Prime Ministerial rhetoric from Whitlam to Howard

Prime Ministerial rhetoric from Whitlam to Howard

by James Curran

Published by Melbourne University Press 2004

The Power of Speech, Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image
by James Curran
Chapter Two :The Verdant Vista of the New
Gough Whitlam and the 'new nationalism'

Melbourne University Press 2004

We are not a nation of philistines; we should not be content with an image abroad based mainly on Barry McKenzie. Gough Whitlam, February 1975 (1)

In 1974 the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Alan Renouf, proposed that Australian diplomats should wear a new uniform for official engagements. The so-called 'Renouf rig' was a Mao-style suit which sported embroidered sprigs of golden wattle on chokered collars. Instantly ridiculed by the press, Renouf explained his foray into the sartorial scene with the claim that Australian diplomats had become 'pale imitations' of the British and Americans on the world stage. One mischievous political commentator asked whether, if the new diplomatic rig did not eventuate, Australian ambassadors at overseas posts might instead be asked to greet arriving guests with cries of 'Cooee', serve fried witchetty grubs as an hors d'oeuvre at receptions, or arrange didgeridoo recitals as embassy entertainment. The Sydney Morning Herald did not know 'whether to laugh or weep at the latest genuflection to the vogue of nationalism', but declared Australian representatives abroad should be neither 'ugly' nor 'synthetic'. The 'Renouf rig' was dismissed as 'phoney, unnatural and thoroughly un-Australian fancy dress'.(2)

While this proposal was laughed out of court, such an attempt to cultivate diplomatic distinction did reveal one of the more identifiable ambitions of the era of 'new nationalism', which reappeared with the election of Gough Whitlam as prime minister in 1972. The desire to project an Australia free from the 'apron-strings' of its 'great and powerful friends', or at least to be treated with equal respect on the world stage, had called for the nationalist message as well as new symbols and expressions to define Australia's relationships with Britain and the United States.

The Whitlam era is of crucial significance in understanding Australia's changing attitude to nationalism. As Australians faced up to the British abandonment of its Empire, looked more towards Asia and gradually shed the idea of being a homogeneous British nation, they began to identify positively with the country's ethnic diversity. But in doing so, the question of what bound the nation together had never been more relevant. What would replace the ties of 'kith and kin', the idea of being 'white and British'? The legacy of the British connection was no longer clear - was it an anachronism that had 'thwarted' Australia's 'march to nationhood', the bequest of a genial political culture in which the classic British liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance had fostered an acceptance of diversity, or was it irrelevant in a post-nationalist, 'multicultural' society?

For some, Gough Whitlam's style and policies provided the answer to this question. For these Australians the Whitlam era constituted a revival of 'radical nationalist' hopes and visions. As Geoffrey Serle wrote in 1973, 'The sense of national independence and self-reliance has perhaps increased in recent years after a long period when fear and the long habit of dependence on a great power held Australia back from full nationhood and inhibited development of an identity.' Australia in his view encapsulated Ernest Gellner's concept of a 'sleeping beauty' nation, with Whitlam as its Prince Charming giving the kiss of life to a dormant, distinctive national spirit, the assertion of Australian 'independence' in foreign policy and the fulfilment of the socialist vision for a more progressive society. Into the void left by the decline of British race patriotism some commentators placed the vague, loosely defined concept of 'new nationalism'. In the words of historian Stephen Alomes, 'Gough Whitlam successfully rode the waves of the new nationalism' into government.(3) Only five years after it had been pinned to the rhetoric and policies of the Gorton era, the 'new nationalism' was quickly recycled to label Whitlam as the great prophet of national renewal and Gough Whitlam social change. Its revival, however, revealed more about the 'world-view' of those who resuscitated the term than it did about the outlook of Whitlam himself. A constant theme of Whitlam's speeches as prime minister was that Australia's relationships with traditional friends and allies, which he maintained were the 'essential foundations' of Australian foreign policy, were to remain basically unaltered.

Far from being the great moment of national self-awakening, the 'new nationalism' was a more moderate adjustment to the Australian self-image, one that spoke with greater self-confidence and self-assertion but nevertheless maintained a careful, critical distance from a European-derived concept of nations and nationalism.

Whitlam's world-view

DEO, ECCLESIAE, PATRIAE
The promised time is drawing near
The everlasting reign of peace;
The aspirations men hold dear
Will make their ancient discords cease.
The lessons learned of lands grown old
Will blossom in an age of Gold.
. . .
Our country scorns the tyrant state
In which the ancient empires stood;
Free nations must co-operate
And aim to serve the common good:
A foreign clime or coloured skin
Will not disguise that men are kin.(4)

These are the first and fifth stanzas of a poem written by Gough Whitlam during his final year at Canberra Grammar School. Whitlam structured the poem around the trinity of 'God, Church and Fatherland', the school's motto. This six-stanza poem contained the essence of Whitlam's 'world-view' - a classical humanism which decreed that all men were equal regardless of race, colour or creed; a liberal internationalism that saw in the co-operation of nations the best means for the preservation of peace and a contempt for the legacy of imperialism. The themes of equality and interdependence, intolerance of racism and contempt for colonialism would form the core of Whitlam's approach to international affairs. The idealism and unbridled optimism that sustained the poem's message, while no doubt soon to be tempered by the relentless march of totalitarian regimes across Europe - regimes which stood for the absolute devotion and submission to the fatherland and an exclusive racial homogeneity - nevertheless must have reinforced his belief in 'free nations' and his commitment to co-operation for the 'common good'.

When Whitlam left Canberra Grammar in 1934 a valedictory note in the school's magazine, the Canberran, recorded that 'His verse translations of the Greek and Roman poets are remarkable for their accuracy of rendering and facility of expression, and have gained high praise from competent critics.' Whitlam's translations of various passages from Homer, Lucretius, Catullus and Horace displayed a passion and interest beyond the call of rudimentary learning. When he defended a mock epic poem he had written for the Canberran, Whitlam encouraged his readers not to be swayed by passing literary fashions or trends. Instead, in a clear statement of the high regard in which he held English literature, he urged 'greater attention to Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley and Keats, poets in whom poetry and the poetic mingle in the most pleasing way.' He then declared:

Above all, I would hope for a greater observance in criticism, as in life, of the Golden Mean of Greek Philosophy, the aurea mediocritas of Horace, which avoids excess either way, and which, without dullness on the one hand or eccentricity on the other, affords the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number.

In the young Whitlam, therefore, was a highly developed sense of the need for a life philosophy and the importance of the great works of literature in finding the keys to cultural refinement and contentment. This enthusiasm for history, the classics and English literature caused one of his contemporaries at the school to observe that Whitlam 'was a particularly good example of the traditional pedagogue, who, by some strange caprice of Fate happened to be attending school as a pupil instead of as a master'.(5) Yet though Whitlam's poem on God, Church and Fatherland may well have captured the essence of his world-view and shown him to be captivated by the classical, English and European heritage, it did not overwhelm him. In another poem, pondering how Australia and his identity connected to this old-world heritage, he embraced the promise of the 'verdant vista of the new' in a sonnet:

Youth and Tradition

Within Australia's shores, where men are cold
To learning's quickening influence as yet,
The man of arts is likely to regret
The benefits our solitudes withhold:
He yearns for countries where traditions old
Of music, letters, art are proudly set,
Where Florence, Paris, Weimar still beget
A recollection of the Age of Gold.

Yet times there are, though culture's rays endue
Those peoples with a charm that men revere,
When spite the heritage of great and true
The soul must crave our younger atmosphere:
We have the verdant vista of the New,
New skies to scale, new paths to pioneer.(6)

Australian indifference to intellectual endeavour was disconcerting for Whitlam as a young 'man of arts' and as one who was deeply attracted to the old world heritage. The frustration was at being so distant from the civilisations that were shaping his world-view. Yet Whitlam was by no means dejected at such a cultural and spiritual distance between 'youth' and 'tradition'. His classicism was devoid of the 'cultural cringe' and his lament for Australia's isolation, her inexperience and unsophisticated nature are overtaken by his enthusiasm for a new land unburdened by the weight of antiquity. Whitlam wrote this poem when he was eighteen years old. Its embrace of an Australian 'new world' vision contrasted sharply with that of R G Menzies who, in a schoolboy poem written in 1912 and dedicated to the Animi Patrum (the spirits of our fathers), paid homage to British heroes, saints and martyrs as eulogised in the Reverend W H Fitchett's Deeds That Won the Empire. As Menzies put it, 'Well for the might and glory of our Empire That their surpassing deeds should stir our own'.(7) It was an old-world heritage that forever sustained Menzies' British race patriot world-view.

The seeds of the Whitlam world-view were sown by his father, H F E (Fred) Whitlam. A senior Canberra public servant and Australian representative at United Nations conventions, Fred Whitlam transmitted to his son a lasting appreciation for the classical tradition, a commitment to the promotion of international understanding and the pursuit of excellence in the public arena, as well as a contempt for racial prejudice.

Gough Whitlam himself has confirmed his father as the dominant intellectual influence in his early years, recalling that 'he created an environment in which I could follow up or gain ideas'. Whitlam's adviser and speechwriter Graham Freudenberg attempted to capture the prevailing atmosphere of Whitlam's domestic environment: 'words and concepts like peace, honour, efficiency, skills, creativity and excellence were used with some meaning and without embarrassment'.8 The Whitlam household was one in which the discussion of current affairs and political ideas was encouraged. Fred Whitlam maintained a huge library in which the predominant subjects were history, theology, sociology, English literature and the Greek and Roman classics. Gough's sister, Freda, has recalled her father's idealism and that he 'made us very conscious of his hopes for the nation . . . we knew we were living in the national capital, it was very important for us . . . we were creating a national capital for Australia'. Thus Whitlam's father, along with the experience of living in Canberra, helped focus his mind on the idea of Australia. In his memoirs Whitlam traced his concern for urban and regional development to his childhood in Canberra: 'I was able to absorb the great advantages of a planned city, especially one built by a single authority under the control of national government'.(9)

It was ironic that Australia's 'bush capital' of the 1930s in fact sowed the seeds of Whitlam's subsequent definition of Australia as an 'urban nation'. Fred Whitlam was appointed to the position of Commonwealth Crown Solicitor in 1936. He was also secretary of the association that founded Canberra University College and later the Australian National University. Along with Sir Robert Garran, he promoted cultural affairs in the new federal capital. He was president of the Canberra Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and accompanied Dr H V Evatt, Australian External Affairs Minister, to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946. Between 1950 and 1954 he was the Australian representative on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where he helped develop the principles of the Universal Declaration into the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In his 1959 Robert Garran Oration Fred Whitlam not only presented a clear and coherent expression of his world-view, he gave an insight into some of the influences that undoubtedly helped to shape Gough Whitlam's ideas. The oration revolved around the classical Greek concept of arête--the pursuit of excellence--and the Roman ideal of humanitas, which he translated as 'international fellowship', but which translates more broadly as 'civilisation' or a love of humankind.

Arete constituted the ideal of supreme achievement pursued by Greek athletes and warriors; but it also had the connotation of excellence in the public arena, of being the 'best' citizen who gave a life of service to the state. In this oration Whitlam senior connected these values of arête and
humanitas to the character of leadership and the desired role for Australia in world affairs.

Fred Whitlam's key themes were the origins of an Australian national identity, the belief in international fellowship and the proposition that the nation's 'destiny' lay in Asia. He argued that Australian identity had been sustained by 'the Imperial systems which are part of our heritage, those of Britain and Rome'. Where the predominant feature of British imperialism had been the development of the rule of law, Whitlam agreed with former British prime minister Herbert Asquith and his assertion that Rome 'founded, developed and systematized the jurisprudence of the world'. Yet 'behind Rome was Greece', and Whitlam drew authority for his classical approach from the Australian scholar Gilbert Murray, former professor of Greek at Oxford University. Drawing on Murray's 1921 essay 'The value of Greece to the Future of the World', Whitlam reminded his audience that the ancient Greeks were 'our spiritual ancestors', who had founded the idea of an individual life based around the concepts of 'Freedom, Reason, Beauty, Excellence and the pursuit of Truth' and - notably - 'an international life aiming at the fellowship between man and man'. The ability of the Greeks to foster these values derived from a strong self-consciousness.

The Greeks of Athens of the fifth century BC were very conscious of what they stood for and they were confident and justly proud that what they stood for had, as they said, been 'woven into the stuff of other men's lives'. The empires of Athens and Rome have passed and the British Empire is merging into a Commonwealth of Nations. Imperialism is no longer the language of civilisation, but the dominion that was exercised in each has left some legacy of good, a good that, despite memories of the colonial past, has been woven into the stuff of other men's lives.(10)

Here Whitlam senior invoked the sentiments of Pericles' Funeral Oration to lend authority to his belief in the need for societies to know themselves. Australia's imperial heritage, since it derived from a classical Western tradition, had outweighed any negative legacy of colonialism. Whitlam senior did not lament the passing of the age of imperialism, especially British imperialism. As a man self-consciously 'of the British tradition', who believed that 'parliamentary democracy provides the best political system for the ordering of a humane organized community life' and who preferred to use the classification of 'peoples or societies' rather than 'nations', he welcomed the post-imperial era when the pursuit of peace would become the pre-eminent goal of humankind. Australia, he said, stood for 'international cooperation through the United Nations' and had to aspire to take a 'growing share in the building of a newer world'. This commitment to fostering international understanding, and its infusion with Greco-Roman concepts of excellence and universal fellowship, were viewed by Fred Whitlam as the ideal foundation for the development of a new regional consciousness in Australia, and he passionately advocated closer ties with the nations of South-East Asia - 'for it is there that Australia's encounter with destiny is at its sharpest, its most critical, its most challenging'. Australia, he argued, needed to display greater sensitivity to the Asian mind.

When Gough Whitlam left Sydney University in 1942 to join the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)--he applied to enlist on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor--the valediction in St Paul's College magazine was adamant that it had captured the essence of his world-view: 'He was above all a classical scholar and he ordered his life according to this conception of values.'(11)

Clearly two of the core values intensified in Whitlam by the influence of his father and by his classical education were those of arête and humanitas. Whitlam's socialism was fashioned in relation to these classical values - a commitment to a common humanity, the equal dignity of all peoples and the brotherhood of man. Education rather than experience had compelled him to ponder and reflect upon the great problems in human affairs.

Whitlam the parliamentarian

Whitlam was elected to Parliament as the member for the outer-western Sydney seat of Werriwa in November 1952. In his early political speeches he did not invoke the thoughts or writings of the great socialist thinkers, nor did he even explicitly appeal to a British Labour socialist tradition. The promotion of equality and the provision of opportunity were the abiding themes that informed his response to national and international questions. In Whitlam's world-view the great tradition linking the modern parties of social reform to the American and French Revolutionaries was their shared 'tradition of optimism about the possibility of human reason'.

The major challenge to this sense of optimism, however, was the achievement of Labor reforms within the Australian Constitution. In his 1957 Chifley Memorial Lecture, Whitlam expressed his frustration at the limits inherent in the Constitution: 'The way of the reformer is hard in Australia. Our parliaments work within a constitutional framework which enshrines Liberal policy and bans Labor policy.'(12)

This frustration at impediments to reform, as well as his resulting desire to modernise the Australian Constitution, explains much of Whitlam's motivation in entering political life. As a young RAAF airman stationed at Gove in the Northern Territory, he had campaigned passionately within his squadron to advocate a 'Yes' vote to the 1944 'powers' referendum. The pedagogue of the classics had become the pedagogue of reforming the Australian Constitution. This referendum, introduced by Labor Prime Minister John Curtin, sought to continue the enlarged wartime powers of the Commonwealth Government into the period of post-war reconstruction and would have allowed it to make laws concerning employment, organised marketing, companies, monopolies, prices, overseas investment, national health and Aboriginal affairs.

For Whitlam, reflecting his father's belief in the unrivalled capacity of a strong, federal government to solve national problems, the argument was simple: Commonwealth efficiency should prevail over states' rights. He later equated the loss of the 1944 referendum with the ignition of his own desire to overcome the limitations imposed by the Australian Constitution:

My interest in constitutional matters stems from the time when John Curtin was Prime Minister. The Commonwealth Parliament's powers were then at their most ample and it was constitutionally, if not always politically, more open to a Labor government to carry out its policies than it is in peace time. John Curtin, however, saw that he was presiding over a passing phase. He was not content with the paradox that the Labor party was free to enact its policies in times of war alone. Accordingly, in 1944, he sponsored a referendum to give the Federal parliament post-war powers. His motives for holding the referendum were based on patriotism and experience. He argued the case with his full logic and eloquence. The opposition to the referendum was spurious and selfish. The arguments were false. My hopes were dashed by the outcome, and from that moment I determined to do all I could to modernise the Australian Constitution.(13)

The loss of that referendum, Whitlam reflected as prime minister, was 'thirty lost years in building a better Australia'. Nevertheless it was significant that Whitlam saw Curtin's patriotism as expressed in his desire to overcome constitutional restraints. This inspired in Whitlam a vision of Curtin as a 'noble failure', a man of peace compelled to lead the nation in war. Whitlam's Curtin was neither the icon of consensus politics, as he became for Bob Hawke, nor the 'radical national' hero defying Churchill over the return of Australian troops in 1942, as he became for Paul Keating, but a leader 'born to lead this nation in times of peace and in the paths of peace'.(14) For Whitlam, a Labor government should ultimately be concerned with social and constitutional reform.

Whitlam had joined the Labor Party while still in military uniform in 1945, at a time when both the Labor platform and its prime minister, Ben Chifley, were still committed to the policy of nationalisation as the best means of achieving Labor's socialist objective. For Whitlam, Chifley's failure to nationalise the banks meant 'Nationalisation became more a symbol of ideological purity for the radicals of the Party than a positive commitment to practical social reform.'(15)

In his Curtin Memorial Lecture of 1961, he declared the challenge for democratic socialism to be 'the creation of opportunities rather than the imposition of restraints. Within our own nation we do not have to ration scarcity but to plan abundance'. This confidence derived largely from a conviction that the sustained period of post-war economic growth would continue largely unabated into the future. In these circumstances Whitlam defined the Labor Party's socialist objective as 'limited, negative, and apologetic' and one which made 'little allowance for the creative scope of socialist measures'. Furthermore, nationalisation had by this time become 'the most difficult and least important aspect of socialism for an Australian government to achieve'. Accordingly, Whitlam argued for a more practical alternative to nationalisation, which involved a strong national government initiating public enterprise. Having observed Menzies' use of Section 96 of the Australian Constitution, which allowed the parliament to make financial grants to the states 'on such terms and conditions as the parliament thinks fit', Whitlam argued that 'The Australian government is as constitutionally free as any other national government to initiate public enterprise internally or internationally'.(16)

For Whitlam, an Australian government's financial hegemony was interpreted as the best means of achieving Labor's reforms. Whitlam had advocated this more expanded role for the Commonwealth Government in his earliest speeches to the parliament. Speaking on the financial relationship between the Commonwealth and the states in 1953, Whitlam expressed the hope that the Commonwealth would in the future assume complete responsibility for education, health, electric power, national development and justice:

Honorable members on this side of the house believe that the Commonwealth must completely occupy those fields. Once we have taken the first step we must march right through the field . . . At best federation is a compromise, a temporary stage in our political evolution. The States are neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring; neither national bodies nor local government bodies. They have not the means to be national and have not the time to be provincial. We do not advocate centralization [sic], we advocate unification.

An active and predominant role for the Commonwealth across a wide range of portfolios lay at the heart of Whitlam's democratic socialism. These sentiments echoed the Labor Party's stance on Commonwealth-State relations in the period following World War I, in which the goal of unification took precedence over the principles of federalism. Whitlam himself was subsequently, at the 1971 ALP Conference, to remove the unification position in favour of a more balanced arrangement between Commonwealth, state and local governments for the provision of services and development of resources.(17)

Whitlam's socialism was to be achieved through parliamentary democracy. At the 1955 Summer School of the Australian Institute of Political Science, which focused on the theme 'Liberty in Australia', Whitlam responded vigorously to views expressed by Liberal MP Professor F A Bland. Bland had equated socialism with political instability and argued that its identification of politics with economics allowed it to demand loyalty to its dictums over and above the electorate and parliament.

Taking issue with Bland's further claim that governments were responsible for the abridgement of liberty, Whitlam attacked the 'crimes committed in the name of liberty by private enterprise', such as price-fixing, rationing and regimentation imposed by private companies. He countered that 'the essential of parliamentary government is that governments are responsible to parliament and parliament is responsible to the people'. Whitlam then looked to history:

British history shows that Parliament has been our great liberating force. Parliament has conferred political freedom on those represented in it, first of all the barons and squires and then the merchants and now all adults. There is no freedom without equality. Parliament alone can give equality of opportunity and thereby increase liberty for all. If we are to have economic equality of opportunity, which is the next stage in the advance of liberty, we must have effective parliamentary government and, accordingly, dispense with fetters on parliament rather than contrive them.(18)

By history and convention, then, the British parliamentary system had come to symbolise the chief instrument of equality and liberty. For him, the evolution of this system constituted part of the genius of the British peoples, and the achievement of reform under the Crown therefore represented the proper use of political power. Speaking before the 1969 ALP Conference, Whitlam gave further expression to the foundation of his democratic socialism: 'the belief that in a modern society the common purposes and needs of a community will only be served fairly and fully through the action of their elected governments'.(19)

This 'underlying philosophy' held that it was the community, through the parliament, that could provide better access to, and improved standards for, housing, health and education, thereby improving quality of life and increasing the sense of security in people's everyday lives.

Thus as the 'proper extension of political democracy', a 'philosophy about the value of man', and 'an international concept concerned with the happiness of man everywhere', Whitlam's socialist faith reinforced his hopes for a better, more peaceful world. In the mid-1960s this led to his trenchant opposition to the White Australia policy. In asserting the equality of all peoples he declared that: 'No socialist party should have in its platform a policy, however qualified, that is, or could be, interpreted as a racialist one. A migrant who could contribute to our community should not be barred on the ground that he is not white.'(20) It was thus 'ideologically intolerable and morally indefensible' that a socialist party maintain adherence to a policy of racial discrimination. Such a stance inevitably brought Whitlam into conflict with his party leader Arthur Calwell, who remained a vigorous defender of White Australia.

Whitlam has reflected that 'During the time of Menzies and Calwell it would have been impossible for either of our parties to change the policy', since the very subject of White Australia was 'taboo . . . we were always discouraged from ever raising it'.(21) This was a more palatable way of referring to the consensus between both parties on the need to maintain Australia as a predominantly homogeneous, British nation. At the Citizenship Convention of 1966 Whitlam again discussed the abhorrence of the White Australia policy. In his view, the change was driven not only by morality but also by the need to forge a new image of Australia in Asia. As Whitlam remarked in 1966, Australia's 'effective political involvement in Asia will depend on removing exclusive attitudes to wealth and race from our community'.(22)

Whitlam's world-view in the Cold-War era is best seen in his contribution to the foreign policy debates in the Commonwealth parliament. The two main political parties in Australia at this time brought different perspectives and different assumptions to their understanding of how best to respond to this global crisis. The Labor Party, while maintaining a bi-partisan commitment to close association with Britain and the
United States, nevertheless evinced a profound faith in the capacity of the United Nations, displayed sympathy for the colonial independence movements in Asia and Africa and looked to pragmatic compromise and realism as the best approaches to dealing with the Soviet Union and Communist China. The Liberal and Country parties, on the other hand, believed the United Nations to be, in the words of one its members, a 'broken reed'. They feared the collapse of the European empires and the process of decolonisation which threatened to leave Australia vulnerable in Asia. Over and above these concerns they saw the spectre of international communism, which made it difficult for the conservatives to differentiate between Asian nationalism and Asian communism.

Along with the Irish-Catholic-based Democratic Labor Party (DLP) they considered international communism a grave challenge to both western ideals and security.(23) The different responses, therefore, to the Cold War and the rise of Asian nationalism added new complexities to Australia's understanding of its role in world affairs. Whitlam's world-view during this time was first and foremost expressed in terms of a progressive realism. It was 'progressive' since it rejected the strategies of containment, forward defence and ideological confrontation and repudiated the view that power was the decisive factor in international relations. Much like his father, Whitlam saw the need to foster international understanding and to promote the co-operation of nations. He accepted the irreversible facts of great-power politics and saw in the United Nations the principal means by which smaller powers, such as Australia, could best hope to influence the great powers and to lessen the chance of further military conflict between them. In his Roy Milne Lecture of 1963 Whitlam considered Australia's changing international position.

Noting that the 'spirit of nationalism which swept Europe between Napoleon and Hitler is now sweeping Africa and Asia', Whitlam saw no security in remoteness: 'The captains and kings of Europe have departed from our area . . . Forces very largely outside our control are forcing us into a fundamental re-examination of our position as an isolated and European community'. Much like Holt's subsequent remark that the nation had been 'jolted by events to adulthood', Whitlam's remarks highlighted the extent to which external 'forces' were the most critical in initiating a process of national re-assessment.

Australia had been 'driven rapidly' from being part of a 'familiar European world' to being in an 'unfamiliar Afro-Asian world'. Denying that the world situation could be explained by a simple dichotomy between freedom and slavery, communism and democracy, Whitlam asserted that Australian interests were not served well by 'moralistic affirmations of our solidarity with the Western powers and ritualistic denunciations of the communist powers'. While he maintained the importance of the ANZUS alliance, Whitlam gave great importance to the United Nations as 'the world legislature and executive which it could and should become': 'Australia must strive above all things and more than most nations for the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. The ultimate security of our nation and the ultimate survival of civilization alike demand it.'(24)

As for his father, so for Gough Whitlam had the United Nations become the institutional embodiment of humanitas. 'Australia is a peripheral nation,' he told the parliament in 1965. 'The strength of such nations lies in international bodies.' He proclaimed H V Evatt to be the 'champion of the small powers' and praised his vision of the United Nations 'as the only means of restraining and employing the power of large nations.'(25) For Whitlam, the world was not one where 'red menaces' or 'yellow perils' were coiled springs waiting to pounce on a vulnerable Australia. Nowhere was this progressive realism more apparent than in his approach to China. The inescapable fact of world politics was that Russia and China, regardless of their communism, were both great powers:

Chinese power and influence must be accepted . . . It is a fact of life which we have to accept, and we have to learn to live with it in the same way in Asia as we have learned to live with Russia in Europe. Peace in the area will depend on an accommodation between China and the West.(26)

For Whitlam, one of the prime examples of the United Nations' ability to prevent aggression and war, and thus achieve such accommodation between East and West, was its handling of the Cuban crisis in 1962. Pointing out Barbara Tuchman's book August 1914 had been required reading for President John F Kennedy's cabinet, Whitlam mused: 'There is no question that President Kennedy and all Americans in a position to determine these matters were aware of the fatal momentum which can come from mobilisation, and which did come in August 1914. If there had been United Nations machinery at that time we would have been spared the First World War'.(27) While this argument as applied to the Cuban crisis derived more from political expediency and idealism rather than an objective assessment, it did point to Whitlam's preference in invoking the lessons of 1914 as an argument against military aggression rather than, as he put it, 'the Munich syndrome', the idea that the Western democracies of the 1930s failed to realise the evils of fascism and Nazism and move more decisively to halt Hitler at the September 1938 Munich Conference. Unlike many Western leaders of this era, he believed that a 'Munich-generated fear of appeasement' had been used to distort the conduct of international affairs in the post-war period, particularly in the 1956 Suez crisis and the Vietnam War.(28)

For Whitlam then, the Cuban crisis had significant implications for Australia's view of the world and the great powers: 'It is quite plain that the United Nations in the future . . . is the great hope for countries of our size to ensure that the colossi do not become embroiled with each other and involve all the rest of us with them'. While the escalation of conflict in Vietnam punctured Whitlam's view of the United Nations as the arbiter of world peace, the belief that the great powers should not use the South-East Asian region as a testing ground for their rivalry became a central theme of the Whitlam foreign policy doctrine when he was prime minister.

The Cuban episode had also given Whitlam the chance to express more fully his progressive realist view of international affairs. Only through international instruments such as the UN could such problems be avoided:

We have to accept the fact that there will be countries in the world with different political systems, and that some such countries will be living next door to each other . . . But we must try to see that they live at least in peace and respect one with the other. It is not right that we should worry about
another country's different regime only when it becomes a rival to us. We must try to ensure that all regimes understand each other and respect each other, and are encouraged through international agencies, if possible, to improve their administrations.(29)

Here again was the essence of humanitas and its prescription for an international life devoted to nurturing fellowship between all peoples. The 'improvement of administrations' advocated by Whitlam here implied the extension of democracy and the provision of selfgovernment. This is crucial for understanding the substance of Whitlam's attitude towards nationalism. For him, the ultimate destiny of the new African and Asian nations was the attainment of national independence and the achievement of responsible self-government. 'Independence' in the Whitlam world-view was not the means by which a country aggressively asserted its interests over those of another nation; it was the path to greater development and improvement in its national affairs and foreign relations.

This had been a consistent stance adopted by Whitlam since his first speech to parliament on international affairs in September 1953, in which he had argued that The best way to deal with any red menace, as we so glibly term it, is to give them self-government. There is no virtue . . . in substituting a Chinese imperialism for a French, Dutch, Portuguese or British imperialism. They are entitled to selfgovernment within the world community of nations, the United Nations, of which Australia is one.

In this speech Whitlam had also defended the exclusion of France and Britain, among others, from the ANZUS pact signed between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in 1951. The speech was delivered between the cease-fire in Korea and the Geneva Conference of 1954, which ended the French phase of the Thirty Years War of intervention in Indo-China. In common with the standard liberal intellectual view of the time, Whitlam believed that the struggle in Indo-China was inspired by Vietminh nationalism against French colonialism, rather than being a communist-controlled or -inspired movement. The significant feature of the Pacific area at the moment is that we European countries are witnessing the assertion by Asian countries of their political and cultural independence and self-respect. It would be an affront to peoples in the Pacific area who are not yet self-governing if we were to include in the ANZUS pact countries that control them, and very often control them against their will. It is to be regretted that the French, who virtually bestowed liberty on the United States of America and Italy, should have for so long denied liberty to Indo-China.(30)

This belief that the Vietminh forces constituted an independent nationalist movement differed from both the American and Australian government's official position that Indo-China had become a focal point for the struggle between communism and the free world. In April 1954 a group of Australian academics and clergymen expressed this liberal intellectual view of Indo-China, with an open letter published on the front page of the Canberra Times and the Melbourne Age:

It is often forgotten that the Vietminh movement, led by Ho Chi Min, arose in Indo-China long before the Communist Government had come to power in China and was in its original
form, not a Communist but a nationalist movement aiming at the total independence of Vietnam from French rule.(31)

Whitlam defended the publication of this letter in parliament on the same day, not only in the name of freedom of speech but primarily because he agreed with the substance of the argument. The automatic equation of independent nationalist movements with communism was an 'over-simplification' and, while Whitlam acknowledged 'that the Communists have been manoeuvred into the vanguard of all these movements', such infiltration was a damning indictment on the West--'that is largely our fault in allowing the only feasible alternative to appear to be . . . European tutelage and American protection . . .' The 1955 ALP Conference in Hobart endorsed such a view of the Indo-Chinese question.

Whitlam provided the most coherent expression of this view again in 1965, following the decision of the Menzies government to commit Australian combat troops to Vietnam.

The only ideological counter to Communism in Asia is nationalism. The West has too often frustrated nationalism and forced it into the arms of China and the communists. Is this not what has happened in Vietnam? Genuine nationalists have often been faced with the choice of joining the communists or going into exile or going to prison. A real nationalism will be neither pro nor anti-Western; it will be principally concerned with its own nationals. Events have shown that a country on the border of China which is aligned with the West is courting subversion. We must therefore accept the fact that such governments can survive only if they are genuinely nationalistic and progressive and are not tied to the East or the West. The independence of these countries must be primarily a matter for their own governments.(32)

No doubt such comments helped soften any potential antagonism towards Whitlam from Labor's left-wing over Australia's involvement in Vietnam. Whitlam, a member of Labor's right faction, never strayed from expressing basic support for the American Alliance in the conflict: 'It is not the American alliance itself which has reduced Australia to a status of diplomatic and defence dependence. It is the Government's
interpretation of the Alliance'.(33) This 'interpretation', essentially, implied Australia under the conservatives had been reduced to the undignified position of being a mere vassal of its 'great and powerful' friend. Whitlam's comments also illustrated his view that the end of colonialism and the assertion of nationalism in Asia constituted the way forward in developing harmonious relations between old imperial powers and their former colonial subjects. The Asians needed 'genuine nationalism' to defeat communism as well as to achieve liberation and national independence.

For Whitlam the dissolution of the British Empire was cause not for despair but for optimism--a chance to spread further the liberal parliamentary tradition of Britain to the newly independent nations in Africa and Asia. If his recognition of Asian nationalism represented a commitment to the benefits of national self-determination, his Britishness emanated from a particular stream of Labor party rhetoric which celebrated shared institutions and the ideal of human liberty rather than the ties of blood or kinship. British institutions and the ideal of liberty were to be extended to all peoples regardless of blood.

Australia's Britishness and its Western tradition were thus a force for ongoing influence in the developing world. The Commonwealth of Nations, Whitlam contended, could 'play a better part than any other organisation in retaining British ideals in the newly emergent countries of Asia and Africa' and form an 'organic' bridge between the industrialized world and the new African and Asian nations. This was a new application of the 'organic' metaphor to define Australia's place in the world.

Where once it had signified an indissoluble worldwide community of British peoples unified by blood, the 'organic' Commonwealth represented the extension of a British institutional, rather than racial, heritage. It was the epitome of W K Hancock's notion of the Commonwealth being 'british--with a small b'. Like Hancock, Whitlam's Commonwealth ideal was motivated neither by a belief in the superiority of the British race nor by thoughts of imperial grandeur, but by the vision of a diverse family comprising many kindreds and languages.(34) South Africa, therefore, incurred Whitlam's wrath. He described its maintenance of racial discrimination as a 'reproach to all people who believe in the British way of life, with its tenets of freedom of expression, movement and franchise for all, and the equal opportunity for every man to participate in the administrative, legislative and judicial processes of his own country'.(35) South Africa had betrayed the core British ideal of liberty.

On the domestic front, this ideal of liberty and equality as embodied in the system of parliamentary democracy found expression in Whitlam's consistent emphasis on the role of government in providing for the wellbeing of the community as a whole. For Whitlam, the character of the Australian 'community' was overwhelmingly urban. In equating cities with civilisations, he again gave voice to his humanitas: 'By derivation, civilised men are those who live in cities, pagans are those who live in the country.' Only governments and public planning, Whitlam added, could manage Australia's 'urban explosion' and promote the virtues of a 'civilised life in cities'.

Delivering the Curtin Memorial Lecture in 1972 on the subject 'Urbanised Australia 1972-1975', he characterised the bush myth as the antithesis of his view of Australia as 'the most urbanised national community in world history'. That so many basic problems experienced in Australian cities had been ignored, he claimed, was due partly to the fact that

we have become beguiled by our own image, our own traditions and indeed our own myths. The skies, the seas, the sunburnt spaces make up the preferred background to our national identity. The archetype of the pioneer unionist is the shearer, not the stonemason.

Whitlam asserted that metropolitan Australia was home to the nation's 'new frontier':

We have the chance once more to be pioneers and revolutionaries. New cities can be the new frontiers, and we can like the best of the revolutionaries, from the Gracchi on, strive to replenish and restore the society by uniting the city and the country.

Much like Tiberius Gracchus, one of Whitlam's boyhood heroes, he had introduced a 'challenging political programme, which would arouse great expectations among the people'.(36)

Whitlam and the 'new nationalism': 1972-75

I don't suppose there is anyone in Australia, certainly no-one else who is still in public life, who has a greater love for Britain than I have . . . Not many of my countrymen have a greater respect for Britain's institutions and traditions than I do--a greater knowledge of your history, a greater affection for your language, your laws, your literature, your unique intellectual traditions of moderation, detachment, tolerance and liberty.(37)

Speaking at the Mansion House in London during a prime ministerial visit in December 1974, Gough Whitlam claimed for himself the mantle of principal Australian Anglophile. Only Sir Robert Menzies, who had departed the political scene eight years earlier, could have challenged him for this role. Admitting that he had been stung by criticism that the direction of Australian foreign policy under his leadership had been an 'insult' to the mother country, Whitlam offered himself as the personal embodiment of Australia's enduring commitment to the British connection.

In the heart of the British world he paid homage to the legacy of Britishness and its influence in shaping his world-view. While there was nothing particularly novel about an Australian prime minister expressing affection for Britain and the British in London, there were significant omissions in Whitlam's rhetoric that did illustrate Australia's changing attitude to its British heritage. The language of British race patriotism was no longer appropriate. Certainly Whitlam was as sincere and wholehearted as Menzies in his admiration for British institutions, culture and mores, but there was not the proud proclamation of 'coming home' or of being 'British to the boot-heels'. Whitlam did add, though, that 'For an Australian Prime Minister, London can never be just another city or Britain just another country--however much a proud and self-assertive people would like to think them so'.

This reaffirmation of Britain's significance to the Australian self-image was all the more remarkable for having been expressed in the midst of an era of supposed 'new nationalism', when, in the eyes of some, Australia was finally casting off the shackles of its imperial past and discovering its 'real' self.

This was the second coming of the 'new nationalism' to Australian political culture. While Whitlam conceded that he could not claim authorship of the phrase, he was nevertheless 'happy to adopt and affirm' the 'new nationalism' as prime minister. Indeed, it became what he called the 'modus vivendi' for his approach to government. As Donald Horne later said, Whitlam was the 'most distinguished political articulator' of the 'new nationalism', and he summarily dismissed John Gorton's rhetoric as mere 'iron-ore' nationalism, a lust for economic development that failed to satisfy the hunger for a new cultural identity.(38)

There are significant contextual and conceptual problems associated with explaining the emergence and promotion of the 'new nationalism' at this time. Much like its appearance under Gorton, the term was often invoked, but rarely was it adequately explained. Robert Drewe, in a series of articles for the Australian in 1973, equated Australia's 'new spirit of purpose' or its 'greater spirit of national identity' with 'New Nationalism'. Rather nonchalantly, he declared: 'If you want to put a label on it, the New Nationalism does as well as any.' And it was inevitable, Drewe added, 'that unless you're a 67-year-old mining magnate who's a member of the League of Empire Loyalists you're aware of a certain rare feeling of national self-respect these days'.

Writing in the 1980s, Stephen Alomes suggested that 'Australian nationalism's traditional amalgam of British loyalism and the male "digger" tradition was increasingly challenged in the conflict-ridden 1960s', but the nature of this challenge was simply accounted for by his claim that 'indoctrination' in racism and empire was 'on the wane'. In Alomes' view, therefore, the re-emergence of a distinctive Australian cultural nationalism was a fait accompli once the foundations of a 'fawning, provincial Australia' had been removed.(39)

The tone of Whitlam's speeches before the 1972 election helps explain why 'radical nationalists' so readily equated his 'program' and the prospect of his election with the resurgence of an innately Australian cultural nationalism. Speaking in Griffith in November 1972 following a recital of Australian poetry by Leonard Teale, Whitlam proclaimed:

In the great issues facing us it's time for a national approach.
It's time we had our own symbols of our own nationhood. It's
time . . . that we had our own national anthem . . . The choice
of the Australian people, not the musical taste of George II,
should determine Australia's national anthem.(40)

Whitlam's policy speech later that month, which gave expression to his political 'program', promised to 'revive in this nation the spirit of national cooperation and national self-respect', to 'take Australia forward to her rightful, proud, secure and independent place in the future of our region' and to 'liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people'. It was also 'time', he announced, to 'start buying
Australia back' from foreign investors.(41)

Whitlam himself, reflecting upon the first year in office, sought to maintain the euphoria of December 1972 and legitimise Labor's claims to national government, he momentarily gave voice to the very sentiments which many of the 'radical nationalists' had long been waiting to hear. Not only had it been 'a year of progress and reform on a scale unmatched in the records of Federation', the Labor party was now carrying the torch of national identity--Australia had 'a new strength and confidence at home and a new respect abroad'. Under the conservatives, Whitlam claimed, Australia in the eyes of the world had become 'insignificant, racist, militaristic, sycophantic, a timid and unworthy creature of the great powers to whom it had surrendered its identity'.(42)

Yet the most obvious and overt political expressions of this 'new nationalism' were to be found in the changes made to some of the key symbols of Australian nationhood during Whitlam's term in office--the introduction of a new Royal Styles and Titles Act, the replacement of the British honours system with the Order of Australia, and the change of the national anthem from God Save the Queen to Advance Australia Fair.

Along with the abolition of appeals from the Supreme Courts of the states to London's Privy Council and Whitlam's refusal to accept a Privy Councillorship--following Deakin's example--such changes were readily portrayed as a decisive break in Australia's relations with Britain. Whitlam, it seemed to some, was finally cutting the 'apron-strings' to the 'mother country'.

Whitlam's foreign policy initiatives were also readily placed within the 'new nationalism' paradigm. At this level, and in its basic assertion of Australianness, the 'new nationalism' did represent an attempt by Australians to find a distinctive and more self-assertive response to their changing circumstances. On the day he was sworn in as Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Whitlam announced his view of Australia's role in the world, saying 'the general direction of [his] thinking' was 'towards a more independent Australian stance in international affairs and towards an Australia which will be less militarily oriented and not open to suggestions of racism'.43 Without consulting 'great and powerful' friends, the remaining Australian military advisers were promptly withdrawn from Vietnam and communist regimes in China, North Vietnam, North Korea and East Germany were officially recognised.

While those on both sides of Australian politics in the late 1960s and early 70s realised that the changes in international politics--especially the Nixon government's 1969 Guam Doctrine, forecasting a US retreat from Asia, and the formal entry of Britain into the EEC--meant the country was on the verge of a new era in foreign affairs, there is little doubt that as Labor leader and then prime minister, Gough Whitlam did not view these shifting spheres of influence or dissolving power blocs with the same anxiety as conservative politicians did. The basis of the Australian Labor Party's foreign and defence policy was to be that the nation faced no direct threat of external attack for the next ten to fifteen years.(44)

As in the cases of W M Hughes and H V Evatt, however, Whitlam has been celebrated as a 'nationalist' on account of his approach to relations with Britain and America. His condemnation of the American decision to bomb North Vietnam in late December 1972 had introduced a new diplomatic style to Australian-American relations. While Whitlam continually reaffirmed the importance of the US alliance, the Head of the Defence Department, Arthur Tange, was appalled at the public criticism of American actions in Vietnam. He did not think it in the best interests of small powers such as Australia 'if they kicked great powers in the shins, simply for the pleasure it gave them and for no material objective'.(45) Yet it was because of this very perception, albeit an exaggerated one, that Whitlam in the eyes of some had passed the superficial 'radical nationalist' test of 'independence' and distanced Australia from the previous conservative governments' 'old' nationalism, which defined Australia as a subordinate part of the British or American world.

Historians Russel Ward and Manning Clark typified this response. Ward classified Whitlam's 1972 election victory as 'The End of the Ice Age'. Britain's military withdrawal east of Suez and her formal entry to the EEC had 'vividly demonstrated the fallacy of the Liberal and Country parties' belief--that ties of kinship, culture, tradition and gratitude ensure the support of a great patron'. It only served to confirm for him that Labor 'is an Australian party while anti-Labor is the party of great and powerful overseas friends'. Ward essentially saw the Labor Party as the political custodians of the Australian Legend. For Manning Clark, Whitlam had not only lifted Australia 'out of the doldrums of dependence' on the United States and Britain; he had led the nation from 'The Years of Unleavened Bread' into a blissful era of plenitude.

Whitlam had ushered in the return of the 'larrikin nationalist'. As Clark enthused: 'Now we've got the situation of the 1890s once more where people are cheeky or indifferent about the royals and reacting against the snob or English values.' Writing during the 1974 election campaign, Clark enthusiastically advocated a Labor vote, since Whitlam had 'dreamed a great dream', was 'moving with the great river of life', and 'had given us the pride and confidence to go it alone in the world: Mr Snedden wants to tie us again to the apron-strings.'(46) The responses of Clark and Ward were no doubt in Humphrey McQueen's mind when he pondered the importance of nationalism to Labor's 1972 election victory.

McQueen, whose commitment to Marxism was not compromised by the failure of Australian nationalism, identified a phalanx of left-wing Labor nationalists who 'merely accepted Whitlam as the inheritor of the radical nationalist tradition-cum-legend' and whose 'nationalism was formed between 1935 and 1945 when popular fronts tried to use nationalism as a shield against fascism'.(47) The assumption that Whitlam was revealing Australia's 'true' self and expressing the voice of a distinctively Australian concept of political community has formed a strong current in interpretations of this era.

But what of the pre-Whitlam era? Had not the successive changes in the nature of the Anglo-Australian relationship, and the reaction of Australian leaders to those changes, contributed to an authentic spirit of Australian nationalism? 'Gough Whitlam,' argued Robert Drewe, 'has been responsible for reviving the frustrated and almost impotent Australian nationalism'. Donald Horne, reassessing the nature of the 'new nationalism' in the light of Labor's 1972 election victory, argued Whitlam had been 'releasing and dramatising all sorts of things that had been developing before'.48 Neither Drewe nor Horne, however, could adequately explain how Australian nationalism had been 'frustrated' or what exactly these 'things that had been developing before' actually were. This illustrates again the fundamental difficulty in defining the nature of the 'new nationalism'. Claims that Whitlam was simultaneously reviving a 'frustrated' nationalism as well as 'releasing' 'things that had been developing before' seemed to imply that the changes in the idea of nation which Whitlam introduced merely gave formal expression to existing forces in the Australian understanding of its place in the world.

Whitlam himself concurred with the view that by the time he became prime minister the British connection no longer struck the same emotional chords in the Australian consciousness. In May 1973 he assured the parliament that changes involving the powers of the Governor-General, the national anthem, appeals to the Privy Council, the Queen's Style and Titles, and the Oath of Allegiance were 'in no way directed against Britain':

They are solely intended to put our relationship on a more
mature and contemporary basis and to reflect the development
of a more independent Australian identity in the world.
Indeed what the Australian government is seeking to achieve
in its relations not only with Britain but also with a number of
other countries . . . is to give formal recognition to what has
already happened, as the necessary foundation for a realistic,
more independent, more mature foreign policy.

For Whitlam these changes were 'no artificial convulsion of contrived nationalism'.(49) It is frustrating that Whitlam, like Horne, did not give expression to what was supposed to have 'already happened', but it is highly likely that in Whitlam's view the fundamental changes in ideas of Australian nationhood, as made necessary by all the practical changes that had taken place, had already occurred before he came to office. Not long before Britain's formal entry into the EEC in January 1973, the Australian reacted to new British immigration laws that categorized Australians as 'alien' by retorting that 'Most Australians have been aware for over a decade that their country had moved outside British hegemony and was oriented more to the Pacific and to the United States than London'.(50) By 1972, it seemed, there was simply no need to see
such changes as leading inevitably to the realisation of a long-held 'radical national' dream.

Although this old imperial order for some had long been 'illusory', some were outraged by Whitlam's symbolic changes to the idea of Australian nationhood, seeing in them an abrupt and unwelcome rupture in the nation's relationship with Britain and the first moves towards the creation of an Australian republic. One Queensland Liberal MP claimed the Whitlam government would 'cut Australia's ties with England so quickly that the Queen will not even know that it has happened'. Another claimed it was aiming deliberately for 'isolationist republicanism'.(51)

On Anzac Day 1974 Malcolm Fraser, then Opposition spokesman on Industrial Relations, expressed 'great concern' at the 'erosion of our links to the Crown' under Whitlam. Citing the attempt to delete the oath of allegiance to the Crown from the naturalization ceremony for new migrants, and the move to stop God Save the Queen from being played on Anzac Day, Fraser argued:

Mr Whitlam may want a republic in Australia complete with President, but to what purpose? Our system of government provides better guarantees for freedom with a greater degree of stability and more opportunity for individual people than any other form I know.

As Mark McKenna has shown, 'whether the Whitlam government was republican or not, it was in the interests of opposition parties to portray it as republican'. In designating Elizabeth II as 'Queen of Australia', for instance, Whitlam maintained that the change had taken account of 'popular feeling' and made the monarchy a 'closer and more relevant institution' for Australians, thus doing more to stifle republicanism than to further it.(52) Concluding his statement on The Queen and the Privy Council to parliament in May 1973 Whitlam spoke in near Churchillian tones: I emphasise that these matters represent no disruptive departure from the past. In the great tradition of British constitutional monarchy, we march still from precedent to precedent --albeit with a firmer, more self-confident, more purposeful
tread than ever before.(53)

But it was not quite clear whether this 'more purposeful tread' was leading Australia completely out of the orbit of the British constitutional monarchy. More than most, Whitlam possessed a deep reverence for the symbolic sovereignty of the Crown, in his capacity as a member of parliament, as a minister of the crown and as a Queen's Counsel--as one who upheld the Queen's justice and prosecuted offenders in the name of the Crown. For Whitlam its position as the formal source of authority in the Australian Constitution was unquestioned. The nature of Whitlam's Britishness assumed a more pungent tone on the day he was dismissed from office--perhaps a day when he would least be expected to enunciate any identification with British tradition. Although Whitlam asserted in his account of this period that his government 'was not republican . . . until the manipulation of the monarchy on 11 November 1975',(54) in the immediate aftermath of the crisis he cried foul at the violation of British constitutional practice. When asked on 11 November how it felt to be a Prime Minister sacked by the crown, Whitlam replied: 'I'm the first for 200 years since George III sacked Lord North.'

As Neville Meaney has observed wryly, in the heat of the moment Whitlam's appeal was not to the Australian Constitution but to 'the parliamentarians of the English Civil War and . . . the tradition of "distant liberty" '.(55) Despite the heavy emphasis on 'independence' in his pronouncements on international affairs, Whitlam went out of his way to re-affirm the 'essential foundations' of Australian foreign policy and the continuity of his government's approach with that of its predecessors. It was not that Australia's national interests and international obligations, or its alliances and friendships, had changed, but that the 'perception and interpretation of those interests, obligations and friendships' signified a change that was 'real and deep'.(56) This emphasis on 'perception and interpretation' may well have implied a more distinctively 'nationalist' approach to foreign relations, but it was not a stance that automatically placed Australia outside the sphere of its traditional relationships.

An example of this attitude can be seen in Whitlam's rhetoric concerning the alliance with the United States. He maintained that Australia was still an 'aligned' country and that the ANZUS alliance was the most vital plank of Australia's security. A more 'independent' foreign policy implied, in essence, relative independence for Australia within the US alliance.

During his visit to the United States in July 1973, Whitlam defined a new Australian-American relationship. Australia was 'not a satellite of any country. We are a friend and partner of the United States, particularly in the Pacific, but with independent interests of our own.' In his view the relationship had reached a 'new maturity'--but with what purpose? Australia wanted the United States to realise that under the ANZUS agreement it should give consideration to the different needs and interests of its junior allies. During Whitlam's second visit to the US as prime minister in 1975 he gave further expression to his American sympathies.

Discussing the possibilities and hopes for world peace, Whitlam again gave his unequivocal support to détente, which he had previously described as the 'most hopeful development in post-war history'. He exhorted the United States to continue to promote détente among the superpowers and to assume again its rightful place as the 'true leader of the world' and, indeed, as the 'last, best hope of the world'. Such language was not purely the product of political opportunism. Whitlam himself had expressed admiration for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and between 1969 and 1972 the Labor leadership claimed that Liberal-Country party policy towards Vietnam and China had delayed the return of America to its rightful position as leader of the free world.(57)

Whitlam's foreign policy was most notable for its policies of internationalism. In his Roy Milne Lecture of November 1973, Whitlam expressed what he believed to be best international practice for Australia: 'The United Nations, despite its imperfections, still represents for us our best hope of producing through international goodwill and collaboration a more peaceful and secure world in which all mankind can live and prosper'.(58) The ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, adhesion to the covenants on Human Rights and the Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as well as the decision to take
France to the International Court of Justice over its nuclear testing in the Pacific, were all examples of the Whitlam government's preference for working through international instrumentalities. As Whitlam told
the UN general assembly in September 1974,

No country needs more than Australia the fulfilment of the international objectives of the United Nations to reach the fulfillment of her own national objectives. There are few countries in which the paradox is demonstrated with such force that true national independence depends upon international interdependence . . . In seeking a better international order, we give primacy to the United Nations.(59)

Along with interdependence, then, Whitlam adhered to the view that a community of nations in which its members lived in harmony with one another was the best means of solving what he saw as the 'complex and daunting' problems that faced the world. Whitlam's decision to fasttrack independence for Papua New Guinea arose not from a groundswell of Australian domestic opinion clamouring for the liberation of the Papuans but because he was impatient to rid Australia of the colonialist tag, to make sure Australia played its part in the 'great post-war, post-imperial exercise of European decolonisation'. True to the Whitlam world-view he asserted that 'It should never be forgotten that in making our own former colony independent, we as Australians enhance our own independence. Australia was never truly free until Papua New Guinea became free.'(60)

The United Nations was also the principal forum in which Whitlam expressed his long-held view that conflict in the Asian region was a direct result of the great powers' use of it as their 'field for destructive rivalry'. Shortly after his election as Prime Minister, Whitlam advised the Australian delegation to the United Nations in New York to vote in favour of a resolution for neutrality in the Indian Ocean, and to emphasise Australia's identity with Asian and Pacific states. In June 1973 Whitlam noted that Australia's stance at the United Nations had too often 'paid excessive regard to the voting intentions of the United Kingdom and the United States and had found itself frequently in a different voting position from that of its neighbours'. He said Australia would, in future, take more notice of countries such as Canada, Japan, India and the African states. Whitlam also envisaged a new Asia-Pacific regional organisation 'without ideological overtones, conceived as an initiative to help free the region of great power rivalries' and to 'insulate the region against ideological interference from the great powers'. It would be a 'zone of peace, freedom and neutrality'. He gave further expression to this idealism during a prime ministerial visit to South-East Asia--'fundamentally I am an optimist . . . about the future of our region.

Diplomacy must be based on realistic hopes rather than resignation and despair.'(61) It was a realist world-view which would contrast sharply with that of his successor as prime minister, Malcolm Fraser. Where Whitlam counselled optimism about the prospect of peace, Fraser would see the constant threat of Soviet hegemony.

But the 'new nationalism' was not only used to express the desire for a more independent Australian role in world affairs; it was also identified with renewed creative endeavour in the arts, with increased control of Australian industries and resources, and with the preservation of the nation's heritage and environment. Thus from its inception the 'new nationalism' had significant implications for economic and cultural policy.

In the economic sphere, the 'new nationalism' became associated with what Robert Drewe called the 'emotionally charged vortex of buying back the farm'. It was clear that the constant emphasis on 'independence' in the Whitlam program could be diminished or impaired if Australian natural resources were controlled by foreign companies. In his 1972 policy speech, Whitlam had promised to establish a secretariat to monitor the flow of foreign investment into Australia and to determine whether foreign takeovers or mergers were in the 'national interest'. He also pledged to expand the activities of the Australian Industry Development Corporation (AIDC) so that it might assist both Australian and foreign companies in the exploration, development and processing of Australian natural resources.

The Whitlam government sought a more prominent role for Australians in the senior management of American-owned companies in Australia. Whitlam himself criticised the decision by General Motors Holden to appoint another American to fill the position of managing director for their Australian operations. During the federal election campaign of 1974, Whitlam unleashed a stinging attack on multinational companies in Australia, and again promised to restrict future foreign investment. He declared the basic question of the campaign to be: 'will Australians continue to control their own economic destiny or are we to become tenants in our own land? . . . We have fought for our independence in several wars. What arms could not conquer, money must not buy.'(62) In the emotive language of an election campaign the fusion of 'destiny', 'independence' and the ANZAC spirit illustrated the extent to which excessive foreign investment could be depicted as anathema to the spirit of the 'new nationalism'.

The 'new nationalism' was also clearly manifest in government support for the arts. Whitlam, as the self-confessed 'man of arts', whose world-view had been nourished by an appreciation for civilisation--humanitas--and the pursuit of excellence, was lauded as the patron of an Australian cultural renaissance. In his 1972 policy speech Whitlam had promised that his government would strive to promote a 'standard of excellence' in the arts, to 'widen access to, and the understanding and application of, the arts in the community, generally', as well as to use the arts in the establishment and expression of Australian identity
both at home and abroad. Speaking on the Australia Council Bill in 1974, Whitlam claimed it impossible to 'imagine a mature civilisation' without the contribution of Australian artists. The Council would ensure 'the emotional, spiritual and intellectual rewards which the Arts alone can provide'.(63) Whitlam's respect for the arts was duly reciprocated. An 'artists for Whitlam' committee had been formed before the 1972 poll, and during an election rally held at the Sydney Opera House in 1974, Nobel prize-winning novelist Patrick White derided the conservatives as 'rustic clowns', praised Whitlam's modernity and welcomed his recognition of the need to 'cure ourselves of mentally constipated attitudes'.

Ironically the most publicised cultural act of the Whitlam government was its purchase of an American abstract painting--Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles--although there was also an emphasis on the acquisition of Australian art as well as the artistic treasures of foreign countries. In any case, Whitlam was driven by the view that all artistic endeavour, including sculptures from ancient Greece, were 'as valid a part of Australia's heritage as a Magna Carta of Edward I'.(64)

It was in keeping with the internationalist flavour of the 'new nationalism' as well as the deep respect Whitlam had retained from young adulthood for the 'countries where traditions old of music, letters, art are proudly set'. But it was the speech Whitlam delivered at Ballarat on 3 December 1973 that explained coherently the meaning of the 'new nationalism' for the Whitlam doctrine. This was the 119th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade incident of 1854 when, according to the 'radical national' myth, miners rose up against British authority and raised the flag of Australian rebellion. The Department of Foreign Affairs decided to circulate this speech to all overseas posts, with an accompanying memorandum announcing the 'new nationalism' to Australian diplomats as a 'mainspring of the Government's political philosophy and hence a motivating force in its actions and reactions on foreign affairs'.(65)

Whitlam's Eureka speech was thus tethered to Australia's diplomatic world. The appropriation of Eureka for political purposes, however, had a history of its own. William Lane, the Communist Party of Australia, H V Evatt, Ben Chifley and Robert Menzies all at various times invoked the memory of Eureka--finding in it either the seeds of Australian republicanism, the birth of Australian democracy or, as Menzies put it, 'an earnest attempt at democratic government'.(66) In their auguries of Eureka many had found the portents of future national greatness.

Chifley, for instance, considered Lesley Haylen's 1948 Eureka play Blood on the Wattle to be 'Australian without being nationalistic', thus implying that a distinctive Australianness was not necessarily reliant upon the projection of a strident nationalism. However, in a variation on the 'radical nationalist' theme, he designated Eureka as 'the first real affirmation of our determination to be the master of our own political destiny'.(67)

While Whitlam in his Eureka speech accepted and re-affirmed Evatt's declaration that 'Australian democracy was born at Eureka', the first Labor prime minister for twenty-three years had a different political philosophy into which Eureka was to be placed. Whitlam's adoption of Eureka's symbolism for the Labor party differed from Chifley's and Evatt's in that he recognised the fundamental insignificance of the actual events of December 1854. In Whitlam's eyes Eureka had 'little to do' with the formation of the ALP or the movement towards Federation, but his accuracy in these comments was overtaken by contemporary party political concerns. Although the events of Eureka were 'sad and remote and isolated', Whitlam nevertheless saw in them 'a symbol of the pride, the independence of spirit, the democratic traditions and the strong nationalist aspirations for which Labor has always stood and with which the new government is especially identified'. Whitlam was unique in making this explicit connection between independence, democracy and an Australian nationalism, since neither the Communist party, Evatt, Chifley nor Menzies had mentioned Australian nationalism as such.

Whitlam also connected the 'new nationalism' to his 'Australianising' of the Federal government: Anyone reading the [ALP] platform will be struck by the emphasis on 'Australia', the 'Australian nation', on national goals and aspirations. Alone among the parties, we affirm the supremacy of Australian sovereignty over the whole nation and its Territories. Anyone who has studied the record of the Government's achievements since coming to office will recognize this nationalist sentiment as the great binding theme of
all our major decisions and initiatives.(68)

This was not merely rhetorical flourish. The Acts Interpretation Act passed in 1973 provided for the use of the term Australia to signify the Australian nation and to take the place of 'Commonwealth' in legislation. Thus the 'Commonwealth of Australia Gazette' became officially known as the 'Australian Gazette' and the 'Commonwealth Government' the 'Australian Government'. The Liberal-Country Party Opposition saw more in the Bill than flippant tinkering with national nomenclature, but they nevertheless supported it. Deputy Liberal leader in the Senate Ivor Greenwood observed that the changes were part of the 'new nationalism with which the Australian Labor Party is seeking to associate itself', and while finding no cause for disagreement with this 'type of philosophy', wondered 'how effective or pointed they are in giving expression to a nationalism'.
For Whitlam, however, the formal 'Australianising' of the Federal Government was in harmony with his consistent push for a stronger, central government at the expense of the states. But the culling of 'Commonwealth' illustrated a certain pettiness in the 'new nationalism'.

Whitlam had taken a symbol which, far from being a relic of colonial subservience to Britain or a potential source of confusion in official publications, statutes and regulations, actually reflected a sense of national idealism, a community committed to the advancement of the common welfare and wedded to the notion of self-government. Although like the nation's language and parliament it derived from Britain, Australians had made it their own, for, as W K Hancock observed, the founding fathers had 'wanted for their new adventure in brotherly living a word glowing with the magic of England's past and the hope of Australia's future'. Whitlam nevertheless allowed it to be sacrificed on the altar of a false nationalism. Hancock, not surprisingly, was distinctly unimpressed.

He thought 'Commonwealth' was 'supreme among the verbal symbols of Australian nationhood' and that the Whitlam government had 'casually' sent it to Coventry, adding that 'Some glorious chapters of our history were sent at the same time to the same place.'(69)

Yet if a 'nationalist sentiment' was the 'great binding theme' for Whitlam Labor, it was to be a heavily qualified one. In a clear signal to those either fearful of the very idea of nationalism or not yet ready to embrace Australia's changing circumstances, Whitlam first reassured his Ballarat audience that there was nothing 'sinister or threatening' about the 'new nationalism' and that it did not mean the 'overturning of received ideas and settled traditions, the breaking off of old friendships'. The consciousness of nationalism's sins and the importance of maintaining continuities with the past required a careful modification of the term itself. Through its concern with reinvigorating and enshrining 'true Australian values' such as fair play, independence and egalitarianism--an egalitarianism which was 'at the heart of the Australian tradition'--the 'new nationalism' brought together 'a great number of diverse strands and attitudes', encompassing economic, industrial, social, cultural, foreign and Aboriginal policy.

When Whitlam made room for the 'new nationalism' to mean 'the protection of Aboriginal culture and traditions as the original and most authentic expression of an Australian identity', it contributed to a growing tendency among some Australian historians and intellectuals, once the old British-centred idea of White Australia no longer carried the same ideological force, to incorporate the Aboriginal people as emblematic of Australia's distinctiveness as a nation. Whitlam even taunted history to judge his government on this criterion alone--its record on Aboriginal affairs.

In his 1972 policy speech, he was much more explicit than Holt or Gorton in connecting the treatment of Aborigines directly to the national image and the theme of national self-respect--arguing that the role that the government created for the Aborigines was Australia's 'real test as far as the rest of the world, and particularly our region' was concerned. This was cast as the indispensable test of national and international self-worth, and Aboriginal policy was elevated in importance above any foreign aid program, treaty or alliance. Echoing Lincoln's Gettysburg address, he argued that, whereas the world would 'little note, nor long remember' Australia's involvement in Vietnam, Australia's treatment of its Aborigines was a 'responsibility we cannot escape, cannot share, cannot shuffle off; the world will not let us forget that'. The message was clear: excessive loyalty to great and powerful friends had distracted Australians from salving a longstanding domestic sore and had prolonged the sullying of Australia's image in the eyes of the world, and most particularly, in Asia. Australians, he said, would remain diminished while ever the Aborigines were 'denied their rightful place in the nation'.

Whitlam was also the first prime minister to employ emotive rhetoric alluding to the detrimental effect of European settlement on Aboriginal culture, calling for the removal of 'stains' from the 'national honour'. It was this type of language that would ultimately sow the seeds of subsequent conservative frustration at a supposed 'black-armband' version of history.(70)

Whitlam's primary message, then, was one of inclusion, not exclusion. In drawing broader conclusions about the nature of the 'new nationalism' in his Eureka speech, he went to the heart of Australia's changing attitude to nationalism:

There is nothing coarse or intolerant or xenophobic about this kind of nationalism. It does not mean closing our society to beneficial ideas from abroad. An authentic Australianism can readily accommodate foreign influences and foreign cultures, just as we have prospered from the post-war program of immigration. They were migrants, after all--Irish, European, American--who provided the backbone of the Eureka rising. Nor do I care for the argument that a 'new nationalism' is outmoded or even dangerous in a world that has suffered too much from nationalistic hatreds and passions and strives only for peace and security based on international understanding. No government is more committed than mine to internationalism in this highest sense. Yet if we look at the nations, excluding the major powers, that have advanced international co-operation the most--India, Canada, the Scandinavian countries--we find they are nations with a secure and distinctive national identity of their own. Echoes and shadows, satellites and vassals are not forces for peace and co-operation: they are more likely to be the first victims when peace and cooperation are overthrown.

These comments illustrated clearly the tension between Whitlam's prime ministerial need to galvanise a feeling of national unity and the recognition that nationalism was associated with malevolent forces in human affairs. Thus one of the distinguishing features for prime ministers in this period, in treating the subject of nationalism, was now to state what it was not, rather than what it actually was. The 'new nationalism' as defined by Whitlam had sacrificed nationalism's own prescription for cultural and racial homogeneity, since it could 'readily accommodate foreign influences and foreign cultures'. But in taking from nationalism some of its strongest, most traditional qualities, a new problem emerged. Since Australian nationalism no longer had a demand for homogeneity at its core, what held the nation together was not readily apparent.

While a homogeneous, predominantly white British society had been the goal of successive Australian governments since Federation, the ending of racial discrimination in immigration policy in the early 1970s meant that the monolithic myth required by nationalism was no longer viable. Manning Clark had shown an awareness of this problem when he redefined Australian nationalism to remove its racism. In the 'old' nationalism, he said, 'the Chinese, Jews, [and] Negroes could all go to hell. That is breaking down at last. There's much more universalism in it today.' But the unease with which newly arrived migrants approached the idea of 'nationalism' was well summarised by Solon Baltinos, then general secretary of the New Settlers Federation, when he said 'To me nationalism has connotations of racism and militarism. The Nazis were supernationalists.'(71)

In this admittedly extreme view, Baltinos reflected the potential awkwardness of introducing nationalist discourse into Australian politics. Whitlam's rhetoric at Eureka reflected a sensitivity to these new migrants. By highlighting the contribution of foreigners, Whitlam presented them with a privileged niche in the tradition of Australian 'egalitarianism'. And the Good Neighbour Council in Victoria, part of a national network of Councils designed to assist migrant settlement and welfare, had bussed 120 new migrants from Melbourne to Ballarat to get the message.(72)

Speeches on the same day by the Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby, further developed this theme of Eureka as confirmation that Australia had become 'a nation of immigrants'.(73) The paradox of the 'new nationalism' was that many of its chief proponents, in rejecting the Anglo-conformity of the past and calling for a new sense of Australian nationalism, simultaneously called for the adoption of 'multiculturalism' as the new national ideal of political and cultural community. This was a curious mix, since multiculturalism was the antithesis of the long hopedfor 'radical national' myth and one inherently opposed to nationalism's demand for 'one people' with a commonly shared culture. Yet from this conundrum emerged the true significance of the 'new nationalism'.

'Multiculturalism' and 'new nationalism' were compatible only because both ideas were essentially non-British phenomena. Whitlam, reflecting his deepest beliefs formed since childhood, also made it clear that nationalism was acceptable if it was primarily concerned with the welfare of the members of the nation and if it directed its energies towards 'international cooperation' and peace rather than intolerance, xenophobia or hostility. The 'new nationalism', despite those who readily assumed the term had radical implications, was not concerned with the aggressive assertion of Australianness towards others. The Liberal-Country Party Opposition were quick to exacerbate such fears, however, and pounced on the 'new nationalism' as symbolic of the government's immaturity in dealing with the world. Before Whitlam had spoken at Ballarat, shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman Andrew Peacock had challenged him in the parliament, declaring that the government's 'new nationalism' was 'not in Australia's interest. It is not new nationalism but old-style aggressive nationalism, a petulant self-assertiveness' that was harming Australia's standing with Britain, the United States and neighbouring Asia-Pacific countries. Malcolm Fraser described the 'new nationalism' as 'a perversity, and an archaic approach to domestic and world affairs'.(74)

Such criticisms and political point-scoring thus ascribed to Whitlam the very form of classic, European-style, oppressive nationalism he was trying so carefully to avoid. Nonetheless it proved the existence of a political consensus which, in dealing with Australia's new circumstances, eschewed the adoption of an 'old-style' exclusive Australian nationalism. Concluding to his Eureka speech, in perhaps the most realistic and intellectually sophisticated assessment of the historical context of Australian nationalism articulated by any prime minister, Gough Whitlam declared:

Our past is deficient in turbulent events, in the civil convulsions and upheavals that provide for older civilisations a focus for nationalistic fervour and popular emotion. Those symbols and rituals we have, like our parliamentary and constitutional system itself, derive from a quiescent colonial past. I am not one to argue, as some romantics do, that true nationalism must spring from the agony and suffering endured by former generations. Yet it is in the nature of things that an event like Eureka with all its associations, with all its potent symbolism, will acquire an aura of excitement and romance and stir the imagination of the Australian people. Dr Johnson remarked that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. He was well aware that patriotism can be carried to extremes, and that nationalism can be carried to excess. There is nevertheless a kind of nationalism that every country needs. It is a benign and constructive nationalism. It has to do with self-confidence, with maturity, with originality, with independence of mind.

Whitlam had recognised that Australian nationalism could not match nationalism's European model for blood or civil strife, and he would not wish it to do so even if it could. As one who had lived through the second great European war of nationalism, Whitlam valued the Australian difference, just as, at the age of eighteen, he had penned his preference for the 'verdant vista of the New' over the 'heritage of great and true'. His weaving of values such as 'self-confidence' and 'maturity' into the threads of the national fabric were intended to curb the extreme expressions of nationalism. For Whitlam, Australia's institutional heritage emanated from a 'quiescent colonial past' and, in defying the romantics, he gave expression to an idea of Australian nationalism very different from that of his Labor predecessors.

For John Curtin, Australian nationhood had been achieved on 'death-charged' battlefields, in 'spine-chilling' battles and on 'stormtossed' oceans. For Ben Chifley, Australia had 'won her spurs' through 'the testing times of two world wars and a major depression'. For Curtin and Chifley, the achievement of Australian nationhood, even though it was a British-Australian nationhood, was by no means 'quiescent'. It had been gained through great adversity, in fighting for the British Empire and amid the hardship of national crisis. In the 1970s, however, Whitlam embodied the tension between the rhetorical demands of prime ministerial office--with the need to articulate what held the nation together--and his liberal sensitivity towards a hostile, aggressive nationalism.

The Eureka speech demonstrated conclusively that Whitlam was very much divorced from radical nationalism by emotion, learning and temperament. As was his custom, he preferred to appeal to logic and reason rather than to tribal or primeval emotions.

Lest it be thought that this concept of 'new nationalism' was pragmatically associated with the anniversary of Eureka, Whitlam gave further voice to his government's philosophy on Australia Day 1974 when he again declared that he was 'happy and proud to proclaim' the 'new nationalism' and that a 'healthy nationalism' was the 'essential preparation for a true internationalism'. He argued not for 'truculent or flagwaving ambitions' but for improvements to quality of life, increased control over Australia's natural resources and preservation of the national estate. He called on the people to commit themselves to a 'greater Australia--not in any bombastic or chauvinistic sense, but generously, humanely, out of regard for the welfare of our fellow man and our neighbours'. Thus the 'new nationalism' was equivalent to the welfare state at home and internationalism abroad. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the 'new nationalism', in order to acquire legitimacy, required constant juxtaposition with what Whitlam believed to be the conventional image of 'nationalism' held by the people, be it 'coarse . . .intolerant . . . xenophobic', or 'bombastic' and 'chauvinistic'. And to emphasise the continuity of his interpretation of an Australian identity

derived from the Western tradition, Whitlam in this same Australia Day speech expressed his admiration for the 'optimism and sheer zest for accomplishment in the American way of life' and the 'qualities of liberalism and intellectual detachment in the British tradition'. Australia would remain open to these influences and continue to emulate them. Geoffrey Serle came to modify his earlier, more 'radical nationalist', claim, arguing that Australian nationalism 1970s style achieved a 'mature nationhood' with a 'relaxed sense of nationality' and an 'openness to international influences'.(75) Whitlam himself was thus squarely within the Kenneth Bailey-Keith Hancock tradition, in which loyalty to a wider community and a commitment to internationalism--in this case the United Nations--tempered any tendency towards aggressive nationalism. The more Whitlam defined the basis of a 'new nationalism', the more it became clear that it was not a jingoistic exercise of national chest-thumping, nor even the creation of a unique and exclusive identity.

Whitlam's restraint in defining the 'new nationalism' represented the traditional liberal intellectual response to nationalism. On the one hand this liberalism had an inherent suspicion of nationalism--as a regressive force that constituted a basic threat to liberal aspirations for human progress. Yet the world-view of British liberals in the first half of the nineteenth century suggested that nationalism and liberalism were not entirely incompatible. In the liberal nationalists' world-view, the dissolution of old empires and a respect for national self-determination constituted the prerequisites for a stable and balanced international order. In displaying their support for national independence movements in Greece, Italy and South America, British liberals saw personal and national freedom as indivisible, since both combined in the struggle for liberty. In the liberal nationalist world-view, a peaceful world was one comprised of independent, self-governing, liberal and constitutional states that respected each other's sovereignty and culture.(76)

Whitlam had given expression to this liberal nationalism more forcefully in the 1950s and 1960s when he had spoken in support of Asian nationalism as the only ideological bulwark against communism. But there had not been the corresponding demand, as in his Eureka speech, that Asian nationalism be 'benign'. Asian nationalism--although it should principally be concerned with the achievement of self-government--needed to be sufficiently strong to withstand the threat of communist aggression.

The tension involved in Whitlam's treatment of the 'new nationalism' question was also manifest in foreign policy and it was not a phenomenon he proclaimed with conviction or passion when overseas. Careful to nullify any perception of nationalistic excess, Whitlam's 'new nationalism' was thus even more restrained and modified abroad than it was at home. Defining the new Australian-American relationship in Washington in July 1973, he expressed the view that the 'new nationalism, for which the election of this government is seen as a catalyst, is, I hope, really the beginning of self-confidence', one which was based on a growing awareness of Australia's unique place in the world, her obligations and a new 'creative maturity'.(77) Whitlam's speeches during a prime ministerial visit to Asia in early 1974 continued in this vein of qualifying the 'new nationalism'. In Manila, he compared the new-found self-respect of both countries: 'In the Philippines, President Marcos has referred to this new spirit as "National self reliance". It has been called in Australia the "New Nationalism", though it is not a term I use. Essentially what we are both saying is that we must stand more on our own feet.'(78)

Within the space of two months Whitlam had moved from being 'happy to adopt and affirm' the 'new nationalism' in Australia to not even acknowledging the term abroad. Different audiences no doubt required different messages, but it was clear that the 'new nationalism' was reserved for domestic consumption only. Abroad, Whitlam stripped the 'new nationalism' to its bare essentials. His acute sensitivity to nationalism's dangers, in addition to his broader commitment to Australia as a model of international best practice, meant that it was simply inappropriate and unnecessary to be on the world stage extolling a loud-mouthed, stridently nationalist line. These sentiments were clearly expressed in his speech to the Singapore Press Club:

Much is written about Australia's 'new nationalism': I would rather put it in terms of Australia's new internationalism. Of course there is a national spirit awake and abroad in Australia. But Australia wants . . . what all the nations in this region are seeking--a national identity within the international community, reasonable control over our own resources in a world where all nations are increasingly interdependent.(79)

Thus the 'new nationalism' was not interpreted by Whitlam to mark a radical or dramatic shift in Australia's concept of nationhood, one that would assert her rights and differences against other nations. This was true of his rhetoric not only in Asian countries but also in Britain. The 'new nationalism', despite its frequent invocations of Australian 'independence', was in no way anti-British. Not withstanding all the formal changes in the Australia-Britain relationship, journalist Robert Duffield argued that 'identification with what we might call the British myth has been increasing rather than decreasing' in the 1970s.

Cheap air fares to Europe had given more Australians the chance to 'look at where their ancestors came from'. These pilgrimages along the Thames to 'hear . . . the chimes of Big Ben' counterbalanced the 'radical nationalists'' imaginary triumphal march to nationhood. Whitlam himself told interviewer David Frost that, though the Anglo-Australian relationship was less intense than in the past, 'Australians still feel more readily at home in England than in any other country'.(80) In his 1974 Mansion House speech in London, Whitlam continued in his emphatic denial of an anti-British content for the 'new nationalism':

Those who see in some of our recent actions concerning Britain a manifestation of some strident new nationalism or anti-British feeling have completely misread our intentions and mistaken the mood of our people. What Australia is trying to do is establish an independent identity in the world and especially in our own region. We have grown up. Our actions are in no way anti-British. They are simply pro-Australian. I speak to you frankly because I know there can never be any questions about the enduring strength of Australia's ties with the British people. The vast majority of our people are of British stock. We wish to build on British institutions. I believe that our understanding will deepen, rather than diminish, as Australia assumes her rightful place as a proud and independent nation . . .

Whitlam's comments demonstrate that, despite the renunciation of formal British ties, despite the new emphasis on an Asia-Pacific consciousness, and despite the formal abolition of the White Australia policy and the integration of new migrants into Australian society, the nation's political culture maintained at its core the British heritage as it had been modified by Australian experience. In contrast to John Gorton, who had been emphatic that the Australian people 'wanted' to participate in and feel the new burgeoning sense of nationalism, Whitlam felt that the radical nationalist cheer squad had 'misread' the national mood. It was Australia's changing relationship with Britain, rather than the re-appearance of an innate, self-sufficient nationalism, that was responsible for the new 'pro-Australian' stance.

Whitlam's projection of a 'new nationalism' as prime minister between 1972 and 1975 and his support for Asian nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s thus highlighted the fundamental tension in his worldview. Nationalism had two different purposes in two different worlds. Within the context of Australia's changed circumstances in the early 1970s, Prime Minister Whitlam was no doubt conscious of his duty as national leader to express a belief in what held the nation together. With its emphasis on egalitarianism, Eureka, a new national anthem, a new honours system, and a renewed emphasis on Australian arts and culture, the 'new nationalism' was certainly an assertion of Australianness and an expression of greater self-confidence.

Whitlam was at pains to explain, however, that if Australia was to have a 'new nationalism', it should be given carefully prescribed limits. If it was a new Australian nationalism, it was also a new kind of nationalism, one that took from the old, classic idea of nationalism its oppressive and aggressive qualities, one that lacked intensity and welcomed ethnic diversity. In the Whitlam view, Australia did not need the romantic nationalist model derived from Europe which demanded racial exclusiveness or blood-soaked revolutions for legitimacy. Yet Asian peoples, who in the 1950s and 1960s had struggled for national independence, had needed nationalism, and not necessarily one which was 'benign'. It remains a great irony that Gough Whitlam, himself seen by some of the 'radical nationalist' school as the political figure who had released a previously 'thwarted' Australian nationalism, in fact used this same thesis of 'thwarted' nationalism to support nationalist independence movements in South-East Asia, in this case a 'thwarted' Asian nationalism which had resulted in the spread of communist influence.

Given the chants and cheers of the 'radical nationalists' that accompanied Labor's 1972 election victory, one might wonder why Whitlam did not invest greater energy in crafting a more upbeat nationalist rhetoric. The 'It's Time' slogan, after all, conveyed not only a growing impatience for social change and political reform, but also the sense of a 'new Australia' supposedly waiting to be brought into being by a radical and national Labor government. Although Whitlam's language on the one hand reflected this mood, particularly in his calls for a 'national approach' and for 'truly national thinking', it never developed into a full-blown rhetoric of nationalism. And for good reason. Whitlam was far more interested in promoting the policies that underpinned his political program. As Freudenberg put it, Whitlam's thinking was 'not
so much pragmatic as programmatic'.(81) Attention to the implementation of the 'program' was not to be overwhelmed by the fleeting strains of jingoistic nationalism.

The mildness and tentativeness of Whitlam's 'new nationalism' become even more conspicuous when compared with the way in which Australians had so passionately and wholeheartedly identified with the British race myth from the 1880s through to the 1950s and 60s. As British race patriotism fulfilled Australia's need for a mass nationalism, these were times when the Australian people rejoiced openly in the grandeur of British civilisation and the superiority of Anglo-Saxon stock. There was no official prime ministerial proclamation that Australians had to be cautious in expressing their pride in being British. On the contrary, both Labor and Liberal prime ministers in the post-war era were as one in proclaiming their Britishness, and when they did give voice to an Australian nationalist story, it never challenged the political consensus on the need to maintain the nation as a predominantly white, British community.

In 1973, however, Whitlam pointed to Australia's 'quiescent, colonial past' and distanced himself from any identification with a fervent nationalism. The acceptance of ethnic diversity and the emphasis on international co-operation that underpinned the 'new nationalism' were thus critical--they nullified any possibility of it being expressed in 'jingoistic' or exclusively nationalist terms.

When his government passed the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, Whitlam pronounced that 'The new Act writes it firmly into our laws that Australia is in reality a multi-racial society', but it would not be until 1979 that the ALP would include 'multicultural' concepts and policies in its party platform.(82) It would be for Malcolm Fraser to give a more substantial content to the concept of 'multiculturalism'. Fraser, too, evinced a similar liberal suspicion of nationalism, yet it led him not to espouse a liberal internationalist world-view but to emphasise the 'national interest', not an optimism about the potential for peace but a fear for Australia's very survival and an enduring antagonism towards Russian aggression.

Ultimately, however, the 'radical national' myth proved not quite so quiescent. Whitlam's calls for restraint and moderation went largely unheeded. A substantial increase in funding for the Australian film industry both before and after the Whitlam period meant that a box office style 'radical nationalism' flashed across Australian cinema screens in the early 1980s. Transported back to the South African veldt in Breaker Morant (1980) and to the trenches of the Nek in Gallipoli (1981), Australian audiences watched as a race of independent, laconic bushmen were treated as expendable colonials to be sacrificed amid the futility of imperial conflicts. In these films an incipient Australian nationalism was portrayed not so much as 'benign' as 'betrayed'. Today, visitors to the Sovereign Hill outdoor museum at Ballarat can watch a sound and light spectacular evocatively titled 'Blood on the Southern Cross'. A pamphlet promoting the extravaganza proclaims: 'France's storming of the Bastille. Gettysburg of the American Civil War. And in Australia, the Battle of the Eureka Stockade. Each of these history-making events was a turning point. Out of each one a new nation grew.' Thus Whitlam's relief at the lack of 'upheavals that provide for older civilisations a focus for nationalistic fervour and popular emotion', as well as the deliberate distance he placed between any new Australian nationalism and its violent European counterpart, had fallen on barren ground. The modern mythmakers would have none of it.