Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Tasmanian Human Rights Charter
My concern is the Tasmanian Human Rights Charter will make no explicit exclusion of Corporate Personhood.
Rights for corporations, because they’re about property, is about who is excluded:
Rights for human beings is about who is included.
“Corporate Personhood,” most people who hear that phrase for the first time scratch their heads. The absurdity of corporate personhood has that effect on people — it just doesn’t make sense! But corporate personhood is not only real under law, it has an enormous impact on all of us. so it behoves us to know what it is, how it got here, and why we need to get rid of it.
To understand what’s going on, you need to to go back to the Constitution of the
The kind of democracy they prized and wrote about so eloquently could only be practiced by people like them — certainly not by the rabble, or, as Alexander Hamilton so fondly referred to us, as “the mob at the gate.”
So in the Constitution they created a republic and a system of government that is designed to protect property, not people. And not surprisingly, when folks in the new
At least half of the population was very much opposed to the Constitution. They had just fought a long, bloody revolutionary war focused on words like “liberty” and “freedom,” not “president” or “congress” or “supreme court.” But the Federalists who proposed the Constitution had the finances and the unity to promote their ideas strongly, and after a lot of politicking they got the Constitution ratified — but only with the assurance that a Bill of Rights would be added to protect people from the excesses by the government that would be possible under the new system.
It’s worth noting that nowhere in the US Constitution does the word “democracy” appear; nor the word “corporation,” nor “slave.” But we'll come back to these in a minute. First let’s look at the basic structure they created to protect property.
They start with the sacred words “We the People of the
There’s just one little problem. It’s that word “People.” At the time the Constitution was ratified, in order to be considered one of “We the People,” you had to be an adult male, you had to be white, and you had to have a certain amount of property. At the time of the Constitution, this narrowed “People” down to about 10% of the population. Those who owned property, including human property, were very clear that this was rule by the minority — and that’s the way they wanted it.
The word “corporation” appears nowhere in the Constitution, and the reason is that the Founding Fathers had zero interest in using them to run their new
government. In colonial times, corporations had been chartered by the king for the purpose of exploiting the so-called “New World” and shovelling wealth back into
They were not popular with the colonists.
So when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they threw control of corporations to state legislatures where they would get the closest supervision by the people. Early corporate charters were very explicit about what a corporation could do, how, for how long, with whom, where, and when.
Individual stockholders were held personally liable for any harms done in the name of the corporation, and most charters only lasted for 10 or 15 years.
Most importantly, in order to receive the profit-making privileges they sought, corporations had to represent a clear benefit for the public good. And when corporations violated any of these terms, their charters were frequently revoked by the state legislatures.
Time passed and memories of royal oppression faded, the wealthy folks increasingly started eyeing corporations as a convenient way to shield their personal fortunes. They could sniff the winds of change and see that their minority rule through property was under serious threat of being diluted. In 1865 the 13th Amendment was ratified, freeing the slaves. Three years later, the 14th Amendment was ratified, giving citizenship rights to all persons born or naturalized in the
During and after the Civil War there was a rapid increase in the number and size of corporations, and this form of business was starting to become a more important way of holding and protecting property and power.
President Abraham Lincoln wrote.
"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
The passage appears in a letter from
Increasingly through their corporations, the ruling class started influencing legislators, bribing public officials, and employing lawyers to write new laws and file court cases challenging the existing laws that restricted corporate behaviour.
Speech to
See Vol. 1, p. 24 of
ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 1905)
Bit by bit state legislatures increased corporate charter length while they decreased corporate liability and citizen authority over corporate structure, governance, production, and labour. But they were only going to be able to go just so far with this strategy. Because corporations are a creation of the Government — chartered by the state legislatures — they still fell on this side of the line with duties accountable to the people. If minority rule by property was going to be accomplished through corporations, they had to cross this line and become entitled to rights instead.
And their tool to do this was the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868.
After a series of lower court cases, the watershed moment came in 1886 when the US Supreme Court heard a case called
A key witness before the Supreme Court in the lead up to the 1886 was Roscoe Conkling. A former Senator who helped draft the 14th amendment. In his evidence he claimed that reading from his diaries of the time, it was the intention of the drafting committee that the rights to be conferred on former slaves to citizenship were meant to be equally applied to corporations.
It was not till thirty years after his death that his diaries were examined and found to have no such reference.
He had lied to the Supreme Court, but by then the legal fiction of corporate personhood had defined corporates’ as natural persons.
Ten years later, in Plessy v.
Fifteen years later the writers of the Australian Constitution included reference to corporation powers in Section 51 xx. Four referendums from 1911 to 1926at which the people of
In less than 30 years, African-Americans had effectively lost their legal personhood rights while corporations had acquired them. And in case you’re still wondering whether the primary purpose of the Constitution and the body of law it spawned is about protecting property rather than people, understand this.
Of the 14th Amendment cases heard in the Supreme Court in the first 50 years after its adoption, less than one-half of one percent invoked it in protection of African- Americans, and more than 50% asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.
When you look at two-plus centuries of US legal history, the pattern is that people acquire rights by amendment to the Constitution - a long, drawn-out, difficult process - and corporations acquire them by Supreme Court decisions.
Rights for corporations, because they’re about property, is about who is excluded; Rights for human beings is about who is included.
Once corporations had jumped the line, they proceeded to pursue the Bill of Rights through more Supreme Court cases.
In 1893 they were assured 5th Amendment protection of due process.
In 1906 they got 4th Amendment search and seizure protection.
In 1925 it was freedom of the press and speech.
In 1976 the Supremes determined that money is equal to speech, and since corporate persons have First Amendment rights, they can basically contribute as much money as they want to political parties and candidates.
And so we find ourselves in a time when corporations have amassed enormous power and wealth, and control nearly every aspect of our lives, because they
masquerade — under the law at least — as one of us.
But most of us don’t know it. A key reason for that is that the whole thing is pretty esoteric.
A corporation is a legal fiction, an abstraction. You can’t see or hear or touch or smell a corporation — it’s just an idea that people agree to and put into writing. But because they have legal personhood status, corporations are like super humans with all the advantages and none of the disadvantages that we mere mortals have. Corporations now have infinite life spans so they can continue to accumulate wealth and power forever. You can cut off the figurative arm or leg or even head of a corporation and it can still continue to exist. Furthermore, corporate lawyers invoke their personhood status or not at
their convenience, allowing them to be whatever they want according to their needs.
Along with this abstract existence, corporations have acquired a lot more abstract property. Ownership of land and buildings is still important, but now corporate property also includes concepts like mineral rights, drilling rights, air pollution credits, intellectual property, and even — under NAFTA — rights to future profits.
All this abstraction fits in to the ways property is used to maintain minority rule. When corporations were over on the duties side of the line, the primary technique for enforcing minority rule was to establish that only a tiny percentage could qualify as “We the People” — in other words, that most people were subhuman. As different groups of people struggled to be included in those first three words of the Constitution and eventually succeeded, the corporation crossed over to the rights side and ultimately became superhuman, still maintaining an artificially elevated status for a small number of people.
Having acquired the ability to govern in the
installed, or propped up by the
Then, just as slavery and immigrant status once kept wages nonexistent or at poverty levels, now sweatshops, and the prison-industrial complex provide ultra-cheap labour with little or no regulation. Just as sharecropping and company store scrip once kept people trapped in permanently subservient production roles, now the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s structural adjustment programs keep entire countries in permanent debt, the world’s poorest people forced to feed interest payments to the world’s richest while their own families go hungry.
Just as war was waged against native populations that lived sustainably on the land, now wars are instigated against peoples and regimes that resist the so-called “free trade” mantra because they have the audacity to hold their own ideas about governance and resource distribution.
Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and divisive religious, ethnic, ideological, and cultural distrust were all intentionally instituted to prevent people from making common cause against the ruling minority, and those systems continue their destructive work today.
These systems of oppression that I’ve been talking about weren’t established overnight; they were gradually and sometimes surreptitiously introduced and refined in ways that made them acceptable. At the time of the Constitution, corporations were widely reviled, but a century later they were a commonplace business institution, and a century after that they’ve become our invisible government! They accomplished this over decades, changing a little piece of law here and incorporating a throw-away comment in a judicial decision there.
Resistance to these oppressions evolved in a similar way. Those who wished to end slavery, for example, worked for many years collecting information, refining their analysis, and debating among themselves. They came to understand the issue as one of human rights and that the whole institution of slavery was fundamentally wrong.
They didn’t come up with a Slavery Regulatory Agency or voluntary codes of conduct for slave owners. They called themselves Abolitionists — the whole thing had to go.
If you look at corporate personhood the same way, you will see that corporate personhood was wrongly given — not by We the People, but by nine Supreme Court judges. We further see that corporate personhood is a bad thing, because it was the pivotal achievement that allowed an artificial entity to obtain the rights of people, thus relegating us to subhuman status. And finally, because of the way corporate personhood has enabled corporations to govern us, I see that it is so bad, we must eradicate it.
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person. Like abolishing slavery, the work of eradicating corporate personhood takes us to the deepest questions of what it means to be human. And if we are to live in a democracy, what does it mean to be sovereign?
The hardest part of eliminating corporate personhood is believing, that We the People have the sovereign right to do this. It comes down to us being clear about who’s in charge.
What would change if corporations did not have personhood?
Well, here are a few examples. If corporate persons no longer had first amendment right of free speech, we could prohibit all corporate political activity — no more contributions to candidates or parties, no more lobbying. Just think of the ripple effect on our political process if no corporate money could contaminate it!
Corporate persons are now protected against search without a warrant under the 4th Amendment.
This means that OH&S and the EPA have to schedule their inspections at a time convenient to corporate managers. If you think the air, land, or water in your community is being polluted, or the workers mistreated, neither you nor the government can go on corporate property to get information without legal permission. Just think of the consequences if corporate polluters were no longer shielded by the US Constitution!
Without their protections under the 5th and 14th Amendments, corporations could be prevented from merging and owning stock in other corporations.
We could leaflet in malls, we could pass laws against supermarket stores and mobile phone towers, we could organise openly at work.
If corporate Personhood is eradicated; a floodgate of possibilities opens for citizen sovereignty to replace corporate governance.
By focusing on the crucial block — corporate personhood — and applying enough force to pry the door open, the whole concept of what’s politically and humanly possible shifts in profound and exciting ways.
I pray, we’ll not let Corporate Personhood contaminate the Human Rights Charter, by inserting a clear and unambiguous exclusion into the charter to turn this insidious legal disease back on itself.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Australian Red Ensign
Re: A fitting memorial to those who served Australia in both world wars would be a flag for the Army so that today’s soldiers would honour the first and second AIF by wearing the Red Ensign as their shoulder Badge.
Dear Prime Minister,
Over the last few years I have written to the previous Prime Minister and his various Ministers in an attempt to get some recognition of the part the red ensign played in our history. Unfortunately, communication with those levels of government were sent down the food chain, resulting in one finally receiving a reply suggesting, that the Australian people were confused back then and the great Bob Menzies set the record straight in 1954.
Alas, attempts to stimulate some discussion with your ministers, has received the same responses by (probably the same) bureaucrats.I am now 74 years old, so this is my last shot. I know there are more pressing issues facing your generation and the ones to come. Nevertheless, it would be nice to know that the Fat Blimps like Bob Menzies and their cohorts did not get away with distorting history to suit their short term fear mongering. Particularly as this history is covered with blood of PBI’s (poor bloody infantrymen). The history of the use of our flags has not been frozen in time since 1903. Indeed there continued to be changes right up to 2000 when the Australian Defence Force ensign was proclaimed on 12 April 2000. The People's Flag - the 1901 flag design competition -was announced on 3 September 1901 and the selected design was subsequently modified and formally adopted from 20 February 1903, with a further change to the current design from 23 February 1908.
Initially the blue version of the Australian flag was limited to government use and the red was only intended for use by private shipping. At sea the use of the Union Jack was prohibited except on warships of the Royal Navy and there was -uncertainty as to whether ordinary people could use the Union Jack on land.
During the 19th century in Britain and other parts of the Empire The practice developed for the British Red Ensign to be used on land when private citizens wanted to fly a flag from a building. This practice explains why the flag of Canada until 1965 was a red ensign. Accordingly, From 1909 to 1954, the Australian Red Ensign was the flag used when businesses and individuals wanted to fly a local flag, either in addition to or in place of the Union Jack. Historically the Australian Red Ensign can be considered to be the, ‘Peoples Flag’ though there was no contemporary use of this description.
Although officially this flag was intended for use at sea only, there was confusion amongst the public about which flag to fly on land, with the red and blue ensigns and Union Jack often being used interchangeably, depending upon the preference of the user.
The Union Jack was the flag used by the Australian forces in the Sudan War (1885), the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901), and the Boer War (1899-1902, i.e. both before and after Federation). The Union Jack was predominant in the First World War. During the Second World War "there was confusion about the Union Jack, the Defaced Red Ensign and the Defaced Blue Ensign". In the Korean War, Australians fought under the United Nations' Flag. As for Australians fighting under the present Commonwealth Flag, "the only war (undeclared) where that was definitively the case was the Vietnam War".
The previous Australian flag had a federation star comprising six points to represent the six Australian states. In 1906 Australia acquired the Territory of Papua, and to indicate this the number of points on the federation star was increased to seven in 1908 but the remainder of the flag was left unchanged. This design change was promulgated in the Government Gazette on 22 May 1909.
When the Northern Territory and ACT were created as Federal Territories in 1911, a decision was made not to increase the number of points on the Federation Star. Instead, the seventh point would represent all territories and states created after 1901.
Flag Adopted: 20 February 1903Flag Proportion: 1:2Use: Government Flag and Ensign
The design of the Southern Cross on the "official" or Government flag was also changed at the same time.
In 1941, Australia's Prime Minister Robert Menzies added to this confusion by directing that there should be no restriction on private citizens flying the Blue Ensign, instead of the Union Jack, though most people continued to use the red ensign. Prime Minister Ben Chifley reaffirmed this Government consent in February 1947. However, the so called, confusion really wasn't ended until the Flags Act 1953 (enacted in 1954) gave legal effect to this directive, with the Red Ensign becoming reserved as the Civil Ensign. Up until April 1954 the Commonwealth Blue Ensign was regarded as an official flag, and its use on land was restricted to government establishments. It was, therefore, the red ensign that enjoyed much use by the public. Red ensigns were displayed in schools, was the flag that the crowd wave when the Queen first stepped ashore in Sydney in 1954. Of course the Blue Ensign greeted her in Melbourne, because ultimately, this was a struggle between Victoria Vs NSW, SA, and QLD. The Australian Red Ensign was used on expeditions, and taken to war by servicemen; When Mawson landed in Antarctica in 1930, the flags he and his men stood under were the Union Jack and the Australian red ensign. The famous Changi Flag, which flew at the liberation of Singapore in 1945, was a Red Ensign. The Victorian RSL president, Mr Bruce Ruxton, bought it in 1998 for $25,000. The Breakwater Battery Museum at Port Kembla, NSW, operated by the State's Maritime Services Board, displays a red ensign with the sign "Original Australian National Flag... This is the flag our troops fought under in World Wars I and II."According to Carol Foley in her book, “The Australian Flag”, published in 1996, the RAAF used the British RAF flag in both world wars and the Australian navy fought under the British naval ensign until 1966. From September 1901 Australia had two officially approved ensigns, but since neither was specifically for use by the public, it was not surprising that the popular Federation Flag (used in the movement for the federation of the Australian colonies) was still widely flown, even up into the 1920s. The Federation FlagThe Federation Flag was viewed as "a flag of the people" and continued to be used, especially on public occasions, as well as in literature and advertising. It was even flown at official events, such as the 1907 Melbourne meeting of State Premiers, and during the 1927 visit to Australia of the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth).In 1924 the Commonwealth government, after much indecision, advised State governments that the Australian blue flag was for Commonwealth use only. Protest forced reconsideration of the issue, and the concession that State governments could use the Australian flag if State flags were not available. However, private organisations and individuals, and even state schools wishing to use an Australian flag were expected to use the red one.
Strangely, the official painting of the opening of Parliament House in 1927 features the red Australian flag.The Victorian Government challenged this direction in relation to State schools in 1938, and, unable to get a response from the Commonwealth, legislated in 1940 to allow schools to fly the Australian blue flag. This increased pressure on the Commonwealth government led it to announce in 1941 and again in 1947 that there was no longer a restriction on the use of that flag.Finally, when arrangements were being completed for the presentation of an Australian flag to every school as part of the Commonwealth Jubilee celebrations in 1951, a decision had to be made as to whether that flag would be blue or red. The Menzies Government in December 1950 proclaimed the blue flag as the Australian national flag, and subsequently prepared the legislation which became the Flags Act 1953. The Prime Minister expected that the practice of flying the Australian flag and the Union Flag together on national occasions would continue. He also ensured that Section 8 of the Act maintained a person's 'right or privilege', defined in Britain in 1908, to fly the Union Flag.However, despite the existence of the two Australian ensigns, the Union Jack remained the national flag of Australia. As the 1939 edition of the authoritative ‘Flags of the World’states: "The national flag of the Commonwealth of Australia is of course the Union, her ensign the Blue Ensign with a large white seven pointed star beneath the Union, and the Southern Cross" (emphasis added). Throughout Australia, in the early part of the century, "the Union Jack was almost as often flown as the Australian flag", although sometimes with an Australian ensign alongside. Prime Minister Robert Menzies himself spelt out the position of the Union Jack, when he made a radio speech on the brink of the Second World War, declaring that Australia and Britain were "at one", under "one king, one flag".In fact, in 1967, Prime Minister Robert Menzies wrote in his book ‘Afternoon Light, Some Memories of Men and Events’ "In the year of my birth 1894 - Queen Victoria was on the throne of the United Kingdom and Ireland and the Dominions and Colonies beyond the Seas... For us, the maps of the world were patterned with great areas of red, at a time when red was a respectable colour."
The release of Gerard Henderson's book ‘Menzies' Child’, has helped confirm the view that the Australian flag as we now know it was not the flag which Australians would have used as their national flag prior to 1954, The Executive Director of Ausflag, Mr Harold Scruby in his media release on Friday 9 December 1994 He made the following points:
· Australians were given a plebiscite for their national anthem in 1977 and a referendum on the republic in 1999. Australians have never had a choice in their flag. The evidence is overwhelming that the blue Australian flag did not come into use, until the Menzies government in the Flags Act of 1953 proclaimed it. Even Then, the Union Jack was flown in the superior position (higher and on the left) to the Australian Flag until about 1964.Towards World War II, the Australian red ensign became popular, although the Union Jack usually flew alone or in a senior position to the red ensign. The blue ensign was rarely seen, its use being restricted to government buildings and schools.
· Bruce Ruxton paid $25000 for the flag kept by the prisoners of Changi. It is an Australian red ensign. Sir Douglas Mawson's flag in his time capsule in Antarctica is an Australian red ensign.
· When Queen Elizabeth II came to Australia in 1954, she was welcomed by millions of Australians mostly waving Union Jacks and Australian red ensigns. During that visit she proclaimed the current Australian flag, for the first time making the blue ensign the preferred colour.
· The Liberal Party was not formed under an Australian flag; it was formed under the Union Jack.
· It is quite likely that Menzies' adoption of a blue ensign in 1954 as the Australian Flag in preference to the popular red ensign, without any consultation with the Australian people, was for political purposes. The clues to this can be found in Menzies' statement in his book "Afternoon Light" relating to "red being a respectable colour" in his youth. This change from socialist red to Liberal Party blue was made during the time when Menzies was campaigning against the communists.
Mr Scruby went on to say, “It was important that Australians were aware of the true history of the current Australian flag. He said the argument so frequently advanced that we should not change it because so many Australians had fought and died under the current Australian flag, was historically and factually incorrect.”
The Australian Army has no separate ensign but has the ceremonial role of protector of the Australian National Flag. The 1954 act gave legal effect to this directive, with the Red Ensign then becoming reserved as the Civil Ensign.
People who deny the role of the Red Ensign in our history say;The public also began using the red ensign on land this is presumably why it was incorrectly substituted for the official Australian Flag.
When you read the signatures on the ‘Kitchener Flag’ (below) you may find it hard to accept that these people believed that the red ensign was not somehow involved in WWI.
Tewksbury, a successful Melbourne businessman, conceived the idea of raising funds for wounded Australian soldiers by raffling a flag autographed by the world’s most famous men, including national and war leaders, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, Prime Minister W M Hughes and General Monash. This flag was sent around the world to obtain the signatures and 20,000 pounds was raised from the raffle.
The flag was advertised as the ‘Kitchener Flag’.A retired seaman who sold it to Edward Solomon, a Melbourne philanthropist and collector, who had already purchased other autographed flags at fund raising auctions for the war effort, won it. Solomon later presented his entire autographed flag collection, which he had acquired during the First World War, to the Australian War Memorial.
During the Second World War William Tewkesbury again raised funds for wounded soldiers by + raffling an autographed flag known as the ‘Churchill Flag’, and selling badges , this time raising 28,000 pounds.
The ‘Kitchener Flag’ Australian Red Ensign.
A square of white silk has been attached to the flag, signed in indelible pencil ‘George R.I. Mary R’, under the Union Jack, marked ‘THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON’ and signed in ink ‘Woodrow Wilson’. The large Federation star is signed in pencil ‘J.Foch’, the smaller stars, in black ink or pencil ‘D.Haigh’, ‘David Beatty’, ‘J.Joffre’, ‘W R Robertson’, and ‘Jellicoe’. The white stripes of the Union Jack have been signed ‘Rudyard Kipling’, ‘H.H. Asquith’, ‘Devonshire’, ‘J.P. Morgan’, ‘A. Bonar Law’, ‘D Lloyd George’, ‘John Monash’, ‘E. Grey’, ‘Derby’, ‘Roseberry’, ‘Beresford’, ‘Kitchener’, ‘W. Birdwood’, ‘W.M. Hughes’, ‘Randall Cantuar’, ‘W Tewkesbury’, ‘R.W. Ferguson’, ‘Edward Wallington’, ‘Edward P’, ‘Stamfordham’ and ‘Beresford’. The signatures on the flag are those of : His Majesty King George V , King of England 1910-1936; Her Majesty Queen Mary, Wife of the King of England 1910-1936; Edward Windsor, Prince of Wales, later King of England (Edward VIII); President Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America 1912-1920; The Duke of Devonshire, Governor-General of Canada 1916-1921;Mr Rudyard Kipling, Author and Nobel Prize winner for literature 1907; The Right Honourable Andrew Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies 1916-1921; Sir Edward Grey (Viscount Grey), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1905-1916; Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1894-1895; The Honourable William Morris Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia 1915-1922;Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and Broome, Secretary of State for War 1914-1916;Lord Birdwood of ANZAC and Totnes, Commander of the Australian Imperial Forces 1914-1919; Lord Stamfordham, Private Secretary to King George V 1910-1931;Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia 1914-1920; The Honourable Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1908-1916; Mr John Pierpont Morgan II, Industrialist said to be one of the world’s richest men; The Right Honourable David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1916-1922; Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War1916-1918; The Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour, First Lord of the Admiralty 1915-1916; Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, Commander of the Channel Fleet 1907-1909; Sir Edward Wallington, Private Secretary to Queen Mary 1910-1919; The Most Reverend Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury 1903-1928; Marshal Joseph Joffre, Commander-in-Chief of the French Armies 1915-1917; Earl Haig of Bemersyde, Commander-in-Chief of British forces 1915-1919; Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1916-1918; Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa, Commander of the Grand Fleet 1914-1916; Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Commander of Allied forces Western Front 1918; General Sir John Monash, Commander of the Australian Corps in France 1918;Admiral Sir David Beatty, Commander of the Grand Fleet 1914-1919;Mr William Tewksbury, Originator of the concept for the “Kitchener Flag” .
AWM copyright
First World War, 1914-1918
The Allied Commander Pays The Highest Tribute To The Australian Forces.
On November 7th 1920 the remains of an Australian soldier and a French soldier were buried in the Amiens Cathedral. The Bishop of Amiens and Marshal Foch expressed themselves thus:-
The Bishop of Amiens: "We bow to you, Messieurs les Australians, for the magnificent deeds that you did in those days, now happily at an end, for your country and for France, and for the victory of hope and sanity. The soil of France is transfigured to a new divinity by your sacrifices. In the whole of history we cannot find an army more marvellous in its bravery, and in the war there was none that contributed more nobly to the final triumph".
Marshal Foch: "We intend today in Amiens to express to you and the Commonwealth of Australia our gratitude......Our aspirations and our will had to be agreed, they could not be too closely allied. Although our task was never easy, it was made less difficult by the patriotism and the passionate valour of the Australians which served as an example to the whole world. That wonderful attack of yours at Villers Bretonneux was the final proof, if any were needed, that the real task of the High Command was to show itself equal to its soldiers. You saved Amiens. You saved France. Our gratitude will remain ever and always to Australia. (Note the Australian Red Ensign).
Gough Whitlam's speech at the ALP Annual Dinner, Melbourne 11 November 1994”On a visit to Ottawa in June 1964 I was in the gallery of the House of Commons when Prime Minister Lester Pearson introduced the bill for Canada's new flag. He made the point that the inclusion and position of the Union Jack in the national flag led to confusion with the flags and insignia of countries and units in all parts of the world; the flag failed in the prime requirement of presenting a Canadian identity. This point was brought home to Australians when a later Prime Minister of Canada welcomed Bob Hawke on an official visit to Ottawa; the streets were festooned with the flag of New Zealand”.“ Blimps like Bruce Ruxton bring the RSL into ridicule by claiming that all Australians have fought under the present flag. Even when our soldiers carried flags in World Wars I and II and our airmen in World War II, there were at least as many Union Jacks as Red or Blue Australian Ensigns. The RAN always used the ensigns of the RN until the latter complained during Australia's, but not Britain's, hostilities in Vietnam. In April 1967 Prime Minister Holt inserted the blue Southern Cross and removed the St. George's Cross in the RAN White Ensign. Early last year another member of my old RAAF squadron sent me photographs of two funerals we attended in January 1945. At Gove and Adelaide River Cemetery the coffins were draped in Union Jacks; at the latter the Red Ensign flew from a flagpole.The capital of Australia was moved from Melbourne to Canberra in 1927. The Canberra Times published photographs 60 years later to commemorate the anniversary of the opening of Civic Centre by Prime Minister Bruce; there were many Union Jacks but no Australian flags. I was at school in Canberra from that time till the end of 1934; there were always more Union Jacks than (Blue Ensigns) Australian flags.”
The point I make is that the bulk of those that served in the Army, and indeed their loved ones, felt that they were fighting under the Red ensign. How can we let this fragment of our history just slip away without recognition?
The best indication of what the soldiers themselves thought is in the ensigns that are on display at the Australian War Memorial and the RAAF Museum. In the Australian War Memorial, the red ensigns on display outnumber the blue ensigns in the World War I period, by about ten to one.
At age 74, I had hoped that one day there will be enough interest within the ranks of Australia’s political classes to give recognition to a flag that had played an important part in our history. When I heard that the Labor Government was seeking ideas for a fitting monument to these long gone Australian soldiers, I believed that a fitting memorial would be for today’s diggers to honour the first and second AIF by wearing the Red Ensign as their shoulder flash. The civil flag, having de-facto acceptance by the generations who fought two world wars, was relegated to the dust bin of history by a Prime Minister who treated us all with arrogance and contempt and who used fear of the Red Communist threat from the north, to win his elections. With the help of ASIO to raise fear of communism in the population.
John Ward 20 Grosse Road
Gordon
7150
References:
Kwan, Elizabeth, 'Blue over red: Australia's Victorian flag legacy and Menzies' decision', Crux Australia, vol. 13/4, no. 56, February 2000, pp. 158–75.Kwan, Elizabeth, 'The Australian flag: ambiguous symbol of nationality in Melbourne and Sydney, 1920–21', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 103, October 1994.
The Australian War MemorialA Short History of AustraliaManning Clark, 4th Revised Edition, Penguin, Melbourne, 1995.
What Happened WhenAnthony Barker, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992.
Crux AustralisAnthony Burton (Editor), Flag Society of Australia, Melbourne, Australia.– "The 1901 Australian Flag Competition: Facts Behind the Myths", Ralph Kelly, Volume X No 1 January 1994.
Menzies' book "Afternoon Light"
Extract from Gough Whitlam's speech at the ALP Annual Dinner, Melbourne 11 November 1994Gerard Henderson's book ‘Menzies' Child’1939 edition of the authoritative ‘Flags of the World’Carol Foley, “The Australian Flag”, published in 1996
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