by Simon Sellars

‘Free Radicals’. Originally published in The Big Issue, #228, May 2005.

It was quite a sight to watch sibling activists Jeff and Jill Sparrow launch their latest book recently. I wanted to chat to Jeff after his rousing speech but the path was blocked by a massed wedge of grannies, groovers, suits and students pumping his hand, slapping him on the back, giving him high fives. What this eclectic mob had come to celebrate was not a raunchy novel of love among the singles set, nor a sinfully revealing warts-and-all autobiography about life in the fast lane. It was Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within, a stirring account of resistance and oppression in the Victorian capital. Who would have thought it?

Melbourne has had some bad press over the years. There’s the famous putdown attributed to Ava Gardner about it being perfect for making a film about the end of the world; for Jerry Seinfeld, it’s the “asshole of the world”. Yet the Radical Melbourne books, published by the Vulgar Press, comprehensively blow the lid off Melbourne’s deeply entrenched “wowser” reputation. The first volume aimed to present a “secret history” of the city. Surveying the period from Melbourne’s foundation until WWII, it offered up a parallel universe of everything from the city’s first vegetarian restaurant (in the 1890s) to workers’ art movements, from unemployed and wharfie riots to embryonic models of free love and hot jazz in backstreet cafes and clubs. It’s a bit like discovering a cache of porn from a century ago: there’s palpable surprise that people did that, here, back then.

Radical Melbourne 2 brought the story up to date with surprising, sometimes disturbing vignettes from the post-war era: secret armies and underground Communist printing presses; subversive acts of mass disruption, including the WANK computer worm that stymied NASA in the late ’80s; early examples of culture-jamming, like the anti-tobacco billboard defacers from the early ’70s; tunnel dwellers, both hoaxed – the Dole Army – and actual, the notorious Cave Clan; and the recent S11/WEF mass protests. But while these stories may be about Melbourne, they transcend the city’s boundaries; their political agenda bleeds in from the outside world.

Ian Syson runs the Vulgar Press and he’s just released the latest instalment in the “radical” series: Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History. Edited by Queensland academics Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier, it’s another feisty read, starting in the 19th century and finishing in the late ’70s. In documenting the struggle for radical ideas, the book skilfully undercuts the Sunshine State’s lingering image as a northern dystopia – a smouldering legacy fanned by former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen and One Nation founder Pauline Hanson. Try these on for size: rock ‘n’ roll riots in the ’50s and pitched battles between punks and police in the ’70s; an emergent, effective Communist Party; the world’s first General Strike; the world’s first Labor government; the world’s first socialist objective. Brisbane – the soporific, boring hollow of Australian lore – can claim them all.

It’s been suggested that Syson took a risk publishing such specialised histories, yet he saw no risk at all. “There’s such a strong local demand that we’ll eventually sell our print runs; Radical Melbourne will be going into its third run soon,” he says. “Outside of Queensland, historians and exiles might show some interest in Radical Brisbane, but I’m totally happy with the idea of a concentrated market. Having said that, when Radical Sydney comes on line, I think the project will take on a national focus and we’ll see increased demand for the radical city backlist”.

Radical Sydney is due for publication in 2006 and sounds intriguing. According to Syson, Sydney’s radical history is “often set in the suburbs ringing the city and so there’s a sense of threat from without – rather than from the enemy within.” But he has his sights set far beyond that. He wants to publish a Radical Australia volume (“once we reach critical mass and have most states covered”) and it’s a vision that makes obvious sense. The myth of conservative Australia – of whitewashed masses and blind, unquestioning loyalty to an abstraction – is one that a succession of Australian governments have invoked to keep power and quell dissent, and it’s particularly relevant now that Australia has piggybacked America into the “war against terror”. By uncovering layers of discord in Bjelke-Petersen’s Brisbane, in Jeff Kennett’s Melbourne, in John Howard’s Sydney, the Radical series – with each successive volume – gradually unpicks the perception of Australia as an endless, flat, unchanging suburb of the soul and reassembles it as a vibrant landscape of ideas, diversity and free thought.

As Syson observes, “One of the important functions of these books is to show radicals that they are not alone in time. Most contemporary struggles have precedents and the books reveal the ghosts of struggles past. When [Queensland activist] Dan O’Neill launched Radical Brisbane, he said this was an important aspect of the book. He could now see his own radical actions as part of a deep history. And he got a lot of solace from that”.

When Radical Australia hits the shelves, will that be it for the series? “No!” Syson says. “There’s no reason why the series has to stop anywhere. Radical Melanesia, Radical Chicago, Radical Manchester, Radical Bologna: they all make sense when you stop and think about it. Actually, there is one reason: money. A project of this kind (Radical Planet?) needs substantial capital beyond my limited resources. So, all you mega-wealthy left-wingers out there…”

Indeed, why stop at Radical Planet? I know he’s being playful, but it doesn’t seem inappropriate when Syson invokes lunar geography to explain the future of the series. “Just imagine it,” he tells me. “A Radical Sea of Tranquility…”

Radical Melbourne: A Secret History (2001) by Jeff & Jill Sparrow, published by the Vulgar Press
Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within (2004) by Jeff & Jill Sparrow, published by the Vulgar Press
Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History (2004) edited by Raymond Evans & Carole Ferrier, published by the Vulgar Press

The Vulgar Press: http://www.vulgar.com.au.