History revisited - Page loses key lieutenant

The period leading up to Page’s 17 February 1931 Glenreagh speech had seen some feverish behind the scenes activity.

On 30 November 1930, the President of the Farmers and Settlers Association at Murwillumbah had telegraphed Page asking that he and Victor Thompson organise a conference ‘with a view to declaring northern new state’. Page telegraphed back, promising to place the telegram before a meeting of the Northern members of the NSW Parliament.

Page had some difficulties in gathering the members together. It was not until 30 January 1931 that he met with David Drummond and Alf Pollack (the member for Clarence: photo) at Cremorne in Sydney to discuss strategy. Unfortunately. Pollack died suddenly later that day.

Politics is about people. The ideas and enthusiasm generated by the mercurial Page had considerable impact. As Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Treasurer he failed to create Australia’s first national superannuation scheme. Later, he would create the first national health scheme. Yet he depended on others to provide form and the supporting under-pinning required to make his ideas work.

A solicitor, Pollack had been to school at Grafton and Armidale before establishing his practice in Grafton. He had been a key Page lieutenant since at least 1915 when the dispute over the Helen river ferry launched the first twentieth century Northern separation campaign. Like Drummond, Pollack one was of those who provided practical grounding to Page’s enthusiasms. His death left a considerable gap.

A week after Pollack’s death, the announcement of the Lang Plan electrified the situation. On 13 February, Page came to Sydney to present his plans to colleagues on the action to be taken if Premier Lang carried out his threat to repudiate interest payments on the State’s overseas debt.

There were considerable reservations. Nevertheless, Page was given his head, while the decision was made to call a special meeting of the Northern New State Executive to be held in Armidale on 28 February 1931 to consider Page’s ideas.

While still technically an Executive meeting, the 28 February meeting was now being treated as a full Movement convention. That Saturday more than 200 delegates gathered to hear Page unveil his plans. The North should organise itself, Page said, ‘into a self-governing unit, demand recognition from the Federal Government on the ground that we intend to obey the Federal law and Constitution and pay our debts.’

In Drummond’s view, Page made an important tactical error her. The issues were so clear-cut to Page that he forgot that many delegates were hearing his plans for the first time. They were understandably cautious about a course of action so clearly smacking of rebellion. Finally, after protracted discussion and with some misgivings and private reservations, the delegates carried a series of resolutions that placed the Movement on the path that Page proposed. These included adoption for the first time of the name New England to describe the entire North.

Meantime, another movement was emerging that would create opportunities and challenges for the Northern separatist cause.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 November 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014,. 

If you want to follow the story of the Northern or New England self-government movement, this is the entry post for the whole series

History revisited – as society fragments, movements begin to form

My last column outlined some of the economic and political events leading into the Great Depression. In the economic and political turmoil of 1930 and 1932 the very fabric of NSW life began to collapse. Many blamed the existing politicians and political parties for the problems and condemned them, calling for new approaches.

New political movements now mushroomed on the right and left of politics. Formed in February 1931, the All for Australia League claimed a membership of 130,000 by the end of June. The Unemployed Workers Movement formed in April 1930 claimed a membership of 31,00o by the middle of 1931. A strong undercurrent of fear ran beneath this political activity.

As the fear of revolution spread, private citizens began to arm, forming unofficial paramilitary organisations. On 18 February 1931, just nine days after Lang announced the Lang Plan, a private meeting of eight men at the Imperial Services Club in Sydney decided to form the New Guard. In less than a year, the Guard had grown to 87,000 men. The photo shows New Guard Leader Eric Campbell leading a fascist salute. 

The Guard courted publicity, and this has given it a faintly comic air. However, it was arguably very dangerous; its strident rhetoric was associated with a well organised military structure, largely in Sydney, that might have allowed it to seize power.

Less flamboyant than the New Guard was the shadowy organisation known as the “Movement” to its members. Formed in November 1930 the Movement, later derisively called the Old Guard by its New Guard rivals, aimed to build up a disciplined force of 9,000 men who would only be called out in the event of a situation beyond police control.

While the strength of para-military forces in the North is difficult to gauge, it is clear that units were formed. However, although there appear to have been small New Guard branches at Lismore and Newcastle, the great majority of Northern groups were almost certainly independent or associated in some way with the Old Guard rather than the more efficient and extreme New Guard.

It is also reasonably clear that the Northern separatist leadership had at least had some knowledge of, if not connections with, the Old Guard. This is hardly surprising, given the number of ex-military officers connected in some way with the Northern New State Movement, for these formed the core of the Old Guard.

Nevertheless, whatever the strength or indeed affiliations of Northern para-military groups, their very existence was an important influence in the increasingly confused political climate of 1931 and early 1932.

In these circumstances, Page’s 17 February 1931 Glenreagh speech calling on the North to secede was not just a dramatic gesture. It was very close to a formal call to arms, a call for revolution.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 November 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.

If you want to follow the story of the Northern or New England self-government movement, this is the entry post for the whole series

History revisited – great depression brings divides on left and right

The fire ignited by Earle Page’s 17 February 1931 Glenreagh call for the people of the North to secede from New South Wales drew its strength in part from the now established desire for self-government for the North, more from the social and political tensions unleashed by the Great Depression.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Australia’s population was just 4.9 million. During the war, 420,000 Australians enlisted, equivalent to 38.7 per cent of the male population. Some 60,000 died, others were wounded or became sick. Including deaths, wounded and sickness, the Australian casualty rate reached 64.8 per cent.

Many Australians returning from the front found readjustment to civilian life difficult. They provided a force for change that helped fuel many of the political movements including the rising Country Party and a resurgent Northern Separation Movement.

There were divisions on the right and left, fuelled in part by the rise of Bolshevism and the success of the Russian Revolution. The radicals looked to the possibility of change, the conservatives feared the overthrow of the existing order.

While the roaring twenties were nowhere near as prosperous as the label would suggest, economic growth was sufficient to contain the underlying divisions. However, that growth was patchy and built on unstable foundations.

Rising tariff protection encouraged expansion of manufacturing. In 1925-26 manufacturing employment exceed rural for the first time. Industrialisation was associated with and assisted by heavy expenditure on public works such as railways, electricity, roads and sewerage. The pattern of industrialisation and public works led to further growth in the metropolitan cities.

Metropolitan population growth became self-generating, for the need to house rising city populations added thousands more jobs in building and construction. Productivity growth in manufacturing was extremely low, import competition rising despite rising tariffs.

Industry responded by trying to control or even cut wages, which in turn led to continuing industrial trouble. Meantime, the rising drift of population to the city together with the cost squeeze placed upon primary export industries as a consequence of rising input costs began to fuel a new wave of country political agitation.

In 1929, the economic house of cards collapsed. The previous year new overseas borrowings to fund Government public works programs had reached fifty-two million pounds, while interest payments on accumulated loans had reached 28 per cent of export income.

The perfect economic storm that now descended combined falling commodity prices with the closure of the London markets to new borrowings. Public works ground to a halt, while Governments were forced into a desperate search for solvency leading to Greek style expenditure cuts.

Unemployment rose and rose again, reaching 23.4 per cent by the end of 1930. As economic conditions worsened, previously submerged social and political tensions emerged. Australian society began to fragment.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 November 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.

If you want to follow the story of the Northern or New England self-government movement, this is the entry post for the whole series

Nathan Wise on the failure in soldier settlement after World War One

Short post to just to provide a link to a radio interview with UNE's Nathan Wise on the failure of soldier settlement after World War One.

History revisited – battling for self-government in the North

“In a fiery speech, Earle Page calls on the people of the North to secede.”

Glenreagh, Tuesday 17 February 1931. In a fiery speech, Earle Page calls on the people of the North to secede.

Eleven days earlier (6 February), the Premiers had met in Canberra to discuss a three year plan to rectify the economic situation. Federal Treasurer E G Theodore had suggested that a new and expansionary monetary policy should be adopted. NSW Premier Jack Lang, a bitter political rival, responded with his own plan, one that came as a surprise even to his own State party.

Under the Lang Plan, payment of interest to British bond-holders would cease pending re-negotiation of the loans on satisfactory terms; interest on all government borrowings would be reduced to 3 per cent; while the gold standard would be replaced by an undefined “goods standard.” What came to be known as the battle of the plans had begun.

Now in response, Page declared that the “people of the North seem to have no other course but to cut adrift from New South Wales. The people of Northern New South Wales refuse to have any part of or lot in this matter of default.” They would request recognition from the Federal Parliament as state that “would be organised under a Provisional Government pending adjustment of relationships and liabilities with New South Wales”.

This appeal, Page went on, would be “on all fours with the appeal of West Virginia” which was recognised by Abraham Lincoln as a separate state when it declared for the Federal Union.

Reaction to the Page speech was instantaneous, if mixed.

“Divorce is ever a tragedy and a confession of failure!”, wrote the newly arrived Anglican Bishop of Armidale John Stoward Moyes in an open letter to the Northern press. “I hope, gentlemen, that deep loyalty to the nation will forbid the people of the North to be beguiled by such sinister proposals”. Later Moyes, convinced at last that the existing system needed changing, would join the New State executive.

The Armidale Express, while sympathetic, warned that the proposed action was fraught with such grave consequences “that the irrevocable step must be taken only after the most thorough investigation”.

People at Murwillumbah had no such doubts. There the shops closed to allow attendance at a new state meeting which resolved that “we decline at all costs to continue to pay taxes and tribute to be spent by caucus-controlled Government.”

For his part, Lang immediately hinted at action for sedition, while the Empire Party, one of the new political groups that had sprung up in Sydney, also suggested that Page was guilty of sedition for promoting secession.

The stage was now set for the next dramatic phase in the North’s fight for self government. To understand this, we first need to look back at the economic, political and social stresses that developed with the Great Depression.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 October 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.

If you want to follow the story of the Northern or New England self-government movement, this is the entry post for the whole series