The dismissal of the Whitlam government, which occurred 50 years ago this month, remains one of the biggest deals in Australian history. There was a previous example of a state governor, Sir Philip Game, sacking a Labor government, and older instances of the British monarch dismissing ministries: Gough Whitlam recalled George III’s dismissal of the Fox-North coalition in 1783.
In 1975, few Australians seriously believed that the vice-regal dismissal of a democratically elected government was business as usual. Accordingly, alongside the relief of anti-Whitlam partisans, there was widespread shock, dismay and anger.
Whitlam called on his supporters to “maintain your rage”. Many did not need his encouragement.
This is a story that remains to be told: the dismissal as it played out in public meetings, on the streets, and through strikes, protests and demonstrations. Thanks to the millions of words written about the dismissal over a half century, we know a great deal about most of the principal actors; Whitlam, opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, governor general Sir John Kerr and Sir Garfield Barwick, the chief justice who advised Kerr. Thanks to recent archival discoveries – especially those facilitated by the release of the palace letters after successful litigation by historian Jenny Hocking – we know much more than we did a decade ago.
But we know less about what we might call “the dismissal from below”, which borrows from a historical practice that looks at events from the perspective of ordinary people on the ground rather than leaders at the top. Several were conscious of the potential for public disorder in a decade when protest was more widespread, more vigorous and, on occasion, more violent than today.
The greatest potential for disorder came from the possibility of the unions mounting a general strike in support of the deposed Labor government. They had the numbers (about 55% of workers belonged to trade unions in the mid-1970s compared with about 12.5% today) and they also had experience. In 1969, Australia’s unions had brought the country to a near-standstill during a general strike in support of Clarrie O’Shea, a tramway union official who went to prison after his union flouted the Arbitration Commission. The judge in the case was none other than John Kerr. There seemed to be even more at stake a few years on.
Kerr himself spotted the danger, writing to the palace shortly after the first rallies and strikes in mid-October: “As the money runs out many problems will arise and the reaction of the trade unions has to be considered. There are threats of protest, strikes and industrial ‘war’.”
Bob Hawke, president of both the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor party, hinted at the possibility of a general strike in a speech delivered outside Parliament House, just as supply was being blocked, but he quickly changed tack. After the dismissal, Hawke and Whitlam encouraged supporters instead to donate “a day’s pay for democracy” for Labor’s election campaign – a decision that disappointed the more militant unions.
Some within the Coalition also feared violence. Ian Macphee, a Victorian Liberal moderate, wrote in a letter to Fraser that if the Coalition won an election “stemming from the present crisis we will have the outright hostility of nearly 50 per cent of the electorate”. John Gorton, formerly prime minister but now a renegade from the Liberal party, thought the political crisis might lead to “riots and strikes … fighting in the streets”.
Fear of popular disorder was real. It didn’t materialise as expected, but there were some violent episodes. A letter bomb exploded in the building that contained the Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s office, badly injuring two staff. Others were sent to Fraser and Kerr, though without causing damage. There were open fights between Whitlam and Fraser supporters, occasional clashes with police and a storming of the Sydney Stock Exchange that went wrong when the would-be revolutionaries got lost in the building. It is often forgotten that – despite the lack of a general strike – hundreds of thousands of workers did walk off the job.
More notably, the dismissal from below was, mainly, peaceful. You were more likely to hear songs, chants, see placards or a street play satirising Kerr and Fraser than violence.
It is possible to discern in the events that followed the dismissal something of the political order that would take shape in the 1980s. That new order was embodied in Hawke, who would become parliamentary Labor leader just before the party’s 1983 return to power. In 1975, the country’s more militant unions castigated Hawke for “betraying” the labour movement over his failure to call a general strike. But the middle ground Hawke occupied – which could seem like a contrast with the anger of Whitlam – struck a chord with the Australian public.
After the 1975 election, Hawke received letters from Fraser supporters who expressed their admiration for Hawke’s “spirit of moderation and of true democracy”. As one wrote: “I don’t share Bob Hawke’s politics, but I do admire Bob Hawke the man.” Some Australians quickly saw the appeal of the consensus politics that would form the centrepiece of his successful pitch to voters in 1983.
Time has been favourable to Whitlam and his government. Where popular memory was once dominated by chaos and crisis, it is now the policy legacy, and the manner of the man himself, that loom largest.
Yet, for a time in 1975, Australian democracy appeared a fragile thing. It proved robust in the end – thanks in large part to the creativity of ordinary Australians who agitated for their country’s democratic culture, system and institutions. In a world where democracy seems in decay, we could learn much from the vigilance of those who rallied as spring turned to summer in 1975.
• Frank Bongiorno is a professor of history at the Australian National University and Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University
• James Watson is a historian at the Australian National University’s School of History
