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In March 1999, the Premier of New South Wales announced that files held on citizens of the State by the former Special Branch police organization could be accessed—by way of a Freedom of Information Act request. This remarkable decision arose as a result of corruption findings made against Special Branch (SB) by the Police Integrity Commission (1998). [1]
As a consequence of this executive decision, it is understood that over a thousand persons made applications for access to his/her own personal file. A number of people known to, or associated directly and indirectly with the author, made the application. In due course, their personal dossiers, with a large number of "deletions," were released. It became clear that a mass of new data was available to assay the quality of Right politics both in New South Wales and throughout Australia. The periods covered went back decades in some cases.
This article has been composed as a development of material offered in "The Other Radicalism: An Inquiry into Contemporary Australian Extreme Right Ideology, Politics and Organization 1975–1995," a doctoral thesis filed at the University of Sydney in 1999, and available on this Internet site. The present article can, and indeed should, be read in conjunction with the relevant sections of that document, because to a great extent, it is impossible to tell the general story (just in a limited time-segment) again—even in precis form. The Special Branch files, in all cases, confirmed material in the thesis concerning the involvement of political police in the politics of the Right, both as agents for action and forces for suppression. Necessary comments are made in the text of this article. It is also the case that material not employed in the thesis is used here.
Essentially, I argued in "The Other Radicalism" that in the years 1973–77, there developed through a process of ideological evolution a new independent perspective on the "Right." This was a response to the emergence of the immigration question which inspired the foundation of new organizations and a recognition amongst some Right cadres, that the hitherto "normal" politics of anti-communism led nowhere—save to an auxiliary relationship with the conservative parties and their political police agencies. Some players on the Right wanted to build movements to cater for new clienteles and break clear of the conservative parties (they had "betrayed" White Australia by this new assessment) and avoid contact with groups which had hitherto played the auxiliary role. [2] It would prove not to be an easy process.
Indeed, the auxiliary relationship had dominated the Right since 1945, and in the "thirty years war" against the Left, the Right served as ideological supporters and self-motivated bash-boys for the anti-communist Liberal and Country parties. The Right's relationship with the conservative parties was considered "normal" on both sides of the arrangement [3] and whatever independent ideas for expression or mobilization existed, had little scope. After 1971, when the Country Party moved against the League of Rights so as to exclude them from the party, and after the election of the Labor government which speeded the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to break its connection with the neo-nazis, many fractions of the Right were adrift. They were bereft of a "role" as little brothers to the big parties, and, as structures, they began to melt away. Groups like the National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA), the Citizens for Freedom, the Captive Nations groups and others, went into decline. Some were swept up by Fraser's "anti-communism" and dispersed with Whitlam's electoral defeat in 1975. An epoch on the Right was over. It was like a "great extinction" of political life as we knew it.
In the period up to 1975, given that the Right perceived of its auxiliary relationship as "normal," it was also not uncommon for activists to report to the Special Branches and ASIO about "suspicious radicals" and liaise with secret police in the commission of offences against the Left. [4] This argument was dramatically demonstrated with the release of Queensland government Cabinet papers for 1971. A set of facts brought forward in the thesis was basically corroborated when it was shown that Nazis, under the leadership of Gary Mangan, and Special Branch police, had conspired together at least in respect of some matters related to the anti-apartheid demonstration at the Tower Mill Motel in July 1971. I had that story already from ex-NSPA witnesses, who now stand vindicated. Of course, they took the matter even further. [5]
The pattern of co-operation with the political police after 1975 would take new forms in specific cases. The common interest of anti-communism could no longer determine the relationship. The Left challenge had been broken although it would take another 15 years for the Communist Party to dissolve and the old-Left to ultimately and formally implode into liberalism. [6] There was simply no value for political police agencies in physically attacking the Left. Rather, surveillance, media propaganda and legal processes (such as those directed against militant leftists like Norm Gallagher and the Painters' and Dockers' Union) were more effective than clandestine violence. Additionally, there were other "security" questions concerning the emergence of a multiracial and multicultural society and the implicit threat to it from an independent Right. At no point thereafter can even the most seemingly insignificant violence-prone or sensationalist Right group be ignored in this context. The political police agencies were required to monitor and constrain the independent Right. This could involve turning groups within the new Right milieu against each other. As an actor in a larger drama, a Right extremist fraction could become a Dirty Tricks cell, no longer active against the Left, but aimed at the independent Right., a situation likely to arise if its leaders felt they could enter into a political police alliance to achieve their personal agenda. [7] It is this truth which has hitherto been concealed. If I have done nothing more, I have tried to drag it into the light.
Getting Things Straight
This article is largely about an "underground" situated in one Australian city. This does not imply that all forces were necessarily integrated into a structure. Nor does it imply that the forces described were part of a definable subculture. Subcultures have styles and rules and maintain themselves, and this "underground" scarce had that. It might be best described as a volatile political bohemia replete with startling individuals with different ideologies and purposes. They could cross over into this underground—and leave it. They could search for ideas or recruits for their projects. Some on the quest for new ideas moved back into their chosen "surface" groups while some might create new "surface" organizations. The "underground" was therefore a meeting place for those who went there and for those condemned only to enjoy an existence within its confines. The underground might focus around speaking clubs, eating venues or hotels. It was a little like the "Paddington Push" of Sydney legend.
Nor can this article be a "history" of all the groups and persons involved. However, it is clear that a historian is urgently required, the present author being just a drummer-boy in that pursuit! The history of the time and the "Right" is slowly being written yes, but more must be done.
Sources are an issue here. So far, I have examined only a limited number of SB files. Others may become available. In working up an article from the SB files, I make the necessary point that the data analysed here is not simply from these files, but acquired also through the information recorded therein leading to further investigation and interviews with affected persons.
The files examined were: S. Rosier; J. Saleam; A. Norwick ; T. Cooksley ; N. Garland; J. Falconer; R. May. These files included over 2,000 pages although not all this volume of paperwork related to the study period. Garland's file, while NSPA-specific, was of some 202 pages. As a historical document, it was the most complete record of the life of the Nazi party in the period. In due course, I hope to get access to further files and write additional material on this subject period and other periods. [8]
The article is a study-in-the-microcosm. This can be justified on several bases: if the story of individual groups and persons is defined we can further assess their political quality in the broader context; if such groups or individuals become significant, their points of genesis and formation may imply their motivations; we can assess the interrelationships of persons and groups.
I write this article in a certain style, to convey the "feeling" of the time and the character of the persons and groups involved. In this sense, the article is not simply a potted "history" (if was a full history, it would have too much of a "thesis" style and, be necessarily deeper and richer anyway), but it will try to be more so a primary document of that history.
The Special Branch files will, at different points, add substance to the story.
Special Branch Nazism: The National Socialist Party of Australia: From Auxiliary Force to "Underground" to Dirty Tricks Cell
The author has argued elsewhere that the National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) was by no means an insignificant organization, if only by virtue of its special (auxiliary) purpose in the arsenal of state anti-communism. Nor should it be judged solely by the peculiar foreign colouring and forms it had adopted; it must be judged throughout for what it did, never what it looked like. This was never more salient after the group found a new role - as a "dirty tricks" group - some years after the formal dissolution of the NSPA in 1975. For the years of the 1960s–1970s, I used the term "Special Branch Nazism" to describe the quality of the movement. I meant that the neo-nazis had no real ideological life outside of the struggle against communism (which made it a "satellite" of state conservatism) and no political purpose outside of bolstering the conservative parties (which means an "auxiliary" role). These circumstances, managed by the Special Branch sections of the State police forces, provided me with the term "Special Branch Nazism."
The NSPA was resurrected in Sydney in early November 1973 at a series of small gatherings attended by half a dozen persons. This situation followed a 20-month hibernation for Sydney neo-nazism after the Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP), an organizational rival to the NSPA, called it quits in March 1972. But the organizational lapse had included more significant developments on the national scene.
In July–August 1973, the national headquarters of the Nazi "party" in Melbourne was closed down by its leader, F. S. (Cass) Young. Young had cut a deal with ASIO and run for Sydney, with the intention of staying out of Victoria and avoiding interview or prosecution for specific offences. Those who re-formed the party at a Melbourne meeting in November 1973 had heard dark rumours of Young's personal deal with ASIO and wanted to secure their records and documents such as to permit the group's reorganization. At that meeting, Neil Garland, 40, a postal worker, a former member of Arthur Smith's Australian National Socialist Party (1971–72), and later of the regular NSPA, was chosen as secretary for New South Wales. The meeting was advised that Robert John Cameron, 25, a railway worker, was a suitable organizer. There were 100 Australian Nazis, including the "famous" Ross "The Skull" May who also affiliated to the Sydney branch. It was a very fragile structure, and as documents in Garland's SB file suggest, it teetered on the edge of "collapse" throughout the remaining two years of its life. [9]
The author had published the testimony of certain witnesses to the effect that Young had been pushed into a provocation which was set for a May 1973 meeting organized by the Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Jim Cairns. Cairns had hosted a delegation of the Viet Cong to Australia, a ministerial action out of favour with certain members of ASIO who were grouped into a parallel network within that security organ. Poison gas was released at the meeting by the Nazis and Young and some followers clashed with Maoist communists outside the building. This event had followed a spate of attacks on leftist-operated bookshops and other violence, whose direction had been overseen by ASIO and Victorian Special Branch. [10] The situation became untenable because of the Labor government's desire to internationalize capitalism and break from the former patterns of conservative anti-communism. Rather, "anti-communism" would not be the issue at all for the emerging new order in Australian politics.
As the SB files of both Rosier and Garland reveal, the SB possessed the membership files of the Young's NSPA. There were two sets of records, being for "Members" and "Official Supporters." The documents were passed over to SB when "name blanked out" and "name blanked out" were "interviewed at this office" on December 12, 1973. [11] This secret act cancelled out the NSPA's attempt to recover the files. The closing down of the NSPA and the acquisition of its files were probably necessary acts from the perspective of the political police. It symbolized a certain finalization in the affairs of the group. Yet, there was always too, the concern that the NSPA or any other rightist group could drift into political independency and it was certainly considered better to wipe the slate. The absence of the membership lists restricted the revived NSPA. There can be little doubt as to the identities of the persons "interviewed" - Cass Young and his wife Katrina. I had already obtained a witness to the meeting at issue and recorded the details in my doctoral thesis; the SB files confirmed the witness, albeit with one difference: the witness said ASIO were also present at the meeting. [12] That seems likely.
Young's sojourn to Sydney introduced him to the drug culture. By early 1974, he was an occasional heroin user and by the close of the year an addict and so after, a dealer. Early in 1974, he was resident in Leichhardt, sharing a house (briefly) with former Sydney NSPA leader, Arthur Smith. It was here that he obtained from some youths in early 1974, a copy of the membership list of the (Trotskyist) Socialist Youth Alliance, stolen in a break-in at its office in St. John's Road Glebe. Young, mercurially, gave the list to Cameron. Cameron held onto the list for a couple of months and around March 1974 passed it to Special Branch. [13] The act did not occasion any criticism in Sydney Nazi circles; rather, it was considered "normal enough" (Garland). Young stayed on the periphery of Sydney Nazism for some months, attending the Easter 1974 "NSPA Congress" in Manly (where he claimed the files were burned) and keeping in loose "touch" with the new group. But his career in Nazism was over.
The passage of the NSPA from an auxiliary organization to an underground phenomenon began soon after "re-foundation." Dr. Ted Cawthron, an original 1963–64 NSPA founder, had hoped to salvage something from the wreckage of Australian Nazism. He went along with the meeting in Melbourne and planned (secretly) to act in such a way as the NSPA would be phased out and its "better elements merged into a new nationalist anti-immigration (as opposed to anti-communist) organization." [14] In December 1973, he was approached by Adelaide Special Branch: "The NSPA was to stay dead. We thought that was agreed." [15] Agreed? Undoubtedly agreed to, by Young! Even so, Cawthron persisted in trying to regroup the Nazis, with himself and his agent, an Adelaide university student, Robin Sparrow, in charge. This would have permitted the "phase-out" project. However, this plan was stymied by the refusal of the new Sydney leadership to accept his control. Cawthron, after a series of threats of violence from Cameron, withdrew from the scene in early 1975.
The Cameron/Garland group became frenetically active on the Sydney front. Garland's SB file set out much of the history on a week-by-week basis and in considerable detail, too much detail, almost as if the "watchers" were obsessed with knowing all. Ross May's SB file was similarly rich in petty detail. [16] Were the SB enthusiastic because they wanted the NSPA quietly managed into oblivion lest the truth about its connection with ASIO/SB be revealed? Were they concerned the group might "survive" and develop independent action, and thus be a public nuisance, a small irritant to be sure, but an irritant nonetheless? Or both? Whatever the case, the SB in New South Wales, no less than ASIO, understood that there was a conservative mobilization against Labor building at this time. The management of the Right generally, was important for the Liberal-National mobilization - and it had to be done "right." Maverick fractions required close monitoring. Noticeably, much of the NSPA's labour in this period, while possibly encouraged (for Cameron's special remark and a particular project, see below), but was not as intensive as neo-nazi activism in its other phases. It seems that real political police disengagement from Australian neo-nazism had already occurred, lest the connection be identified - by the Labor Party. The symbolic alteration in the relationship must lie in the act of "retiring" Young from the scene.
At the 1974 Congress of the NSPA, its "national leadership" was transferred to Sydney, with Garland as "National Secretary and long-term NSPA member, John Stewart, as "Administrator." Thereafter, the NSPA's Sydney history in 1974–75 involved: participation in the 1974 NSW Senate election for 2,500 votes and Ross May in "Werriwa" against Whitlam for 89 votes; wrecking the Australia-Philippines Friendship Society's inaugural meeting in October 1974, violent harassment of Communist Party union boss, Jack Mundey (a special project running for over 12 months); damaging leftist bookshops; discharging weapons at leftist bookshops; physical violence directed at Asians; some television interviews with provocative utterances; pasting posters and a few small "demonstration" actions. In 1975, Ross May ran again against Whitlam for over 200 votes. [17] Cameron was arrested for one of these malicious damage forays, and although on a bond, escaped further proceedings. The others received heavy fines, but in August 1975, Mangan was jailed for one of these adventures. Much of the other media stunt activity engaged in by the Sydney leaders was - curiously - conducted in Brisbane, where the branch was run by long-time boss Errol Niemeyer and a Dutch wartime collaborator, Anton Heintjes. The ASIO operative "run" in the NSPA, Michael Hodgson, also lived in Brisbane at this time (he had previously lived in Melbourne where he was an intimate friend of Young, 1971–73) and he kept close tabs on events, whilst also working to ensure the wind down of the group. (He withdrew in late 1974–early 1975) [18]
The author may now "testify" directly. In November 1974, I was in Sydney and visited Garland with the intention of ascertaining the future direction of the NSPA, for reasons the reader will shortly note. I met for the first time, his houseguest, Gary Mangan. Mangan had been expelled from the NSPA in October 1971, ostensibly for moral reasons, but in fact because of his loose-lipped talk of the Special Branch connection in Queensland. In 1972, Mangan, then "leader of the Fascist Party," was charged over the bombing of the Communist Party headquarters in Brisbane, but ultimately acquitted in September 1973. Cameron, who had also been involved in the "Fascist Party," had brought him back in. Mangan was an alcoholic but not short of intelligence and a clear ideological maverick. Mangan guessed that I had no ideological allegiance to neo-nazism and then detailed his own reservations. "They talk about communism," he said. "I think the enemy is in America." He invited me (in Garland's later absence) to copy parts of the NSPA's membership and mailing list (which I did) and suggested I could probably employ "some Nazis" as suitable recruits one day for "something else." He said he assumed I had some general idea in mind. That was indeed the position. It was a strange offer and I accepted the partial-list.
This "list" had a history and its details turned up in Garland's SB file. At the meeting with Garland, I was asked if I would make certain enquiries of the Melbourne Nazis on his behalf. I wrote out a "list of tasks" at his behest, and he asked they be told to reply to him in writing. I had already intended to survey this "scene" for myself, a perfect "cover" being an errand boy. On November 29, after arriving in Melbourne, I was taken into police custody with another man (he was charged with bill pasting) and held for a couple of hours. The documents and the members' list, although "returned" to me - were obviously copied. [19] The NSPA's "luck" with members' files, as we shall see, only got worse.
Mangan was right about several things. The author had formed very definite opinions of the NSPA. The reader should understand that in 1974 I was Brisbane-based as a university student; I was "acquainted" with the local Nazis. On occasions, I "used" their services to subscribe to a broad array of "racial-nationalist" literature (mainly foreign) and received local Nazi material by paying a subscription to remain on the mailing list. There seemed to be several others in different cities who subscribed to Nazi materials and kept a connection with them, if not out of any solidarity, but for "practical" reasons. Even when identified as that type of contact, they were tolerated as fellow anti-communists. However, the author was regarded as a "National Bolshevik," meaning to the Nazis I was some sort of communist with nationalist-cum-racist predilections. Of course, that's not quite the definition of the term, but it was the best the Brisbane Nazis could conjure.
Nonetheless, this description said a lot. Certainly, whatever ideas I espoused were not "worked out,". I desired the creation a type of radical nationalist party, a genuine patriotic movement - one that would not sell itself to the conservative parties nor to the old Right groups, a movement which would not function as the "useful idiots" to do the dirty work. I had seen the dirty work done, and heard why it was the normal and right thing to do, courtesy of all sorts of "Right" figures, but I considered the Nazis the worst offenders. I had had direct confessions of a number of auxiliary actions from Queensland NSPA "secretary," Errol Niemeyer; indeed, he essentially described this as the Nazis' role in the years 1968–73. When I first met Bob Cameron at a right-wing meeting in Sydney in late 1973, and to my question as to how he could get away with the "violence" he claimed to perpetrate, he said, "I'm told what I can hit and what I can't," I had heard enough, becoming a confirmed, if secret "enemy," of the neo-nazis. It appeared then that only an entire renewal of the so-called "Right" could ever suffice. [20] Because these long-term desires were only every confided to one other person, in Brisbane in 1975, and this person was "reliable" (as below), no trace of my labours emerged in the SB files. The idea of "renewal," was shared with others in different cities (such as the Eureka Students' League in Melbourne). This personal account explains certain events to the reader, and is one record of the subjective opinions of activists who went through various political experiences and who progressed into what was to become later -- nationalist politics.
Yet, renewal was a tall order. Thereafter I travelled often to Sydney and hence played a small role in the affairs of the "underground." Thus, if the text above has not already shown it, I was a witness to life in this "underground." [21] In that period, I met some of the surface groups (anti-immigration groups) and corresponded with actors in the underground. In the case of the NSPA, the author observed a group without any options, an action group, committing crimes against "targets" that were not the enemies of any Australian freedom movement, a description of circumstances not disagreed with by Garland, and only qualified by May. [22] It was also peopled by an increasing number of lumpen and "mad" individuals in all of its sections. As the half-sane (sic) and the "normal" anti-communists withdrew, they were partly replaced by the psychologically infirm. The author met Kerry Davidson, a long-term informer for the Sydney SB; he told me he had "married Field Marshal Keitel's grand-daughter" (Keitel: Hitler's chief of staff), and drove the same train used in the film "Doctor Zhivago" over the Swiss Alps while on a secret mission for the CIA. It seems he was sent to the Nazis by the anti-communist conservatives in the Liberal Party to whom, he also reported on Nazi activism. Davidson was somewhat like "Hudy," a Brisbane recruit, a paranoid Hungarian anti-semite who lived in a room beneath a Spring Hill House; but he owned a property, where some Nazis fired off a few rounds and imagined it was a "training camp." He opined that Cameron was somehow "related" to a Liberal politician of the same name and was as a consequence of that delusion, an ardent follower. There was "Robert the Goose," a Melbourne schoolteacher busted for his affairs with senior (girl) students, who moved to Brisbane to support the revamped NSPA.
The life of the NSPA, both as a "surface" group and an underground milieu, was graphically illustrated in the case of a bizarre individual with the likely name of John Howard. He had been a member of Arthur Smith's "Australian National Socialist Party" which had dissolved in March 1972. He had started reorganising it in the period around September 1974 from an ANSP membership list in his possession, and he entered into negotiations with the NSPA with a view to "amalgamation." He lived in Erskineville in a home that doubled as a temple where he conversed with the spirit of Adolf Hitler. After a violent clash with May, Cameron and Garland on October 19, he was "expelled." It is clear that the person was mentally disturbed, but typical of the quality of those drawn to the extreme fringe of neo-nazism. But he was a further boon to Special Branch. As two letters in Garland's file reveal, he contacted SB and arranged to pass over his records to Detective Leaney. On November 21, he did so. One letter said: ". . . he was going to tell everyone he had burned the records and did not want anyone to know that he had given them to . . . Special Branch." This letter continued most ominously: "[Howard—his named blanked out] claims that all the records were given to him by [blank] following the demise of [blank] party about 1972 and a perusal of the documents in question by my Special Branch tend to confirm that statement. It is obvious they are not the complete records from [blank] party as some of the more prominent members from that period are not included." It seems the SB already had a copy! Even so, as Garland tells the story, his "use" of the list with Howard's acquiescence, showed it was somewhat valueless, with most of the members no longer at the addresses given or -- nonexistent! [23]
However, SB's intrusion into the records of the NSPA went deeper still. On January 1, 1975, Garland was arrested in company with another member of the NSPA for "malicious injury" to property at a communist bookshop. Two entries in Garland's file, tell what happened:
"The name . . . Garland . . . appeared on a list of the NSPA which were maintained on cards measuring approx. 5 x 5 contained in a wooden box. The documents belonging to the NSPA were copied without the knowledge of . . . Garland . . . after he and [blank] were arrested by members of this Brn. and No. 1 Det. on Wed. 1st January 1975 in relation to Malicious Injury, concerning New World Bookshop. . . ." (Entry, March 11, 1975)
"A letter on the National Socialist Party of Australia letter head from N. Garland . . . to the Secretary NSPA, South Australia, regarding the next Congress and who will be the next leader. . . . These documents were copied without the knowledge of . . . Garland after he and [blank] were arrested . . ." (Entry, March 25, 1975) [24]
It is concluded here that the Special Branch burgled Garland's home (with his home keys) and illegally copied material. When released on bail, many hours later, Garland was none the wiser.
Further material, this time from Queensland Special Branch shows that Garland's full folio of internal documents, carried to a Brisbane meeting, was copied in October 1975. [25] The tone of the SB material suggests that an interview with Garland was undertaken while his hotel room was burgled. While burglary and other criminal conduct were SB stock in trade, the enthusiasm shown to possess the entire picture of NSPA activity and membership was peculiar indeed. Again, I conclude it was about "management" into oblivion.
In August 1975, members of the NSPA, the Australian Nationalist White Workers' Party (ANWWP: as below), and all the anti-immigration groups, were present at a meeting hosted by Nick Maina and the National Australia Association (as below), to hear Shadow Immigration Minister, Michael McKellar. The Liberal chose his words carefully, but those who attended concluded the Liberal Party was in favour of tightening up immigration and, in effect, returning to a quasi-White Australia Policy. Of course, if the rightists thought that they were deceived, and if McKellar had given this impression, it was an act of cynical calculation. The Liberals were lining up all potential support for the imminent clash with Labor. The NSPA members had arrived courtesy of Maina who was always trying to smooth over differences in favour of anti-communist unity, and the meeting with the ANWWP opened up, for Cameron at least, a new power struggle to have his group recognized as the only "fascist outfit" in town. Contacts were initiated with the ANWWP which set off three months of constant harassments to induce the group to amalgamate with "the strength." The ANWWP declined the offer, insisting on the idea that it would work with any group in a united front (possibly even the Nazis), but was not to be regarded as a neo-nazi group. [26]
This intimidatory behaviour marked the desperation of Australian neo-nazism. The adventurist commentary in the media in 1975 that the party had death lists, that it would murder Jim Cairns, had training camps, was in support of the PLO, and would send "troops" to a crumbling South Vietnam to halt the Viet Cong thrust, would purchase a Canberra class bomber aircraft; had a plan to murder the singer, Kamahl, and so forth, impressed no one, not even those within Nazi ranks. Throughout 1975, the group in all states began to fade, as it did in Sydney too. The neo-nazi component of the conservative mobilization, whatever "jobs" might have been allocated to it (such as the violent harassment of Jack Mundey, the enemy of the property developers, a project that ran from mid-1974 through to mid-1975), could not negotiate a place. And the other Right surface groups were progressively keeping real distance from the NSPA although the informal underground bonds would keep activists in touch. As a "Nazi," there was little for Cameron to do as 1975 rolled on. The Railway Square office, used mainly for late night grog-ons, was abandoned, and relations between core Nazis soured.
The scene for self-destruction came with the "recruitment" of Newcastle personality, Arthur Tane, in August 1975. Tane believed the author was a supporter of the NSPA and enquired if he should join. Of course, I told him he should. Yet, Tane was a highly fractious and peculiar, indeed wildly eccentric individual, definitely not a neo-nazi, but almost certainly a type of political meanderer. A number of absurd situations ensued over succeeding months that destabilized the NSPA "leadership." [27] In any case, Garland had by this time become fundamentally disillusioned with it all. He had spent sizeable amounts of money for no result. However, his particular revelation was that he had been used (in various ways) as a cover for sensationalist media coverage and violence --prompting an urgent desire to be out of the arrangement. He had accepted the empty title of "Leader" at the 1975 Congress only to resign shortly afterwards, recognising the position as a mere cipher for the continuing (and pointless) violence and media provocation. By August 1975, the Queensland Nazis were also restive, wanting to establish a quiet fraternity, the "National Socialist League" -- which would be a discussion group and information circle, a group which could influence other rightists, and be linked through to the World Union of National Socialists (the co-ordination centre for neo-nazism) headquartered in the United States. They indicated to the Sydney leaders their criticisms of the adventurist publicity. The bills were suddenly due on Australian neo-nazism. Few wanted to play.
The NSPA died amidst some of the most stirring days in Australian political history -- the "constitutional crisis" of November 1975 and the resultant election victory of Malcolm Fraser. In November–December 1975, the NSPA was wracked by a series of internal convulsions. The tensions had built between Cameron and the Niemeyer group in Queensland, and between Garland and the Cameron fraction. It was a matter of expectations. Cameron wanted action, and the Queensland Nazis desired non-confrontation; Garland thought in terms of a "responsible" (pseudo) party which might have to alter its external presentation, whilst Cameron saw any "administration" as a resource to be used for action.
There was also the decisive intervention of others who incited these tensions and other divisions. The author and a close friend in Brisbane who shared the idea of a "renewal" of the Right, were in a position to perform much of the latter "function." Indeed, this person was the instigator of the disruption scheme, an idea fueled by his personal knowledge of the destabilising effect of neo-nazism in Britain. My Never In Nazi Uniform indicated that we initiated various elaborate actions in pursuit of the scheme and that little "credit" existed in the individual deeds which ensured the break-up of the NSPA. Any recounting of these actions would serve scant purpose either, their intense, if convoluted processes, enmeshing their twenty-year-old initiators in a web of sometime petty intrigue and counter-intrigue. [28] Certainly, the fragmentation of the group could be achieved because of its already-biting internal problems and the overlapping contacts we had formed which permitted the national exchange of information and the creation of misinformation. The motive for this campaign was simple, if almost banal: the NSPA represented a faulted ideology which served merely to leash the development of some sort of a new nationalist politics and must be put out of business. But more pointedly it had had a relationship with the State power and it was "time" to rid the scene of the state's agents. What entity should be formed by "radical nationalists" in the future -- was very much undecided. The ultimate plan produced results over its many months of operation.
This campaign finally brought Cameron to Brisbane in December and resulted in the bashing of Niemeyer by Nazi loyalists. Niemeyer bore the blame for the destabilization campaign. His scheme for a "National Socialist League," came to nought thereafter, but the Cameron faction was left high and dry. Niemeyer reported to Special Branch that the campaign against the NSPA had come from two named persons, but because SB questions were never answered or denied, they were never sure.
As Garland put it, the group was "doomed" anyway. He recognized it had no targets upon which to focus its method: the mass Left had declined and the movement in place against Whitlam and the broad Left required different types of agent. Screaming would-be bullies or gun-toting militants were not of utility. Garland gave it an official collapse date of December 20, 1975, a notice later appearing in Nation Review to this effect. There was talk amongst Cameron loyalists for the creation of a "National Socialist Liberation Front" modelled on the California violence group of the same name. A Brisbane prostitute, calling herself "Sandy LaGosha," emerged from Cameron's past, with a small circle and espoused this line, reprompting a new flurry of Brisbane-Sydney Special Branch communication. Nothing happened.
In May 1976, Garland's vehicle was burned in obvious retaliation for his tacit and then direct support for the breaking up of the group. A NSPA newsletter signed by W. Meiss (Cameron?) appeared, criticising Cawthron, Tane and Garland, and the "national bolshevik" Saleam. In a 1976 report, the SB seemed to agree that Tane played a very destabilising role. [29] But for the moment, the NSPA was dead and Australian neo-nazism silent. In early 1976, the author called upon Garland in Sydney to discuss the collapse of the NSPA. In my presence, he burned all the membership files and organizational documents of the NSPA. In December 1975, there were 73 Australian Nazis, of whom only a dozen were truly "active." One of them, Kevin Colbourne, evidently lived out on the Nullabour Plain where he posed for photos; he wore a German military helmet, home made iron cross and a crude blue uniform. The bonfire thankfully consumed it all.
The disappearance of the NSPA had a curious sequel. The Bulletin magazine published an article that ostensibly came from an ASIO agent who desired "to set the record straight" on the NSPA. He reported "excessive zeal" in dealing with them under Labor and even the intervention of the MOSSAD. He considered the twenty Nazis not worth monitoring as most were "either in jail or mental institutions much of the time." [30] The article was obvious poppycock. It underestimated Nazi support and misstated the relationship with ASIO. The mentioning of MOSSAD was either foolish, or a furphy of the highest order. The article was more a cover-up.
As there were other dramatic changes on the Right scene, and with the advent of the Fraser government based upon an anti-communist programme, few players gave any thought to the NSPA's ultimate collapse.
The "Racist" (Anti-Immigration) Milieu
The Immigration Control Association (ICA) had formed in 1969 under the leadership of Robert Clark. There were various spin-offs from the ICA and alternate groups also made an appearance. Bob Clark, born 1908, had lived for thirty years in southern Africa, returning to Australia in 1967, the year after the White Australia Policy was officially axed. Clark understood the requirement of an activist group, but also lobby force, to mobilize resistance to the change. His own "conservative" upbringing directed him to the position where he would favour the Liberal Party over Labor, but his "racist" suspicion of the former grew over time. Although an "anti-socialist," he put race first. This was new and it angered the anti-communist Right around Lyenko Urbanchich and the Captive Nations Council (see below). By 1972, the ICA was organized nationally with about 500 members. Around a hundred and fifty resided in Sydney. [31]
Clark was a secretive man who preserved confidences -- and the membership roll. Yet he floated across the Sydney Right scene, lobbying to build opposition to immigration. In 1974, he struck a broad alliance with many actors in the scene and campaigned hard against Al Grassby, Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam government. Grassby was ousted from his electorate in the 1974 poll, blaming Clark and others for his defeat. The kudos won partly accrued to him and his authority grew. However, the anti-immigration scene was also fissiparous.
By 1973, Sydney was host to a number of anti-immigration groups. Nick Maina, Laurie Clapperton and and Noel Macdonald were also players. The Immigration Restriction Council, the White Australian and Aborigines Defence League and the White Australia Progressive Party (WAPP) were groups under the respective commands of each at various times thereafter. On occasion in alliance, on occasion out of union, these men vied with Clark for hegemony over the new pro-White Australia movement. In 1974, McDonald died and Clapperton's group faltered, leaving Maina the only alternative anti-immigration leader to Clark.
These groups had obviously concerned Special Branch. There was clear evidence in Garland's file of a source within the WAPP. [32] In this case he reported that Garland had attended a WAPP meeting on October 1, 1974. Maina told the author he has identified this person. John Bridge, another old hand, told the author he had been informed on at other meetings. The meetings were well attended and young people appeared, suggestive that the immigration issue could become more volatile and bring on an activist mobilization.
Ted Cawthron had considered the anti-immigration forces way back in 1970 as a key element in his secret plan to create a nationalist movement with a keen awareness of the "White Australia" question. Essentially, this was hardly a foolish notion. They had some numbers, financing and organizational resources.
The anti-immigration groups seemed to have had some strength in the belt from Mosman to Manly, where former Liberals provided the foot soldiers. Older ladies and war veterans were in numbers, some of whom had interests in other conservative ideas and visions. But "race" was their issue and it hardened them. They were people whose vision on immigration was limited to status quo ante 1966. And they would act, with long hours and hard work, to distribute hundreds of thousands of letterbox leaflets across Sydney, warning luridly of the challenge of immigration to our European culture and society. Eventually many would pass into National Action.
Another different force also appeared. It was the Australian Nationalist White Workers' Party (ANWWP). It formed in late 1973, courtesy of two singular activists. One was Alistair Raven, an English migrant who had some involvement in the British National Front, and the other Alex Norwick, the son of Eastern European migrants. The first was looking for a type of activist politics like he'd known; the other was seeking to animate the Eastern European anti-communists towards "racial socialism," a new ideology that identified the issue as the process of racial change then getting under way in Australia. Aside from a thin layer of Australian-born persons, it was the migrants who made up much of the membership. As many were more-looking for anti-Left action, they were a conduit into the circles exposed to the Captive Nations message. Because of circumstances, this also involved Maina (an ally of the Liberal Party anti-communists discussed below), and a friendly alliance was struck. The ANWWP looked towards a new cosmology: a broad white race unity, an Australian nationalism accommodating to all and an anti-Left unity which also involved a commitment to a revised "socialism." In one sense this "neo-fascism" was trying to find a new market. It latched onto the beginnings of Middle Eastern migration and favoured, rather than lobbyist action, a more direct approach. [33] But ANWWP was overall, too "radical" for some and had limited appeal. But its leadership added further colour to the underground, bringing esoteric debates on European-nationalism and Mosleyite ideas generally to meetings of the Sydney Right. It was the first expression of the radical-nationalist tradition in the Sydney scene.
By late 1975, Maina had transformed himself into effective leader of the New South Wales branch of the National Australia Association (NAA) directed by Brigadier General Ted Eason. Eason's group, with its support for the Constitution, the Flag, the Monarchy and the Commonwealth, also desired to restrict immigration. Given it worked closely with sections of the League of Rights, it was in some ways, a political version of it. Eason desired anti-socialist action to defeat Labor and was a keen friend of the conservative fraction of the Liberal Party (next section). It was the NAA which provided Joh Bjelke-Petersen with Pat Field, a bogus Senate nominee in 1975 drafted in to replace a dead Labor man, thereby tilting the balance in that House of Parliament against Whitlam. As a non-party group, the NAA, despite its anti-immigration views, could and did augment the conservative Liberals in New South Wales. Maina's meetings, often full of keen "anti-socialists" provided new vistas for the underground and many people within it formed coteries and cells of contacts for whomsoever would seek them out. [34]
The co-ordination of the Right in 1975 to serve the Liberals was a fact that cannot be denied and our story blends in with one other prominent story of underground fermentation and surface group activation—the politics of the Liberal conservative anti-communists.
The Anti-Communists Regroup and Act
The period after the election of the Whitlam government was one of great uncertainty for the conservative Right.
The group of Liberal Party members based around veteran anti-communist Lyenko Urbanchich became more active. In 1968, they had founded the Fifty Club, with Michael Darby, Geoff Holt and David Clarke being prominent. As the 1970s unfolded, they found a place opposing the Vietnam Moratorium and organizing amongst Eastern European migrants against "Labor socialism." This group vociferously opposed the Labor government's 1975 recognition of the Soviet incorporation of the Baltic states and the activities of Yugoslav communists in Australia. [35]
When the Fraser mobilization was under way in 1975, Urbanchich wanted everything subordinated to the anti-communist struggle. He was frantic, but also effective, in his efforts to energize Eastern European migrants in support of the Liberal Party. He managed to truncate even the Sydney League of Rights and have it as a useful ally and network supporter.
As Clapperton told the author in 1979, Urbanchich had never forgiven Clark for "dividing the racists from the anti-communists." Did he then try to kill two birds with one stone? In 1975, Clark was befriended by David Clarke. As Mrs. Clark told the story, David Clarke became a close confidant, and in October 1975 prevailed upon Clark not to field candidates in any election, to dissolve the ICA and its Conservative Party offshoot, and to support Fraser who could be expected to implement changes in immigration policy along ICA restrictionist lines. It was a deception. The Clarks spoke with great bitterness of their gullibility and after perceiving the deception of Clarke and the reality of Fraser-ism, re-formed the ICA around March 1976. [36] Did Clarke preach this line because of Urbanchich's entreaties or because of absolute loyalty to the Liberal Party machine, or for some other reason?
The magazine News Digest International helped to focus and rally "Captive Nations" anti-communists against the Labor government. Its editor, John Kedys was a determined activist. He ensured the Baltic communities in particular were animated against Labor and thereby new pools of embittered people entered formal "surface" groups and fuelled the underground. The Eastern Europeans were regular fixtures at all anti-Labor meetings: older men and women with dark stories of the Stalinist terror and the similarities between Labor social-democracy and Marxism-Leninism.
A group Youth Against Communism (YAC) was formed by a university student and bohemian, James Asimus in early 1975. It attracted a few former NSPA members (like Alan Parziani) and some youth. It pasted screen-printed posters around inner Sydney. [37] But YAC was an ephemeral group that didn't see out the year. Some of its recruits passed over into the university-based "Democratic Clubs," a front for the National Civic Council. One exception was Eddy Azzopardi, who was looking for a radical-nationalist organization. He didn't find it there, so eventually he would found his own.
There were places where many of the activists from the anti-communist Right might meet with other Right personages. One meeting spot was the League of Rights (ALR) sponsored "Conservative Speakers' Club" (CSC) -- which took to gathering at the Commonweal Club rooms and restaurant in Castlereagh Street. The ALR's speaking club was an old haunt of many of the Urbanchich Liberals and every variety of rightist, and the new Commonweal Club facilities provided a city venue for the entire Right. Good old-style English food, the 1920s club atmosphere and the whiff of conspiracy, were blended into the panelled walls. Here ideas would be tossed about and miniature schemes launched by the minor and major actors in the drama. Alliances across the boundaries of the groups would form. The Club, run by advocates of the Tinker Tailor religious sect, was ideally placed to offer a rock within the swirling vortex, stability, focus. [38] It was here, surrounded by listeners after a Conservative Speakers' Club meeting in mid-1977, that Azzopardi clashed with the doyen of the League of Rights, Jeremy Lee, over whether direct political action was necessary -- "now." In a display of the Socratic dialectic, Azzopardi compelled Lee to say that political action had to be postponed until the Second Coming, which rendered it superfluous in such an event. The Commonweal Club, no less than the CSC, was therefore a physical witness to the changing apetites within the underground and between its surface groups. Times were changing and some didn't like it.
The anti-communists in the conservative Liberal "Uglies" faction -- as they came to be known—played a duplicitous game. They wanted to be the "hard faction" of the Liberal Party and they sought hegemony over every variety of "Right" in Sydney. They would pretend to agree with everyone else but demanded, cajoled and begged (depending on the audience), allegiance to their plan to take control of the State Liberal Party. The truth was of course, that they were not "White Australia" supporters, let alone advocates of the positions of the League of Rights; rather they were anti-communists, anti-socialists, free-market men, whose "hard" position was a product of their Cold War origins. Many were Eastern European anti-communists, and Australian independence from the Yankee anti-communist system wasn't part of the game either. When Bob Menzies became patron of the NAA, they stayed superficially friendly enough (despite Menzies's public statement that he favoured the NAA's view on immigration), but once Menzies was compelled by media pressure to withdraw, the Uglies monitored Maina's more intently to ensure it did not develop organizational independence and spin out of control. But Maina was already beyond their full grip and his meetings in the years 1976–77 often catered to a growing swathe of people angered by Fraser's open-door policy on refugees; even so, he continued to work with them. [39] It was a confusing time.
In the years 1977–79, the Uglies faction peaked in influence until struck at by the Laborites outside the party (Labor called them a "New Guard" and "fascist") and small "l" liberals within it. Times had changed and while these persons were pliable dupes as a general rule, they could not be trusted in the new liberal environment. They might back Fraser's "Cold War Two" politics and fall over themselves to welcome Vietnamese refugees, but many had had Nazi, Italian Fascist and similar wartime connections; they'd all gone all the way with the USA afterwards and served faithfully, but they were dinosaurs now. A fractional Menziesite conscience was rather unnecessary for the modern Liberal Party.
The main players were Lyenko Urbanchich, Major Ashley-Riddle, Michael Darby, David Clarke, Geoffrey Ferrow, Geoff Holt and others. As conservative impressarios they toured all the Right sects looking for followers, and whipping them into line. But some wouldn't follow (like Bob Clark) and some (like National Resistance) would become downright oppositional. Nonetheless, they were a determined cadre and a colourful one. Urbanchich had his wartime "collaborationist" past, which while somewhat overstated (he belonged to a pro-German anti-communist militia in Slovenia), never betrayed a fascist sympathy. Ashley-Riddle had served in the British Army (his background was also Estonian) and had acquired a Vietnamese wife (when he was reported saying "I believe in four things: God, the Queen, the Judiciary and the Services," a young nationalist called Frank Salter quipped: "I wonder if the Viet wife supports it all?"). Darby was the son of the former Liberal M.P., Douglas Darby and he had impeccable anti-communist activist credentials back to the 1960s; as a supporter of the Taiwan regime, he was no friend of White Australia; David Clarke, who figures throughout this narrative, was a solicitor by then, a glib spokesman for conservative anti-communism; Geoffrey Ferrow was a systems man who brought order to chaos. Geoff Holt, later a city councillor in Waverley, was as ever a linkman to fringe neo-nazis (once an acquaintance of con-man neo-nazi Graeme Royce). [40]
The determined quality of the group ensured its longevity and vitality. These people were believers, committed advocates of a type of High Tory conservatism focused, indeed distilled by the Cold War logic of anti-communism. Their Australia was the "secure" Australia of the picket-fence house, full employment, the Yank alliance and the British civic culture; this haven for democracy had allowed in the anti-communist refugees from Eastern Europe and they were loyal to the Liberal Party and the political police as if the freedom of their old homelands depended on it. The Uglies cadre lived long, long past their use-by-date, long past the "relevancy" of their ideology. As the "Right" was evolving in Sydney, they and the underground which looked to them, had to confront new challenges.
The Impact of Some "Divine People"
One of the more curious, but as events would show, significant aspects of the underground, was the hurricane chaos around "Angela," a poetess and Sydney Domain speaker, who commenced independent political activities in Sydney in 1975. [41] Angela Radovnikovic (born 1936) was of Croatian and Italian background and had migrated to Australia as a child, in 1949.
In the period around 1971, Angela developed political interests in Women's Liberation, Trotskyism (she found them too authoritarian), finally joining the Communist Party of Australia's Brisbane branch one day after its headquarters in that city was bombed by a NSPA split-off, Mangan's "Fascist Party." She participated in its cultural activities and wrote for the paper, Tribune, and Meanjin magazine. However, the CPA's marxist equalitarianism did not retain her loyalty.
Angela went on to speak at the Yarra Bank in Melbourne in 1973 and 1974 on interrelated subjects of "purity of racial integrity" and "the futility of war," conceived through a perception of the Second World War as a "massacre of the white race." Her speeches would also refer to animal cruelty and vegetarianism. In fact, Angela thought of that political change could be focused as cultural cum religious change. She espoused a pagan position, criticising Christian theology and morality. In its own way this was somewhat analogous to the more sophisticated models of conduct in which the Extreme Right would later engage in, both in Australia and elsewhere.
By early 1975, domiciled in Sydney, she had become a partisan of esoteric race and gnostic doctrine, and as the author of polemics, composed her synthesized thoughts into book form. The Silent Revolution appeared and was advertised by posters around the city area. The posters, pasted up by Myles Ormsby and others, attracted the author's attention and a copy was ordered by Norwick. The Silent Revolution was critical of both church and government as institutions which would encourage people by their negativities towards violence; rather revolution "came from within," not by arms nor illusionary oppositional action. Lifestyle and thinking had to change. The title cover carried the reverse-swastika, the good-luck and life-positive emblem.
By late 1975, the Special Branch had developed an interest in the Domain meetings (organized as the "Divine People Mission"); Branch officers often followed the family to their home, trying to carry out interviews and being rebuffed. This non-cooperation with the Branch had some disturbing consequences. Subsequently, these police suggested that Angela was the culprit in the bombing of the Police Headquarters in College Street in 1975 and that one of her sons had murdered a three-year old child. Fortunately, for him he was not in New South Wales at the time. These sorts of baseless allegations seem normal Special Branch method.
At a house in Rose Bay, Angela would organize meetings after her appearances on the Sydney Domain (1976–79) where many personages of the Right would "drop-in" then and avail themselves of a venue to mull over ideas at other times. Such participants included Cameron, Ed Azzopardi, Dave Zodembski, Myles Ormsby, Ross May, and Mark Ferguson. The premises were frequently under Special Branch surveillance.
Why was the Special Branch interested? Angela said the house was "like an intellectual exchange centre." The ideas were all different, and hence the attendees were different. Was this why Special Branch feared some sort of coalescence? Was this gathering of people therefore considered dangerous in some way, so as to make the Divine People Mission feature on a list of racist organizations published by Al Grassby's Community Relations Commission? Then too, there was the criticism of Zionism and Judaism which excited a Jewish community interest and possible surveillance.
Bob Cameron seemed somewhat fascinated by the group and had been a regular visitor for years. In 1978–79, after the arrests of members of the Ananda Marga sect by Special Branch (three members were convicted of a conspiracy to kill Cameron and the attempted murder of police), Cameron made sensational admissions to Angela and her daughter, Lili. These admissions, if "true," are new evidence in this sensational criminal conspiracy affair. And even so this material, even at the present level of "allegation," would demand proper investigation -- but then our state has no interest in these matters being ventilated. It wants to forget.
The account given to me by Angela says that she "baited" Cameron about the affair, saying that the philosophy of the Ananda Marga was really a peaceful one and that it was impossible to imagine their involvement in a murder conspiracy. Cameron insisted they were terrorists. As the case wore on after June 1978 to their first trial in January 1979, Angela said to Cameron: "You are not important enough for this to have been done. You are not a leader of any big movement for them to have this done to you." Cameron insisted they were guilty. At this time, whenever he visited, he came armed with a pistol which, as the story went, the Special Branch was only too happy for him to carry. Lili said that Cameron always had money in those times and said that he had been paid "eight thousand dollars" for his services in undefined matters relating to the case. Lili said that once, under goading and prompting by her and Angela he said that the Ananda Marga might not be guilty "but they had to be found guilty." He spoke highly of Special Branch as good blokes and fine policemen and he was happy to be "in" with them.
This detail could be the final secret of the Ananda Marga case. After all, if the Margis were innocent, then why frame them for an attack upon a person who was ostensibly a rightist militant? Clearly, the conspiracy to frame the Margis to defuse attention from security services' complicity in the Hilton Bomb, dovetailed with the need to nobble the emergent anti-immigration forces. The two conspiracies merged as one. And a pliable "agent" would make the best victim. This argument has been around for twenty years.
The Divine People group was thus in possession of dynamite detail only revealed in 2002. It was information only ever collected because of "bonds" that were forged in Sydney's peculiar "right-wing underground" in these lost years.
New Directions in 1976–77: Australian Rightist Community and National Resistance
In 1976, the Sydney Right was in flux. Fraser's victory had caused the NWWPA to implode. Within weeks, its anti-communist Eastern European migrant contacts were dropping out. The NSPA was declared dissolved (by Garland) although the group around Cameron was still about, but essentially inactive. The Urbanchich Liberals were now defining themselves as true conservatives and criticized the "wet" Liberals as not responsive enough to the fight against communism. They had effectively lined up with Fraser although they occasionally criticized him as socially liberal. However, when Fraser progressively showed himself in favour of Vietnamese refugee immigration, Urbanchich was silent. His group accepted these fellow "anti-communists" and lined up against the "racist Right." Fraser was the ultimate anti-leftist, striking at unions and serving the interests of multi-national capital. Some sections of the Left, those derived of the Stalinist and Maoist traditions talked of "Australian independence" -- from imperialism. [42]
The collapse of the NSPA occasioned a "relief from its charade," to use Garland's words. [43] He was in motion by mid-1976, writing to former members of the NSPA in Sydney and in other States. Garland met with Norwick to discuss events within the ANWWP. In August 1976, he issued a circular in the name of the "Australian Rightist Community," a "community" on the "Right," that would represent true "National Socialism, Fascism and Australian Nationalism"; It announced a few details of the collapse of the NSPA and the ANWWP. [44] The newsletter did not represent an organization, just a network. Or so it seemed. Within three months, during which time it reported on the appointment of a World Union of National Socialists secretary for Australia, the neo-nazi references -- ceased. Private-house-meetings were happening by early 1977 -- and the newsletter was regular. Entitled, Nationalist News, it announced it would push "a new ideological line." [45] The newsletter reported on some patriotic groups in Australia and overseas, sympathetically reviewed Mosleyite Europeanism and reviewed books on the history of the Australian Right. It seemed that Garland, who was a self-educated student of the subjects of race, religion and "fascism," had struggled with the peculiar issues raised by the existence of a neo-nazi movement in Australia and had gone on to examine it as an ideological falsehood.
Garland entered back into the underground, fishing for like-minded people at anti-immigration meetings and through other circles. He found them. There was "Gary," a larrikin with an interest in "National Socialism" who opened up the door to new contacts. Later, John Beyrich, a mystery man from country New South Wales came on the scene. Sadly he was armed with a sick obsession of breeding a super race to survive nuclear destruction; he would suicide years later in a house occupied by his son and daughter and a child (who was the product of incest). Yet he provided money, and god knows why! There were personal friends of Garland, some co-workers at a Mail Exchange, a few ex-members of the NSPA, supporters of the Hungarian National Socialist movement in exile, and a few fiery East European migrants. Norwick was supportive as was Saleam, and once Garland met with Azzopardi and Salter, the former were placed in contact with the latter.
Garland was espousing "Australianism" by early 1977, and publishing articles about Percy Stephensen, the New Guard and "social Nationalism" based upon the "old Labour" tradition. His newsletter served as a focus for some in Sydney and the author helped out along with Norwick and others. In April 1977, Garland published a statement which signified a serious break with nostalgia and set out an argument that distinguished his Australianism from any revived neo-nazism. Although wordy and pretentious for a small group, and still directed at answering issues related to the fascist-fringe tradition in Australian politics, it is worth quoting: [46]
Some Theses for the Development of the National Revolutionary Idea
1. The ideology of the National Revolutionary is in no sense a nostalgic desire for a return to the political slogans and action forms of pre-1945 Europe. We realise that they have time-space limitations, and could not be, even if so desired, successfully emulated in Australian conditions.
2. That any attempt to make out of any one of the European movements of pre-1945 a cultism is ridiculous folly which betrays ideological-political immaturity. That similar or aggravated conditions create similar solutions we are sure -- but we are not copyists, given that thirty years since the military defeat of the European Fascisms have radically altered all world conditions.
3. Each nation creates its own form of National Revolutionary politics. No international form thereof could, if one is sincere to the organic theory of history and nation, be possible of realization.
4. No particular revolutionary idea of the overseas past or present, has any right to order the form of Australian Nationalist Revolutionary politics, or may overshadow our political thinking.
5. The Nationalist Revolutionaries are banded together in general ideological solidarity, and scope of mission, to their comrades in other White Race nations.
6. The Nationalist Revolutionary has no intention of merging himself into the "Conservative Patriotic Right." The Australian Nationalist Revolutionary idea is futuristic in its attitude to current national conditions. In ethnic affairs we recognise Australia's European basis, and divorce ourselves from the "Nationalist" advocates of a British-based Australia. We believe the Australian Nation is not yet formed. We anticipate its arrival through the Europeanisation of our Australian creed, and the Australianisation of our European ideological basis.
7. The Nationalist Revolutionary through his attachment to a "historical mission" must divorce himself from the bourgeois right-wing ideology.
8. Based in part as we are upon the principles of Old-Labor, we believe in social justice. After absorbing the advanced postulates of the European Nationalist Revolution we stand in favour of a social revolution. We see this not only as a fulfilment of Old Labor principle, but as a step into the realities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is equally true that Australia's Nationalist Revolutionaries draw part of their inspiration from Nationalist movements of the past where they present aspects that were not conservative.
9. As a young nation, Australia's Nationalist Revolutionary idea requires young leadership. Our system wishes not to anchor itself in any way to the past, but to remain youthfully futuristic. This should be applied in all our work.
10. Any organization attempting to advance Nationalist Revolutionary principles needs to build slowly, create a leadership cadre for its political future and work out fully its principles before it contemplates actions amongst the mass of average Australians. This period of building will be a long one.
These "theses" served as the basis for discussions within the ARC. There was some dissension from a few who had troubles moving beyond the fascist formulae, but support from others who had an eye on the future. The theses set the tone.
Garland also played another role in the evolution of the Australian Right. In 1977, the British National Front (NF) corresponded with a number of Australians, fishing for people who might consider forming an Australian branch of the then-expanding British movement. Garland however, was not supportive. In paraphrase, he wrote to John Tyndall, leader of the party, that the British NF were "radicals," but those who might follow in Australia were "conservatives." He said that the Australian nationalists were increasingly nativist in disposition and whilst willing to work with the any group like the NF, would not consent to any form of neo-colonialism. To Tyndall's reply, Garland became more strident. In shrill counter-punch to one of his letters, Tyndall said: "I have never been able to understand this search for an Australian identity. You already have one and have had it for a 1000 years, that of a British people who have pioneered a land to the best of British standards." [47] Garland was eventually called upon by Jeremy May, a representative of Tyndall's, in June 1978, and was told the same story verbally. Despite May's blandishments, he received the same replies.
Things did not prosper for the NF "solution" in Sydney. However the NSPA had had contacts in Melbourne and the ARC newsletter, while being received there, did not persuade those to look to local solutions. Rather, the contacts there (their circle began to grow and included people not involved in any way with the NSPA) thought the NF option not only politically opportune, but ideologically reasonable. Sydney-Melbourne rivalry took on a new aspect! Garland became aware that the Melbourne group intended to publish material espousing the "colonial line." It became clear they thought of the ex-NSPA members as a sure core-cadre component, a proposition Tyndall may have concurred in, given his peculiar background. [48] Garland prepared to meet the challenge by further ideological action and personal intervention.
Salter and Azzopardi requested of the author, another (related) project. They had urged in March 1977 that I research the British nationalist scene, and assemble direct data for new ideas and arguments. It was clear from early 1977 that the Melbourne group based around Rosemary Sisson (formerly Eureka Students' League) was discussing how the British National Front could provide a "British" direction for Australian nationalism. They were also aware that a fraction of neo-nazis had latched onto the NF, anglifying their ideology and repositing British imperialism as an "Anglo-Nazism." Salter and Azzopardi rejected that too. As nativist nationalists, the British conception of Australian Identity (howsoever formulated) was not an option. They regarded both neo-nazism and revived British imperialism as hopeless constructions for the remodelling of the Australian national movement. They wanted to apply the ideological lessons of the British nationalists to Australia whilst avoiding the formal connection to the National Front with its pseudo-imperialism. I researched the subject for university as an honours thesis, drafts of which and the final version too, were circulated within the nationalist section of the underground. I also entered into correspondence with a French nationalist historian, François Duprat, whose "Groupes Nationalistes Revolutionaraires" (GNR) was a pivotal structure within the French National Front, writing a report/analysis for him on the Australian scene and receiving valuable data on the British and Continental movements in return. The material collected for this research project was also circulated amongst activists to stimulate discussion and clarification. The final text is on this site: "British Neo-Fascist Politics 1960–1975." [49]
As mentioned, Azzopardi had been in regular touch with the ARC from late 1976, and the ARC network thus proved seminal to later developments. By this time, Azzopardi was articulating a "new radical nationalism" within a small circle of university-based friends and acquaintances. Azzopardi seems to have been a decisive product of the underground. He moved freely within it in the years 1974–76, seeking out allies and otherwise learning lessons. For the latter reason he said, he had even searched out Cass Young in 1975. He had wanted to know what made neo-nazis tick. He found out. In late 1974, he had sought out Jack Lang whose newspaper, The Century, was still being published. Lang eventually offered him an editorial role with the paper, but the offer was not taken up in time before Lang's increasing infirmity meant no decision could be taken. Azzopardi attended meetings of the Conservative Speakers' Club, the NSPA, the ICA, the ARC and others. In 1976, he met Frank Salter, formerly of Duntroon Military College and then an engineering student at the University of New South Wales, and through Salter moved into wider circles of the Sydney "Right." He even conversed with Arthur Smith, the founder of Australian Nazism, who told him of Percy Stephensen, the founder of the Australia First Movement and the articulator of nativist-nationalism in the 1930s. Finally, on one morning in late February 1977, Azzopardi led a few students to the University of New South Wales, to pass out leaflets issued in the name of "National Resistance." The others were Norwick, Ormsby, Saleam -- and another student, "Neil." [50]
It was a defining moment. Azzopardi spoke for "youth." His embryonic programme spoke of "national unity," "the socialism of the early Labor Party -- Socialism without doctrines," "non-interest-bearing credits, and opposition to "Australian capitalism's importation of skilled and professional labour from the Third World." He supported the "small farmer," "the worker," "conservation" and did "not accept the United States as a reliable ally." [51] This new populist nationalism was out in the open.
Azzopardi was described by me, in an interview with Peter Henderson for his doctoral thesis, as a "minor genius." [52] Essentially, Azzopardi saw that the 1950s was over. The "Golden Age of Menzies" as he sarcastically dubbed it, was a lie. Suburbanism, consumerism and conservative conformism were the enemies of the preservation of the Australian identity and heritage. For Azzopardi, the 1950s Liberal Party was, even then, an "obsolete piece of junk" and the American alliance a sure recipe for "a future Asianisation for profit." [53] As a child of the 1950s, Azzopardi had no loyalty to the existent forms of "Right politics"; as an Australian of mixed European background, he could not affiliate to some of the anti-immigration groups that were still divided over whether to argue the case for an Australian identity "British" or "collectively European." But most of all Azzopardi had a facile pen and a voluble conversationalist style. He was inquisitive and experimental. He was prepared to listen before he spoke. It showed when, after digesting all that was "anti-communism" in Australia, he concluded that the Soviet Union was not a communist state and not necessarily an enemy of Australia either; it was "imperialist," but not the real enemy of Australian survival. When I told him in 1976 that I had long held this view, Azzopardi replied: "the proposition is revolutionary, too advanced, yet we have to market it." In a series of "coffee house discussions" with Salter, Norwick, Saleam and Ormsby, Azzopardi enunciated this subversive proposition, among others. "We must change the whole style of the Right," he said, "and do it as an intentionalist act of will."
Garland too was interested in the university group. The Australian Rightist Community had been picking up steam and he wanted to see the group develop in tandem with his own efforts. He had hoped for restraint in the group and did not favour it assuming a position of public campaigning. He hoped a "long" period of shadow work would precede any open movement. Salter however was now in a hurry. In a confrontational meeting in early September 1977, Salter abusively relegated Garland to the backstage. It seemed it was his opinion that Garland's previous Nazi connection could only impede the group within the Right underground and the surface groups, and in the public arena. Whether that was true or not, this petty scene, within a short period, induced Garland to withdraw from activism. His mailing list and contacts were "passed over" to the new youth members of National Resistance. The core was thus assembled for an overt activist experiment.
The National Resistance was clearly intending to take the stage and redefine what had been "patriotic politics" in Australia. The National Resistance, formally inaugurated in July 1977 was officially "legalized" on October 1, 1977, with a constitution signed into existence by Azzopardi, Salter and Saleam. [54] The group had in its actual seven months of operations built no infrastructure of any description. It had produced a tatty sheet, Audacity, passed out to students at the major universities. It met regularly in the houses of the members and the cafeterias of the universities. It now opted to upgrade its activities. The "refugee invasion" had begun and Azzopardi and Salter were certain the old-Right groups would miss the chance. A sheet Advance appeared and in November 1977, it became a broadsheet newspaper. The White Australia question took pride of place. Was it a sect with a "leader" like the neo-nazis? Hardly. As the author's SB file reveals, I was spoken to briefly by SB officers whilst distributing group literature; to their question about who led the group, I informed them there was no question of there being "leaders" and let the matter rest. In point of fact, it was a collective effort as nationalist politics should be. Interestingly, the report contained errors, in dating and as to where the discussion occurred. The falsehoods were pointless. Were they just sloppy coppers? [55]
The most significant contribution the group had made to the redefinition of "Right" politics was the adoption of the Eureka Flag. The sporting of the Eureka Flag occurred at the moment when the Maoist line Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) was running fronts across the country which invariably styled themselves as "Independence" movements. These Maoists had paraded themselves dressed in the emblems of the Australian native cultural tradition. They talked of an Australian identity and a people's state. It was to a great degree -- a cynical ruse. At the better end, it meant even some leftists could feel the impress of the national idea. The question of Eureka had been positively discussed by the ARC and within National Resistance. But in September 1977, a more positive start on the rehabilitation of the entire Australian folk heritage tradition was made when National Resistance adopted the Eureka Flag. As Advance explained, the aim was to "force" the Maoist-line communists to "drop the whole issue." [56] The adoption of the Flag and the tradition by a small group sent shockwaves throughout the Left and the Right underground and its surface formations.
A break with 1950s "patriotism" had occurred and a wild-card factor had been introduced. In a strange street confrontation in late 1977, Urbanchich said to Salter: "You are very clever, like Hitler and the Red Flag. You take a communist symbol and make it right-wing." Salter said: "You know nothing of Australian history and care even less." For the anti-communists, a populist nationalism was a substantive competitor. It could answer the Left in a new way, but would not be overly concerned with confronting it. That was the line that had led to surrendering political independence to the bourgeois parties. Rather it would stand against the symbols and forms of a state which, all grandstanding aside, had served the anti-communist Right, very well.
Sir Phillip Baxter, former Vice Chancellor of New South Wales University and of the 1960s Atomic Energy Commission, was approached in October 1977. In the 1960s, Baxter had advocated that Australia acquire nuclear weapons. [57] On October 7, he addressed National Resistance at the Estonian Club. He spoke on the population food crisis, the likelihood of mass population transfers into the Southern Hemisphere, the drowning of Australia in a human tidal wave of refugees. He was, the Vietnamese influx notwithstanding, truly ahead of his time. Baxter had digested The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, an apocalyptic novel (now a classic) which expounded the same thesis. Baxter's "lifeboat Australia" thesis galvanized National Resistance to action. And he stayed in close touch thereafter, donating funds and blessing the group, as an unofficial patron. The acquisition of Baxter was a startling coup. It suggests new issues and new blood.
Nonetheless, into the equation came the "hidden hand," the game. The National Resistance circle crossed over into the milieu of the anti-communists. In that regard, a subterranean struggle began with the anti-communists based around Urbanchich. Why? Salter had been raised in a family with close involvements in the League of Rights. He had met the various leaders of the anti-communist Right. Salter put forward an opportunist proposition: he said that courtesy of his father, he would approach all the financiers of the Right in Sydney; he would persuade them to pass their dollars to a young group, down playing his radical "White Australia" commitment with a few choice panderings to their anti-communism. So it began. Azzopardi wrote for News Digest International about the need for a new party, and one aimed at youth. Approaches were made to the League of Rights pamphleteer, Dora Watts (she joined) who affirmed her nationalism previously expressed with Percy Stephensen of the Australia First Movement (1941–42). Some members of the Uglies faction saw the point and gave Salter a hearing. Italian supporters of the local Italian Social Movement (MSI) were interested. That was, for whatever reason, the final straw. [58]
Da Papa's restaurant was in Stanley Street, East Sydney, a popular Italian-cuisine establishment. A confrontation took place there between David Clarke on the one hand and Saleam and Ormsby on the other in mid November 1977. The confused Italians listened intently as Clarke was berated as a reactionary whose politics were not in any way similar to the MSI. Clarke said he liked the British NF. We said they were not Tories and hence they didn't liquidate into the Conservative Party as his group had into the Liberal Party. Clarke was told that his conservative Liberals were con men. We produced a sticker being distributed by some reactionaries in his group: "Keep Australia British; Kick Out the Alien Races." "You like Vietnamese, but you don't like Italians? Explain it to us." In embarrassment, Clarke decamped. The story spread to Leichhardt's MSI supporters and money began to flow -- from "Giovanni," and "Mario," and other comrades.
Some two weeks later, the Da Papa Italians advised that someone "big" wanted to talk to Azzopardi and Salter. They were sincere in their admonition that the meeting occur, and were hardly "responsible" for what took place. As it was, Azzopardi and Saleam attended Da Papa's. They were ushered in to a storeroom in the downstairs section of the premises and were introduced to "Mr. Calabro," reputedly the brother of a Liberal Party politician (another "Ugly"), but a supporter of the MSI's front-group the Tricolore Committee. The others left and the conversation began. Calabro was in his fifties, overweight, a sort of cross between "The Fat Man" of Maltese Falcon fame and an Italian civil servant. He told us that our group had been "recognized" by many in his "community." They understood we were like the MSI, but in miniature, and radical. He said that there was a veritable civil war going on in Italy and it was possible the "national forces" might lose and Italy could go communist. He said: "I will tell you a secret: I am recruiting for the Garibaldini."
This was the obvious point of the meeting. The Garabaldini -- if it ever existed [59] -- was conceived as a group of non-Italians, members of foreign nationalist movements, who would enter the country on mission. They would be met by "Black Brigades" activists, armed with a time-device bomb or a sub-machine gun and sent to work. For the rest of their short time in Italy, it was all-expenses paid. As a participant in the conversation, I yielded to that sort of control exercized by Azzopardi, who took over the "negotiations." I noticed he refused to "agree" to anything, queried the planning and sidetracked the conversation. After an hour Calabro broke off, saying it was "urgent" and "could we meet again?" This was the last meeting. Once outside, Azzopardi said: "I believe we were tape-recorded." The Garabaldini was a hoax. But whose hoax?
I cannot escape the idea that it was an Ugly hoax, but one with a political police component. Had we "agreed," the very definition of a conspiracy in law, matters would have proceeded further by way of additional meetings -- and the inevitable arrest. It was the case, that just around this time, an English Special Branch detective arrived in Australia. This Norman Ferris was drafted to the Commonwealth Police with the task of assisting in formulating their reaction to the likely formation of a local "National Front." Ferris's tentacles reached out across the Right scene, and not just in Sydney. [60] Members of the former NSPA, League of Rights activists and "Uglies" were spoken to; and the name Bob Cameron was also referred to Ferris.
This was the beginning of the era of conspiracy trials. The Ananda Marga frame-up was just six months after the Garabaldini hoax of December 1977. Indeed, the Ananda Marga Trial, which established Cameron as the face of "racism," neo-nazism and "the Extreme Right" was a fraud on every level, these media-promotional "services" for Cameron being one (the smaller) aspect of the entire performance. I must conclude that the new forces had already assumed the status of "threat" and were thus to be "managed" in the new way: by allegations of criminal conduct sanctified by "trials" and other processes. The Garabaldini hoax was designed as a trial for the emergent nationalists; the Ananda Marga Trial, which answered other needs related to the ASIO Hilton Bomb conspiracy, would fragment and discredit the anti-immigration and nationalist forces by the promotion of a strawman neo-nazi as its symbol.
The Uglies, for their part, considered National Resistance (and thereafter the Australian National Alliance or "ANA") the "local" National Front. We were outside of the two party system, "extreme," non-American alliance supporters, and our alternate pole of attraction not conducive to their plot to control the Liberal Party. When the NF group was formally initiated in June 1978, Urbanchich condemned it. Cameron's false-claim to lead it, and his obvious "extremism" were known to the Uglies, but Salter's father reported that "David Clarke" (and this article will not say it was a fact, thereby "libelling" Clarke) paid Cameron's group to harass the ANA, up to and including the painting of slogans along the Sydney railway tracks -- "Frank Salter, Duntroon poofter." And a campaign of whispering against Salter and Azzopardi and others which was initiated over the Sydney Right scene in 1977 was intensified by the Uglies. [61] A combination of political police interest and conservative interest seemed to run in tandem.
Neither the National Resistance nor its successor (Australian National Alliance founded in January 1978) could shatter the Uglies bloc and win over the League of Rights. There was only the crisis-mythos that Azzopardi preached: superpower war, refugee invasion, crisis of the system, a new mass movement of change. When National Resistance was re-christened Australian National Alliance, it was with anticipation that a mass movement was imminent. Certainly the ICA was interested (at arms-length) as were individuals across the board, but the potential would not be realized. The underground was about to flower, but the growth would sprout too soon.
Fault Lines: The Topography of the Right Defined Thereafter
The period examined in this article defined the "Right" thereafter in Sydney, at least down to the time of the late 1980s. The topography became very clear.
The neo-nazis survived, but in a new form. They were no longer the auxiliary force they were until 1973, but a Dirty Tricks cell, to be brought out as a bogey man by a compliant media, and then to the detriment of other rightist forces. Although this isolated them in one way from the rest of the Right, underground links with some players stayed intact. The Cameron group remained the face of neo-nazism until 1984. With the announcement of a public inquiry into the conviction of the Ananda Marga Three, the Cameron group was "dissolved." [62]
The anti-immigrationists were to remain in the field for years, down to the dissolution of the ICA in 1982, and thereafter with the shadowy existence of Maina's "new" Patriotic Lobby throughout the 1980s. Essentially, many of these activists looked for a more comprehensive ideal and a more combative method. Many found it in National Action after 1982.
The split between those who were centred on anti-communism and those who opposed non-European immigration became absolute. The Urbanchich Liberals had never been comfortable in a defence of immigration restriction and went down a pathway that interpreted the Australian identity as one based upon institutions and a supportive civil culture. In that way, Urbanchich supported Australia's "British heritage." And as communism faltered internationally, the enemy was reinterpreted as "socialism" and the Uglies ended as good supporters of Thatcher and Reagan. By the 1980s, they and the radical-nationalists were so far removed from each other that tension based on close competition for an available market was just not an issue. They fished in very different waters.
The radical-nationalists were the "winners" out of the underground period and beyond. And in 1982, they subsumed much of the ICA into the Australian National Action "the main meal" of the decade as Andrew Moore described it. They pooled together cadre from other sectors, declared themselves enemies of the conservative Right and marched off "into the political jungle" to wage "political guerilla war" against liberalism. [63] This trend however, seemed "dominant" throughout the dead valley years of opposition. By 1990, new movements came upon the scene.
The right-wing underground was a pool into which flowed many tributaries. It was a fertile political bohemia. There were permanent residents and others who entered into its comity for a brief period and who passed out again.
The underground did serve as an interlinking force for the entire Sydney Right scene. It was not that the various trends liked each other particularly, but they seemed to some extent to tolerate each other.
The underground had common venues where the chatters could meet and cross-fertilize each other's thoughts or share views.
The underground was a "soup" for the nourishment of innumerable "surface" groups. The surface groups had different forms and colourful histories themselves worthy of account.
By the end of the period, to some extent it began to die as issues sharpened and enmities took on vicious and more articulated forms. Of course, when an underground becomes a subculture, it has different rules and follows a structured pattern. The period under review was one when trends were forming but had not hardened.
I used the term Paddington Push to describe the forms of the time. And then "it" changed. The determinative factor was that where the Right was repudiated by the state power and became oppositional. Some didn't realize the change had happened and hardly welcomed it if they comprehended it. Others drew the conclusions and some struggled with it. This change in quality ended the age of innocence, or perhaps—the era of stupidity. Ultimately those who did not wish to "oppose" demonstrated their essential characters by dropping out or becoming state-loyal. For the others, a Long March began. It continues.
1. Police Integrity Commission, Report To The New South Wales Parliament Regarding the Former Special Branch Of The New South Wales Police Service, 1998.
2. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism: An Inquiry Into Contemporary Australian Extreme Right Ideology, Politics And Organization 1975–1995," PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1999, pp. 117–119.
3. Ibid., pp. 59–77.
4. Ibid., pp. 77–105. (that section which dealt with Special Branch Nazism and the campaign of violence against the Left, in which other rightist groups, were also involved);
I note that the term and concept of "Special Branch Nazism" was rejected by Dr. Andrew Moore, one of my thesis examiners. Dr. Moore's thesis-examiner's report referred me to his article, "A Secret Policeman's Lot: The Working Life of Fred Longbottom and the New South Wales Police Special Branch" in John Shields, ed., All Our Labours: Oral Histories Of Working Life In Twentieth Century Sydney, Kensington, 1992. He noted that I had not cited it, implying I had either not read it or ignored it because "it did not suit his purpose." In fact I had not read it, a deficiency I have corrected. Dr. Moore had interviewed ex-SB chief, Fred Longbottom (a one-time Sydney-wharves-thief and occasional basher, according to Arthur Smith); Longbottom, said Moore, was neither the sort of man to condone using the neo-nazis to commit violence, nor to commit violence in any case. Given every other SB did, and there were innumerable allegations against Sydney SB anyway, it is difficult to arrive at that conclusion. Longbottom had no reason to explain the seedy aspects of SB work. Nonetheless, it is expected this debate will continue. Dr. Moore has left that open by saying further on: "It is doubtless true that ASIO/Special Branch enjoyed or came to enjoy a symbiotic relationship with some far-right groups."
Special Branch File: James Falconer. James told the author that he did give information to Special Branch on leftist activity in the late 1960s/early 1970s period. He considered himself—at that time—an anti-communist and that the SB were the "legitimate authority." "I don't have that view now," he concluded. His file included a lot of material on his attendance at meetings of the NSPA. It is clear this information did not come from him!
5. Michael McKinnon, "Special Branch Soft on Nazis," Courier Mail, January 4, 2002, pp. 1–2.
6. For CPA social-liberalism, the best text remains: David McKnight, ed., Moving Left: The Future Of Socialism In Australia, Sydney, 1985, passim; Denis Freney, editor of the CPA paper, Tribune, also provided material to the National Inquiry into Racist Violence (1989) which showed his political dependence upon the institutions of liberalism in the "anti-racist struggle." He called on the state to act against nationalist movements and berated ASIO/SB for not doing enough against them. (Freney even supported a parliamentary inquiry into the League of Rights in Tribune in 1988, an ironic position for a supposed communist to take.) See the Special Branch File: Shane Rosier for Freney's National Inquiry submission, a document which also suggests a "relationship" between Freney and the SB, a fact that might demand some re-writing of CPA history.
7. This situation has been documented in other countries over decades. Names such as the Americans, KKK leader Wilkinson, and neo-nazi Roy Frankhauser, the British Combat 18 leader, Charlie Sargent, and various German neo-nazis. It seems a trait of the hyper-racist and/or neo-nazi contingent of the Right.
8. All of these files are in the author's possession and are, of course, available to genuine researchers or persons with a proper need to seek access.
9. Interview With Neil Garland. I spoke with Neil Garland in relation to my doctoral thesis. I found Mr. Garland an accurate and incisive witness. An undated Secretary's Report (mid-1974) makes the point.
10. Interview With Shane Rosier. I spoke with Shane Rosier in relation to my doctoral thesis. Mr. Rosier explained how he, as a strong Liberal supporter, had met Young in 1972, and as a result of certain actions became implicated in Young's criminal spree. When Young left Melbourne, Rosier left also and had a personal association with Young in 1973–75; Interview With Claud Woods. I spoke with Claud Woods in relation to my doctoral thesis. Mr. Woods confirmed much of the detail relating to Young's arrangements with Victorian Special Branch and the Zionist leader, Abraham Cykiert.
11. Special Branch File: Shane Rosier. The entries were made on May 5, 1974. For more on Garland's file, see below.
12. Shane Rosier. He was told by SB officers not to return to Victoria.
13. Interview With Arthur Smith. I spoke with Smith in relation to my doctoral thesis.
14. Interview With Ted Cawthron. I spoke with Cawthron at great length in the 1970s during research on a Master's thesis. I also conferred with him subsequently on other matters from the NSPA period. Cawthron's view in 1973 had in fact been his view during the period when he was the main figure in Australian Nazism. In the period he "led" the NSPA, he sought to Australianize it, alter its ideological nature and eventually phase out neo-nazism. He returned in 1973 to achieve that belated objective.
15. Ted Cawthron.
16. Special Branch File: Ross Leslie May.
17. This brief history put together from National Socialist Bulletin, No. 34, July 1974. And the SB files of Garland and May. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," pp. 102–105, employs a similar overview; I have also viewed some copies of Action Report, a tatty sheet issued by Cameron which described in lurid terms, the fight against "the red traitors."
18. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," p. 95, discusses Hodgson; ibid., p. 104, for Heintjes.
Interestingly. Hodgson, who used to call on the author in 1974, described Heintjes as a "wanker," a "liar," etc.; he suggested I "limit all contacts" with the NSPA as "the Nazis are going to bring a lot of people down." I accepted his warning, but not quite in the way he meant it.
19. Special Branch File: James Saleam, page 4, of the running sheet, date 1975.
20. James Saleam, Never In Nazi Uniform, Sydney: NA, 1985, gives this account. This pamphlet was the first nationalist document to publicly make the link between the neo-nazis and the political police. It contained some errors of fact about early neo-nazism. I refer particularly to some details concerning a neo-nazi called McCormack and some mistakes concerning Arthur Smith.
21. I understand too, and superficially "odd" as it may seem, the versions of certain events cited here are vehemently denied by the small contemporary neo-nazi coteries. There are many reasons for this which need not sidetrack us here. I have no doubt the reader can judge accordingly upon the weight of the material advanced here.
22. Neil Garland; Interview With Ross May. I interviewed Ross May in relation to my doctoral thesis. I have had some other conversations with him since that time. While he puts a brighter gloss on events, he considers the activities flawed and limited in effect.
23. Special Branch File: Neil Garland. Two letters dated November 25, 1974, and November 29, 1974. These letters were by way of report, one to the Commander of SB and his letter to ASIO.
24. Special Branch File: Neil Garland. Entry made in running sheet in November 1975 (one year later).
25. Ibid. A letter from Queensland SB, dated October 8, 1975. A report to the Commander of NSW SB dated October 22, 1975, detail all the records acquired.
26. Conversation with Norwick.
27. A histrionic letter from Tane to me turned up in Special Branch File: James Saleam and Special Branch File: Neil Garland.
28. The account given here is seldom disputed by contemporary neo-nazis, who really know very little of these events. Rather, the matters cited are usually given as "proofs" of the author's perfidy.
29. National Socialist Bulletin, This newsletter was a two page affair, issued in early 1976; Detective Barry Leaney, Special Branch Report, November 17, 1976, Special Branch File: Neil Garland.
30. "The CIA, Labor And ASIO," The Bulletin, June 5, 1976, pp. 14–16.
31. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," pp. 107–110.
32. Special Branch File: Neil Garland. The person was interviewed at SB headquarters and he provided opinion on NSPA supporters who attended WAPP gatherings. A report by Garland to the "Inter-branch Meeting" on September 1, 1974, concerning the WAPP, referred to "a gentleman's agreement not to interfere in each other's activities."
33. Special Branch File: Alex Norwick. Various entries.
34. This opinion was advanced by "John Bridge," an activist in the group. It tallies with my own observations.
35. A very useful study of the Liberal anti-communists is: Samuel Harris, "A Generation Of New Conservative-New Right Activity In The New South Wales Division Of The Liberal Party 1965–1985," BA (Hons) Thesis, University of Sydney, 1987.
36. The author spoke with Bob Clark and Mrs. Clark on these matters in 1980–81.
37. Posters "Stop Communism" and "Oppose Communism" were held by the author in a poster collection. Pasted versions were sighted at various inner Sydney railway stations in 1975.
38. Andrew Moore, The Right Road? A History Of Right-Wing Politics In Australia, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 102–104, gives this account of Tinker Tailor and the Commonweal Club. The author has seen the venue in 1976–77.
39. Interview With Nick Maina. I interviewed Nick Maina in relation to my doctoral thesis.
40. This biographical data was collated from a variety of minor sources.
41. All essential information in this section comes from Angela and her daughter, Lili. There is minor corroboration from Mark Ferguson (a well-known nationalist activist of the 1980s period); Alex Norwick. Some details were known to the author as organizational hearsay.
42. This account of the historical circumstances is given in James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," pp. 111–112.
43. ARC Newsletter, No. 2.
44. ARC Newsletter, No. 1.
45. Nationalist News, No. 3 (this newsletter carried on the numbering from the ARC Newsletter.
46. "Some Theses For The Development Of The National Revolutionary Idea," Nationalist News, No. 5, April 1977.
47. James Saleam, What Is to Be Done?, Sydney, December 1985, provided the reference. Garland unfortunately lost this remarkable document sometime later.
48. Neil Garland. He obtained this information from ex-NSPA sources at the time.
49. For the French report: Jim Saleam, "L'Opposition Nationale Australienne," Cahiers Européens, No. 180, May 1977. Duprat was assassinated in March 1978, in a car-bombing almost certainly carried out by Zionists; James Saleam, "British Neo-Fascist Politics 1960–1975." The introductory chapter to this document sets out the parameters of the Azzopardi-Salter "instructions" and other aspects of the production of the document.
50. A photo of this happening appeared in the University of New South Wales student newspaper, Tharunka. It is not in the author's possession.
51. Audacity (undated, unnumbered, but in fact, number one, February 1977). This was a roneo leaflet, not to be confused with the subsequent newspaper of the same title.
52. Peter Henderson's thesis has, of this date, been filed. Mr. Henderson, who is certainly not of any sort of "rightist" persuasion, has written his thesis, supervised by Dr. Andrew Moore at the University of Western Sydney, as a history with an emphasis on the "oral history" style.
53. The forms of this argument were set out in: "The Conservative Pastiche," Audacity, No. 5, 1978 ; "The Old Order Crumbles," Advance, No. 3, December 1977.
54. Constitution And Rules Of National Resistance (October 1, 1977). Original signed copy in author's possession.
55. Special Branch File: James Saleam. Entry for December 1977 at page 5 of the running sheet.
56. "Australian Nationalism," Advance, No. 1, September 1977.
57. Tony Stephens, "How A Scared Little Country Became A Nuclear Wannabee," Sydney Morning Herald, August 17–18, 2002.
58. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," pp. 145–146. This section details the story at this point.
59. I can find no reference to it in the literature dealing with Italian urban violence and terrorism of the 1970s. Perhaps a reader may advise?
60. James Saleam, Never In Nazi Uniform, gives the account relating to Ferris.
61. Frank Salter Snr. told this to the author and others at the time.
62. This was a "demand" that the group dissolve, possibly indicating to Cameron that he had been dealt with in some negative way by the SB. The dissolution of the "NSPA" has been the subject of no little speculation within nationalist circles. In May 1984, Cameron met with the author and members of the National Action committee at a "secret" conclave. Some information over given by Cameron proved totally accurate, e.g., he told the author that "someone has been talking to Commonwealth Police about you. They want to charge you with something." He described his withdrawal from activism as "police pressure." Obviously he had to be out of the way during the Ananda Marga hearings.
63. James Saleam, "The Other Radicalism," Chapter Five.