Description:
When the 'baby-boomers' had reached university age, their understandings, habits and behaviours often collided with the political discourse of their parents' generation. By 1968, the Monash University Labor Club, fresh from its campaign to raise money for the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF), had discarded the mantle of Labor reformism and set itself on a path of a radical communist activism that scorned the efforts of the Communist Party (CPA) to contain its enthusiasm. In concert with similarly leaning student clubs at the other two Victorian universities it turned its attention to the protest movement outside the university, against conscription and the Vietnam Wm: That brought the inevitable clash with the older established anti war movement led by a loose blend of ALP, CPA, church groups and unions. This process led, in Scalmer's classification of protest actions, to the mode of political demonstrations leaping radically from 'staging' to 'disruption.'
Description:
When the 'baby-boomers' had reached university age, their understandings, habits and behaviours often collided with the political discourse of their parents' generation. By 1968, the Monash University Labor Club, fresh from its campaign to raise money for the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF), had discarded the mantle of Labor reformism and set itself on a path of a radical communist activism that scorned the efforts of the Communist Party (CPA) to contain its enthusiasm. In concert with similarly leaning student clubs at the other two Victorian universities it turned its attention to the protest movement outside the university, against conscription and the Vietnam Wm: That brought the inevitable clash with the older established anti war movement led by a loose blend of ALP, CPA, church groups and unions. This process led, in Scalmer's classification of protest actions, to the mode of political demonstrations leaping radically from 'staging' to 'disruption.'
Description:
This thesis is a political history of the emergence and evolution of selected radical, left, student and workers movements in Victoria between 1965 and 1975. It examines the development of radical alliances, demonstrations and public actions using documentary materials and oral accounts provided during interviews. It argues that the radical left movement in Victoria began within the Monash University Labor Club, which subsequently generated radical groups outside the university. During this timeframe, both military conscription for the Vietnam War and the war itself became focal points for oppositional political mobilisation in Victoria. In 1967, the Monash Labor Club’s disruptive campaign against university authority was sufficiently popular for the club to turn its attention to disrupting the war effort. Soon, its locus of operations shifted into the general anti-war movement and the Labor Club established new, non-student, and avowedly communist and revolutionary organisations. Roughly termed the “Maoists,” by 1970 these organisations coalesced into the Worker Student Alliance (WSA), which grew rapidly to become a “left-wing” body that challenged the leadership of the established “left” organisations. The cessation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War removed a major cause for radical action and, despite the generation of some important campaigns to replace it, the WSA dissolved itself in 1974.
Description:
This thesis is a political history of the emergence and evolution of selected radical, left, student and workers movements in Victoria between 1965 and 1975. It examines the development of radical alliances, demonstrations and public actions using documentary materials and oral accounts provided during interviews. It argues that the radical left movement in Victoria began within the Monash University Labor Club, which subsequently generated radical groups outside the university. During this timeframe, both military conscription for the Vietnam War and the war itself became focal points for oppositional political mobilisation in Victoria. In 1967, the Monash Labor Club’s disruptive campaign against university authority was sufficiently popular for the club to turn its attention to disrupting the war effort. Soon, its locus of operations shifted into the general anti-war movement and the Labor Club established new, non-student, and avowedly communist and revolutionary organisations. Roughly termed the “Maoists,” by 1970 these organisations coalesced into the Worker Student Alliance (WSA), which grew rapidly to become a “left-wing” body that challenged the leadership of the established “left” organisations. The cessation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War removed a major cause for radical action and, despite the generation of some important campaigns to replace it, the WSA dissolved itself in 1974.