This article appears in the April, 2014 issue of Quadrant.
By Tony Thomas
Did Mr A.T. Jelly, probably of Nedlands, Perth, play some small role in 1952 in ameliorating Cold War tensions and bringing about a more peaceful world?
He was walking along the Stirling Highway footpath near the then State Saw Mills, and I, as an 11-year-old, blocked his way . I presented him with a petition for a Five Power Peace Pact between the US, UK, France, the Soviet Union and China. I explained why it was a good idea, and he became about my tenth signatory that morning.
I was a keen collector of signatures, so keen that I won the prize from the Eureka Youth League and/or its parent the Communist Party of Australia. The big prize! I became the sole delegate from Perth’s Junior Eureka Youth League (JEYL) to Sydney’s Youth Carnival for Peace & Friendship.
At this distance it is safe to make a confession. I did forge 10-15% of my signature tally, enough to knock my sister, 12, out of the short-list for the prize. My parents, inspecting my petition sheets, immediately queried the authenticity of “Mr Jelly”. Mr Jelly’s signature was authentic. I was righteously indignant. Even today I notice two Jelly families in Perth’s White Pages, possibly Mr A.T. Jelly’s descendants.
At 11, I was already a petition veteran. At ten I had taken the World Peace Council’s petition to ban the atom bomb to Nedlands State School and got a lot of kids to sign before school – they were flattered to be asked. By playtime, to my disgruntlement, the kids virtually queued to scratch their names off my petition sheet. At a lunchtime interview, the doubtless horrified headmaster at this conservative school, Mr Thorpe, instructed me to cease and desist from signature collecting among his flock.
Joseph Stalin was my ultimate boss as the mainspring of the Five Power Peace Pact petition. Some press man interviewed him in February 1951. Comrade Stalin highlighted the need for the pact, which had been languishing as a topic since Foreign Minister Vyshinsky broached it in the UN a year earlier. (Vyshinsky had presided over the pre-war Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, remarking judicially, “Shoot these rabid dogs… Let’s put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses!”).
Insensitively, the General Assembly had voted against Vyshinsky’s peace pact, opting instead for an American protocol for ‘peace through deeds’.
After the Stalin interview, instructions about the petition speedily went out via Alexsander Fadeyev, of the Soviet Writers Union, and Ilya Ehrenburg, the writer, who were Stalin’s conduits to the Peace Council. What do you know, by December there were 600 million signatures, including Mr Jelly’s.
The predecessor petition against the atom bomb (then a US hegemony) had not done nearly as well, gathering only 500 million signatures, including the vestigial tally from my Nedlands State School peer group. Most of the signatures were from Soviet bloc citizens, where declining to sign involved a career setback.
We JEYL members in Perth, aged to about 15, wore the white shirts and red scarfs that were a la mode for Communist youth globally. Our troop mother was a nice but humourless young woman called Dot Calvert.
One morning about eight of us boarded a Stirling Highway bus for the beach, and half-way there Dot instructed us brightly, “Let’s sing the peace song!” We immediately piped up, “For peace, world peace! United for peace! For peace, world peace! U-u-NIGHT-ed for PEACE!” We then launched into the many verses between choruses, such as “Everywhere the youth are singing freedom’s song…We are the youth! And the world acclaims our song of truth!”
How co-passengers on the bus viewed this performance, I do not know. I think Dot imagined that our peaceful enthusiasm would inspire them to join the Communist Party.
Our main JEYL assignment was fielding a soccer team in the Saturday juniors. We played for two seasons, winning no games but memorably drawing one, at one-all. I was goalie. Our ability to field an 11-boy team, given JEYL’s miniscule numbers, was zero. Normally we fielded between 7 and 9 players, and the opposing team would assign us a couple of their spare players to make a better game of it. Those seconded players seldom put their heart into the game.
There was a Jewish team called the Maccabeans, probably boosted by recent arrivals from Yugoslavia, Hungary and the Ukraine. The Maccabeans, if you will excuse my anti-semitism, were bastards. They wouldn’t donate their spare players to our team, and they spent their hour banging goals past me into my net. Our or my worst score was 35-nil.
I’m a bit annoyed that our Eureka Youth League sponsors were so busy creating a better world that they never gave a thought to putting down our mortally-ailing little team.
Or perhaps they were just too busy cramming for EYL study courses. I turned up the curriculum for Victorian EYL studies, July 1951 – maybe they used the same one in Perth. Lesson 6 was ‘Historical Materialism’ . The poor EYL sods not only had to ingest Stalin’s work, “On origin and role of ideas” but do further reading including Zhdanov’s views on “Marxism and Linguistics” and even Boris Hessen’s tract on “Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia.” Zhdanov died in 1948, and in 1953 Stalin used the death as the fulcrum of his planned “Doctors’ Plot Trial” to deport 2 million Jews to extinction beyond the Urals. Boris Hessen was tried and shot (on the same day) in Moscow in 1936 so his work shouldn’t actually have been on the Victorian EYL curriculum in 1951, although Hessen was rehabilitated posthumously in 1956.
Sorry, I’m rambling. Anyway, I was soon Sydney-bound on the Trans-Continental Train. I can’t remember much about the Youth Carnival, except that I had a starring role in a big campfire evening where I sang Walter Scott’s song about “Bonny Dundee”, except I precociously substituted rhymes about NATO and its UK Labor supporter Clement Attlee. This went down a treat among the evening’s sausage eaters and keg-dwellers.
I still recall the atmosphere of excitement and self-importance. Much to my surprise, I found a newsreel about the carnival (http://tinyurl.com/l7ahuad)
and I’ve transcribed the commentary below. The background music was the march from Tchaikowsky’s Sixth Symphony, perhaps a musical pun on Russian influence on the Carnival. The newsreel opens with a Russian-language sign:
“Russian for ‘Peace & Friendship’ – one of many signs at Fairfield’s Hollywood Park where the Youth Carnival for Peace & Friendship opens. The Carnival itself has been give little publicity but Cinesound presents these pictures, [shot of crowds, families, kids] because the Australian public should know what is going on in their midst. Suppression too often breeds strength.
[People march past under flags bearing the Carnival symbol, a dove plus a boomerang which seem slightly sinister/fascist in black-and-white footage].
Ten thousand people attended the opening day. Noticeable among flags missing from the carnival was that of the United Nations, of which Russia is also a member.
The Federal Government and the Australian Labor Party have both described the carnival as Communist inspired. [State delegations go past, and nice-looking female teenagers and young women are singing but not audible]. The procession of youth, the flags, the banners and marching songs are strangely reminiscent of the Nuremburg rallies of the late unlamented Hitler Youth. [Broad-chested young men march in T-shirt uniforms]. Not so many flags, not so many people, but the first German rallies were small too. To a man (sic) sitting in the centre, it is often difficult to tell the far Left from the far Right.
We seem to have gone all European suddenly don’t we? For this is hardly an Australian scene…
Yes Madam, [matronly woman applauds enthusiastically] it is impressive but it is the start of what?
‘Peace’, and marching in the procession are Chinese. [The Chinese, all locals, are in androgynous Confucian or Tai Chi sort of costumes, eschewing any militancy]. We seem to recall that Red China today is at war with the world in Korea…that Australian youth is dying there to restore peace.
Communist Waterside Workers leader Healy marches – a rather mature youth. [With a large tummy, too].
Perhaps the greatest job these people [Greeks and New Zealanders sweep past] could do would be to convince Russia that the whole world wants peace with a passionate longing. [A big truck float goes past, massively decorated with flowers forming the dove/boomerang symbol]. Frankly we can’t see how the cause of World Peace can be aided by a semi-theatrical parade in a picnic ground 15 miles from Sydney. We wonder too how many of those marching today and those who watch, really know what is going on – these children for instance. [Yay! A truckload of cheering, waving kids. Is that cute kid leaning out, me? Well, maybe!]
Let’s not fool ourselves. There is war in the world today and it was started not by the democracies. Maybe the Youth Carnival could start right there, if the authorities would let them. [Women in hats, a toddler wildly waves a flag in each hand]. Because if this were a democratic procession it could not happen in Moscow’s Red Square!”
And you thought ABC News was subjective?
An ASIO plant was in a cinema when the newsreel was originally shown. As described by historian Dr Phillip Deery, the field officer reported,
“The commentary itself was so biased and unfair that it drew groans from the audience…The audience consisted, not of Carnival supporters, but of suburban housekeepers in town for shopping and members of the public and their girlfriends sheltering from the rain [‘members of the public’ must have all male, unless the agent also spotted some lesbians] …the obvious injustice of the commentary provoked a sympathetic reaction.”
Dr Deery, of Victoria University of Technology, in his excellent study of the Carnival, lavishly appropriated below by myself, complains that most historians of the post-war peace movement have ignored or downplayed it (http://tinyurl.com/n5kc7tc) The most detailed work has been by the ‘unremittingly hostile’ historians, including (Quadrant stalwart) Hal Colebatch of Perth, who treat it as a Communist stunt and ignore its broader community participation, Deery says.
He notes that the Carnival was the first outside Eastern Europe and was the child of the August 1951 3rd World Youth Festival in East Berlin (two years before the East Berlin uprising by less-conformist types). The 1951 show was attended by 26,000, compared with 10,000 at Sydney. Among those at Berlin were 135 Australians including Frank Hardy.
One delegate was 24 year old Frank Townsend, a lab assistant and former Student Council president at Melbourne Technical College. Although a political cleanskin in ASIO’s view, he became full-time organiser of the Sydney carnival in early 1952, keen to repay hospitalities involved in his Berlin trip. He envisioned that the carnival would, in the words of a pamphlet, “light a torch which will shine in a world where the people’s are kept too much apart from each other. This torch can light up the road to the happy, sane and peaceful Australian (sic) that we all hope and strive for.”
Getting 10,000 attendees was a good effort considering the hostile State apparatus. Attendees ran the gamut of refusals by 25 councils of halls, stadiums, parks, ovals and even beaches. The planned venue, the Harold Park trotting stadium, was withdrawn a bare fortnight before start-day. The hastily-arranged and privately-run Hollywood Park venue in outer Sydney was banned by Fairfield Council on the eve of the opening, and the council was only thwarted by a last-minute injunction. The State then banned private bus services to the park and in a Dunkirk-like miracle, the EYL organised private cars, trucks and lorries to shuttle the thousands back and forth.
Deery discovered that ASIO, in “Operation Handshake”, had two men and a woman in the Carnival headquarters and (probably) used agents to intimidate anyone offering Carnival services.
A Hobart ASIO man, J.J. Webberley, was flown to Sydney specifically to monitor Tasmanian attendees by trailing cars and identifying people in photographs. He even trailed himself into Taronga Zoo and Paddington Town Hall dances. He reported, “While at Sydney I was able to obtain the names and addresses of a large number of Tasmanians who have communist interests and will report on them accordingly on the following form.”
The Menzies government couldn’t ban the Carnival per se as the Liberals had just lost the referendum to ban the Communist Party and its ilk. But scores of Russian, Chinese, Czechs, Malayans and Americans were denied visas and had to stay home. Only New Zealanders got in. The ‘international’ flavour was from local ethnic groups.
Somehow the organisers created a panoply of sporting, dance, musical, art and literary events, many with handsome prizes of 200-250 pounds. Us kids were offered prizes for plasticine models, drawings and costumes.
Literary sponsors included Gavin Casey, Eleanor Dark, Dame Mary Gilmore, Eric Lambert, Alan Marshall, John Morrison, Walter Murdoch and Katherine Susannah Pritchard. Colin Simpson signed on but then signed himself out.
Cultural groups were transported to factories to do their stuff. On a single morning, seven groups got to seven sites, each group with chairman, a presenter, and sound equipment. Knowing what a hassle sound gear is even today, I feel respect for those organisers of 1952.
ASIO’s list of participating bodies in the Carnival runs to six pages, including the Atlas Greek Club, the NSW Ballroom Dancing Academy, the Melbourne Camera Club, and Geelong Choristers.
Individuals generously housed out-of-towners, including a Mrs Edwards of Fitzroy Street, Killara, who offered to billet two same-sex delegates in her spare room. She probably got the 2 pounds per person subsidy for costs.
As suggested by the Pathe newsreel, the wireless and the SMH, Tele and Sun ran a news blackout on the carnival. Deery says that the carnival’s EYL news-sheet Challenge had daily print runs of tens of thousands and issue No 10 involved 500,000 copies.
Deery then broadens his canvass to ask why Menzies, fresh from his referendum defeat, went all-out to disrupt the Carnival. Apart from obvious reasons such as the Korean war outbreak and the supposedly-imminent World War 111, Menzies viewed the Carnival as part of a Soviet phony ‘peace offensive’ via the World Peace Council. As External Affairs had advised him, “Like shady night club proprietors the Communist promoters are no sooner put out of business by exposure in one place, than they are busy organising a fresh venture under entirely new management.”
Deery puts the case that the Carnival none-the-less involved a genuine effort by young activists to connect with other youth through culture, sport and a bit of non-sectarian politics. “And it was, in the words of the woman who conceived the carnival, ‘an attempt to break through to a whole new section of the working class movement, we were trying something new and it was terribly exciting…we hoped it would be a new start.’ ”
I was chatting on the phone to Joe Lane in Adelaide about his archival research on SA Aborigines (http://firstsourcesguide.com). He mentioned that he too had attended the Youth Carnival, at an even younger age, 9, than myself. He also thought he spotted himself on the kids’ truck. Cue scepticism. Joe’s parents named him after Joseph Vissarionovich, about which he’s a bit embarrassed today. “At least I’m not called Joe Thomas,” I said. #
Despite his unusual childhood, Tony Thomas has grown up to be a model citizen.
No B-S here (I hope) 