Where have all the rebels gone?

Sydney, to the disappointment of some observers, is no longer a hotbed of fiery student protesters. Alan Barcan* surveys the rise and fall of campus radicalism.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” And where are the student radicals of yesteryear? For the elderly, the answer to Francois Villon’s famous question is easy, if rather depressing. The answer to the often-debated second question is less simple.

In March 2002 the Australian’s Higher Education section asserted that “student politicians, juggling study, work, activism and often a family, seem to be cocooning”.

Three months later an editor of Honi Soit, Chris Wright, mourned the decline of student activism, noting that between 1986 and 1996 the abolition of free education, the extension of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, and cuts in government funding brought widespread demonstrations. But in subsequent years further cuts brought minimal protest.

Daniel Kyriacou, president of the SRC and currently president of the NUS, claims that the nature of universities, the student body, and national political issues has changed over the last 30 years. Student activism is still alive and kicking; but it has changed its character.

One significant difference is that in the days before 1967, radicals studying the humanities shared most of the liberal humanist assumptions of their conservative teachers. Their dispute was whether socialism could advance the ideals inherent in the cultural heritage more effectively than capitalism. After 1974 academics who offered semi-Marxist analyses struggled to compete with the corroding influence of postmodernism. In a pluralist, cosmopolitan society students found it hard to locate an all-embracing philosophy. Later, globalisation increased this difficulty.

Another great difference is that in earlier years many poor students benefited from a system of University exhibitions, state teachers’ scholarships and, ultimately, Commonwealth scholarships which sustained them, even if at times barely so. Today many students need part-time work to survive. They lack the time for student politics.

Time may also alter our perceptions. Radicals and activists have always formed only a small proportion of the student body. Even in 1969, when protest was at a height, the president of the SRC, Percy Allan, estimated that radical activists numbered just 2 per cent of the student body, their followers 25 per cent, and spectators another 25 per cent. About half of all students were apathetic. Radical activists have always been a minority, but an important minority, setting the tone for their generation.

It is worth remembering that periods of intense political activism have been few. Since the first political clubs appeared at Sydney University in the 1920s only four great explosions of student radical activism have occurred: the Old Left protests of 1930–33 and 1944–49; the New Left revolt of 1967–73; and a final outbreak, more ambiguous in character, between 1987 and 1993.

But surely, many observers say, university life would be poorer without student radicals. “Bring back the fiery radicals and put spark into our unis,” cried a 2002 article by John Schumann, graduate of Sydney University, writer, and member of the folk-rock band Redgum. His complaint in the Sydney Morning Herald brought a response from a postgraduate student and tutor in history, Zora Simic: “Cheer up, storming the chancellor’s office is not a lost art”.
by Alan Barcan
Sydney, to the disappointment of some observers, is no longer a hotbed of fiery student protesters. Alan Barcan* surveys the rise and fall of campus radicalism.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” And where are the student radicals of yesteryear? For the elderly, the answer to Francois Villon’s famous question is easy, if rather depressing. The answer to the often-debated second question is less simple.

In March 2002 the Australian’s Higher Education section asserted that “student politicians, juggling study, work, activism and often a family, seem to be cocooning”.

Three months later an editor of Honi Soit, Chris Wright, mourned the decline of student activism, noting that between 1986 and 1996 the abolition of free education, the extension of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, and cuts in government funding brought widespread demonstrations. But in subsequent years further cuts brought minimal protest.

Daniel Kyriacou, president of the SRC and currently president of the NUS, claims that the nature of universities, the student body, and national political issues has changed over the last 30 years. Student activism is still alive and kicking; but it has changed its character.

One significant difference is that in the days before 1967, radicals studying the humanities shared most of the liberal humanist assumptions of their conservative teachers. Their dispute was whether socialism could advance the ideals inherent in the cultural heritage more effectively than capitalism. After 1974 academics who offered semi-Marxist analyses struggled to compete with the corroding influence of postmodernism. In a pluralist, cosmopolitan society students found it hard to locate an all-embracing philosophy. Later, globalisation increased this difficulty.

Another great difference is that in earlier years many poor students benefited from a system of University exhibitions, state teachers’ scholarships and, ultimately, Commonwealth scholarships which sustained them, even if at times barely so. Today many students need part-time work to survive. They lack the time for student politics.

Time may also alter our perceptions. Radicals and activists have always formed only a small proportion of the student body. Even in 1969, when protest was at a height, the president of the SRC, Percy Allan, estimated that radical activists numbered just 2 per cent of the student body, their followers 25 per cent, and spectators another 25 per cent. About half of all students were apathetic. Radical activists have always been a minority, but an important minority, setting the tone for their generation.

It is worth remembering that periods of intense political activism have been few. Since the first political clubs appeared at Sydney University in the 1920s only four great explosions of student radical activism have occurred: the Old Left protests of 1930–33 and 1944–49; the New Left revolt of 1967–73; and a final outbreak, more ambiguous in character, between 1987 and 1993.

But surely, many observers say, university life would be poorer without student radicals. “Bring back the fiery radicals and put spark into our unis,” cried a 2002 article by John Schumann, graduate of Sydney University, writer, and member of the folk-rock band Redgum. His complaint in the Sydney Morning Herald brought a response from a postgraduate student and tutor in history, Zora Simic: “Cheer up, storming the chancellor’s office is not a lost art”.

It is instructive to trace the careers of student radicals after leaving university, and my book, Radical Students: The Old Left at Sydney University, follows the fortunes of many adherents of the Old Left. A reviewer in the Australian Review of Books remarked that one finds “many examples of pamphleteers and organisers later to become austere and remote judges, reactionary academics, conservative Catholic poets or journeymen teachers”. But other Old Left radicals preserved their commitment as state schoolteachers or industrial lawyers.

Some 120 people attended the book launch last August, many of them elderly leftists. Some, such as Paddy McGuinness, the Sydney Morning Herald columnist, were nostalgic conservatives. And a few youngsters, such as Chris Wright and Daniel Kyriacou, showed up.

The oldest person in the room was not, as I feared, myself. The honour fell to Margaret Reade, women’s president of the Student Christian Movement in 1932; the men’s president that year was Bill Wood, son of the foundation professor of history, Rhodes Scholar, and later a prominent communist. Quite a few students became Christian socialists.

Communists were a central reservoir of Old Left radicalism. A member of Australia’s leading communist family, Eric Aarons, active in the Labour Club in 1939–40, attended the launch, as did Bob Walshe, ex-serviceman and student leader, who was arrested in the 1947 pro-Indonesian, anti-Dutch, Margaret Street demonstration. He graduated with honours in history, became a teacher, wrote school textbooks and, 50 years on, was awarded the OAM ‘for services to education and the environment’.

Labor Party socialists were represented by another ex-serviceman, Justice Bill Fisher, whose entry in Who’s Who still boasts his Labour Club membership. Another left Labor contemporary of Fisher at the launch was Dick Klugman, former member of the federal parliament.

The book was launched by Meredith Burgmann, president of the Legislative Council, grand-daughter of an Anglican bishop, who was oft-times arrested when a student in the 1960s. A 1995 profile in the Gazette celebrated her consistency in politics. Another speaker, Peter Coleman, represented the other political extreme. Moving in Labour Club and Freethought Society circles in the post-war University, he later became leader of the NSW Liberal Party opposition, a member of federal parliament, and editor of Quadrant. Professor Geoff Sherington, the respected educational historian, provided an academic buffer between the two politically-committed speakers.

The Old Left radicals of 1930–33 were reacting against world-wide economic breakdown and social misery. The radicals of 1944–49 were responding to world social reconstruction after six years of “total war” and to the prestige conferred on communism by the Soviet Union’s war effort.

The student revolt of 1967–74 was a world-wide phenomenon. In Australia it was relatively mild at old universities like Sydney and Melbourne, but very strong at new ones like Monash and New South Wales. This revolt was a leading component of a wider cultural revolution which reshaped traditional modes of behaviour and values. Belief in socialism was no longer an essential component of the revolt.

Some ten years of moderate or right-wing complacency in student politics ended in the late 1980s. The revolution in higher education initiated by the federal Labor government, and supported by the Liberal-National coalition, revitalised activism. In particular, the reintroduction of fees under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme fuelled protests. A new, radical, National Union of Students was set up in 1987.

But the new arrangements also generated political apathy. Students became too busy for politics. Many “full-time” students needed to hold down part-time jobs. A new emphasis on vocationalism discouraged engagement in student politics. The introduction of a semester system in 1989 may have reduced the leisure time needed for politics. Perhaps some arts students now find “political” expression in postmodern or neo-Marxist controversies within their lecture rooms. Certainly, the collapse of communism, the blurring of differences between Labor and Liberal and the growth of “identity” politics encouraged disenchantment.

In 1991 the Gulf War aroused some (rather ineffective) student protest. It remains to be seen whether the current rerun of this drama will generate significant activity.

*Alan Barcan, a former editor of Honi Soit, is the author of Radical Students: The Old Left at Sydney University.