Australia and the Interwar Internationalism Movement

The League of Nations was established in January 1920 following the catastrophic culmination of WWI.1 The purpose of  the League, as outlined by its founding covenant, was twofold: to establish international peace and security; and to foster international collaboration.2  While the League of Nations itself has traditionally been viewed as a failure, it was supported by a broader movement of civil society organisations that sought to build a strong movement at a grassroots level. In Britain, these civil society organisations mobilised hundreds of thousands of people. Historian Helen McCarthy has argued that these institutions successfully inspired a culture of political protest in Britain.3 In Australia, however,  these  organisations failed to engage the population, with reports from leading members claiming that there was ‘very general public indifference to the League.’4 In this essay I will seek to undertake a comparative assessment of the impact of the League of Nations Union in Great Britain and similar institutions and organisations in Australia. I will attempt to demonstrate that the interwar internationalism movement in Australia failed to engage the population to the same extent as the League of Nations Union in the Britain. I will put forward a suggestion that this was due to complex process of nation­building that was occurring at the time. Australia was crafting their identity  as a nation, and this identity largely grew out of the actions of the diggers in WWI. Internationalism therefore became entangled with other debates and ideologies such as nationalism, socialism and imperialism. These broader issues served as both a distraction to the debate of internationalism and when the debate itself was addressed, it became politically polarised and partisan. I will first seek to ground my analysis by providing an introduction to McCarthy’s argument. In the second part of this essay I will undertake a comparative analysis of the tactics employed by the League of Nations Union in Britain and the League of Nations Union (and later in the International Peace Campaign) in Australia, and their respective successes and failures. Finally I will discuss the social and political context of Australia during the interwar period and how this campaign manifested during that period of time.

Helen McCarthy argued that ‘the League inspired a rich participatory culture of political protest, popular education and civic ritual which took root in British society between the wars.’5  The League of Nations has become known as an abysmal failure. It was an institution established in order to prevent any future conflicts and within only a couple of decades of its creation, the Second World War broke out; one of the most significant and catastrophic conflicts in history. McCarthy, however, suggests that we must adjust our perspective and instead analyse the effect that civil society organisations established to assist the League in achieving its mission had  on  British society.6 McCarthy claims that one such organisation, the League of Nations Union in Britain managed to ‘democratise’ foreign policy. It successfully mobilised a group of disparate groups behind a single cause and instilled in the British population a sense that the electorate can and should influence foreign policy.7

During the interwar period the internationalist movements in Britain and Australia attempted to mobilise public opinion and direct it at political decision makers. The Australian International Peace Campaign failed to mobilise even a fraction of the number of responses as their British counterpart.8 The general public in early 20th century were becoming increasingly more knowledgeable about the state of domestic and international affairs thanks to the extension of near universal suffrage and significant developments in the proliferation of mass media. Helen McCarthy suggests that in Britain the LNU experienced a relatively high level of success in persuading the population that they had a right to exercise their opinion through public polling to be directed at decision makers.9 government  leaders  to  adopt  LNU policy.10 The League intended such a model to empower In  1935, in the middle of a mounting crisis in Europe, the LNU in Britain launched the Peace Ballot in an attempt to remind the government of the British people’s ongoing support for the ideal of the League of Nations and continuing peace.11  The questions generally related to the continued support of the government for the League of Nations and moves towards disarmament. Over eleven million people participated in the ballot and their responses were largely a statement of support for the League.12 The Victorian Branch International Peace Campaign in Australia attempted a similar tactic in 1939 when they launched the IPC Peace Questionnaire. The questions on this particular ballot related to the actions that should be taken by Australian and British government in response to the mounting aggression of European fascist governments.13  A report issued by the Victorian Branch of the IPC detailing the results of the questionnaire state that they only received just over 600 filled in ballots. While it is unclear how these ballots were distributed, the report does note that responses came from a broad range of groups and that many responses were uniform when representatives were a part of the same organisation. From this note, it is reasonable to infer that the Victorian IPC most likely attempted to distribute the ballot  amongst aligned  organisations.14 The low response rate is indicative of a failure on the part of the Australian interwar internationalism movement to engage and empower the Australian population. Ernest Bramsted has suggested that the driving factor behind the success of the Peace Ballot in Britain was the sense of ‘British superiority’ and their belief that they were uniquely placed to lead the world in the pursuit of collective security.15 The question remains, did the Australian sense of national identity, and a lack of belief in their ability to influence the pursuit of collective security a factor in the lack of engagement?

The LNU in Britain and their Australian counterpart both professed a core part of their mission to be the public education of the population in the topic of war, peace and internationalism.16  While this tactic flourished in Britain, the Australian LNU failed to engage a committed core of members to carry their message onwards towards decision makers. The broader interwar internationalism movement viewed public education as key in the prevention of future conflict through a number of different pathways. As touched upon in earlier paragraphs, the interwar internationalism movement sought to mobilise educated public opinion in order to compel  or  support  the  government  to  back  League  policy.  This  was  one of the primary motivators behind their education campaigns.17 One of the early civil society organisation supporting the work of the League of Nations in Australia was the League of Nations Union. Public  education was one  of  two  key  objective  pursued  by  the LNU following their establishment.18 In a report from the General Secretary of the Australian League of Nations Union issued in 1933, covering the period from 1930 to 1933, the General Secretary laments the failure of their public education campaigns to achieve their stated purpose, to influence political tendencies. He claims that the main causal issues are: the general nature of their lectures and the failure to link to current political issues, and the fact that their audiences and isolated groups that have little influence over public policy.19  While the General Secretary does allude to the issue  of targeting the right audience who can carry the message forward to decision makers, perhaps what he does not address is a failure in breadth of engagement and method of distribution of the Australian LNU’s message. The general secretary only makes note of lectures as a method of public education. In Britain, however there were numerous methods of public education, including study circles at local branches and educational committees. What comes through consistently is the attempt to invest deeply in the education of their hundreds of thousands of members through close communities devoted to learning.20

One of the hallmarks of the LNU in Britain was their vague centrist rhetoric that created pathways for engagement for a broad section of society.21  While the movement and early institutions such as the LNU in Australia attempted to espouse a similar rhetoric, their attempts largely failed and their language became progressively more polarised as the Second World War approached. The LNU in Britain claimed that matters such as foreign affairs, and particularly the maintenance of peace needed to rise  above  party politics. It was for this reason that their organisation strictly enforced a non­partisan policy stance.22 This stance extended to their membership, which contained representatives from the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party; and their communications with the public. Speeches and written material by LNU representatives were often censured if they were perceived to be too politically bias.23 While their non­partisan rhetoric was challenged and forced to navigate sensitive territory when certain  parties  refused  to  sign  on  to  their  policies,  for the most part the LNU in Britain  was successful in maintaining their non­partisan   status.24 This non­partisan status, however, did not mean that individual groups of members of the interwar internationalism movement did not overlay their own political objectives on the ideology of internationalism. The international socialist movement, the Labour and Socialist International was a strong supporter of the League of Nations. They believed that international institutions in Geneva opened up a pathway for coordinated socialist action at an international level.25 While the leading civil society institution supporting the League of Nations in Britain, the British LNU managed to keep their public persona relatively non­partisan, Australian organisations failed to follow the same pathway. By the 1930s, the LNU in Australia was failing to maintain a strong following of supporters and they gave way to a new institution, the International Peace Campaign. The IPC was inspired by a French socialist Popular Front movement in France.26 A  letter  to  the  editor  submitted to the Argus newspaper in 1937 by an unnamed member of the medical section of the International Peace Campaign provides an insight into the public perception of the IPC. They write: “it is now generally recognised that the IPC was inspired and is largely financed by international communism.”27  Given this perception of the IPC it is possible that they isolated a large sections of their potential audience who did not wish to be affiliated with the broader socialist movement.

In order to better understand the varying outcome of the tactics employed by the interwar internationalism movement in Britain and Australia, we must first understand the social, economic and political context that they were operating in. During the interwar period, the Australian debate surrounding internationalism was influenced by broader questions of Australia’s place in the world. At the time of the completion of the First World War, Australia was still relatively young as a nation with less than two decades having passed since federation. The experience of the First World War fundamentally reshaped the way that Australians viewed themselves. Nick Dyrenfurth has suggested that this manifested in the physical landscape with “War memorials, avenues of honour and tribute boards were erected in every town and city. Australia’s national identity was literally reshaped by the war.”28 The First World War, however, also forced Australians to ask some hard questions about the nature of their relationship with Britain. Richard Devetak suggests that a rift developed in Australia between those who wanted to maintain the close relationship to Britain and the Empire, and those who wanted to start to distance  themselves and  potentially  pursue  closer  ties  with  the  United States.29 In addition, amongst a segment of the population, there was a growing resentment towards the British, driven by a perceived lack of appreciation for the role of the diggers in WWI and the perception of incompetence by British military officers during the conflict.30  These competing factors were  all occurring against a backdrop of an advancing international socialist movement.31

While the adoption of socialist rhetoric by proponents of internationalism during this period was common globally, in Australia radical socialist internationalism was adopted and espoused by one of the major political parties: the Australian Labor Party. This saw the advocacy of a mainstream political argument was that was socially divisive. Internationalism was one of the defining political debates of the interwar period in Australia and a major contributing factor in the schism in the Australian Labor Party. Former Labor leader, Billy Hughes was ousted from the ALP for his ardent support of conscription as a measure of protecting anglo­Australian interests overseas and went on to form the Nationalist Labor party. Hughes was a proponent of a specific type of Australian­British imperialism, a style of Australian nationalism that was conflated with loyalty to the British.32  While Hughes continued to be a major player in Australian politics and a strong supporter of conscription and the anglo­Australian relationship, the ALP is his absence went on to adopt a formal anti­war stance in 1918.33  The language applied by the Labor Party in their advocacy for the prevention of future conflict had strong socialist overtones. In the mid­1930s the Labor anti­war committee, representing the ALP issued a brochure titled ‘Labor’s case against war and fascism.’ In this brochure they stated, “capitalist wars… can only be ended by the complete abolition of the capitalist system, and the establishment of common ownership of the means of production.”34 In addition their anti­war rhetoric was deeply connected to the imperialist argument and the question of Australian independence with the pamphlet also stating, “Labor’s national policy against war therefore asserts uncompromisingly the right of the Australian people to decide their own destiny, free from the military suppression or political domination of any imperialist power”.35 The political right in Australia used this particular debate as a method of painting the ALP and their supporters as anti­British communists. Their stance was not popular with ex­soldiers, and violent outbursts frequently took place between ex­soldiers, police and labor unionists.36 This divisive and polarised communication of their anti­war policy could have actively prevented the engagement of a broad range of groups and individuals in the internationalist movement.

In addition to the potentially polarising nature of involvement with the interwar internationalist movement in Australia, we must also question whether the crowded nature of Australian political debate during this period impacted the level of engagement with institutions such as the League of Nations Union and the International Peace Campaign. Nick Devetak claims  that  while there  was  interest  within  Australia  regarding  the  League  of Nations, this interest  was  dwarfed  by  the  broader  questions of the  Australian­British relationship.37 This suggestion is supported by correspondence from leading members of the League of Nations Union and the International Peace Campaign at the time. William Harrison Moore, a League of Nations delegate wrote of the ‘general public indifference to the league’3839 while correspondence with Dorothy Gibson, a leading member of the Victorian IPC details the need for the Tasmanian Branch of the IPC to cease operations due to a lack of interest from affiliated bodies.40

1 Jari Eloranta, “Why did the League of Nations fails?”, Cliometrica 5 (2011): 30.

2 ‘The Covenant of the League of Nations’, in The Aims and Organisation of the League of Nations(Geneva: Secretariat of the League of Nations, 1929), 13–18.

3 Helen McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 1.

4 Sir William Harrison Moore, “Public Sentiment towards League of Nations,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 8, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/55.

5 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 1.

6 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 2.

7 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 1­3.

8 Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign, “Report of a questionnaire issued by the Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign in 1939,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 6, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/32.

9 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 17.

10 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 19.

11 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 28­29.

12 Ernest Bramsted, “Apostles of Collective Security: the LNU and its functions”, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 13 (1967): 347.

13 Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign, “Report of a questionnaire issued by the Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign in 1939,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 6, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/32.

14 Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign, “Report of a questionnaire issued by the Victorian Council of the International Peace Campaign in 1939,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 6, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/32.

15 Bramsted, “Apostles of Collective Security”, 249­350.

16 Hilary Summy, “Countering War: The role of the League of Nations Union”, Social Alternatives 33 (2014): 15.

17 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 30.

18 Summy, “Countering War”, 16.

19 Australian League of Nations Union, “Excerpt from Report of the General Secretary of the Australian League of Nations Union for the period June 1930 to May 1933. ,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 6, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/9.

20 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 20.

21 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 46.

22 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 46.

23 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 48.

24 McCarthy, British People and the League of Nations, 46­50.

25 Daniel Laqua, “Democratic Politics and the League of Nations: The Labour and Socialist International as a Protagonist of Interwar Internationalism”, Contemporary European History 24 (2015): 181.

26  Summy, “Countering War” 18.

27 Argus Newspaper, “"the Quest for Peace" newspaper clipping, Argus Newspaper 1937,” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 8, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/36.

28 Nick Dyrenfurth, “Labor and the Anzac Legend, 1915–45”, Labour History 106 (2014): 171.

29 Richard Devetak, “An Australian Outlook on International Affairs? The Evolution of International Relations Theory in Australia”, Australian Journal of Politics & History 55 (2009): 335­337.

30 Neville Kirk, “'Australians for Australia': The Right, the Labor Party and Contested Loyalties to Nation and Empire in Australia, 1917 to the Early 1930s”, Labour History 91 (2006): 95­111.

31 Laqua, “Democratic Politics and the League of Nations”, 181.

32 Dyrenfurth, “Labor and the Anzac Legend”,169.

33 Kirk, “'Australians for Australia”, 97.

34 Labor Anti­War Committee, “Labor's Case Against War and Fascism [pamphlet],” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 8, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/38.

35 Labor Anti­War Committee, “Labor's Case Against War and Fascism [pamphlet],” Interwar Internationalism: An Archival History, accessed October 8, 2015, http://tretzthurs10.omeka.net/items/show/38.

36 Dyrenfurth, “Labor and the Anzac Legend”, 171.