In January 1908, Melbourne socialists gathered to farewell from their midst the cycling Welsh socialist, Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the British Labour Party, who was returning to Britain after a brief visit to the antipodes. Arrayed on the platform were four giants of the British labour movement. Apart from Hardie, there was the colourful figure of Tom Mann, the quixotic figure of Henry Hyde Champion and Ben Tillett.1 Tillett had been a moderate Labourite in the mid-1890s, even supporting an alliance with the Liberals, but had arrived in Melbourne in 1907 proclaiming himself a ‘revolutionary socialist’. He was recuperating in Australia from asthma and dermatitis, as well as the bruising defeat he had received in the 1906 British election. Tossing back whisky with raw eggs to preserve his voice for the interminable speeches he had to make in so many draughty halls, this former teetotaller now breathed the fire of class war.2
The four men presented a picture of strength and of hope as they stood together on that Melbourne stage. Radical Melburnians might imagine that they were at the centre of the world’s socialist struggle. But, like a family photo at Christmas, it was a false picture of harmony. The Victorian Socialist Party would become increasingly beset by factionalism as members disputed the best way to achieve that which united them: socialism. There were some who argued that the party should confront the Labor Party head-on by standing their own avowedly socialist candidates for parliament. Emboldened by the radical majority on the Socialist Federation of Australia, they intensified their challenge to the moderates’ control of the Victorian party.
In January 1908, one disaffected member established a rival group sympathetic to the aims of the Chicago-based Industrial Workers of the World. The following month, another member, Walter Mizon, published what he called the Supplementary Socialist in protest at not having his critical articles about Mann published in the Socialist.3 Mizon accused Mann of adultery and Hyett of misappropriating funds from the Socialist Cooperative Society’s store in Elizabeth Street that Hyett had helped to establish in 1907. So heated did the disputes become that the positions on the VSP’s executive were declared vacant. In the subsequent election, Mann was successful in retaining his position as secretary and Mizon was expelled from the party by the Mann-dominated executive. Although rebutting the allegations against him, Hyett resigned from his post as deputy secretary of the party and secretary of the Socialist Cooperative. But it was not the end of the matter.4 Mizon’s Supplementary Socialist continued its attacks. Mann had seen previous organisations of his creation founder on the rocks of factional fighting and now retreated from the fray by sailing off to New Zealand in April 1908, ostensibly on a voyage of inquiry into conditions in the neighbouring dominion which he had visited six years earlier.5
For his part, Curtin was similarly consumed by the ideological struggle with his former comrades. His correspondence with Jessie Gunn became even more sporadic. It was six weeks before he wrote again on 24 February 1908. It was in the midst of the internal party dispute but Curtin made only slight allusions to it, explaining that his lack of letters was due to him being ‘wrapped up in argument and the preparation for further argument’. More importantly, he disclosed the depths of the depression to which he was sometimes prey and the crucial role played by friends like Hyett in lifting him out of it:
Friends are at once a rare and a priceless possession; Silly is the person who cares little as to the endurance of his friendships. The time always comes when the hour of darkness fixes upon his mind; when the dreams fade away; and dark gaunt despair begins to feed upon and devour the high hopes and the great expectations – In that hour Friendship stands as a shining light in the gloomy forest, leading the way once again to the lost wanderer; who thus gathers fresh courage and renews the fight for whatever cause it is he loves.
He also revealed the influence that Mann had had on his thinking about nationalism. Although Curtin would later be hailed (as prime minister) for boosting Australian nationalism, and although he had previously praised the work of Sir Walter Scott, Curtin now told Jessie that while Scott was ‘a pronounced Nationalist’ who ‘loved his country’, it was ‘better to love humanity’.6
Curtin was writing in the wake of the VSP having just established a Cosmopolitan Committee which arranged lectures by speakers from non-British backgrounds about the situation in their respective countries. Later that year, the VSP held a dance in the Cathedral Hall which proclaimed boldly: ‘Servian, German, Italians, French, Scandinavians, Russians and British cordially invited’. Although Chinese and other non-European groups were not specifically invited, Bertha Walker cites an occasion when Tom Mann ‘compered an International Night at which there were about 20 different nationalities, each one was introduced on the platform and Tom made comments on the countries of origin. There was huge applause for an African who worked as a bootblack in Bourke Street.’7 Not all VSP members would have been cheering. There were many who supported Australia’s exclusion of non-Europeans.8 Mann, though, proclaimed a wider socialist vision, arguing in the pages of the Socialist in July 1908 that socialists
realise that they are members of a world-wide Brotherhood and Sisterhood. No narrow nationalism can satisfy our people. Nothing short of Cosmopolitanism can really satisfy a world citizen. ‘The world is my country!’ is the declaration of every Socialist. It is our mission then to speed the day when racial antipathies shall be completely obliterated, when national boundaries will exist only as indicating that certain areas were the cradles of certain peoples.9
He was whistling in the wind as far as Australia was concerned. The members of the VSP could not even treat each other as brothers and sisters.
The continuing turmoil in the party clearly occupied Curtin’s non-working hours during March 1908 when, despite his promises, his letters to Jessie lapsed. In frustration at not hearing from him for more than a month, she announced that she was now also writing to another young man. This prompted Curtin to reply on 1 April, just as the first round of the struggle for control of the party seemed to have gone Mann’s way. He apologised for not writing and informed her of a book that he had just read, The Eternal City, which concerned a revolutionary deputy in the Italian Parliament. It was, wrote Curtin, ‘a masterly presentment of how sacrifice and love can achieve great things’. He claimed not to be disturbed by Jessie writing to another. In fact, he said he was glad, declaring that ‘fair play is bonnie play you know and we should treat all alike’. Although he included the usual ten kisses at the end of the letter, he signed off simply as ‘Jessie’s friend, Jack’, instead of as her ‘affectionate friend’.10 And it would be another six weeks before he found time to write again. The re-election of Mann and expulsion of Mizon had been a short-lived victory for the moderates, who now came under increasing attack.
Curtin’s next letter, on 15 May, was only two pages long, one of his briefest and written just as he was about to go out to a meeting. He had no books to tell her about since he had only time for political tracts that he judged would not interest her. But he commiserated with her plight in Rheola which was then experiencing a water shortage, something that he had experienced as a child at Charlton and also, he wrote, in Gippsland.11 He complained that he had been unable to see the May Day procession that year because of work, but he made up for it by organising ‘material on the “Imperial” and “Empire” business’ at night. This would have been in opposition to the conservative celebration of Empire Day, instituted in 1905 and timed to coincide with the birthday of the dead Queen Victoria on 24 May. It was all about the glorification of empire and of war in defence of that empire. Curtin condemned it utterly, declaring, ‘War is an abomination, a creation of the devil. Hate it Jessie for it is an iniquity.’ Then, complaining that he had been interrupted by a ‘nuisance’ who had insisted he cease writing, Curtin abruptly stopped, signing off simply as her friend and this time omitting the usual kisses. He did promise, though, to send her the previously mentioned Eternal City and to write what he called a ‘proper letter’ the following week.12
This time Curtin was as good as his word, writing a four-page letter on 20 May but clearly struggling to fill it. His mind, he said, was ‘a perfect vacancy, so far as knowing what to write about is concerned’. Again, he had not read any books that would interest her and there had been no picnics to tell her about since it was now nearly winter. But there were dances that he continued to attend along with Frank Hyett and the Bruce sisters. Curtin does not mention the pleasure that he found in dancing or the fact that he was accomplished at it, but dwells instead on the doings of the Bruce girls. ‘Bob’ was a ‘great dancer’, wrote Curtin, while it seemed that dances were the things ‘Yat looks forward to’. ‘Jen’, too, ‘dances splendidly’ but thought them ‘a waste of time’. On one occasion, Curtin reported, she was ‘induced to attend; and Frank and I felt that we were a bit ill or seeing things kind of dream like, when we beheld or thought we beheld — the lady who “never will come again”’. Apart from that, football also helped to sustain Curtin during the dismal days of the Melbourne winter. He told Jessie that he and Frank barracked for Brunswick
and between us, Ethel and all your relatives get a lively time – they profess to think Brunswick is no good. But win or lose, we are always able to show the contrary – When Brunswick loses we blame the umpire or say our fellows are injured – It is not true ‘barracking’ to admit that your Club could be beaten by any other than unfair methods.
Despite having corresponded now for at least seven months, the two had still not met. Noting that he used to live up that way ‘at a place called Charlton’, Curtin now promised that ‘Next time I can get away in that direction, I shall manage, by hook or by crook as the saying goes, to call in quite sudden, and I’ll bet anything you like that you will not know me when I come’. Hopefully, young Jessie did not wait by the gate for the appearance of a tall, dark stranger with a cast in one eye because it seems he never did get there.13 The expense would have been a deterrent as would the painful memories that would come from visiting the place where Annie was buried. Moreover, his time was now consumed by the renewed struggles within the VSP which saw his correspondence with Jessie apparently stop for the next six months.
Much of the success of the VSP had been due to it being a broad river of socialist thought and action that was capable of carrying many individual and sometimes competing ideological streams. It was inevitable that such a broad river would soon breach its shallow banks. And Curtin would find himself in the middle of an increasingly fractious row that would test his faith in socialist comradeship. It would provide a valuable lesson for Curtin about the debilitating effects on a political party of placing ideological purity before party unity. It would be a lesson that he would put to good effect when he later became leader of the disunited Labor Party.
Once again the SFA conference gave heart to the radicals. This time the conference was in Sydney in June 1908, with the delegates strengthening their line against the Labor Party. Hyett attended as one of the delegates from the VSP but was unable to prevent the conference deciding that socialists should not also be members of the Labor Party and that they should field separate candidates at elections. Such candidates, if elected, were expected to ‘devote their time and talents to harassing the Parliamentary machine and instruments of the ruling class in the spirit of Revolutionary Socialism’.14 The frustration of the socialists with the political meekness of the Labor Party was understandable. Despite three years of activity, the Socialist Party had failed to get the Labor Party to declare itself forthrightly for socialism. Instead, at the 1908 conference in Brisbane, the Labor delegates reaffirmed the decision of three years before to eschew socialism in favour of racism and nationalism. The two-pronged objective of this workers’ party was:
1. The cultivation of an Australian sentiment based upon the maintenance of racial purity, and the development in Australia of an enlightened and self-reliant community.
2. The securing of the full results of their industry to all producers by the collective ownership of monopolies, and the extention of the industrial and economic functions of the State and Municipality.
What was worse, the Brisbane conference also accepted a proposal to introduce compulsory military training for Australia’s youth.15 As one historian of the ALP readily conceded, the platform was best described as ‘a watered down Liberal Party policy’.16
The move for compulsory military training came against the background of a more threatening international situation as the rivalry between Britain and Germany sparked a frantic naval race. At the same time, the new Pacific naval power, Japan, exacerbated Australia’s historic fears of an Asian invasion following its surprising and sudden victory over the Russian fleet. A fleet of sixteen American battleships, dubbed the ‘Great White Fleet’, toured the Pacific during 1908 to emphasise to the Japanese the might of the United States. At the invitation of Alfred Deakin’s Liberal Government, the fleet called at Sydney and Melbourne where it was met by widespread adulation from the populace and small-scale protests from socialists, including Curtin, although individual sailors were given a socialist welcome by Mann.17 This was rather ironic considering his appeal in 1941 for the Americans to help defend Australia. But it was a very different world in 1908 and it seemed incumbent upon socialists to mount whatever opposition they could to the grinding military machine that threatened to destroy the growing unity of the international working class and derail the coming social revolution. Reformists in the Labor Party saw the matter differently.
The Labor Party’s Billy Hughes had been pushing for compulsory military training since 1901 but had always failed to win much support from his colleagues. Now, in the wake of the Japanese victory over the Russians, most of them were behind him despite principled opposition from Anstey and a few others who saw it as promoting war rather than preventing it.18 Curtin was appalled by the Labor move. In April 1908, he had described what he called the ‘barrackers for Australian defence’ — conservative politicians and newspapers — as the ‘servants of Capitalism’ and ‘the enemies of the people’.19 Now the Labor Party had joined their ranks. In September 1908, he attacked Labor’s jingoism in the pages of the Socialist, railing against what he called ‘The Armed Nation Lie’ by which Hughes and his allies justified compulsory military training. War had become an industry, argued Curtin, and soldiers had been reduced to automatons. Accordingly, it was in the interests of the ruling class to promote war scares and racial tensions so that it could profit from the sale of munitions. Curtin feared that their hopes for a socialist paradise could well sink into the mire of war. As he declared in a subsequent Socialist article, ‘civilisation is everywhere exhibiting a riot of brutal passion fraught with the greatest menace to human progress’.20
Mann had returned from New Zealand in September 1908 more convinced than ever that the road to socialism lay in industrial organisation rather than parliamentary representation. At the same time, he still argued for the Socialist Party to remain as a broad church willing to work closely with the Labor Party and to focus its activities on education and propaganda. According to Mann, the job of the VSP was to ‘persuade the labour movement to become socialist’.21 However, he and his supporters within the VSP executive were unable to reverse the SFA decision against cooperation with the Labor Party. When the idea of socialist candidates was put to a referendum of party members in October 1908, they lost decisively. At the same time, Mizon raised the stakes in his attack on Mann by laying a charge against Hyett of misappropriation of funds. The charge was thrown swiftly out of court and Hyett sued Mizon for libel and won. However, it was a pyrrhic victory as Mizon could not pay the damages and Hyett was left unable to pay his lawyer.22
Although Mizon’s attack on Mann and his supporters had been decisively repelled in court, the moderate view remained a minority one within the VSP. Mann acknowledged his tenuous position in the party by taking a month’s leave during which he went to the mining town of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales.23 Although Tillett had urged him to return to Britain, Mann instead answered a clarion call from the poorly organised Broken Hill miners who were facing the prospect of a bitter labour dispute and needed an organiser to galvanise their ranks. This move would effectively end Mann’s active association with the Socialist Party that he had been so instrumental in creating just two and a half years before. Without the presence of Mann’s burning enthusiasm, and with Hyett also taking off for a time to Broken Hill, Curtin found that his own revolutionary ardour had cooled.