Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

“In Melbourne, the legend of the Cave Clan helped inspire a more directly political link between the drainage system and the unemployed with the celebrated Dole Army hoax” — Radical Melbourne 2, p. 136

Going underground in Melbourne Town, photo © Peter Ewer

Ever since its foundation, Melbourne has had a “wowser” reputation: stuffy, boring, conservative. We all know the famous quotes: Ava Gardner supposedly claimed that Melbourne was the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world; Jerry Seinfeld unequivocally stated that Melbourne was the “asshole” of the world.

I spoke with Jeff and Jill Sparrow about the series and Melbourne’s radical future.

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-– Simon Sellars, 2004
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>> What was the genesis of Radical Melbourne?

Jill: It all came from the “Secret History Tours” that Socialist Alternative ran, where we’d take people around to buildings and streets and talk about some of the radical history associated with them. The tours were surprisingly successful – it seemed that people found labour history more interesting and more real when we were able to take them to a site where something actually happened. We then realised we had enough material for a book.

>> When I was growing up, Melbourne filled me with a mixture of fear and wonderment. I remember my cynical older brother telling me that Melbourne was not a patch on London or any of the world’s great cities. “Where was the art?” he would rant. “The culture? The excitement?” During the course of your research, were you, like me, surprised at what you eventually uncovered about the place?

Jeff: Hell, yeah. I didn’t know very much about Melbourne’s history and, like many people, generally assumed the city was quite dull.

Jill: I was surprised at how much of Melbourne’s history is underwritten. And then, of course, there were particular stories that astonished me: the secret army, the workers’ commune organised by feminists, the underground bunkers. We generally tried to only include stories that were surprising in some way.

>> What was the reception like for the first book? Any criticisms, say, of the political viewpoint?

Jill: The reception has been surprisingly positive. A few critics said that we hammered home our political point of view, but we’re not too fazed by that. We never pretended to be anything other than left-wingers and we weren’t interested in writing an impartial history.

Jeff: Yeah, some people said we were hectoring, but bugger ‘em. They can write their own damn book.

>> Is there a history of activism in your family?

Jill: Our mum was (and is) a feminist involved in women’s groups in the ’70s. There’s a photo of her and some other women having a beer in a pub, protesting about the fact that women weren’t allowed to drink in the main bars of hotels. Mum was always a union member, and both my parents were Labor voters. Now, of course, they’re disillusioned with Labor like so many other people.

Jeff: Jill, Rob (our older brother) and myself were at Melbourne University in the late ’80s, when there was a fair bit of activism around because of the initial attacks on free education. We all responded to that. When the first Gulf War broke out, the ISO [International Socialist Organisation] just seemed like the only people who could both explain it and do something about it.

In 1992, the Sparrows were in some danger of actually going to jail for their political beliefs. Along with three other members of the International Socialist Organisation, Jeff and Jill were arrested in dawn raids two weeks after attending a 3000-strong rally in support of Austudy grants [grants for tertiary students] in March of that year. Charged with illegal assembly and incitement to riot, I wondered how they came to be prosecuted, and how they beat the charges…

Jeff: At the time, there was a series of quite militant demonstrations that provoked a degree of outrage from the usual quarters. When the police arrested a group of people at an Austudy demo, the crowd surrounded their van and eventually got them out. A few weeks later, they raided the houses of five ISO members and charged us all with illegal assembly and riot. But they were collective offences – illegal assembly applied to everyone in the crowd – yet they only arrested ISO members. So it was clearly political victimisation, especially since we weren’t playing much of a role in the situation with the van: we were too confused and disoriented.

Jill: It was quite a shock getting raided by 10 police at 4am in the morning, but after that it was just two years of organising a political defence campaign: lots of fundraising, public meetings, speaking on the radio and so forth. Fortunately, we had a huge amount of support from student unions, trade unions and civil liberties groups. People at the time were very worried about the precedent that a conviction would set.

>> In terms of threats to our personal freedom, is the situation different today?

Jeff: It’s much worse today. The security forces now have powers that they would only have dreamed about a decade or so ago. And, as the current situation in the Iraqi prisons show, if you give untrammelled power to police, they will exploit it. It’s a matter of time before someone in Australia gets done over good and proper.

>> How close were you to going to jail?

Jeff: Oh, I don’t know. In theory, the charges carried a ten-year jail sentence. Whether they would have imposed that on nice middle-class kids like us is a moot point. The older people arrested with us were in more danger.

>> You write about the impact of the May ‘68 riots and how it stemmed from protests started by French student unions. Looking at Melbourne’s student unions, it seems hard to believe that they could ever be capable of similar actions. In Melbourne, where will real revolution come from?

Jill: We saw a general strike against Kennett in 1992 that shut the city down and demonstrated that workers still wield an enormous collective power. More recently, we had the massive street marches against the war on Iraq, and the S11 protest at Crown Casino. If you combine all those things, maybe you’d have a feel for what revolutionary change in Melbourne might look like. Of course, it will probably look completely different to what we expect!

>> The first Radical Melbourne book had a nostalgic tone, but isn’t that a dangerous outlook? Surely in 100 years, people will look back on our era and see radicalism in art, politics and so on, that we perhaps cannot see because we are too close to it?

Jeff: Well, that’s why we wanted to write the second book, to show that we weren’t just harping about things that happened a long time ago. If anything, the recent history is more radical than the past.

Jill: It’s actually hard to write about mass movements of the past and not seem nostalgic, especially giving the current low levels of political struggle. The book was supposed to be an intervention into the present by demonstrating some of the ways that people have fought for political change in the past. Like Jeff says, we were keen to write the second volume so that we could bring the stories up to the present day. Finishing with the S11 demonstrations at Crown Casino was meant to indicate that we’re firmly on the side of troublemakers today – we’re not just reminiscing about demonstrations that are safely in the past.

>> When I first read the “urban disaster” novels of JG Ballard and the manifestoes of Guy Debord, I became fascinated by Melbourne’s flat surfaces; Ballard and Debord taught me to look beneath them, to uncover the psychopathologies that fermented there. Do you see any connection with Radical Melbourne and with what Debord and the Situationists did with their concept of psychogeography?

Jill: Have to pass on this one. If there is a connection, it would have to be coincidental as I’m struggling to remember anything about them!

Jeff: Well, we quote Debord in the intro about the tendency of a modern city to efface its history. But that’s as far as it goes. His Society of the Spectacle is an interesting book but politically we’re quite a distance away.

>> Radical Brisbane has just been published by Vulgar and Radical Sydney is being written. How did the series spread to Brisbane and Sydney? Are there plans for other cities to come on board?

Jeff: Ian Syson, our publisher, originally came from Brisbane and approached some activists and academics he knew up there. Sydney just seemed logical as Australia’ biggest city and in many ways the most important. As for future cities, you’d have to ask Ian. I suspect it probably depends on sales. I know at one point he was talking about Radical Cardiff (ie, Wales), but I think that’s fallen through.

Jill: Ian keeps trying to get me to write Radical Tasmania, but I’m not sure if that’s a joke or not.

>> How do you feel about spawning a socialist publishing franchise? Do you think it has the power to effect change – to, as Guy Rundle writes in the intro to Radical Melbourne 2, allow “the streets to call back”?

Jeff: Look, I’m not under any great illusions as to the impact you can have by writing. Most people who read these books will be mildly diverted for a while; well, hopefully. It’s not like they’re all going to run out and become revolutionaries. What I would like to think, though, is that the books might give some people heart that there’s a tradition of radicalism extending back into the past and hopefully into the future. Some of the stories might provide some ideas and some inspiration for activists. And that’s not a bad thing.

>> Does Brisbane and Sydney’s radical history differ from Melbourne’s? Are there any points of convergence?

Jeff: I don’t know Brisbane very well: I’ve never been there and I only know its history in the vaguest way. Brisbane people did have to deal with the impact of the Bjelke-Petersen government’s redevelopment – a lot of historic buildings were knocked down – but overall, I suspect there’s probably quite a lot of convergence. Even though these things are local histories, the political agenda comes from the outside world. Every city had to deal with the impact of WWI, the Russian revolution, the Depression, WWII, the Cold War, and so on.

Jill: Most of the stories in Radical Melbourne are about people fighting against wars, unemployment, for women’s rights, union rights etc – issues which would have presented themselves to people in each city. And, of course, lots of the radical organisations that we looked at were national organisations. I’m sure there are differences, too, but it’s hard to see them as being as significant than the similarities.

>> Speaking of which: Jeff, on the net you once wrote, “Political differences cannot be wished away, nor overcome by broad smiles and hearty handshakes all around”. For an ideology that strives to work towards the common good, why do socialist groups always seem opposed to each other and riven by petty differences? Is this the biggest problem facing radical politics in Melbourne today, rather than any threat from outside?

Jeff: The two things are related. The fact that our side has been on the defensive for so long naturally exacerbates splits and factionalism. It always happens during periods of defeat. Hopefully, when we have a few more victories, we will see a realignment which breaks through some of the historical disagreements. But in any case, the real forces in society aren’t on the left. I’m talking about the 99% of the population that has never heard of any of the groups on the Left. Once some of these people enter the arena, I suspect they will massively change the complexion of radical politics.

>> How do those struggles of the past that you document in the books inform what’s going on today, as Australia piggybacks America into war?

Jeff: In lots of different ways. Why are governments so keen to deny that Iraq is starting to resemble Vietnam? Because they know that the US, Australia and the other aggressors were forced out of Vietnam by a mass movement that spilled into a challenge of many other aspects of society. And that’s the last thing they want to see today. The other really obvious lesson is the importance of organisation. The great anti-war struggles – WW1 and Vietnam – depended upon someone taking a lead and providing structures that allowed people to participate. One of the problems today is that there are no organisations capable of playing that role. We can only hope that they emerge out of the chaos likely to ensue from Howard and Bush’s Iraq adventure.

>> In the first book, you wrote, “Even today, Melbourne is not a town you associate with artistic experimentation”. In the second book, you say the Communist Party critically informed the development of jazz and film. Are these two statements mutually exclusive, and do you still stand by the first statement?

Jeff: Actually, our mum hated that bit about artistic experiments! But I think the two arguments can still stand. The point is that there are two Melbournes. Respectable Melbourne is still very wowserish and staid. Think of the furore about film classification recently. Think of Piss Christ [Andres Serrano’s infamous art work that was attacked with a hammer by two youths, and eventually prevented from being exhibited by Christian interests]. On the other hand, there have always been people trying to do different things, whether it’s the Workers Art Club in the ’30s or those kids who go around stencilling things today, but they are generally in the margins.

>> In writing the second volume, did Melbourne still have the power to surprise you? Did you come across anything unexpected?

Jill: To be honest, most of it surprised me!

Jeff: The Bernie Heinze tunnel story surprised me [Heinze, a Communist Party member in the 1960s, built a secret cellar in his house to enable the Party publication, The Guardian, to continue]. Going down Anzac tunnel with the Cave Clan surprised me. The story about the Association [a secret army that plotted a postwar military coup] surprised me a bit, too.

>> Do you feel you have closed the lid on Radical Melbourne, with two volumes published? Have you purged whatever drove you to begin with? Or are you constantly looking to the future?

Jill: Well, there’s heaps more that could be written about Melbourne’s radical history – but hopefully someone else will do it. Jeff and I have worked together for about four years now and we definitely need a break from each other!

Jeff: I’d like to write something with a longer, more continuous narrative. At the moment, I’m really enjoying the Guido Baracchi project [Jeff is currently researching and writing a biography of Baracchi, one of the founders of the Australian Communist Party – a well-known intellectual, philanderer and long-time radical].

>> Jill, I understand you’ve lost your job at the State Library. Is this something you’d care to comment on?

Jill: I haven’t officially lost it yet, but along with 30 other people I’ve been named as someone likely to receive a “targeted redundancy”. I work at VICNET, a Victorian community network organisation run from the State Library of Victoria. Some of our funding is coming to an end, so Library management is looking to cut positions. It just so happens that all three union delegates, including myself, are being targeted. Obviously, we’re running a political and industrial campaign against their plans. It’s been a very strange time there, because on the one hand they’re supporting Radical Melbourne 2 – in fact, the State Library logo is on the back – but on the other hand, they’re sacking one of the co-authors along with all the radicals! I don’t know if they see the irony.

– Simon Sellars, 2004

…:: BIOS
>> Jeff Sparrow helped found Socialist Alternative and edited its magazine for two years. Since then, he has been involved in numerous student, union and community struggles. In 1999, Jeff won the $1000 Hal Porter Short Story competition, and is currently the reviews editor at Overland magazine. Radical Melbourne is his first book.

>> Jill Sparrow works as a Network Administrator at VICNET in the State Library, where she is also a union delegate for the CPSU. She has written for numerous student, union and socialist publications, but Radical Melbourne is her first book.

..:: LINKS
>> The Vulgar Press “Established in 1999 and dedicated to the publication of working-class and other radical forms of writing”
>> VICNET
>> VICNOT