faulty because whatever was causing the fault was not being addressed.
The women complained and requested that the settings on their machines be checked, being mere women they were not allowed to do so.
The company refused. Deadlines and all that, the line would have to be stopped, the women workers would be idle but paid.
Tensions grew over several shifts as every inspection resulted in rejects but the intervening shells were ‘passed’.
Finally the women held a meeting, totally unofficially.
One made the point that her husband was an artillery gunner at the front and she didn’t want to send him useless shells.
They went on strike. Cheeky buggers.
The shit hit the fan.
Even the union officials were appalled at their lack of ‘patriotism’ and lack of ‘dedication to the war effort’.
But they stayed on strike until the machines were re set, and yes, a faulty setting was causing the problem.
Gutsy women.
I was proud of my mum.
Mum used to take me to protests in the stroller and pram. But it didn’t seem like politics, just an extension of Dad’s folk group, ’cause we always went together. There was a period in the late 60′s when Mum’s fav party trick was to march me into the public bar of the nearest pub and order a beer and a lemonade and sit there quietly, ignoring entrities to move to the Ladies bar, until a police officer arrived to escort her from the premises. she was always very polite with the constabulary, often in stark contrast to the foul language of the other patrons. it was from these exchanges that i learnt to relate to police officers as human beings as they did their job, whatever it was, and whatever my position. i know now that this behavior came hard to my mother, she did not believe that there are two types of people in the world, those that are comfortable with the approach of the police and those that are not, but she thought that the police believed that and therefor their behaviour was predictable if you related to them as people. i was a valuable lesson and one that i am very greatful to have learnt so young.
as far as party politics is concerned we, Mum, Sis and me, now 8, blew into London late in 72 after being badly ripped off by my Dad’s then girlfriend. we were broke and squatting in some derelict terraces in Hamsted. one night mum bundled us onto the tube and took us to a big building in town with the largest collection of Australians that i had seen since we had been in england. i had a qutsie english kids book with me with lots of talking animals and snow and skating on the frozen pond that totally bemused me as in two winters i had yet to see snow. but the adults bemused me even more. it was my first exp with a mass of drunk australian males all celebrating Gough’s victory. i have a clear memory of mum laughing and crying at the same time saying it was time to go home, we are going home over and over again.
i tried joining Young Labor in my first year at uni. i got there early as you do and paid my fee and signed the forms and sat down just in time to see a bloke get up on a chair and move the clock forward 15 minutes and open the meeting. a bunch of motions were passed and the meeting closed within ten minutes. five minutes later a mass of people walked in and tried to have the meeting proper, arguments ensued and i think the whole branch got suspended.
Hannah’s Dad and Dylwah, those are great stories about your respective Mums. Strong women, both.
As a 13 year old its was the death for Dr King and as a 16 year old in ’72 my very future was dependant on the election of Gough
Great stories.
My next-to-oldest political memory after the dismissal is then 1977 – going with Mum down to the Roma St watchhouse to bail out Dad – arrested at another civil liberties campaign march in QLD.
Yes, young kiddies – it was illegal to demonstrate in QLD in the 1970s and 1980s. Hard to believe isnt it?
First rally slogan I recall: “Queensland, police state, demand the right demonstrate!”
Scans well!
I have very fond adolescent memories of the post march whip around at the pub, then the delegation marching up to the Roma street lockup to bail comrades out, and then their triumphant return to the pub!
That, and, a Seargent of Police making me jump from the curb to the footpath; “I direct you under the Traffic Act to leave the public roadway”, the dudes at rallies who were so obviously Special Branch plants “what do you study, COMRADE?” (best answer was ‘Law’), and former Special Branch copper and then Minister Don Lane hiding behind the bushes at Labor Day taking photos.
Oh, and when I was a junior public service clerk, wandering upstairs in the Treasury Building with a colleage after hours and sitting in Russ Hinze’s chair!
Dylwah,
hannah’s mum attended a conference a year or two ago [OK, Ive checked, it was 6 years ago, *sigh*], the 20th anniversary of Womens’ Legal Service in Brisbane, at which Merle Thornton [mum of Sigrid] related the story of how she and Rosalie Bognor chained themselves at the bar of the Regatta Hotel in 1965. They showed B@W ABC TV footage of the event and described how they were bought a beer each by the male patrons in the pub, the publican would have been fined if he had served them alcohol.
You could’ve fit the whole Department into Russ’s chair, Mark.
My parents aren’t into politics – so the earliest memories are Mike Carlton’s Friday News Review with Hoppa-long Cassidy (Ronald Reagan), Andrew “Gucci” Peacock, “Ahhh, Ahhh” Hawkie (for some reason I think Nick Greiner was Kermit the Frog). Which segues nicely into Nicholson’s puppets which were on one of the comedies at the time – with Hawke and KEating always sparring, the liberals were always seen drinking with “pigs arse” John Elliot. Tellingly, the themes about the liberals were always about personality conflicts and the lack of policies (which sort of exemplified the internecine warfare between Howard and Peacock) – I remember one with John Howard’s tax policy and a Moby Dick whale.
I vaguely recollect Joe for Canberra, as one of my friends in high-school had parents who were Liberal branchholders in the area – he was furious about the quixotic idiocy of the movement. The other memory was the Wall Street crash – where I remember sitting behind some guy who was telling his friend that overnight his father had lost 2 million dollars on the stock-market – a sort of prequel to the recession that would hit Australia.
@51 – it was one big chair, David!
I also liked Bob Hawke. I think everyone did. I remember being irrationally angry when Keating did a Brutus to Hawke’s Caesar and — Keating’s unpleasantness apart — I’m sure this coloured my view of Keating for all time.
I do find people who have political memories from when they were little kids very impressive, because while I remember Hawke on the news over the America’s Cup etc, it wasn’t a political memory as such, but the fact that he was PM and said something funny. I was probably more lefty back in high school (insofar as a 14 year old can be said to have ‘politics’), mainly because I was in the process of becoming an atheist at a religious school, and I didn’t know any right-wing atheists.
I went to a very politically inclined high school, so our guest speakers in the Politics class (then called Social Studies), included Bob Hawke, when he was boss of the ACTU, Frank Crean when he was Treasurer and Don Chipp when he was still in the Liberal Party. Hawke was tremendously charismatic, so you had a class of teenage girls just about swooning. Crean was very sweet, but dull. Chipp told dreadful lies about Medibank and the horrors of ‘socialized medicine’. Some of the girls took the argument right up to him and I could never take to the Dems at all after that.
Crean was my local MP and my dad used to do the plumbing at his place. Even when he was Treasurer he’d ring up himself ‘cos his toilet was blocked or something. And he always paid his bills promptly.
Strangely, one of my earliest memories is when Winston Churchill died and someone came around collecting money for a wreath to send to his funeral. My Dad gave him an earful about not wasting a cent on that right-wing arsehole.
I 1st voted in the 1977 Federal election. My recollection, which may be a tad faulty, is that got to the voting place at 5.55. I was fairly drunk or stoned or both. I didn’t know much about any of the parties, not sure who I voted for. At that time I was in the safe seat of Curtin held by the now forgotten Vic Garland, who I think later on was in some scandal or other.
I was six. It was a hot day, and all my classmates had come in from lunch and we were just sitting there, waiting for the class to resume. I found out later that this is a management technique that teachers apply to little kids, you can’t have them running around and then sit them down and go straight back into classwork.
We lived in a country town. Our teacher had come out of retirement to teach us. With the charitable intent for which young boys are renowned, we called her “the old bat”.
On this particular day one of the other teachers, a tall thin gangly man, stepped over us prone kids and muttered something to our teacher. He face fell. The teachers exchanged words and the other one stepped back outside. Our teacher stood, and with her voice cracking up, announced to the class:
“Children, the Prime Minister has been sacked. You won’t be able to appreciate this yet, but it’s a terrible, terrible thing”.
Ronnie, sitting behind me, said: “the old bat is gonna cry!”. She didn’t but she was crabby and shrieky all afternoon. I had no idea what a Prime Minister was. I thought she meant the Principal had been sacked, and when one of the other kids asked about that the teacher started to explain but gave up, explaining that the principal was OK and can you just do what I’ve asked you to do, please.
I got home and told my mother that the Prime Minister had been sacked. It seemed like the biggest thing that had happened at school that day. Her reaction was the opposite of my teacher’s: “I know! Isn’t it great!”. She took me by the hand and danced me around the kitchen.
That night my father came home. “Isn’t it great about Whitlam!”, said Mum. “I’m not so sure”, said Dad.
One event. Three adults, the three key adults in my life at that point. Three different views. Welcome to politics.
@54, yes SL I too felt cross when Keating knifed Hawke. Again, I was a kid, and I felt sorry for the vanquished, and I intuitively felt the whole episode was “dishonourable” somehow. I still think my kid-instincts were right about this: the adult game of politics is terribly, terribly, grubby. A lot of what goes on, in human terms, just ain’t right, regardless of how the politics play out.
In 1974 I was in 5th year high school at a private school. One of the teachers there said what Australia needed was ‘guided democracy’. They were still smarting over Labor’s withdrawal of funding for school cadets. For the election of that year we were told to recommend to our parents that they vote Liberal- in part in the hope that the cadet funding would be reinstated but also for the general good of the county. Some years later I instinctively distrusted Fraser as he reminded me of that teacher.
In 1983 I attended a rally at Hyde Park (Perth) where Bob Hawke worked the crowd in a way I have never seen since.
My father and his mother had flaming rows about whether Menzies had engineered Petrov’s defection with the object of destroying Evatt. She said yes. He said no.
History proved my father right, though not until after my grandmother died.
We all want the leaders of the causes we hate to be smarter and more evil than they really are.
Fraser – then and now.
Hawkie. Just watching the Denton interview (Elders) reinforced to me how charismatic he was in his prime and still able to command the space.
Vatican 11 – the end of the Latin Mass and the lifting of the steel veil of politics and mysticism for Catholics
Finding out about Santa.
There’s some great stories here. In my case, well, Menzies was Prime Minister and that’s just the way things were. The Queen came, we went and waved flags. I think I saw the Land Rover. The local Mayor was a Liberal, he was the Holden dealer and we sold another brand – we never had a chance. The newspaper was the Daily Liberal (Google will now reveal where this was!).
At 50 years of age my father moved to Canberra and lived in the public service hostels with the new graduates. We joined him, he also went to Uni and got radicalised and somehow, that eventually rubbed off on me. Mother would never disclose who she voted for “because that’s personal” so we didn’t discuss politics until much, much later.
I remember being intrigued by politcal cartoonists and their drawing large heads on small bodies. I remember asking dad about it (I think I was four) and him saying something about “making them look funny”. I must have held onto that because I used to tease a Labor friend at school by doing a rather funny mock Gough on the steps on 11/11/75. I also used to tell her older brother that Gough was communist. Not that I had any idea what a communist was.
I switched sides in my mid twenties and have been a reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate and generally well fuctioning human being ever since. Much to the chagrin of my Tory parents.
@62Phil: my mother wouldn’t reveal who she voted for either. She thought it was bad manners.
As a teenager watching the ABC coverage (b+w) of the 1968/69 Chicago 9 ‘conspiracy’ trial and thinking ‘this is fucked’. Thinking the same thing as I watched footage of Yank B52′s pour defoliant over the jungles of Vietnam. Watching the conscription lottery on the ABC whereby it was announced that anybody born within a specified date range was obliged to register for military service and thinking ‘this is really fucked’. Watching my old man cry when Harold Holt drowned and thinking ‘hoo bloody ray’.
anthony nolan,
Apologies for being a pedant, but you did not see footage of B-52s spraying defoliant in Vietnam, or anywhere else. The B-52 was never used in that role. It was mainly the UC-123B Provider, as well as C-130 Hercules and various helicopter types.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UC-123B_Ranch_Hand_spraying_1962.jpg
I grew up in a country town on the Darling Downs and my earliest political memory (from the late 60s I’d guess) was a post-election breakfast table conversation between my parents and a couple of older siblings. The results from individual polling booths were in the paper and the family were going through naming who the 50 or so ALP voters at the local booth were likely to be. Once they’d reeled off immediate and extended family, friends and acquaintances who they were reasonably sure were Labor voters (mostly railway and council workers) and some public servant blow-ins from out of town who they reckoned would also vote Labor, there were still a handful of votes to be accounted for. There was lots of laughter as suggestions as to who else would have given the Labor candidate their vote became more and more outrageous.
Lefty E@24: During my last ‘let’s get rid of some of the crap in the boxes in the garage’ day, I came across “A child’s guide to politics” drawn and created by Cheryl McGregor & David Hinchliffe in 1975. My sister, then a member of the ALP, had had it signed by Al Grasby and given it to me. I’m getting more cynical about politics in my old age, so it was in the chuck out pile. However, somehow it found its way onto my son’s bookshelf where it sits today.
Thats the one Jill! Purple and white from memory. We had hundreds stored downstairs for year. Hope I still have one somewhere. The depictions of Phil Lynch and Paddy Field used to disturb my dreams!
My Dad was, once, a fervent Labor man. When the Dismissal occurred, he organised a spontaneous mass walkout from his place of employment to protest. I was much too young at the time to understand what was going on, but it was a topic of family conversation for years afterwards.
Fast forward to this decade. In his old age, Dad could hardly contain his admiration for the Howard government. On every hot-button topic, Dad sided with the Libs. He loved speculating on who would succeed Howard, and preside over the next era of unbroken Coalition rule.
At each election, I’d ask Dad if he put his amorous feelings for the Liberals into effect at the ballot box. I’d get the reply: “Oh no, I voted ALP, as usual. I’m too old to change now.” A perfect illustration of what Mark was saying earlier about most people staying fixed in their voting patterns!
What an interesting thread, full of great stories. Very cool, very human sort of stuff!
Jill @ #68: “A child’s guide to politics”
Well that kind of describes the entire profession, dunnit.
Paulus @62: OK. That war put me off any interest in militaria. Big planes spraying defoliant is good with me.
My first and abiding childhood memory of politics was Don Dunstan’s resignation.
Something about it profoundly shook me up. It had something to do with the fact that while I wasn’t enough to be politically aware, I was old enough to recognise authority figures, and for the first time seeing one in a condition of frailty and vulnerability, I suddenly realised that not only Dunstan, but all the authority figures I thought of as vaguely invincible – parents, teachers – were all human.
Or maybe it was the dressing gown…
1950′s memories….
1. Earliest is probably seeing a newspaper poster with one huge word: WAR, at the time of the Suez invasion, 1956.
2. That year also the suppression of an uprising in Hungary, and the Melbourne Olympics held in the heat of the Cold War. Hungarian/USSR water polo teams stoush in the pool, defections of Eastern Bloc athletes.
3. Asked about Aussie politics by NZ friends circa 1957, I launched into an explanation of Menzies/Evatt. After all, a primary school kid aiming to be a bullsh*tter may as well begin early. (I knew NARTHING.)
4. Visit of a British “V-bomber” circa 1957; fly-over in Melb.; us schoolkids herded out into playground to peer up at it.
5. Marching practice on the school oval; competitive marching in the House competition (primary school), accompanied by rudimentary drumming (bass and kettle drums) by much-envied squad of Grade 6 boys….
6. Loyalty oath recited at flag-raising ceremony every Monday morning: “…. I salute the Flag, honour my Country, and will cheerfully obey my Parents, Teachers and the Law.” God Save the Queen sung to scratchy orchestral recording broadcast over the suburb by school loudspeakers.
7. Royal Visits were more important than the annual Redex (outback) car trial, or the Melbourne Cup; but not more important than the VFL Grand Final.
8. Not much politics on TV. Very few families owned a “set” anyway.
Perhaps you knew someone who subscribed to Games magazine in the early eighties which ran a competition for a story composed entirely of three letter words, the winner of which was a political satire involving Ron (old ray gun).
Which I guess shows that my nerd memories were formed a bit earlier than my political memories…
Being scared shitless after my older sister told me during the Cuban missile crisis that we were all going to die.
Less than a decade later, being made permanently immune to governments beating the war drum by the lies told about the Vietnam war.
Agree with jpz, interesting read through the thread. May I add a multicultural perspective?
Given the comparable odd and complex workings of direct democracy in the Confoederatio Helvetica , I have early memories of Dad trotting off every other Saturday to vote on something or another. Be it on Federal, Kanton (State) or local Council level, if memory serves me right, every major policy or expenditure as well as Popular Initiatives and Referendums have to be voted on. Mum stayed home as Swiss women had no voting right federally until February 7th 1971 and most States and council later than that. Direct democracy can work at a snails pace.
As for my earliest Australian political experience, I was genuinely puzzled when I read about the dismissal of a certain Prime Minister in the Antipodean. This was due to me being only used to the Concordance system where the Government positions (Cabinet, given the numbers) are filled by the major parties and decisions therein are made in concordance.
My earliest political memory in Australia is the visceral disgust displayed by a work mate when he commented, back in 82, on the then Treasurers ‘honesty’ and pathological lies. I did not know then what he was referring to, I do know now.
Jill@67: My grandparents used to live in a country town in outback NSW where the election results were screened at the cinema. Apparently the Country Party always had a massive proportion of the vote (well, duh!). There was always a lot of speculation about who had voted for whom.
My grandfather is a contrarian from way back. He decided that he was going to vote Communist just to larn everyone, so that when the votes were announced, it would say, “Communist – 1 vote”, and the whole town would be wondering who the Commie was.
The election results were announced. Guess what? It said, “Communist – 2 votes“. My grandfather was terribly chagrined. His grand scheme was ruined. Who was the other person who had voted Communist? To this day, as far as I know, he doesn’t know who it was.
Ambigulous@74: We had that flag raising ceremony too, every Monday morning, except that this was from 1980 onwards. But it was the same oath “…I salute the Flag, honour my Country, and will cheerfully obey my Parents, Teachers and the Law.” We always said it in the most bored drawling voices, I’m afraid.
I was pleased when they brought in the new anthem, although I would have preferred “Once a Jolly Swagman” because I already knew the words to that (typical lazy kid that I was).
When I worked for the courts not so long ago (i.e. within the last 10 years), we still had to say “God Save the Queen” when opening the Court. It really stuck in my craw, but I said it when required, through gritted teeth. I’ll have to ask people whether they still have to do that.
They do in the District Court in Qld, complete with the requisite number of ‘Hear Yes’ before hand, but not in the Supreme Court. I have no idea why there’s a difference.
as a 5yo in ’67 – the hanging of Ronald Ryan and the understanding that Victorian Premier Henry Bolte was a bad man.
“Who was the other person who had voted Communist?”
The candidate?
I don’t remember the Dismissal (would have been 5), nor the subsequent election, but I remember arguing with my best friend (circa 1978) because my Dad said Whitlam was a bad man and her Dad said Whitlam was a very great man. But AFAIK Fraser had always been PM and Neville Wran had always been Premier. (Though I do remember the jingle “It’s gotta be Wran, Wran, Wran” and the term “Wranslide”, but they weren’t part of anything bigger. I do remember wanting Bob Hawke to win (and save the Franklin) and how pleased the entire school was — I grew up in an area that was middle class with working class roots. The teachers’ satisfaction was pretty transparent too.
Perhaps it’s because my parents were divorced and voted for opposite sides, but no, I generally don’t share my Dad’s political views these days, even though we are close and he’s got a bit more lefty (apart from both of us having an instinctive mistrust of JWH). I think it was the various environmental issues of the ’80s that had the lasting impact, from the Franklin to Bhopal to Chernobyl. As for grasping the larger processes involved in politics — I studied Australian politics in first year because I felt too ignorant to be a voter.
@79 – yep in Joh’s 70s Queensland, we also had flags raised, scratchy recordings of God Save the Queen over the pa system, etc, at primary school. When that dangerous socialist Gough Whitlam was in power, he of course legislated for Her Maj to be Queen of Queensland in case Australia became a republic.
And on Jill and LE’s stories, I handed out how to votes for Labor in the 90 federal election at Greenmount – on the road between Warwick and Toowoomba. A bunch of us uni students were bused up to cover all these country booths the night before, which was fun! About 300 people voted at the booth, and the Nats (who are always nice people to be on a booth with, as opposed to some Libs) believed they could accurately identify the 60 or so who would vote Labor. So I’d get “that’s one of yours”, as people walked up to the school gate. Always right. Most were retired railway workers and their families, and council workers. And, there was a vote up there too for a Socialist Party of Australia candidate, and during the scrutiny and counting of the votes, much gossip as to who it might be.
The 1984 NZ election. My parents went round to some of their friends place to watch the election and us kids were shoved in front of another tv with some swords and sandels movie. I got regular updates from my father. There was a lot of celebrations when it was obvious that Labour had won. I guess the joke was on them.
No Question : I loved Bob… Paul Keating scared me but I wasn’t a kid anymore and admired the way he could dress people down in front of the nation like that for purely political purpose but it was a bit scary all the same. I wasn’t aware of who the Prime-Minister was before Bob.. he had PRESENCE I suppose! (Not that Paul Keating didn’t!)
I now recall that thing, Ambi. It filled about half the sky.
Another memory.
Cuban Missile Crisis. Doomsday scenarios poured out of every media outlet.
Playtime in a suburban school yard. The grade six girls were playing up. The teacher called them over and berated them for setting a bad example to younger pupils, like myself.
One of the sixth graders looked the teacher directly in the eye (an unusual act of defiance in itself). “Why should we behave, the world might end tomorrow!”
I considered this response and concluded that she might well be correct.
In an important sense, the 1960s began on playgrounds all over the western world on that day.
The 1972 Federal election and going to the local TV studio so my Dad could record an ad. He was a Labor candidate in Cowper. Alas, 13% swing against the sitting Country member wasn’t enough to win.
Lefty E @ 82 – No, it couldn’t have been the candidate because he didn’t live in the town. Still a mystery!
Mark @ 84 – when I was younger I occasionally wrote side comments on my ballot papers. Hope that they provided some amusement to the vote counters…
‘It’s a federal two-ring circus, it’s called democracy… etc’
That went on one of mine one year. It’s from a Redgum song, the name of which I’ve forgotten.
“Cuban Missile Crisis. Doomsday scenarios …”
Yes, similar reactions in Europe. Come to think of it, I have always been more taken by the reaction of those around me, rather then the actual ‘remote’ political event. In particular, I vividly remember the stunned faces of adults and frantic shouting of my peers: “JFK has been shot! JFK has been shot!”.
Summer 68 was huge, riots every where, in the States, Paris even in sleepy Switzerland. Then next thing I find myself with all the rest of the youf on the street yelling “Dub?ek, Swoboda, Dub?ek, Swoboda!” A rather somber mood was amongst the adults, memories of the war where revoked and then the thousands of refugees started to flood in. While in the background there was massive carnage played out on TV called the Tet Offensive. I remember distinctly how I was offended by these daily body counts, simply inhumane. I think like many in my generation, I lost my political innocence in that year.
Most amazing memory, June 1982, amongst 250 000 people in London to protest against the placing of the Pershing 2 missiles.
I have a memory of asking my mum who the president was; the answer was Gerald Ford. So I can’t have been older than 4. Not sure why I was curious about the president and not the prime minister but then for a long time I found US politics far more interesting than Australia’s. I wasn’t particularly politically precocious either, despite that early start; I didn’t really start paying attention to politics until I was old enough to vote.
Otherwise, I can vaguely remember things like Fraser being PM, then Hawke at the America’s Cup (but having seen that footage umpteen times since then, who knows if it’s a real memory). Liked Hawke but liked Keating more. The first election night I can really remember was as an adult when Kennett got in (which was my first vote). It was at a friend’s 21st, his father had stood as a Liberal candidate previously and they were both ecstatic. I was glum but conceded that Victoria was in bad shape and hoped Kennett would do a good job.
Mine is being accosted by a year 7 pretending to hold a mic and doing a snap poll of voting intentions at lunch time. I was in year 1, and had no idea what the hell “so, kid, Liberal or Labor?” meant. I answered Labor though, not wanting to look stupid, and (this being Dalkeith Primary School), was roundly condemned as a communist, which I also didn’t understand.
Incidentally, the young fellow in question was Ashley McIntosh, future All-Australian defender for the Wet Toast Weevils.
When I was about 4, I was walking round the supermarket with my mother, and asked her why there were so many types of toothpaste, shampoo and so on, if they were all the same really. In reply, she asked me if I was a communist.
@89 – yep, LE! Scrutineering isn’t usually the most fun thing… so it helps! I’ve written some doggerel verse on ballot papers myself in the past!
Why should that comment of andyc @ 94 make me laugh so much? It’s also left me curious. Please tell us more about your mum!
I can vaguely remember JFK’s assassination, but being 4 at the time and having grown up in a TV household, it’s hard to pin down whether I recall it much fom the actual time or later. (I clearly remember holding one of younger brothers the first time, born in Feb 1963, so the memories are possibly of real time).
I definitely remember hearing Bob Menzies on the radio a few times during milking (you were supposed to get better milk production playing music, but our cows had to put up with news, The Goon Show, and other ABC radio comedies).
At school in ’66 a lot of us spent time drawing up our own interpretations of LBJ’s armour plated bubble car when he visited Oz. My design featured a turret and was heavily influenced by Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls Royce. On an international note, the 6-day war is a strong memory from that year, such as the sea of boots and especially the Mirages.
I definitely remember Ronald Ryan’s hanging and the protests against it from ’67 and Harold Holt’s disappearance later in the year. Dad and I watched the memorial service, with LBJ et al, joking about how Holt should turn up about now…
Although his parents had helped create the local Country Party branch, Dad was a Liberal voter and is still fairly small-L liberal – he stood for preselection once but lost out to later Vic Opposition leader Alan Brown. But I was most impressed by John Gorton’s assumption of leadership not because of him having to move out of the Senate but that he used to fly Hurricanes and Kittyhawks.
Don’t know that MLK’s assassination had much impact on me, but I clearly remember discussing Bobbie’s assassination with some of my mates at State School the day after.
The DLP’s Henry and Clyde TV commercials caused arguments between Mum and Dad; Mum’s always been of the Genghis Khan wing of the Liberals, and voted DLP that year and One Nation many years later.
As for my first active politial memory: the first time I voted in 1977 I ended up spending the rest of the day helping the Democrats workers retrieve the How to Vote cards from everyone leaving the booth. Every so often someone would go out of their way to tear it up in front of me, but most thought it was ok. And we were not invited when the Liberal’s bus turned up with tea and coffee for their workers , even though the Nats and ALP workers were.
Legal Eagle @ 43: Growing up with the threat of nuclear war was a constant, but I don’t recall it being “political” until I was in my teens (and probably post-my first viewing on telly of Dr Strangelove).
But it terrified me at least for a few years.
My parents had a US medical book, brown cover, that I remember skimming through when I was 8 or 9, home for months with brucellosis. In the middle of the book was a yellow/orangy coloured section about what to do in case of a nuclear attack.
Apart from the pictures of Hiroshima victims, it had a diagram showing the effects likely within different radii from ground zero. It also had wonderful targetting information, like proximity to capital cities, military bases etc meant you had to take greater precautions.
Melbourne was 63 miles away from our farm in Loch, so I wasn’t too worried on that score, but Korumburra was 10 miles away, and there was an Army base there. It was actually a Reserves RAEME heavy recovery platoon that every few weekends convoyed down the highway in front of our place for their latest drop and recover exercise with at least one old tank and a few armoured cars. But to an 8 yo boy, that meant army base=likely nuclear attack.
I started digging a bomb shelter at one point (after convincing/threatening my younger brothers to help). One of them dobbed me in after we got down nearly half a metre. I think it was soon after that point that Dad explained that the Russians were not likely to bomb Korumburra.
I think my earliesty political memory is of Arbor Day when we had a school trip to plan trees (pine tree, but the thought was there). My memory is actually of the poem I wrote for the day (I presume it was a required thing), that is still in my mind today:
come on kiwi’s get to work
this is not time for us to shirk
get to work on conservation
there’s no time left for comtemplation
Still rings true today. I would have been under 10 years old then, but then, as now, I read a great deal.
AndyC @ 94, your Mum sounds like a character – like Patricia @ 96, I laughed a lot. My Dad tried to explain communism to me when I was about 10, and I commented, “But even in the school yard no one is equal. In fact, it’s the opposite.”
Brett @ 97: I saw a documentary on Hiroshima and Oppenheimer when I was about 6 or 7. It really freaked me out. In response, I drew a terrible little book (which my mother still has somewhere). I drew people walking around happily, a bomb falling, a big mushroom cloud, then people crying and bleeding. I even drew the shadows left by people in the epicentre (I think that must have really bothered me). Yes, I was just slightly morbid as a child. It was the thought that people could be happily going about their daily business, blamelessly, and then suddenly…”BOOM”! How could people live with doing that to other human beings?
(I’m sure I saw this posted as #93, so apologies if it doubles up. it’s a rewrite, anyway)
JFK’s asasination is something I’ve always grown up knowing; I think my memory is in real time (I clearly remember the first time I saw/held my brother Craig in Feb 63) so i think it is probably the actual event I remember. I was 4.
Definitely remember hearing Menzies while he was PM, especially during milking which, as no 1 son, I helped with from about age 6 onwards. The theory in Gippsland was that cows produced more milk when listening to music on the radio, but ours had to put up with ABC news, the Goon Show, Yes Sir! and other ABC radio comedies.
In grade 2 many of us spent time drawing up our versions of LBJ’s bubble car when he visited Australia; mine had a turret and was heavily influenced by Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls Royce.
I was 7 when Ronald Ryan was hanged: I’m pretty sure we were visiting relatives near Coburg the night he and Walker got out and seeing something about it on the TV, although I was more interested in the remote control Tank I was playing with at the time.
I think we occasionally played hangman afterwards off the monkey bars at school (grade 3), and I can remember the arguments and demonstrations. My grandmother was all for the hanging, but cannot remember my parent’s position on it. And I know I cannot claim to have been against the death penalty then; it came much later.
I cannot remember much impact of MLK’s assassination, but I clearly remember discussing Bobby kennedy’s assassination with my mates at school. On an international note, the 6-day war is a strong recollection, especially the “sea of boots” of fleeing Egyptian soldiers, and the Mirages.
Definitely remember Holt’s disappearance. I remember sitting watching the memorial service on TV with Dad, both of us joking about “Holt should be appearing about now…” And while I remeber the discussion about Gorton having to move from the Senate to become Holt’s successor, I was more impressed that Gorton had flown Hurricanes and Kittyhawks.
Vietnam didn’t impinge much until Long Tan in 68. I remember ending up on the VC side in our regular war games at school after that on the only time I recall that we weren’t Aussies v Germans/yanks v Rebs/Cowboys v Indians. And come to think of it, I was almost always on the “other” side.
Like most, in ’68 I cheered for Dubcek and lost any faith in the Russians after the Prague Spring. But I’m sure I was on the student’s side re Paris and the Chicago Democratic convention, and certainly was by the time of Kent State.
Although his parents were both founding Country Party members, Dad was a Liberal: even now he’s still relatively small-L liberal, although Mum’s more on the Genghis Khan side of the liberals. The DLP Henry and Clyde commercials of 1970 or so even got me to suggest to Mum and Dad that they should vote DLP: Mum said she would (and did) and Dad argued against it and voted lib. It was one of the earliest and few memories of my parents arguing (apart from when Dad taught Mum to drive) and I felt guilty for causing it. I think that was when I started thinking about politics.
By 72 (I was 13) I was solidly in the It’s time camp. We’ve never had violent arguments, but since then Dad and i have had pretty clear demarcation lines when it came to politics. Mum’s always been a lost cause: I know she’s voted DLP and One Nation in the years since, but most often she’s been a lib voter.
As for actual political involvement, the first time I voted was the 77 federal election. After going to the polling booth, on my way out I handed my Democrats How to vote card back to the poll worker. She thanked me, we chatted a bit, and I spent the rest of the day retrieving HTV cards from the bins and asking people for them back. Every so often someone would ostentatiously tear their card up in front of me, but most people were ok about it.
One disheartening thing, and a good intro to politics, was when the Liberal party bus turned up to give their poll workers cups of tea and coffee. The Nats and even the ALP workers were invited inside, but not us (then) Democrats.
These memories are fascinating.
Perhaps my first realisation of the evil that can be done in the name of politics, was one day having lunch in a city cafe with my Mum. I was primary school age. When the waitress served us, I noticed she had numbers tattooed on her forearm. Totally mystifying to me, so I asked my Mun. That’s how I first learnt about the Holocaust.
Legal Egale @46 thanks, i know that i am biased, but i reckon that she has turned out alright.
Hannah’s Dad @ 50, i remember seeing something similar in a doco back in 83 or 84, mum turned to me and asked me if i remembered doing things like that, At that and this remove it was hard to tell memories from that age from the stories that surrounded the various events, i told mum that i at least remembered a post Auntie Jack, tea and milk arrowroots session where she and a few friends had had one of those “remember that” discussions where it had come up, i was reminded that we were not talking to them anymore. this was news to me then and i still am not sure why.
Oh and please excuse my tardiness.
I was working on my LOOP limerick when i remembered this piece of doggerel
Baa baa black sheep
Have you any wool
One for the Brokers
One for the Banks
And one for the Japanese to sell to the Yanks
I’m pretty sure that it came from the late sixties, but i have little idea what it is about.
I grew up in a working class Protestant family in the northern Melbourne suburb of Reservoir which was politically gender-gapped between my Old Labor father and my rusted-on Queen-and-Church Liberal-voting mother, and generation-gapped between my parents and my Baby Boomer brother whose friends were all of conscriptable age at the time of the Vietnam War. The War was the dominant story on the news every night throughout my childhood and adolescence until it ended when I was 15.
My very earliest political memory would be my father taking me for a drive to the polling booth at my own primary school (Keon Park State School) in about 1966. When I asked what we were doing he said “We’re going voting.” At that time “voting” made no sense to me so I don’t recall whether the election in question was Federal, State or Local.
Shortly thereafter, on another election day, my mother volunteered the opinion that I should vote Liberal when I grew up and that people like my father voted Labor because “they were lazy”.
The first Prime Minister I recall was Harold Holt. I have adapted the lyrics of Tomorrow Wendy so as to remind me of the day, month and year we heard that he’d gone missing in the surf. When I play it in my bedroom I sing:
I also recall John Gorton being elected as his replacement.
In the same year or perhaps the year after I recall the Democratic Labor Party Senate election campaign jingle which went:
Also from 1968 I recall Tricky Dicky winning the US Presidential election, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace being the other two significant candidates, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King being shot, the student riots in France, and the Russians invading Czechoslovakia. By this time I also knew that there was a man called Gough Whitlam who was something called the Leader of the Opposition.
The first Federal election I really had any inkling about was in 1969, when it transpired that it looked for a time like Mr. Whitlam might defeat Mr. Gorton and become Prime Minister.
Then, in 1970, when I was 10, my brother (with whom I shared a bedroom) talked to be about the Vietnam War and the Moratorium movement against the war. I formed the view that our involvement in the war was not consistent with the Christian principles I was learning at the local Baptist Sunday School. This sealed my eventual fate as an incorrigible serial leftist.
This is a fun thread!
Two other recollections:
1. Sharing a room with a Baby Boomer brother meant being constantly regaled with the music of Pete Seeger, The Weavers and the early Bob Dylan, which synergised with my Sunday School teaching amd MAD Magazine to turn me into a particularly idiosyncratic sort of socialist.
2. The great strike over the Penal Powers and the jailing of Clarrie O’Shea in 1969 which shut off the gas and electricity all over Melbourne, and which was great fun for me because dinner had to be cooked on the wood-fired stove which had hitherto lain unused ever since my mother bought and moved into our house in the 1950s, and eaten by the light of a combination of candles and kero lamps.
brett coster refers to the DLP’s Henry and Clyde ads. These were made for the 1970 Victorian State election campaign when Henry Bolte was Premier and Clyde Holding was Opposition Leader. The first verse (which I can’t recall) of the jingle was generally unflattering about Bolte. The rest of the jingle went:
Early 1960s … my mother warning me about some guy named “Castro” and seeing “yankees go home” graffiti about on the walls and billboards around Sydney … I must have been about 4 or 5. I wasn’t sure where the “Yankees” had gone not to be home, and thought that Yankees referred to people in those blue uniforms from the Civil War that I’d seen in movies. For some reason I thought Castro was the guy in “Popeye the Sailor Man”. “Castro” was apparently extremely nasty.
I also lived a couple of doors down the road from Cliff Dolan (in West Ryde, Sydney) and so the political talk was pretty full-on. Apparently there had been some major split in relations between my (anglo) grandfather and grandmother after 1961 when she had voted for Menzies out of fear of communism (following consultation with here rightwing catholic father). It all happened when I was about 3 but I recall the retelling of the story sometime later. In the 1961 election the Liberals got back in (by one seat and despite getting the minority of the popular vote) after communist party preferences leaked to Jim Killen. My grandmother had apparently helped Menzies get back in, even though our electorate at the time was solidly ALP … They didn’t speak for six weeks.
I also recall talk of “faceless men”, which sounded pretty scary to my five-year-old ears and people “kicking the communist can”. I envisaged someone going down the road aimlessly kicking a tin can down the road but couldn’t quite see the connection with politics. If Castro was that evil guy from Popeye and connected with communism then maybe the “communist can” was something that had once had spinach in it? Very confusing …
I remember the 1987 Federal Election as an 8 year old. I remember the “Joh for PM” stickers turning up in unlikely locations (I’m from SA!) and going to bed fearing that I would wake up and John Howard would be PM.
Back then the newly-launched 7:30 Report used to be repeated at 7:30 the next morning. I used to watch it before school as we lived in a valley and could only pick up channel 2 on the telly… or so I was told.
We dodged a bullet there!
I remember a bit about Bolte, Paul, despite not being a Victorian. He struck me as a particularly evil little fucker. Made Playford look pretty good, actually.
My first memory of political activism.
I had a minor organisational role in the 1970 Moratoria.
I was amazed by the forbearance of the representatives of the diverse groups, from Methodist pastors to eccentric sects of anarchists, to come together to make common cause in united, non-violent, non-partisan protest on two huge occasions.
Jim Cairns risked his political career and successfully rode the tiger on both those occasions. Respect.
David, you’ll be mortified to learn that when my Grade Six class was asked by our teacher to name the Prime Minister, the Federal Opposition Leader and the Victorian Premier, a majority of the kids named Henry Bolte as the incumbent in all three positions.
My father laughing and exclaiming “Billy Big-ears!” at the TV, as Billy McMahon was being put on the spot, probably by TDT sometime in 1972. Gough Whitlam booming everywhere and that “It’s Time” ad. What began the true tragic descent for me was reading “The Gorton Experiment” by Alan Reid. What a mean man that Fraser was, I thought. Roughly 9-10 at the time!
My first experience of attempted political indoctrination by a school teacher. Miss Haddingham telling my Grade Three class about the Vietnam War and telling us in all seriousness that we had to fight the North Vietnamese because if we didn’t they’d come down on Australia from the north and take us over.
This raises an interesting question for other posters: to what extent, and in what ways, were your political views influenced (intentionally or otherwise) by things your teachers told you or showed you at school?
Bolte was an evil bastard. Had a man executed just for political advantage.
My Dad knew Ronald Ryan, which got us a visit from the cops when was on the run.
My earliest memory was me being a smarty pants and trying to trick my little brother (who was 3.5 years younger) about who the Prime Minister was – about a week after Keating had knifed Hawke.
The other big memory is of driving back from ‘helping’ Mum vote, not sure which election, and asking her who she’d voted for – Mum was very cagey, and said it was rude to ask, and refused to tell. Later I asked Dad who he’d voted for (clearly hadn’t quite got the rule down yet), and he very loudly bellowed that OF COURSE he’d voted for Labor, and that NO ONE would be stupid enough to vote for the BLOODY LIBERALS.
From that moment on, I was utterly convinced that the reason Mum said it was rude to ask was so that I wouldn’t accidently tell Dad she’d been a traitor and voted Liberal!
My attitudes to the various State premiers in the late 60s and very early 70s were largely informed by the way they dealt with anti-war demos.
SA wasn’t too bad (although the Special Branch had their moments) because the govt was alternating between Labor and the Libs (under Steele Hall) at the time, but Bolte and Askin particularly struck me as being truly evil and (particularly in Askin’s case) corrupt.
Paul Norton
My year 6 teacher, during a standard “social studies” class in 1970 was supervising our exercise book work. It was the pattern to scaffold each country
Country Name:
Capital:
Population:
Major Language(s):
Religion:
Major Rivers:
Products:
History:
Well it was our turn to do the then USSR. I got to religion and I turned to the chap and asked …
Sir, what religion is the USSR?
He glowered and towering over me he placed a clenched fist about an inch from my nose and growled: Communism!
I’m guessing he meant that as a bad thing. It certainly affected me. I determined there and then that I’d better find out more about this ‘religion’.
I spent the first four years of my life in South Africa, in a very liberal white English family. I recall my parents harranguing the television screen whenever PW Botha appeared on it, stating how the Afrikaners had ruined the country. I also remember my grandparents’ housekeeper referring to me as ‘Master’. I recall finding it very strange that a ‘very old person’ would call me ‘Master’. I also remember by parents and their friends discussing the Soweto riots in the 1980s and how they were all going to leave the country (which they did in 1986). My black nanny gave me a toy guy and I recall my mother and father taking it away from me on the basis that ‘there are too many guns in this country’ and explaining to me why ‘guns were bad’.
As soon as we got to Australia, my parents became great Hawke supporters. I clearly remember Hawke visiting my primary school in the 1990 election, surrounded by the media. Hawke even came over and gave me a friendly pat on the head for the cameras. It was the most thrilling day. I think my interest in politics started then.
I also clearly remember the collapse of the Berlin Wall and all the Germans flooding from east to west. The First Gulf War (particularly, the black and green night cameras) is another clear memory. I spent the day running around with a tea towel on my head yelling in ‘Arabic’ (I was 9, for the record
).
It’s possible that my earliest political memory is one of either watching Norman Gunstan try to interview Whitlam in a later re-run of the Gunston show, or sitting around the kitchen table with my grandfather listening to question time.
Indoctrination by a teacher?
Mine was a positive one. I was 14, due to turn 15 the following January, and in my last year of school, at De La Salle Kingsgrove, getting ready to be thrown onto what was then the industrial scrapheap.
The brother teaching us religious studies, of all subjects, in the religious studies class gave us a long talk on the ethical responsibility of every worker to join the relevant union. Nothing about whether they were right or left wing unions, just that the first thing you do when you get a job is find your union rep and join.
The 1983 federal election. I had to collect HTVs for a grade 7 project.
Mum and dad always played their cards close to their chest, saying the secret ballot was there for a reason. Dad lived with a vague, but intense, fear of Special Branch and them destroying his life. Also, I later found out my dad, who’d gone to Catholic schools and was some sort of official in the Storemen and Packers, was in tight with some of the ‘players’ on the Vince Gair side. He says he got a phone call early one morning “Ted, we’re going to have a new government tomorrow.” He apparently ended up in some official ‘meet and greet’ line for the newly elected Premier Nicklin, but says he lost the stomach for it and walked away just as Frank arrived to shake his hand. Replacing the ALP with the QLP was one thing, but helping the Country Party was beyond the pale (notwithstanding his father, who use to beat up AWU organisers who’d talk to his farmhands)
d
I can’t say I recall much that could be characterised as ‘indoctrination’ by teachers. The teachers I had in year 11 and 12 in subjects like Logic, Economics and Modern History tended to be Labor voters (I think), but encouraged us to reason, and think for ourselves.
I do recall my grade 5 teacher was a huge Democrat and made us fold Democrat literature and stuff it in envelopes in class!!! That would have been for the 77 federal election.
Yes, interesting about indoctrination.
At my primary school we didn’t have ‘factions’ (A- hilarious now to think of kids describing themselves as in x,y or z faction; B- btw, do primary schools still have factions for sports days and so on?).
Each year we would have United Nations week, around UN Day, which would feature a sports day in which we represented our assigned nation. One year I was in Greece, another Vietnam.
This approach certainly influenced me and heightened my interest in international relations.
Indocrination: a prodigy in Form 3 wrote a persuasive (to me) essay attacking the efficacy of government spending and taxation in general. The teacher made an even more persuasive case that ended with the (to me) unforgettable phrase – paying tax is a privilege.
have now googled prodigy referred to above – apparently the teacher’s indoctrinatrion didn’t persaude him. One of his published papers:
Abstract:
Governments of the past showed great ingenuity, and sometimes effrontery, in devising ways to spend their money without the authority of parliament. In doing so, they worked within a legal framework that has changed surprisingly little. What they did forms an important part of the background to the more recent law of government finance in Australia. This article explores early techniques for evading parliamentary control in New South Wales and Victoria, and makes some modern comparisons.
My earliest political memory is reading a piece of doggerel that my grandfather had published in The Age in response to Sir Robert Menzies gushing doggerel about Queen Elizabeth.
Grandfather’s doggerel included in part
Roses are red
Violets are blue
——
—–
The rest was forgettable and has been forgotten, but not the immense pride he had in having his verse published. He thought it was trivia.
Great reading folks.
And I realised that it was a wee bit of a privilege to have been exposed to Speakers Corner & oratory at the Domain in its last heyday, as a primary school child. Experiencing an eye and earful across the whole divide delivered with wit and verve… or not, in many more cases.
Atheists, Christians of many stripes, anti-war speakers, socialists, free-thinkers and so on.
As I posted above, I was a little young to recall the speeches in any great detail, other than that some were funny and clever and attracted big crowds and other peeps were just nutters and you’d stand there for a minute and listen politely in my case and half-understanding again in my case, and then walk on – sort of like the internet…. except in the late 60′s and early 70′s, and in person, with a big crowd in a nice park & with hopefully smart arse hecklers.
However, the person I recalled straight away in some detail ( without googling – found a few great old pics btw) but yeah, the person that flashed up the other night when trying to remember this stuff – was that very nasty Nazi -(is there any other type?!) ‘the Skull’, who used to hang around the Domain and also used to turn up at demonstrations & football games in Sydney for years, thumping people.
No-one had to tell you to keep out of his way, even as a young child, although I don’t know if he hurt children – he may have!!! He wore the boots and some type of uniform etc. Being frightened obviously made a greater impact memory wise, than being amused.
So, one of my other first political memories was unfortunately, ‘Skull the Nazi’ walking towards me under a fig tree in the Domain when I was about 7 or 8, and me trying not to make eye contact, look invisible and walking backwards stage left, all at the same time. A good lesson learnt young, if nothing else.
Ms Laurie@116 – that’s the way I think it played out at our house too (see@62).
Paul@114 – although I went to a Government primary school which was nominally Protestant (there being a Catholic equivalent just down the road), my 6th class teacher was a rampant (for want of a better term) Catholic and had us all pray when the news came through of Kennedy’s assassination. I’m not sure what contribution this made to any future political views, though. The daily “I honour my God, I serve my Queen, I salute the flag”, plus marching, did far more ‘damage’.
However, that same teacher stopped me as I was (allegedly) running out the door to see the Avro Vulcan (the V bomber mentioned earlier in this thread) at recess/playtime and made me stay in the classroom, so I missed it – they never came back to Australia.
For that she was never forgiven.
As far as I can recall the secondary school teachers kept their views to themselves, but the move from country NSW to Canberra in year 10 opened my eyes to a non-conservative world: my new friends went to the Anzac Day march to make sarcastic comments to each other, not pay respect. What sacrilege was this?
Surely youth affords an archaic bullshit detector, so indoctrination does often lead to an opposite result. We probably are more influenced by other socialisation processes, such as developing wider in group-out group associations, as rewis comment shows. Politisisation of a person, the way I see it, is based on ones temperament, milieu and lifes insightful opportunities, as in the hammer strikes that forge us or the guiding beam of songs, paintings and poems of our times. Redgum and Dylan were mentioned above, these people probably had much more broader influence than any teacher. Well you would hope that is the case still today with them omnipotent tubes and pay channels providing only competing infotainment.
Rose above reminded me of my earliest political memory in relation to the power of the arts, charismatic thinkers/leaders and journalists with guts and ethics.
The Soweto uprising in June 16, 1976 is edged in my mind, as I found my self on that morning right on the outskirts of a burning Township (and a bad hangover too). A whole week of clashes, mainly in the ‘non-white’ townships, left hundreds of people dead and massive damage, burned out schools, petrol stations, townhalls, public transport. I was taken by the power of the song and dance approach of the Africans. What formidable weapons these were, it galvanised and energised the anti apartheid movement. That movement brought amazing people to the fore, such as Steve Biko with insights like:
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
“You and I are now in confrontation, but I see no Violence.”
“It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.”
And lastly, I have never seen ‘Cry Freedom’, but based on my experience, Donald Woods integrity, journalistic professionalism and guts should be an inspiration to all aspiring influential political journalists.
The first politician I heard of was ‘Mr McMillan’ in Britain. I was too young to understand any stories but noticed his name kept coming up on the news.
But I first sat up and took notice when Gough Whitlam was PM. His erudition and scathing counter-attacks in parliament made me admire him personally and was the reason I joined the ALP at age 17.
Then I was leaving an exam during my first year at Uni and heard about the dismissal. When I got home, my parents were huddled around the radio. They could tell I had heard, from the look on my face and we said nothing to each other. It was as if a major war had been declared. The result of the 1975 election killed my desire to be active in politics. I lost all faith in the parliamentary system, since the real power was clearly elsewhere. I became an embittered cynic.
I’ve mellowed out since. Can I just say here that Anglican Kev and Catholic Tony are equally full of self-serving hypocritical cant?
@skepticLawyer: For right-wing atheism, read Ayn Rand.
Indoctrination by teachers? i don’t recall any, but i went to a lot of schools, so many memories of teachers are hazy. my last two primary schools, in paddington, sydney, didn’t have classes as such, that was a type of indoctrination, as is all schooling, turn up, b e quiet, obey authority, etc. Apparently one of the teachers at my last primary school worked out which corner shop we went to after school for our sugar fix, he gave the shop owner a couple of copies of the Little Red School Book to sell, this would have been 75 or 6. we lapped them up and for a while it supplanted LOTR as our fav book. mostly i remember the reproductive and intoxicants education sections.
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=354431
my linking skills is not mad today.
I have tried to remember some political messages from my primary school teachers, but cannot remember any. I suspect they only accepted narrow-minded, completely apolitical teachers in my part of Gippsland. Since the ‘personal is political’ the efforts of teachers and parents to keep this farm girl down are as important as any direction to vote for tweedle dum or tweedle dee political parties.
One incident that still haunts me was when I wrote an essay under the influence of Mark Twain’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’. I imagined a group of boys from my Koonwarra Primary School creating a raft out of planks and bailing twine and sailing down the Tarwin River – which in those days was more pristine than the polluted creek it has become around Koonwarra. The next thing I know is several parents, including my own, have been called into the school and grilled about this jaunt by several boys and one girl, along the Tarwin. Not only did the teacher not recognise my essay as a work of pure fiction, but he was horrified at the thought of a girl being alone on a raft in the river with so many boys.
So it was not teachers who introduced positive political messages. Rather it was a woman herd tester, who in about 1959 took me along to the local Koonwarra Hall to see Douglas Nichols. I see from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Nicholls , at that time he was field officer for the Aborgines Advancement League. That would have been the first time I ever saw an Aborigine, and I was very impressed by his message.
Doug Nichols had supported my first son’s father’s migration application, so in 1969 my son, Douglas Amar was named after him.
I can’t recall any of my teachers ever trying to indoctrinate us in any way specifically. We did have one who tried to teach us about Parliament, and I got really confused.
We had another one who was an old fashioned bigot, and I hated her. When it was Ramadan, she tried to force my Muslim friend eat lunch, and took a ham sandwich off another kid for her to eat. Of all the inappropriate things! I mean, even at the age of 11 I knew that was out of line on so many levels. As it happened, I nudged my friend to “accept” the sandwich then ate it on the sly myself so the old biddy would stop hassling her. We’re still friends to this day.
This teacher was also really unsympathetic to the large proportion of Asian kids in our class, and one of our class readings was a really stereotyped depiction of an Asian boy which made me prickle with embarrassment. I defended the poor Japanese boy in our class when she was horrible to him, which prompted all the other kids to say that I “loved” him for about two weeks. I believe that there’s still graffiti in the girl’s toilets of my primary school to this effect!
I couldn’t help questioning her, and I was in constant trouble. My parents backed me up, though.
So I guess this woman did have an impact on me in that I decided that I’d never be as ignorant as she was. She had an Australian flag on a flagpole in the front garden of her house, and ever since then I’ve been a bit suspicious of people who have flags in their yard.
Good teachers shouldn’t indoctrinate you – they should encourage you to question your assumptions and come to your own intelligent, well-thought out conclusions.
Legal Eagle, that’s a ghastly story about that teacher. Surely that kind of behaviour warranted sacking and/or hauling her and the school to the nearest anti-discrimination tribunal.
Earliest political memory? Well, for distinctive events, the 1983 election. I was all of 5, we’d just got a tele, and my father made it a habit to sit me in front of the news with a running political commentary from then on in.
But the rot set in well before 5. I remember NO DAMS placards and posters and various enviro campaigning material cluttering up the house, car and windows, and my favourite 3 Billy Goats Gruff book usually sat next to the Communist Manifesto of the bookshelf. Both got a look in, when I had the chance, but I prefered 3 Billy Goats Gruff (maybe if the Manifesto had had pictures…). [I finally read it when I was 12, fwiw].
My parents also made a habit of dragging (well, carrying) me along to various rallies (Palm Sunday, etc), but these memories remain largely indistinct until shortly after 1983…
Yes … Legal Eagle … as a memeberr of the executive of my high school, I can say it would take about 30 seconds for something like that to get back to executive via anyone of a number of channels … the ARCO, Women’s Officer, Year Adviser, other teacher on duty, roving HT etc. The teacher would probably be facing disciplinary proceeedings via the Professional Standards Unit at DET if the matter could not be resolved at school executive level. The matter would then be canvassed at the ensuing staff meeting to offer guidance to staff.
Another story that I’ve since remembered.
I answered the phone when I eight, at our new house in the country. I was probably confused with my mother, as I was constantly on the phone until I was 12.
Anyway, the phone call was from Melbourne, and to someone who had never been outside Qld, that sounded incredibly important. And big. They asked for my step-father. I went and got him.
What followed was one of the most colourful rants I had ever heard, and ended with him slamming the phone down with a few more flourishing epithets. I asked who was on the phone.
He said he had once given $600 to the National Party, and he was now on some ‘list’ where they called him whenever they wanted money. He was also particularly not happy about receiving interstate phone calls. $600 seemed like an incredible amount of money to donate to me. Actually, it still does.
That was my initiation to the complex relationship between farmers and the National Party. Pauline Hanson and One Nation exploded on the electorate just six years later, while I was at boarding school.
The lefties at our school were threatened with expulsion if we turned up to the 1998 High School Students Walkout Against Racism protests.
Fran and Paul, this was many years ago (25 years ago) – and the teacher was due to retire that year, so I guess they didn’t make a fuss. She did take leave for third term…forced or pushed? The principal was an absolute tool as well, which didn’t help the situation. He once told me I was “uppity” because I questioned him about something he’d said. (I didn’t mean to be rude or cheeky, I was just asking him a genuine question.)
It’s good that times have changed and I suspect that kind of cultural insensitivity couldn’t happen now, or if it did, they would leap on it immediately.
At one of the De La Salle schools I went to (I can’t remember which one) we had a lay French teacher who was, I think, English, and hads fought with the French resistance in Special Ops. He used to tell us heaps of really interesting war stories. He only lasted one term. He was sacked, I think, because he swore too much. Merde and stuff like that.
Jeez, Paul, I would’ve killed for a teacher like that. The best I had was a history teacher (who I suspect was a commo) linking the missionaries with the increased sales on nudity-covering, Manchester-woven cloth in the various colonies.
My first memory of anything remotely political was being force-fed Gaia green bullshit from various teachers as early as year 5.
The funny thing was that the teachers in our school were always a pretty stroppy lot when it came to politics, since in a small farming town they were outnumbered 100-1 by conservatives, and the classroom was pretty much the only place they could get away with expressing their left-wing opinions.
DI (nr) @ 143,
He was good fun. Also a very good teacher.
Some years ago I was reading a biography which had slabs of original French documents/quotations in it. I was surprised at how much I could still understand. (About a scattered half of each long quotation. If I’d had a French/English dictionary, I probably could have read the lot.)
Lols Yobbo.
In Year 8 I remember our blow-in student science teacher consoling a farmer’s daughter about animal testing.
“Don’t worry, there testing these drugs on sick animals…”
I got told to shut up when I asked how did they become sick.
Geez Yobbo, you grew up in a town where conservatives outnumbered progressives 100-1 and that still wasn’t enough for you? Those totalitarian instincts sure started young, didn’t they?
Putting aside the fact that environmental Gaia-style views are not confined to leftists or even initiated by same … Yobbo said:
Diversity … worthy thing … uniformity … not so worthy … this in not an exclusively left-wing opinion
I do recall the time when the worst thing about communism, according to conservatives, was said to be its inclination to turn everyone into grey indistinguishable zombies capable only of spouting the latest party-line …
Apparently the conservatives wanted that very thing. Perhaps they were jealous?
Fran, it’s always interesting to read Federal and State election results for polling booths in Queensland. Every election there are bound to be a few places in up-country Queensland where every vote is cast either for the LNP or for a combination of the LNP and whichever lunar right party is running. However there are no booths where everyone votes Labor or votes either Labor or Greens.
After I moved to Brisbane in 1988, I was interested to discover that my then-partner’s older sister and brother-in-law, who owned a property in the Beaudesert area, were members of the National Party, despite not obviously having any political convictions of that kind. The explanation was that in those days, in certain parts of Queensland (of which Beaudesert and surrounds was apparently one), anybody who wasn’t a member of the National Party found it very difficult to do business, find employment or get invited to social events in their area
Time for a Godwin Alert, Paul Norton @ 149: apparently it wasn’t too different in Germany between 1933 and 1945 …
I remember a big picture of Menzies on the front page of the paper after (I assume) the 1963 election. I assumed he had been selected as PM after an exhaustive search and that the paper was introducing him to the public.
That’s interesting Paul N.
In the early to mid-1960s my grandfather and his cohorts in the surrounding block of streets treated elections as an occasion for making sure that everyone got out and voted ALP. In the weeks before they would systematically canvass the area knocking on every door and securing commitments not only to vote ALP but to accompany them on their rounds and make donations. They would meet once a week comparing notes on who hadn’t yet been contacted and who needed a follow-up visit and so forth. Then they would take their lists and talk to the local traders insisting they put up ALP posters in the window.
Most elections, they fancied they had about 90% success in our little area of West Ryde and the booth figures seemed to support this. If more people than that were voting Liberal they were going elsewhere to do it.
Reality TV in 1963? Ahead of your time
@149 –
True, Paul, but there used to be some central Queensland mining booths where the Labor Party and Communists would take 80-85% of the vote between them.
jeez, Prof Q @ 151, I’m pretty sure you’re slightly younger than me, but in 1963, Menzies as PM was part of the furniture – an ugly lounge suite that you just put up with. I’m surprised you even remember it.
Whitlam really was a breath of fresh air (notwithstanding my mate Michael and I squirting him in the crutch with water pistols during a Moratorium March down Rundle St – hey! as paid-up members of the Psychedelic Left, that’s what you did.)
With regard to the former I’m not sure that’s strictly true at least for the last election, and with regard to the latter there are some remote booths that come close. Check out Injinoo in Leichardt.