FRIEDRICH
Had it not been for ABC’s breakfast presenter, (Andy of Antiques or Clown of Collectors) I probably would have let it go, it being the past. So I’m going to write without revealing my name. Why should I? “Dead simp” as the mother-in-law would say because in my time I have had my car damaged, bricks thrown through a window and a few attempts have been made to beat me up. And that’s nothing compared to the shit in the mail and threats to wife and kids. In a chequered career I’d taught, lectured, broadcast and even made a brief appearance on TV. I’d travelled widely and was tempted to stay in the US but moved on and on.
I had intended never to go public, talk in public or write again and golden retirement in Tasmania appeared like paradise, especially after steamy, stinking Sydney, the tropics and harsh places that lacked the facilities we take for granted such as heating, electricity and so on. In one particular and almost unbelievable place, I had an extraordinarily powerful shortwave radio and the signals from nearby stations were absolutely atrocious. We were told it the trees under a dense canopy were to blame. Even with rain dripping down the back of my neck, I decided the trees were a better cause than the steady march of so-called progress.
So with barely enough money to break through, my faithful companion and I settled in Tasmania. The better part of me probably has to have been a monk or a contemplative figure in a past life and some of it lasted to make me something of a hermit. Unfortunately the one thing you can’t get away from is politics. Foolishly, I obeyed the law and put myself on the electoral roll and then discovered the pitfalls of compulsory voting. Well, they have just had a cracking election in Iran and as expected, Ahmed dinner jacket has had a resounding victory and the opposition will complain about all sorts of crooked practices but it won’t do them any good and the result will stand. Shame really, Tehran will probably glow violet at night for 30,000 years if the Israelis are pushed too far. My abiding memories of that part of the world are the beauty of the women, ceilings and mosaics of mosques. The coffee was nearly solid but a real heart-starter. I won’t visit Iran again – the politics are homicidal and it doesn’t pay to be tall, white and blond.
After moving around the country for a while, I firstly discovered Tasmania, dropped anchor and settled in a nice obscure place, well out of the way of commuters and other dangerous animals. I was briefly sucked into studying at UTAS but gave that away when I found out about the corruption in certain departments and as I knew too much about some people, it seemed pointless to proceed because no one can force me to toe the party line or write rubbish in whatever the current trend might be. Strange though it may seem, the knowledge of what was rotten at UTAS came from some surprising people but as with so many other things, I found it had been swept under the carpet.
I had initially come to Tasmania to work quietly and spend plenty of time fishing, then move on. To my surprise but not necessarily horror, I found around a dozen people who had been my peers in the mainland universities I attended and we met occasionally…for drinkies. Terry, the master brewer, soon got the group organised to exchange tall tales and true about our lives and where we had messed up and I think without exception we had all put our feet in it one way or another because we had all been married and divorced at least once. My friend Terry made the best beer known to man and he filled his house including the bathroom. In fact, when he built a new house he had a cellar for wines but the beer was stored anywhere and everywhere. There are people who tell you that you can’t drink homebrew after six months because it goes off. That is absolute rubbish because if anything, the flavour improves especially dark ales. And so, I stayed well away from the bigger towns and my pet gripe is poor telephone and broadband service.
Breaking my silence now is a direct consequence of what’s happened in Tasmanian politics over the past couple of weeks. The crafty Andy of ABC played a song that rang too many bells. In days gone by I might have sneered at the words and music but “I wish I was punk rocker with flowers in my hair” by Sandy Thom dragged me back through the years and the words made sense. Now with Jennifer Warnes’
“First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin” are in tandem on my i-Pod, and I’ve added protest songs from the 1960s and 70s. For some reason, they tug at my heartstrings and possibly my conscience, along with lost hair. It’s appropriate to mention the subject now because it is just over five years ago that former Premier James Alexander Bacon departed this world.
Most of our group knew him when we were at Monash University. To find that he had become Premier of Tasmania produced almost polar opposites in terms of loathing and admiration. Yes we knew Jim, when he tried to organize sit-in during the Vietnam War and no-one could doubt his courage when he marched into a lecture hall where about 350 of us were taking a unit in second year politics. He demanded that the lecturer stand down and the time devoted to a critical Marxist analysis of the Vietnam War. The lecturer in question was the late Max Teichmann, whom I knew reasonably well as he was a man of the left for many years and my tutor. He wiped the floor with Jim, telling him that the students had an exam in less than three weeks but as he believed in democracy, there should be a vote. It was done by show of hands and Jim, with his sidekick and a lone supporter left the lecture theatre soon after, to laughter from the rest of us. Exams and deadlines had a way of clarifying the mind enormously but it’s funny how you remember some things. I always sat at the back of the lecture theatre just for the sheer pleasure of watching a short but leggy, well-stacked blonde climb the stairs, clad only in an army shirt that fell beneath her butt and a pair of what were known as gripper knickers. I could never remember her face but that was the best memory of Pol.Sci.
II; Jim’s abortive putsch didn’t rate.
“Chairman Jim” as he was usually called was a member of the Monash University Labor Club. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Labor Party and was a seething hot-bed of Maoists. No doubt inspired by the campaigns of self-criticism and the tearing down of authority in China, they reckoned it was a good thing to arrange in Australia, starting in the union movement and universities. It was of course a time of intellectual ferment and anti-authoritarianism. The various political clubs on campus often tended to see who could do the most damage and the university administration building was vandalized; fire used indiscriminately and several protesters found themselves in a counterattack from flour bombs held from the total buildings. It was no worse than any other university in Australia and probably better than some and fairly typical of student revolt around the globe.
The basic problem was that no one saw through the demonstrators and their ideological agenda. As I left that particular university for another, I lost touch with the activities of fellows he needs students. I need Jim Bacon’s sister, Wendy of the ABC, reasonably well and she too like another acquaintance Jill Jolliffe, was on the extreme left, possibly a Trotskyite but almost impossible to pigeonhole.
Like a lot of extreme left journalists who were women, they tried their best to outdo the men in words and insults and behavior unbecoming of the female of the species.
I’ve seen some rough tough behavior in my time but probably because I’m male, I took great exception to sanitary napkins and tampons being used as weapons missiles in demonstrations. That was a particularly ugly side of women’s liberation. I never understood the attraction of Chairman Mao; the little red book and the ubiquitous Che Guevara T-shirt and pictures of the great helmsman and Che in the famous or infamous pose that has lasted three years ago on every campus. Even the theology faculties found themselves bombarded with this type of propaganda and became inhabited in hot by idiots who called for a Christian-Marxist dialog.
According to some, Christ was a Christian; the first socialist, a worker and therefore by definition a member of the proletariat. Not bad really except that first century Palestine was occupied society under Roman rule and using the definitions of marks the society would be described as few futile and therefore outside of the dialectic to which old Marxists clung. I suppose we should let bygones be bygones but yeah some things have a habit of sticking in the memory.
The first, Mao’s little red book and there appeared to be endless surprise supply and they were handed out free of charge. Secondly, women’s Lib coincided in much of the anti-Vietnam movement and while I admired those women who threw away their bras, it was almost axiomatic that those who should have didn’t and those who should have, did. But who can forget Megan Stoyles during the 1972 election campaign? No bra, magnificent bouncing boobs in a tight T-shirt and it was a case of pure lust. On the downside, I’ve never seen so many unattractive thoughts in my life; looking like that unmade beds and apparently, membership of the sisterhood required students to avoid the use of shampoo, soap and deodorant. On a hot day, lecture theatres and tutorial rooms stank like a zoo or outhouse. There is no wonder just about anybody finished with a degree because lecturers were often intimidated and several were critically affected by string of abuse but university administration engaged in a bad case of pragmatism. In practice, it meant a quota had to pass and so what if the pass mark in a subject was 29%, because of the pig ignorance of the students, they went through. Many of them became that teachers of our children and together with the disrespect and lack of regard for learning, I can quite understand why people lament the dumbing down of society today.
A sometime girlfriend who turned sharp left told me to burn her books. She went off with the Maoists and the copycat students for a Democratic Society (SDS) well known in America. Many years later, she was a schoolteacher and a great cup of coffee, it was apparent her views had changed somewhat. She asked me whether I had burned her books as they would come in handy. Mildly I pointed out that I left book-burning to the Nazis and there have been a few of those around as well. I had packed them carefully in a box and stashed them in a friend’s garage. I subsequently returned them to her and found that she had become a disciple of those who favoured old-fashioned teaching methods, especially when it came to teach English. I lost touch with her but I understand she retired a few years ago after becoming a headmistress. Another revolutionary subverted by the system.
Then I found myself back in Melbourne and there was Chairman Jim, now associated with the Builders’ Labourers’
Federation and the secretary/chief organizer, a criminal named Norm Gallagher who just by chance was making the most out of capitalism by screwing employers and at the same time claiming to be a member of the pro-Chinese Communist Party.
Jim was an enforcer for the BLF and apparently used a baseball bat or a cut-down pool cue to smash kneecaps of dissenters. I soon learned that the Victorian Trades Hall, home of the Victorian ALP was dominated by communists; pro-Moscow, pro-Peking or strangely almost pro-Australian, insofar as they were trying to popularize the Euro-communist movement. No wonder the Liberals managed to stay in power for so long even with Henry “the hangman” Bolte, a corrupt little sod as Premier. I don’t know whether Jim picked up a police record during that time because I had left the state and apparently he moved on to WA and reinvented .
I got one hell of a shock when I saw him for the first time in Tasmania dressed in a suit and tie in a color that did nothing for his sallow, pock-marked complexion, a color that some of us called ‘tired turd. And the next thing I knew, he was Premier. It was well known that he had commenced the long march through the institutions, much beloved of student radicals. His old mate from Monash days, Albert Langer (universally known as “Fat Albert”) had split with Chairman Mao and favoured “the gang of four” who slowly but surely vanished into obscurity. Fat Albert was more or less the self-proclaimed leader of the Maoists at Monash and as such viewed himself as a general directing the troops from behind the lines while Jim was the tactical genius who led frontal assaults. Somewhere, someone will have a photograph of Jim, half way up a light pole extorting the masses against the police and authorities in Melbourne, when he led the fabled worker/student alliance. Denim was of course the uniform of the day and I had a quiet laugh to myself that these years later the non-conformists uniform had been replaced by the suit and tie the capitalist and managerial class. Of course, despite claims that he was a member of the proletariat, Gentleman Jim, as he was ironically known by the football club, came from a wealthy background and had attended an expensive private school.
Being more or less a Liberal supporter but none too happy with their dog-eat-dog economic policies, I found no satisfaction with the Bacon Labor government. Leopards of any side never change their spots and Chairman Jim, was now chairman of the board and remained what he had always been; an autocrat because despite all the crap about egalitarianism and equality under communism, typically the leadership was authoritarian and ruthless: if you weren’t with them, then you were against them and there was no middle ground. Thankfully, he spent most of his time in Hobart where some say he was engaged in planning the vision splendid for the city. Somehow that idea had me thinking of Socialist realist building projects or Hitler and Albert Speer planning a new capital in Berlin. Some of the occasional accounts of cabinet meetings that have filtered out showed that he was every bit as ruthless in making allies with people in the state who count – those who think of themselves as movers and shakers. They are not to be found in Parliament and I know of one or two politicians who have quite a list but it’s never been shown to me and apart from the former supermarket king, the despoiler of forests, a former Liberal Premier, who was caught with his vital parts in the vice but missed jail and Cap’n Bob of Blackrock Reef fame, I wouldn’t know any of the others if I ran into them somewhere. And despite his radical views, Comrade Chairman Jim was pro-business and pro-capitalist but somehow never recanted on University radicalism or the rumors that he was a police snitch.
I was once instructed never to speak ill of the dead and no matter how hard I try, there will always be problems. I’m not sure whether it’s true but one of the town drunks from the public service told me that there were plans to erect a bronze statue to Jim after his life had been cruelly snatched from him. Cancer is totally non-discriminatory and Jim had shortened his odds by smoking. I never actually hated Jim largely because I never knew him well enough and I didn’t think much of his politics up the sight of him on TV announcing that he had the dreaded C will live long in my memory and despite all the talk about battling and remission, he was doomed. I’d like to say more because after Jim came Lennon but I think many people have written much more about him, so I will restrain myself. I’m certainly pleased that I’m not a member of the Labor Party and I look forward to seeing them getting their arses kicked next year.
But a couple of discordant reminders of the Bacon legacy prompted me to finish on a sour note.
Since Chairman Jim’s death, there appears to be a movement to turn him into a saint and at the front is Honey Bacon, which is hardly surprising. In some respects she is the flag bearer and if his son gets into Parliament and I sincerely hope he does not, no doubt he will be elevated rapidly. I don’t know the lad and I don’t want to: all I hope is that he is more decent than his father. The irony of Honey Bacon protesting at the statements made in the Australian newspaper by Paula Wriedt is both unbelievable and quite remarkable. I don’t know the doomed former minister but I have no doubt that her account of the chairman’s reaction to her second pregnancy is accurate: you see at heart, Jim was a thug and he surrounded himself with the same type of people that he was when he was younger. If you weren’t tough, then too bad, there wasn’t any room. And yet, someone who knows and whom I trust told me, the great helmsman of Tasmania himself suffered from depression. No concept of doing unto others as to himself. Nothing I write or say will knock him off the pedestal upon which people have placed him as a great leader of the ALP. But at least, there won’t be any statute now. I would have derived great pleasure from seeing such an edifice pulled from its place by an angry crowd but let’s face it, Tasmanians are too apathetic about government. Bacon should be remembered for what he was and what little he achieved despite the spin and nothing more.
The foundation named after him does worthy work and deserves recognition: in time, the real Jim Bacon will be forgotten and the legend will live on.
