3. Douglas Copland, Australia in the World Crisis 1929-1933, Cambridge University Press, 1934, pp. 123-129. However, the real value of the basic wage fell by about 8% (ibid., p. 124) and there are reports of under-award payments both to union and non-union members (Louis, Trade Unions and the Depression, p. 142). But while it might be thought that this would have led to clear, working class political action, such was not the case. The unions, as Louis says, were for the most part in retreat on the industrial front (ibid., p. 63ff.), while those sections of the Labour movement which did attempt to take industrial or political action often complained of worker apathy (ibid., p. 126). So, once again, class is a difficult concept to use with precision because, when it comes to the working class, it is, as Louis says, ’virtually impossible to gauge what the inarticulate rank and file were thinking ...' (ibid., p. 146).
- 117 -
and non-Labor, it was a choice between the UAP and, to use Inspector Browne’s words, 'civil war’. It would determine whether Australia were to be governed by an elected coalition of liberals and conservatives, or whether conservatives would feel compelled to stage a coup in order to deliver Australia from a Labor government elected for a second, intolerable term . Of course there can be no certainty that such a coup would have been attem pted. But, as we will see, during 1931 the conservative world view developed powerful imperatives legitimating the use of the militia to such an end.
Broadly speaking, the White Army was formed by an alliance of conservative males from the ruling class and from the bourgeoisie. But if the world view which informed that alliance is to be examined with any rigour, class is not a concept on which an analysis can satisfactory be grounded. By 1931, already made ambiguous by national mythologies of egalitarianism and individualism, class was further confused in popular perception as the Depression disadvantaged some groups and advantaged others across class boundaries. Small business people who entered the Depression with high debts, and clerical staff in unstable companies, occasionally
found themselves facing bankruptcy or unemployment. On the other hand, many
people on regular salaries actually benefited from the Depression. Even after nominal wage reductions ranging from 10% to 20%, most wage earners were still better off in real term s in 1933 than they had been in 1929.^ Trade
2. Lowenstein, Weevils in The Flour, pp. 347-9, 363-6.
3. Douglas Copland, Australia in the World Crisis 1929-1933, Cambridge
University Press, 1934, pp. 123-129. However, the real value of the basic wage fell by about 8% (ibid., p. 124) and there are reports of under-award payments both to union and non-union members (Louis, Trade Unions and the Depression, p. 142). But while it might be thought that this would have led to clear, working class political action, such was not the case. The unions, as Louis says, were for the most part in retreat on the industrial front (ibid., p. 63ff.), while those sections of the Labour movement which did attem pt to take industrial or political action often complained of worker apathy (ibid., p. 126). So, once again, class is a difficult concept to use with precision because, when it comes to the working class, it is, as Louis says, 'virtually
impossible to gauge what the inarticulate rank and file were thinking ...’ (ibid., p. 146).
- 119 -
One of the key anti-Labor initiatives to emerge from the fracas was the appropriation of the concept of •citizenship'. As we will see, it was a concept which was used to legitim ate both the White Army and the All for Australia League/UAP. An ideal which explicitly rejected class thinking, it depicted society, not as the site of conflict between groups with different economic interests or aspirations, but as a unity of loyal individuals threatened by enemies within their midst.
This emphasis on 'citizenship' was only one elem ent in a much broader ideological event. I have called this event conservatism. It is a term which requires som e qualification however. History - especially the history of ideas - takes account of both continuity and change, it seeks explanations by plotting the diachronic against the synchronic. The conservatism of 1931, then, is unique to that moment. It is, in its particular m anifestations, distinctively, 'the conservatism of 1931'. But it is also a world view which is the product of traditions and past events and initiatives. And it is, in turn, a world view which has provided precedents for the future. If conservatism is thought of as a system , as synchrony, then it is only by seeing it in operation across time that it is possible to see the range of its conceptual resources and to appreciate their implications. Both the precedents and the products of the 'conservatism of 1931' may be instructive, if that particular conservatism, in its own historical moment, is to be understood more fully.^
3. c f. Tynianov and Jacobson: The history of a system is in turn also a system .