The "White Australia" Doctrine

The Doctrine Of "White Australia"
Socialists Comment Critically

7/14/2004 12:37:08 PM
World Socialist Website

Commentary -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/ju...-j14_prn.shtml

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

WSWS : News & Analysis : Australia & South Pacific

What is at stake in Australia’s “History Wars”
Part 3: The doctrine of “White Australia”
By Nick Beams
14 July 2004

Below we are publishing the third part in a series written by Nick Beams,
national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) and member
of
the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site. Part 1
appeared on July 12 and Part 2 on July 13. Part 4 will be published on
Thursday, July 15.

For the new Australian ruling class, establishing a federated nation-state
required more than forging a relationship with Britain and the Empire,
laying
out the legal basis for the federal government and delineating its
jurisdiction. A national ideology, or identity, had to be developed that
could
command popular support. Herein lay the crucial role of the doctrine of
“White
Australia”. It provided the ideological cement to hold the new
nation-state
together, under conditions where deep class divisions had already started
to
emerge.

The passage of the Immigration Restriction Act was to symbolise what has
become known as the “Australian settlement”—the exclusion of non-whites,
the
protection of the home market through high tariffs, and the regulation of
wages and living standards through an industrial arbitration system. The
White
Australia policy, as the leader of the Liberals in the new parliament,
Alfred
Deakin, made clear during the parliamentary debate, signified more than
just
the exclusion of Asians from the new nation. It was to provide Australia’s
very foundation.

“This note of nationality,” he declared, “is that which gives dignity and
importance to this debate. The unity of Australia is nothing, if that does
not
imply a united race. A united race means not only that its members can
intermix, intermarry and associate without degradation on either side, but
implies one inspired by ideas and an aspiration towards the same ideals,
of a
people possessing the same general cast of character, tone of thought—the
same
constitutional training and traditions—a people qualified to live under
this
Constitution.... Unity of race is an absolute to the unity of Australia.
It is
more actually in the last resort, than any other unity. After all, when
the
period of confused local politics and temporary political divisions was
swept
aside it was this real unity which made the Commonwealth possible.” [1]

For Deakin, the White Australia policy was related to far-reaching social
questions. “It means the maintenance of social conditions under which men
and
women can live decently. It means equal laws and opportunities for all ...
it
means social justice and fair wages. The White Australia policy goes down
to
the roots of our national existence, the roots from which the British
social
system has sprung.” [2]

White Australia, he was to explain in 1903, was not a surface phenomenon,
but a “reasoned policy which goes to the roots of national life, and by
which
the whole of our social, industrial and political organisation is
governed.”
[3]

Opposition to Indian and Chinese labour

The prevalence of racism was not isolated to the Australian colonies.
Throughout the nineteenth century, racism had become one of the key
ideological weapons for the European bourgeoisie as it began to carve the
world into spheres of influence and colonies. But what did distinguish
Australia was that racism was to become the founding doctrine of the
nation,
backed by the claim that this was the only basis for social justice.

From the early years of colonial settlement, and particularly as pastoral
capitalism grew and wool exports to Britain expanded, racial issues played
a
central role. The very expansion into new regions of the continent—with
the
growth of the wool, and then the beef, industry—motivated the frontier
wars
against the indigenous population. The conflicts commenced in earnest from
the
mid-1820s and continued well into the twentieth century.

The pastoral industry had no use for tribal Aborigines—they were simply to
be cleared from the land, or “dispersed”, as the euphemism for shooting
them
put it. But labour still had to be found. Initially, it came from the
convict
population, which grew rapidly in the period after 1820. But as agitation
against the transportation of convicts from England developed in the
1840s,
the pastoralists were forced to turn elsewhere.

Initially, they sought to bring in indentured labourers from India, but
this was opposed both in London and in the colony of New South Wales
itself.
In London, Sir James Stephen, the permanent under-secretary in the
Colonial
Office, insisted that the continent of New Holland was to be reserved “as
a
place where the English race shall be spread from sea to sea unmixed with
any
lower caste. As we now regret the folly of our ancestors in colonising
North
America from Africa, so should our posterity have to censure us if we
should
colonise Australia from India.” [4]

Within the colony, opposition to Indian indentured labour emanated mainly
from self-employed artisans and manufacturers, as well as from small
landholders. These emerging colonial capitalists—none of them
large—harboured
two fears. On the one hand, if the large landholders had access to a ready
supply of cheap Indian labour, their economic and political power would
vastly
increase, exerting pressure on the smaller urban-based bourgeoisie from
above.
On the other, Indian labourers would form an impoverished proletariat—a
permanent underclass—that would increasingly threaten the social interests
of
the urban bourgeoisie from below.

In the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions in Continental Europe and the
rise
of the Chartist movement in the 1840s in Britain, the so-called social
question was never far from the surface. There were many who feared that
conflicts such as these would emerge in the colonies. In January 1857, a
leading article in the Melbourne newspaper the Argus noted that in
England,
the contrast between wealth and poverty had created a “dangerous class”,
as
had the tyranny of the European rulers.

“In these old countries arguments are not wanting in favour of a gradual
and cautious extension of equal political rights to all citizens. But the
social condition of this colony is, thank Heaven! widely different. Here
we
have no ‘dangerous class’. The number of paupers bears an insignificant
proportion to the mass of the community. Every Australian citizen is
interested in defending the just rights of property, and the smallest
freeholder will as earnestly maintain those rights as the large capitalist
who
has invested tens of thousands in the soil. The wealthy classes have
nothing
to fear from manhood suffrage. It will prevent them from abusing their
power,
but there is no danger of its encroaching upon their rights.” [5]

The arguments against Indian labour were applied with even greater force
to
the Chinese, especially after the gold rushes of the 1850s. If the Chinese
were allowed to enter the colony, they would “degrade” the European
population. According to the colonial liberals, the establishment of
freedom
and liberty required a “shared outlook”, and that was not possible if the
Chinese population grew. Henry Parkes, later to become one of the
“founding
fathers” of federation, regularly proclaimed that the Chinese threatened
“our
very existence as a nation”. In the late 1850s there were three
unsuccessful
attempts to pass legislation restricting Chinese immigration, with a
fourth
eventually proving successful in the wake of the anti-Chinese riots at the
gold diggings at Lambing Flat in 1861.

As Parkes’ remarks indicate, the nation was, from the outset, defined in
exclusionary, racialist terms. These tendencies were to intensify over the
next period as class antagonisms deepened. By the end of the 1860s, with
the
end of the gold rushes and the entrenchment of the power of the large
landholders, small-scale manufacturing industry was taking root, with a
consequent growth in the urban working class. A local patriotism
emerged—with
calls for the use of home brands and the consumption of locally produced
goods. The Australian Natives Association was established in 1871 to
promote
the claims and virtues of colonial men of importance, over those of
immigrants.

At the heart of the emerging nationalist ideology was the conception that
a
new society, free of the class antagonisms and conflicts of old Europe
could
be constructed in Australia, with prosperity and social justice for all.
But
for this to take place two conditions had to be met: the population had to
share a common outlook and values and there could be no possibility for
the
establishment of a “degraded” cheap labour force, which could be used by
the
wealthy capitalists and landowners to undercut social conditions. This was
how
racial exclusion became the cutting edge of developing Australian
nationalism.

In 1887 the Bulletin magazine, one of the most prominent voices for the
emerging Australian nationalism, defined Australian identity as follows:
“All
white men who come to these shores—with a clean record—and who leave
behind
them the memory of class distinctions and the religious differences of the
old
world ... are Australian. In this regard all men who leave the
tyrant-ridden
land of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are
Australians before they set foot on the ship which brings them hither ...
No
nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, no kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured
labour is an Australian.” [6]

White Australia and the labour movement

White Australia racism was to become the ideological foundation of the
alliance between the manufacturing bourgeoisie and the leadership of the
growing trade union and Labor movement that was to form the basis of the
first
Commonwealth governments.

The small manufacturers, whose interests centred on the home market,
desired protection from overseas competition on the one hand, and the
curbing
of the economic and political power of the large-scale pastoral and
financial
interests on the other. They opposed Asian immigration because it would
undermine their own position by augmenting the wealth of the large-scale
capitalists.

According to one liberal spokesman, the parliamentarian Dr William
Hobbs, “cheap servile labour, particularly non-European labour, would
prejudice the development of a progressive democratic society.” [7]

Such arguments were buttressed by social Darwinist ideology, which
asserted
the supremacy of the white race. The one-time education minister of
Victoria,
C. H. Pearson, claimed in his book National Life and Character that a
struggle
existed between the “higher” and “lower” races of men.

“The fear of Chinese immigration which the Australian democracy
cherishes,”
he wrote, “and which Englishmen at home find it hard to understand is, in
fact, the instinct of self-preservation, quickened by experience. We know
that
coloured and white labour cannot exist side by side; we are well aware
that
China can swamp us with a year’s surplus of population.... We are guarding
the
last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase
freely,
for the higher race.” [8]

According to the Bulletin magazine, which maintained the slogan “Australia
for the White Man” on its masthead until 1961, the “instinct against race-
mixture” was rooted in evolution. “Once a type has got a step up it must
be ‘selfish’ in its scorn of lower types, or climb down again. This may
not be
good ethics. But it is Nature ... the Caucasian race, as a race has taken
up
the white man’s burden of struggling on towards ‘the upward path’, of
striving
at a higher rate of evolution.... If he were to stop to dally with races
which
would enervate him, or inflict him with servile submissiveness, the scheme
of
human evolution would be frustrated.” [9]

For the leaders of the newly-formed Labor Party and trade unions, the
struggle for democracy was inseparable from the establishment of a “White
Australia”. A frequent theme of Labor and radical publications was that it
was
the wealthy capitalists who supported the entry of “Asiatics” in order to
undermine the trade unions and impose poverty on the workers. White
Australia,
the Brisbane Worker claimed in 1901, was the greatest question that could
be
placed before the people. The process of federation could give birth to a
white nation or a “mongrel nation torn with racial dissension. Blighted by
industrial war, permeated with pauperism, and governed by cliques of
lawyers
and bankers and commercial and financial adventurers.” [10]

From the outset of the movement for federation in the early 1890s,
discussion on the character of the political institutions that would form
the
new state was linked to the question of White Australia. At a meeting in
Sydney in 1893, convened to establish a Federation League, leading members
of
the Labor Party proposed a series of amendments to the proposals of the
meeting organiser, Edmund Barton, for a federated nation. Their amendments
included establishing a democratic republic, a federal parliament
consisting
of only one chamber, one man one vote in all states, the nationalisation
of
all land, and the abolition of legislative councils (the reactionary state
upper houses). They concluded with a call for “the total exclusion of all
Asiatics and other aliens whose standard of living and habits of life are
not
equal to our own, and whose entering into competition with Australian
wage-
earners is a direct menace to the national welfare.” [11]

At the 1901 election, the Labor Party presented itself as the foremost
defender of White Australia. In the words of the Labor paper, the Worker:
“If
you are convinced that it is a wrong thing to have a horde of Kanakas and
Chows and Afghans coming into this country insulting your wives and
daughters,
and taking the bread out of white men’s mouths, then do not fear to march
up
to the ballot-box and plump for the Labor candidate.... If you let this
chance
pass you of getting rid of the Chow and the Kanaka it will be many a long
day
before you will get another.... Let us remember that the white electors of
Australia are at our backs cheering us on. Let us go to the polls like
Trojans
and win in the name of White Australia.” [12]

In 1905, when the federal Labor Party came to formulate its objectives,
White Australia nationalism occupied the central place. Labor’s primary
objective called for: “The elevation of an Australian sentiment based on
the
maintenance of racial purity and the development in Australia of an
enlightened and self-reliant community.”

White Australia involved not only the exclusion of immigrants from Asia.
It
was, as the Labor objective made clear, a doctrine of racial purity. The
existing Chinese population, consisting largely of males, was not expected
to
be able to reproduce itself, while Pacific Island labourers, brought in to
work in the Queensland cane fields, were deported. As for the Aborigines,
it
was anticipated that they would die out, in accordance with the laws of
social
Darwinism. They constituted, after all, a “lower” race, and, accordingly,
were
written out of the constitution.

Section 51 of the constitution gave the Commonwealth parliament the power
to make laws for peace, order and good government, and provided for the
making
of special laws with respect to “the people of any race, other than the
Aboriginal race in any state.” When population was being calculated in
order
to determine the size of the various electorates, the decision was
that “Aboriginal natives shall not be counted.” This meant that Aborigines
would not be included in the census. Nor would they be entitled to
Commonwealth pensions and benefits.

White Australia was not simply a racial policy. It lay at the very heart
of
the social and economic policies of every political party within the new
nation-state. And the set of relationships that were thus
established—later
dubbed the Australian settlement—formed the foundation for the writing of
Australian history. The “Australian story” was presented as the
transplanting
of British ideals and institutions to the other side of the world, the
successful passage from colonial status to the achievement of nationhood,
and
the establishment of advanced social conditions. The Aborigines, who had
been
the subject of nineteenth century historical accounts, were largely
ignored,
just as they had been written out of the constitution and the Australian
population itself.

To be continued

Notes:
1) cited in J. A. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin, pp. 280-281
2) cited in Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy, p. 204
3) cited in Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, p. 148
4) cited in Ann Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism in Jayasuriya” ed.,
Legacies of White Australia, p. 13
5) see R. N. Ebbels, The Australian Labor Movement, pp. 39-40
6) cited in Richard White, Inventing Australia, p. 81
7) cited in Kay Saunders, “Conceptualising Race and Labour, 1890-1914” in
Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore ed., Working the Nation, p. 81
8) cited in Andrew Markus, “Immigration and some ‘lessons’ of Australian
history” in Markus and Rickelfs ed., Surrender Australia? p. 11
9) cited in Richard White, Inventing Australia, pp. 81-82
10) cited in Leanore Layman, “Fighting Fatman Fetteration: Labour Culture
and Federation” in Hearn and Patmore, op cit, p. 68
11) cited in Stuart Macintyre, “Federation and the Labour Movement” in
Hearn and Patmore, op cit, p. 16
12) cited in Andrew Markus, “Immigration and some ‘lessons’ of Australian
history” in Markus and Ricklefs, op cit, p. 35

overthrow.com