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  Issue No 26 Official Organ of LaborNet 13 August 1999  

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History

Edmund Who?


John Passant lifts the veil on Our first Prime Minister, a bloke called Barton.

I love that ad asking who our first Prime Minister was. I especially like the girl who trills "I don't know". There's something very attractive about a good trill. Maybe that's why Scottish accents seem interesting and French ones captivating.

But it doesn't really matter what accent you admit your lack of knowledge in. The fact remains that the majority of Australian people have no idea who our first PM was. Good.

Think about it. 50 years from now, when Australians are asked who our leader was at the beginning of the twenty first century, we'll have no idea. John Howard will have oozed into the swamp of historical mediocrity.

Howard's legacy will be like Barton's - ignorance. That's because, like Barton, there will be nothing memorable about Howard's reign. Ordinary people remember their leaders, if at all, for their attempts to better their lives.

What is John Howard giving us? A jobless recovery. The destruction of a real republic. The failure to apologise to aborigines. A preamble that through the use of the word "mateship" celebrates the physical closeness and bonding of virile males because of the lack in the last century of females in the Outback. The implementation of "a new tax system" that is so modern it has its philosophical roots in the 1930s. Such is his greatness.

The philosophy underlying the Barton ad is that history is about who, not why. Our rulers don't want us to actually think about history. They just want us to know about some of their hero figures. Of course their champions are always establishment figures.

Isn't it interesting that there's no explanation of Barton himself, or how it was he became PM.

For a country steeped in alcohol Barton sets a good example. Our first Prime Minister was known to his enemies as Toss-Pot Barton. According to Manning Clark, Barton often began the day with rum and milk, as that, he said, kept a man rosy and genial. For afternoon tea he preferred whisky and water to the beverage the ladies pestered him to drink. All his adult life he believed in what he called `a steady irrigation of the alimentary canal with spirits and soda'.

While some politicians today might still practise the art of intemperance, none of them would dare espouse it. Imagine the present Prime Minister having a quick belt for brekkie to start him on his way. Come to think of it, maybe we would be better governed if he followed Barton's drinking habits.

So how did Barton become our first PM? Barton, because of his leadership of the Federation movement and his liberal centrist politics was the natural choice among the men and women of property to manage the country. They knew the profit system would be safe for them in his hands.

Yet no-one today knows him. Toby Toss-Pot has disappeared from our history.

Why? Everywhere there is apathy. Most people don't give a hoot about politics. The Republic debate is boring. People don't care who our present Prime Minister is, let alone who the first Prime Minister, long dead, was.

Apathy is not a recent development. In the run up to Federation the maximum turn out in the vote was 46 per cent.

46 per cent! Federation was important for the more intelligent sections of the economic elite. But for ordinary working people, battling to survive each day, it made little difference what particular form capitalist rule took. So they didn't bother to vote.

The bourgeoisie of today want to remind us of Barton's rule as part of their attempts to create or reinforce the myth of a united nation. But class differences are irreconcilable, and although workers may not engage in industrial struggle every day, they express these differences in a variety of ways.

They have no idea about Barton. Or Howard, really. One hundred years ago, federation was a yarn for working people. Today the republic is a yarn.

Alienation from the process of rule, and the daily struggle to stay afloat, mean that most ordinary Australians leave it to others to govern on their behalf. They are not part of the system that rules them.

Working people are doubly alienated. They are alienated from what they produce and they are alienated from the way they are governed. Political alienation protects and reinforces economic alienation. We live in an essentially undemocratic, exploitative society.

It was true too in the run up to Federation. Federation was a union designed to contain democracy rather than spread it. The whole process was about furthering the profit system and protecting those who lived off the labour of others.

It is not surprising then that the majority of working people were not inspired by Federation. They had no real say in the system Federation set up. So they had no interest in it.

Alienation is one of the defining characteristics of capitalist society. It's why people don't care about Barton. It's why the ARM's Republic of the rich has failed to capture the public imagination. And it's why, in a generation, John Howard will be a richly deserved obscurity.


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*    Contact our history editor, Dr Lucy Taksa

*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 26 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Republic: Looking Forward
With the Republic referendum threatening to run off the rails, supporters of an Australian Head of State need to reclaim the debate from the lawyers.
*
*  Interview: Chatting With Kate
Workers Online�s first ever Net night was held in the Yap chatroom this week. Labor IT spokeswoman Kate Lundy stepped up to the plate to talk Politics in a Wired World.
*
*  Unions: Simply the Best!
A major international study has ranked Australian seafarers the world's best.
*
*  Technology: Unions Log In to Online Yap
A Conference on Unions and Information Technology for the Australasian Region will be held in Melbourne: November 15-17.
*
*  History: Edmund Who?
John Passant lifts the veil on Our first Prime Minister, a bloke called Barton.
*
*  International: Turkish Miners' Leader Murdered
Semsi Denizer, President of the Turkish miners' union Genel Maden-Is, was shot dead outside his home last Friday evening.
*
*  Labour Review: What's New at the Organising Centre
Read the latest issue of Labour Review, Labor Council's resource for students and activists.
*
*  Review: Working Class Boys
silverchair might have a new sound, but they�re part of a rich Australian music tradition.
*

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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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Letters to the editor
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»  Some Views Of Einstein
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»  Call for Wage Freeze Action
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