Kay Saunders

The dark shadow of white Australia: Racial anxieties in Australia in World War II

Abstract Although World War II was perceived as a race war, historical attention has almost exclusively been focused upon the Axis powers’ racial conceptualizations. Little scholarly research has been directed towards investigating the Allies’ internal racial attitudes and policies. Building upon long‐standing formulations that emerged from the process of colonial conquest, the rhetoric of racism in Australia was recast and expanded in order to address the unprecedented crisis of the war in the Pacific. Aboriginal people were thus portrayed as potential collaborators who would aid the invading Japanese; enemy aliens, most particularly the Italians, the Japanese and the Germans become sinister fifth columnists. Lastly, the introduction of large numbers of black GIs among the American forces challenged notions of racial and sexual purity. Australians were ultimately fighting to preserve a white British‐derived nation. The ‘race war’ on the Pacific frontline intensified racial awareness and allowed hysterica...

The Reception of Black American Servicemen in Australia During World War Ii: The Resilience of "White Australia"

The deployment of Black American service personnel in Australia from December 1941 challenged the basic precepts on which Commonwealth legislative and administrative policies were constructed. Commitment to racial homogeneity had, since 1901, demonstrated that bipartisan agreement and cooperation, at the political level, was possible over such a cardinal policy and practice. Certainly, no other issue in Australian politics and society could surmount class, gender, regional, and sectional interests so unanimously as adherence to strict principles of racial exclusiveness. The crisis of imminent invasion and the concomitant dependence and subordination to the United States in the early months of 1942 forged new imperatives and redirected standard approaches and priorities. The Commonwealth governments capitulation to the wider claims and powers of American policy directives starkly illustrates both the flexibility and the endurance of Australian internal procedures. Having been forced to accept the presence of Black GIs, both the Commonwealth and Queensland governments negotiated and established complex, interlinking patterns of segregation to contain this unwanted inclusion in the Allied forces. Aware of Australias defenselessness and vulnerability, with the Second Australian Imperial Force stationed in the Middle East from 1939 to late 1941, many Australians had initially regarded their Pacific Allies as omnipotent saviors; but the inclusion of Black

'The stranger in our gates': Internment policies in the United Kingdom and Australia during the two world wars, 1914-39

Total war in the twentieth century witnessed the unprecedented expansion of executive powers in liberal democratic societies. In Australia and the United Kingdom the primacy of common law and parliamentary responsibility was severely challenged and modified. Nowhere were these radical processes so readily identified than in the area of policy towards enemy aliens. Traditionally a liberal haven for refugees, England began modifying its policies with the Aliens Act of 1905. Though not ethnically specific this legislation began a systematic dismantling of earlier procedures. Australia, like other Dominions, never subscribed to these abstract notions of tolerance, introducing racially discriminatory legislation early within the attainment of self‐government. The First World War transformed the status of law‐abiding alien residents into the ‘enemy within the gates’, subject to internment and deportation. In Australia not only were enemy aliens interned but also those British‐born residents of enemy alien heritage might find themselves interned. Racial categorization counted more than nationality. In the Second World War regulations addressed the question of ideology as well as ethnicity. Again Australia was far more vigilant to protect British ethnic identity, interning non‐British residents who were neutral and Allied nationals. In Australia and the United Kingdom in both wars, all legal arguments concerning whether common law or extraordinary war measures had precedence were resolved in favour of executive rule and the imposition of arbitrary authority.

‘The question of the day’: The maintenance of racial rhetoric in Queensland, Australia: William Lane and Pauline Hanson as racial ideologues

Since the late nineteenth century Australian racial ideologues have identified retrogressive immigration policies and practices with the national interest. They have consistently argued that ethnic and racial diversity will led to rapid decay and national fragmentation. In the vast north‐east state of Queensland, the most racially diverse area of Australia historically, the arguments have been most persuasively articulated. Queensland has produced, not unsurprisingly, the most vehement and obsessive racial ideologues both on the left and right of politics. William Lane and Pauline Hanson, though separated by a century, both argue that the possibilities of imminent invasion from the north, the polluting effects on national strength from non‐British immigration and ethnic diversity will destroy national cohesion. The continued and widespread acceptance of these ideas demonstrates both the virulence and persistance of racial ideologies in Australia.

Visibility problems: Concepts of gender in Australian historical discourse∗

Feminist historiography of the 1970s challenged dominant paradigms by attempting to integrate ‘women’ into historical narratives. Gender relations studies have taken this re‐evaluation further by problematising categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’. Yet these endeavours have been fraught with conceptual and methodological difficulties as the range, complexity and interpenetration of categories of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion and region have been coterminously analysed.

Taking the International Spotlight: Pauline Hanson and Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party

Pauline Hansons One Nation Party (PHONP) held an extraordinary place in the Australian and international media from March 1996, when Hanson was elected to the House of Representatives. Hansons role as a charismatic leader idolised by supporters is unprecedented in postwar Australian politics and the leader and the party were totally identified, with Hansons name incorporated into that of the organisation when PHONP won 11 of the 89 seats in the Queensland Legislative Assembly in June 1998.