The Returned Soldier as a Site of Memory: Employment Preference and War Pensions during the Great Depression in Australia

Abstract

This article argues that the returned soldier, who has figured prominently in Australian historiography of war, should be understood as a site of collective memory. During the Great Depression, the Scullin government failed to remove preference in employment for returned soldiers, even though the Australian labour movement demanded the restoration of preference for unionists. Moreover, Scullin quarantined key categories of war pensions from the cuts imposed by the deflationary Premiers' Plan of June 1931. In the public debates surrounding these policy issues, the ‘returned soldier’ was constructed as a powerful representation of unity, national pride and sacrifice in the common good. These wartime values were now claimed to be needed as Australians faced another national crisis. Hence, even though individual returned soldiers were often affected adversely by the Depression, their privileged status as an imagined collective was affirmed.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to my meticulous research assistant Paul Dalgleish.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

All Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates citations can be accessed via https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/search.w3p;adv=yes.

Notes

1 Inglis's seminal articles – on Anzac Day (1964), the Anzac tradition (1965) and the original returned-soldier pilgrimage to Gallipoli (1966) – can be found in Anzac Remembered: Selected Writing of K.S. Inglis, ed. John Lack (Melbourne: Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1998). Inglis's later works included: ‘A Sacred Place: The Making of the Australian War Memorial’, War & Society 3, no. 2 (1985): 99–126; and his monumental study (with Jan Brazier), Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 1998, 3rd edn, 2008).

2 Marilyn Lake, ‘The Power of Anzac’, in Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, eds M. McKernan and M. Browne (Canberra: Australian War Memorial in association with Allen & Unwin, 1988), 196–8; Raymond Evans, The Red Flag Riots: A Study of Intolerance (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1988); Martin Crotty, ‘The RSL and Post-World War I Returned Soldier Violence in Australia’, in Legacies of Violence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia, ed. Robert Mason (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 185–98. For domestic violence see Elizabeth Nelson, ‘Victims of War: The First World War, Returned Soldiers, and Understandings of Domestic Violence in Australia’, Journal of Women's History, 19, no. 4 (2007): 83–106.

3 For soldier settlement, see particularly Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Bruce Scates and Melanie Oppenheimer, The Last Battle: Soldier Settlement in Australia 1916–1939 (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Key works on Repatriation are: Clem Lloyd and Jacqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994); Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), 63–117; and Philip Payton, ‘Repat’: A Concise History of Repatriation in Australia (Canberra: Department of Veteran Affairs, 2018).

4 For the relative generosity of Australian Repatriation, see Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, ‘Total War and Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, no. 2 (2013): 15–32. For the United Kingdom, see Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), especially ch. 1.

5 George Blaikie, Remember Smith's Weekly? (Adelaide: Rigby, 1966), passim.

6 Lake, ‘The Power of Anzac’, 204–12; Martin Crotty, ‘The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, 1916–46’, in Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War, eds Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 166–86; Martin Crotty, ‘What More Do You Want? Billy Hughes and Gilbert Dyett in Late 1919’, History Australia 16, no. 1 (2019): 52–71.

7 See, for example: Marina Larsson, ‘“The Part We Do Not See”: Disabled Soldiers and Family Caregiving after World War I’, in Crotty and Larsson, 39–60; Marina Larsson, Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2009); Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘“Fated to a Life of Suffering”: Graythwaite, the Australian Red Cross and Returned Soldiers, 1916–39’, in Crotty and Larsson, 18–38.

8 The literature is extensive. For cemeteries and pilgrimages, see particularly: Bart Ziino, A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2007); Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For Anzac Day: Mark McKenna, ‘Anzac Day. How Did It Become Australia's National Day?’, in What's Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History, eds Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010), 110–34. For recent overviews of the Anzac legend: Carolyn Holbrook, Anzac: The Unauthorised Biography (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2014); and Joan Beaumont, ‘Remembering the Heroes of Australia's Wars: From Heroic to Post-Heroic Memory’, in Heroism and the Changing Character of War, ed. Sibylle Scheipers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 334–48.

9 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 18, 14.

10 See Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), especially 22, 69, 71–2, 223–5.

11 Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 276. On the problems of definition of ‘collective memory’, see: Jeffrey K. Olick, ‘Collective Memory: The Two Cultures’, Sociological Theory 17, no. 3 (1999): 333–48; and Dali Gavriely-Nuri, ‘Collective Memory as a Metaphor: The Case of Speeches by Israeli Prime Ministers 2001–2009’, Memory Studies 7, no. 1 (2013): 48.

12 T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration’, in Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory, eds Ashplant, Dawson and Roper (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000, paperback edn, 2004), 17.

13 Peter Cook, ‘The Scullin Government 1929–1932’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1971), 57, 68.

14 Michael Rothberg, ‘Between Memory and History: From Lieux de mémoire to Noeuds de mémoire’, Yale French Studies, no. 118/119 (2010): 8.

15 This summary draws on Jean Bou and Peter Dennis, The Australian Imperial Force, vol. 5 of The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2016), 71–99.

16 Larsson, ‘“The Part We Do Not See”’, 40.

17 The phrase is that of Marina Larsson. It will be some years before we understand more fully the morbidity and mortality rates of returned soldiers. A major project under the direction of Janet McCalman, University of Melbourne, is conducting a medico-demographic study of survivors of military service in World War I, drawing on service and veteran medical records.

18 Andrew Moore, The Secret Army and the Premier: Conservative Paramilitary Organisations in New South Wales, 1930–32 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 31–41, 69–73, 82–3, 113–15.

19 See Crotty, ‘The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia’, 174–5, for discussion of the 1919 membership figure.

20 This conclusion is based on trade union membership rolls, including branches of the Australian Workers’ Union and the Waterside Workers’ Federation, found in N117, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University.

21 Garton, 89.

22 Cohen, 39.

23 Public Service Act 1919, www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb//au/legis/vic/hist_act/psa1919152/ (accessed 28 April 2020).

24 A summary of the various state governments’ positions on preference can be found in the RSSILA Circular no. 169/1930, MS 6609 Box 457 Circulars 1930, National Library of Australia (NLA).

25 British employers showed a similar reluctance to employ disabled ex-servicemen, unless the state agreed to assume liability for compensation against accidents; Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), 54.

26 For RSSILA concern on this issue, see RSSILA 12th congress resolutions, A458 CR745-1-296, National Archives of Australia (NAA); and G.L. Kristianson, The Politics of Patriotism: The Pressure Group Activities of the Returned Servicemen's League (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1966), 29–30.

27 ‘Diggers’ Rights’, Smith's Weekly, 6 March 1920.

28 Garton, 91.

29 Drew Cottle, ‘Guns across the Yarra: Secret Armies and the 1923 Melbourne Police Strike’, in Sydney Labour History Group, What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 220–33.

30 C.B. Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression: A Study of Economic Development and Policy in the 1920s and 1930s (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970, reprinted 1973), 47.

31 Secretary, Builders’ Labourers’ Union, cited in Morna Sturrock, ‘Gilbert Dyett – Architect of the R.S.L.’ (MA thesis, Monash University, 1992), 229.

32 Lloyd and Rees, 241.

33 ‘Preference in Employment’, J.A. Lyons, Minister for Works, 5 February 1930, A6006 1930/02/05, NAA.

34 For union pressure, ‘The Trades Hall View’, Age, 1 May 1930.

35 Scullin, Australia Parliament, House of Representatives, 2 May 1930.

36 Crotty, ‘What More Do You Want?’, 54–5.

37 Kristianson, 51–7. For a detailed account of the tactics of the RSSILA and internal divisions over their approach, see Sturrock, 208–39.

38 ‘Adelaide Protests’, Age, 2 May 1930.

39 ‘Preference to Soldiers’, Age, 2 May 1930. For parliamentary references to honour, see Josiah Francis (Nationalist), House of Representatives, 2 May 1930; John Latham (Nationalist), House of Representatives, 7 May 1930.

40 For high diction, the classic exposition is Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), especially 21–3. For the sacred, see Winter, Sites of Memory, especially, 7, 171–7; Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), ch. 5, 186; George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 32–3, 100–2.

41 ‘Preference to Soldiers’, Age, 2 May 1930.

42 Hughes (Nationalist), House of Representatives, 7 May 1930.

43 ‘The Soldier Preference Issue’, Age, 5 May 1930.

44 James Guthrie (Nationalist), Senate, 2 May 1930.

45 ‘Spurious Patriotism’, Australian Worker, 7 May 1930.

46 Albert Green (ALP), House of Representatives, 7 May 1930.

47 ‘Jeers at War Services’, Herald (Melbourne), 7 May 1930.

48 John Daly, Senate, 2 May 1930.

49 ‘Preference to Soldiers’, Age, 2 May 1930. See also John Newlands (Nationalist), Senate, 2 May 1930; George Pearce, Senate, 2 May 1930.

50 R. Green (Country Party), House of Representatives, 2 May 1930; Sir William Glasgow (Nationalist), Senate, 2 May 1930.

51 Burford Sampson (Nationalist), Senate, 2 May 1930.

52 Newlands, Senate, 2 May 2019.

53 T.W. White, House of Representatives, 2 May 1930.

54 Victorian RSL President, G.W. Holland, quoted in ‘Preference to Soldiers’, Age, 2 May 1930.

55 ‘Anzac Day’, Riverina Recorder, 26 April 1930; ‘Anzac Day’, Weekly Times (Melbourne), 26 April 1930; ‘Anzac Day’, Advertiser (Hurstbridge), 25 April 1930. These are three of many such statements in the press.

56 ‘Anzac Day 1930’, Canberra Times, 25 April 1930. Again this is only one of many such expressions in the press.

57 Quoted in ‘Anzac Day Memorial Service’, Northern Standard (Darwin), 25 April 1930.

58 ‘Anzac Day’, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 25 April 1930.

59 ‘Communists. Counter Demonstration’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 1930.

60 Scullin, House of Representatives, 7 May 1930; Caucus Minutes 1901–1949; Minutes of Meetings of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party 1901–1949, vol. 2, 1917–1931, ed. Patrick Weller (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), 369.

61 Cited by Scullin in House of Representatives, 2 May 1930.

62 Federal Executive RSSILA Circular no 133/30, 10 May 1930, MS 6609 Box 457, NLA.

63 Scullin, House of Representatives, 7 May 1930.

64 ‘The Question of Preference’, Australian Worker, 7 May 1930.

65 Weller, 369.

66 Minutes of Committee of Management, 23 May 1930, Waterside Workers’ Federation papers, T62/1/2, Noel Butlin Archives.

67 The account of the 1931 pensions debate in the following paragraphs draws on the Second Interim Report of the Special Committee to Consider Questions Relating to War Pensions, and letter, Scullin to Dyett, 19 June 1931, A461 B382/1/2 pt 1, NAA.

68 Lloyd and Rees, 64.

69 The best account of the technicalities of the evolving pensions system is found in P.B. Toose, Independent Enquiry into the Repatriation System (Canberra: AGPS, 1975), especially 25–32.

70 This is the argument developed at length by Kate Blackmore, The Dark Pocket of Time: War, Medicine and the Australian State, 1914–1935 (Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2008), 194–6.

71 Garton, 114–15.

72 For the status of war widows, see Lloyd and Rees, 23.

73 Toose, 30.

74 ‘Should Be Considered Sacrosanct’, West Australian, 27 May 1931.

75 Details of the RSSILA lobbying and meeting with the government can be found in: Dyett to R. Muish, President Queensland Branch RSSILA, 13 July 1931, MS 6609 Box 43 5042B 1; Federal Executive RSSILA, Circular no 107/31, 3 June 1931, MS 6609 Box 457, NLA.

76 Scullin, House of Representatives, 26 June 1931; ‘Soldiers’ Pensions’ press reports, MS 6609 Box 521, NLA.

77 See, for example, Edward Riley (ALP) and Edward Holloway (ALP), House of Representatives, 25 June 1931.

78 Lazzarini (ALP), House of Representatives, 18 June 1931.

79 Roland Green, House of Representatives, 23 June 1931; Thomas Guthrie (Nationalist), Senate, 3 July 1931.

80 See Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), 41, 143–5.

81 [No title], Age, 16 September 1916.

82 ‘Equality of Sacrifice’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 December 1917.

83 James Guthrie (Nationalist), Senate, 3 July 1931.

84 Attachment to letter, Dyett to Scullin, 26 May 1931, MS 6609 Box 44 5042B pt 3, NLA; T.W. White (Nationalist), House of Representatives, 24 June 1931; William Long (ALP), House of Representatives, 24 June 1931.

85 White (Nationalist), House of Representatives, 24 June 1931.

86 Paul Jones (ALP), House of Representatives, 24 June 1931.

87 Roland Green, House of Representatives, 19 June 1931.

88 Report of the War Pensions Enquiry Committee, Part I, A461 B382/1/2 pt I, NAA.

89 Lloyd and Rees, 246.

90 A.P. Skerman, Repatriation in Australia: A History of Development to 1958 (Melbourne: Repatriation Department, 1961), 65.

91 Dissent, L.F Giblin, 30 June 1931, in Second Interim Report of the Special Committee to Consider Questions Relating to War Pensions, A461 B382/1/2 pt 1, NAA.

92 For discussion of this issue, see correspondence in A458 C502/7, NAA.

93 Reveille, 30 April 1930.

94 For the impact of the Depression on soldier settlers, see Scates and Oppenheimer, 234–5.

95 Parliament of Australia, ‘Suicide in Australia’, www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/Suicide#_Toc299625618 (accessed 28 April 2020).

96 Scates and Oppenheimer, 197–8.

97 ‘Returned Soldiers, Sailors and Nurses, WHERE DO YOU STAND?’, N57-445, Noel Butlin Archives.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP160104699.