The writer in a time of terror
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 14: The Trouble with Paradise
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Frank Moorhouse
Download the complete article PDF
Go to the FORUM and start a discussion thread about this article
Frank Moorhouse's biography and other articles by this writer
In my time as a writer, I have lived through three significant freedom of expression crises in Australia. This essay is my attempt to analyse how the threat of terrorism – which I see as real – should affect me as a "writer", which I use as short-hand for freedom of expression, not only for writers, poets and artists, but as the citizen's right to gather information, share it and discuss it. Living in a time of terror has also forced me to re-examine these beliefs in a way I hadn't done for decades – to see whether I had lost my certainty about the place, nature and role of free speech in a liberal democracy.
Watching case after case of interference with freedom of expression since the threat of terrorism manifested itself in our lives, I realised that some things were becoming unsayable, and that we were finding ourselves in a world where we no longer know what we are allowed to know and what we are allowed to say.
The cases I have in mind have come from new legislation enacted during the last few years, the use of existing legislation, amendments to existing legislation, and the behaviour of government agencies which have in turn changed the mood, spirit, and tone around freedom of expression in this country. I refer to the Acts and amendments collectively as "the anti-terrorist legislation" and have listed them on the Griffith REVIEW website. I have not turned my attention to the wider challenges to civil liberty.
I WAS AT HIGH SCHOOL, BUT STILL CAUGHT UP in the Cold War, in the 1950s.
Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies said then: "Can we recognise and deal with enemies of liberty only when they actually take up arms? ... Are we to treat deliberate frustration of national recovery, of economic stability and of proper defence preparations as a mere exercise of civil rights?" This mind-set is alive again, and as I test my thinking on freedom of expression it makes me anxious.
In October 1950, the Menzies Government passed a law banning the Communist Party of Australia. The Act was declared invalid by the High Court six months later, and Menzies then tried to ban the party by referendum in September 1951. This failed – just over half the electorate did not think it was a good idea. The freedom of communists to argue their theories of the overthrow of capitalism and to be members of an organisation was inseparably intertwined. In Australia, this struggle was seen as non-violent, but it was carried on in a world where the conflict between capitalist and communist systems was violent and potentially devastatingly destructive because nuclear weapons were in play.
I published my first short story at this time – and by the 1960s had quite a file with ASIO, both as an applicant for Commonwealth Literary Fund grants and because of my involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. When I recently read my file, I was hurt that Australian intelligence had overlooked the power and influence of the Sydney Balmain Anarchists – all seven of us, followers of non-violent anarchist theory.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, established in 1949 by the Chifley Labor Government, gave nearly all its efforts to surveillance of the Communist Party of Australia, its "front" organisations and the unions it led. Surveillance was extended to cover the Commonwealth Literary Fund and those writers who applied for grants and, for a time, their referees. In many ways, as a result, ASIO has the most comprehensive record of Australian writing of the 1950s and 1960s. They should publish it.
When you are doing archival research, you sometimes have a day when you find a hugely significant document and your mind lights up and you look around to see who you can share it with. I had such a moment in the National Archives in Canberra last year when I came across a minute of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1952.
The fund's memorandum recommending grants for that year came back from the Prime Minister's Office with a handwritten note in the margin: "In future all names put forward should be investigated by Security. This case is scandalous and embarrassing. RGM 21/2." Menzies was outraged by the recommendation that a grant be given to Judah Waten, a writer who had publicly expressed strong communist sympathies.
Security files were opened on writers with, in some cases surveillance carried out, including telephone tapping. Those writers thought to be connected in some way to the Communist Party (sometimes mistakenly) who were recommended for grants by the Advisory Board of the CLF were either denied these grants or the grants were deliberately delayed, sometimes for years. Passports were withheld from suspect writers and academics to prevent overseas travel to what ASIO perceived to be communist-related conferences and other activities.
We should not forget that writers are not always Simon Pure. Some are also spies, terrorists, mad, bad and dangerous to know. But the understanding until then was that grants should be given on the basis of talent, and no religious or political tests were to be applied.
THE SECOND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION CAMPAIGN in which I was involved took place in the late 1960s, when writers, students, lawyers and readers began a civil disobedience rebellion against sexual censorship in Australia by publishing underground, uncensored and unregistered newspapers made possible by offset printing, which could be done by anyone with minimal technical knowledge.
It is sometimes difficult to remember how censored Australia was – hundreds of books were banned (nearly all now considered mainstream), including James Joyce's Ulysses and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Australians arriving back from overseas had their luggage searched for banned books and magazines. In 1969, Phillip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint was declared a prohibited import and booksellers and publishers in four states were prosecuted.
It was said that if Martians had landed in Australia then and read our newspapers, magazines and literature, they would not have been able to learn how the human race reproduced.
Over the last fifty years Australian governments have censored swear words, blasphemy, offence to the monarchy, advocacy of communism, advocacy of anarchism, irreverence to religion, advocacy of political assassination, "horror" stories, advocacy of witchcraft, birth-control information, advocacy of the social benefits of prostitution, the advocacy of the social benefits of masturbation, opposition to marriage, advocacy of single-parent childbearing, the belittling or denigration of members of the armed forces, descriptions of lesbian or homosexual behaviour, descriptions of heterosexual sex, material offence to an allied nation and giving comfort to an enemy nation. If you find this list hard to believe, check the much longer list in Peter Coleman's 1962 work Obscenity, Blasphemy, Sedition: Censorship in Australia (Jacaranda).
The campaign against sexual censorship involved a dramatic change in our understanding of freedom of expression. It was hugely significant. Freedom of sexual expression was almost certainly a category not imagined by the great theorists, John Stuart Mill, the framers of the "rights of man", the declarations of the French Revolution and the American Bill of Rights. Even the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1950 were silent about such expression.
While the early theorists could have understood the urge to ban the Communist Party and would recognise the behaviour of governments confronted by terrorism, the sexual revolution was not what they had in mind when they argued for freedom of expression.
Our concern was with what we called "sexual politics", and the expansion of the "political" into the personal, including free expression of sexual information, thoughts and fantasy in fiction and in non-fiction. I was led to it not by a political position on freedom of expression, but more by being affronted that our young, honest writing was being censored, that we could not write short stories and poems as we wished. This was not only about four-letter words – which were banned and could be excised from a book, deleted from a play or trigger an arrest – but about portraying our sexual lives as we were living them, in the confusion in which we were living them. Peter Coleman, who was to become the Liberal Chief Secretary in NSW, said of those campaigning for wider sexual freedom, "...they seek to destroy all forms of our treasured society which include, family, church, and school and other institutions...it is porno-politics..."
Police raided the houses and broke into the cars of those involved with the underground papers in an attempt to stop publication; many were arrested and forty court cases on charges of obscenity were listed and some fought. Some of us spent time in cells and Wendy Bacon was jailed for a week at Silverwater prison.
To our surprise the battle was won.
In 1973, the Whitlam Labor government abolished censorship of the printed word, films and plays. Customs restrictions were removed and the court cases still pending did not proceed. As a result of this campaign, sexual subjects such as contraception and homosexuality could at last be discussed in public. For the first time, we were reading and writing for free papers with no sexual censorship.
I was recently reminded that in 1970, an American maverick Lyle Stuart published The Anarchist Cookbook which told how to make bombs, pick locks and commit other crimes was also banned in Australia, although I remember copies being around. This did not come for discussion in our group, but the distinction was clear to me. The argument against publishing a book which teaches you how to make bombs is that the bomb may one day arrive in your mail box.
And now I am back facing the questions of censorship in an atmosphere different to that of the Cold War or the sexual revolution. It has required me to take months away from my other writing to work through my position again.