The end of World War II marked a time of celebration and relief for most Australians. For Aboriginal Australians in many parts of the nation the celebration was short-lived. While the post-war years ushered in an era of tremendous economic expansion and increased prosperity, the experience of many Aborigines belied the optimistic statistics. In the midst of the upward economic spiral, the Aboriginal people remained at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale, and their poverty only accentuated severe health problems, which particularly afflicted the young. Though it did not provide the impetus for prosperity for most Aborigines, the end of World War II did, however, provide the spark for increased Black Australian urbanisation, activism and self-determination.

It is significant that in almost all cases these trends ran counter to the enunciated aims of the Commonwealth and state governments’ official Aboriginal policies of the 1945-1961 period. These policies, especially after 1951, became fervently directed towards the goal of assimilation, first introduced theoretically during the 1930s although not implemented until two decades later. This chapter examines the gulf between policy and practice during the 1945-1961 period. It emphasises the inherent contradictions of an era of attempted assimilation by highlighting Aboriginal activity which, to a great extent, traces its roots to the experiences of World War II.

In the year following the cessation of hostilities, the first concerted Aboriginal labour protest took place, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Cynics may argue that the Pilbara Strike of 1946 was fomented by a white man and was, moreover, a Communist plot. Apologists may laud it as the most important example of Aboriginal self-determination and protest action in post-war Australia. No doubt the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, but it is indisputable that the strike provided, and still does provide, fertile ground for ideological assertions. For example, in 1972 Don Atkinson wrote in Arena:

Perhaps Atkinson exaggerates the international anti-colonial significance of the Pindan Movement, but he does not overstate the significance for Aboriginal people of the strike and its aftermath. As Allan Muriwulla Barker stated in interview with Kevin Gilbert:

And this strike, which was both symbolically and actually of great importance for the Aboriginal people, was in a number of ways a direct legacy and logical result of their experiences during World War II.

Even prior to the war, the Pilbara Aborigines had a venerable tradition of opposition to white incursions in their region.^[157] Moreover, the Port Hedland area had for some years before 1946 been a focus for part-Aboriginal political activity, as the formation there in 1934 of the Euralian Association exemplified. World War II brought together the tradition of resistance and this political awareness because, especially with the evacuation of whites from the area, part-Aboriginal labour became even more essential to war operations and preparations. Yet, in an extremely ill-considered move, the Port Hedland district was in October 1942 declared a prohibited area for Aborigines, with the exception of those who had been granted exemption passes. Clearly this measure was prompted by the pastoral lobby of the region, which sought to stem the flow of Aboriginal workers to more highly paid jobs in Port Hedland. This restriction on both wages and physical movement caused tremendous resentment among the Pilbara Aborigines. Added to their long-standing grievances over working conditions, these factors go a long way towards explaining their support for the strike of May 1946, led by Don McLeod and his Aboriginal ‘lieutenants’, Clancy McKenna and Dooley Bin-Bin.

The genesis of the strike and its aftermath have been described thoroughly by a number of commentators^[158] so there is no need to re-examine the course of events. However, a number of general observations are pertinent: first, that the Pilbara Strike was strongly influenced by international factors aside from the war itself, such as the rise of Communism, the growth of the trade union movement, and overseas charitable organisations’ increased interest in oppressed minorities. Specifically, Don McLeod was a member of the Communist Party at the time he initiated the idea of the strike. Commentators differ on this point: Broome views it as a sincere, if implicitly unfortunate, conversion (‘McLeod had come under radical and communist influence in the 1940s’^[159] ) while Wilson describes it as opportunistic manipulation (‘In order to gain support for the strike venture … Mcleod took out a three-year membership with the Australian Communist Party’^[160] ). The fact was that, together with nonconformist church groups, the Communist Party represented an important element of support for the Pilbara Aborigines.

The trade union movement, too, played its part. The Port Hedland wharf workers of the International Workers’ Union briefly banned wool from a number of ‘struck’ stations in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the Pilbara strikers. When the three strike leaders were jailed, charitable interest in the case in Perth was so great that a Committee for the Defence of Native Rights was formed to lobby on their behalf, which included clergymen, academics, and many other prominent citizens, notably Katharine Susannah Prichard among them. This group was responsible for bringing the plight of the Pilbara strikers to the attention of the World Federation of Trade Unions and ultimately to the United Nations, which underlines yet again the international perspective of the events.

Yet, despite White Australian collaboration and support, it must be emphasised that this was an Aboriginal strike. Those stockmen who left their jobs in early May, 1946 did so freely and because they believed in their cause; the fact that the momentum of the strike actually grew after the incarceration of its leaders supports this point. More important, although it was a Western economic weapon, the strike cannot be cast solely in Western economic terms. For even when in 1949 the pastoralists offered the strikers twice their original wage demand, many refused the enticement. Clearly, the Pilbara walk-out was for more than wages. It was eventually aimed at self-determination and autonomy; in Broome’s words, ‘freedom from wage labour’.^[161] Despite the vicissitudes which the strikers endured and the troubles and divisions of the later Pindan movement, this Aboriginal ideal has persisted until the present day, and the Pilbara Aborigines did fight ‘the longest strike action in Australia’s industrial history’.^[162]

Although those involved in the Pindan movement could not be termed traditional Aborigines, they did retain significant and distinctive elements of Aboriginal culture in spite of their involvement with the cash economy. It is ironic that, as the ideology of assimilation developed, so did a conviction amongst the administrators of Aboriginal ‘welfare’ departments that Black Australians had to learn to appreciate the value and usage of money. Yet, when the Pilbara Aborigines demonstrated that they had an independent economic power base (and had ‘assimilated’ an awareness of how to make the capitalist system work in their favour), numerous impediments were placed in their path. It is difficult to find a more lucid example of the internal contradictions of the assimilation doctrine. This policy was doomed to failure because it presumed that Aborigines had to absorb a white lifestyle totally in European terms. There was an inability to contemplate the capacity of Black Australians to assimilate some elements of White Australian society – and to resist others – within an Aboriginal framework, and this inability has in fact persisted in many areas until the present day.

The Pilbara strike was the first major example of an Aboriginal labour protest, but it was by no means the only case of what has come to be known as industrial action. For example, Middleton has detailed the strike of black workers at the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve in Darwin in 1950 and 1951, emphasising the support of the North Australian Workers’ Union for their cause.^[163] Further assertive action was demonstrated in the creation of Half-Caste Progressive Associations in Alice Springs and Darwin in 1949 and 1950. Hence, although the Northern Territory was not strictly comparable to the north-west of Western Australia, this was a time of change in Northern Australia generally, again stemming largely from Aboriginal wartime experiences.

This atmosphere of change in the Northern Territory had a number of constituent elements: the desire of pastoralists to maintain at an artificially low level the wages of their essential Aboriginal work force, the new emphasis upon Aboriginal health problems which emerged in the wake of the war, and the redoubled involvement of missionaries in the area, particularly as the 1950s progressed. There is no need to examine in detail the Northern Territory cattle industry as there is already a comprehensive study of the subject,^[164] but the conclusion has to be drawn that coercion, exploitation and wage injustice persisted in the industry throughout the era of assimilation.

For the sixteen years between 1933 and 1949, the Aboriginal minimum wage in the Northern Territory pastoral industry was pegged at the lamentably low level of five shillings per week (along with some allowance for food, tobacco, and clothing).^[165] In 1949, that minimum payment was raised to one pound per week – but only for male Aborigines with at least three years’ experience. The labour of female Black Australians continued to be exploited as it had always been and female Aborigines languished at the bottom of the Territory’s socio-economic ladder. Furthermore, equally damaging to all indigenous Territorians was the fact that the minimum payment covenant was not fully honoured. As Stevens points out, pastoralists ‘openly broke the agreement entered into on their behalf in 1949 concerning the provision of rudimentary accommodation for Aboriginal employees’. It was to be another eight years before any further improvements in wages or working and living conditions were to be made in the industry. It is little wonder that in 1981 Stevens summarised, ‘Since the end of World War II the larger pastoral organisations have fought the introduction of even the smallest vestige of civilised conditions for their Aboriginal employees’.^[166]

The pastoral lobby in the Northern Territory was so powerful and influential a pressure group that it could virtually dictate to the government the Aboriginal wages it was prepared to pay. Given that during the 1950s an increasing amount of foreign capital – primarily British and American – was invested in the Territory cattle industry, it is arguable that a growing amount of international exploitation of Black Australian labour was taking place in the region as the decade progressed. In this sense, international connections did not always benefit Aboriginal Australians. For a people who had in some cases experienced the vastly improved living conditions and relative wage justice of the wartime period, this oppression must have been infuriating. But the question was, ‘What choice did they have?’

One alternative was to live on one of the many missions which were founded or revived in the Territory during the post-war era. This trend accelerated after 1953 when, for the first time, the federal government agreed to finance and provide staff for the missions’ medical facilities and educational programmes.^[167] This had numerous effects, one of which was the beginning of concerted attempts to combat the incidence of diseases such as leprosy, which was rife among the area’s Aboriginal population.^[168] The motive for this financial underwriting of mission services was hardly pure philanthropy: the various governments concerned with Aboriginal ‘welfare’ had determined that the Black Australians were to be assimilated and missions were considered to be ‘indispensable agents in implementing this new policy’. As early as February 1947, A.P. Elkin had informed a conference of mission officials that it was essential for their institutions to:

As Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck convened a nationally representative Native Welfare Conference in 1951. This conference of Commonwealth and state officials and Aboriginal affairs administrators was inconclusive, for not all states were represented: Victoria argued that it had no need to attend as, in effect, its Aboriginal problems had been solved!^[170] Nevertheless, in the proceedings Hasluck did enunciate the clearest definition of the doctrine of assimilation up to that point in time: that, after generations of ‘cultural adjustment’, ‘in practical terms … it is expected that all persons of aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia will live like white Australians do’.^[171] Missions were to be an integral component of this endeavour, as the vehicles of assimilation. The Northern Territory Welfare Ordinance of 1953 was based on this very principle: if Aborigines were encouraged to develop occupational skills, to care for their own health and hygiene, and to live in settled communities such as missions, assimilation would be the logical ultimate result.

But what appears logical on paper in a Canberra office does not necessarily operate ‘logically’ in Oenpelli or Maningrida. Even those welfare officials and missionaries with the best of intentions could easily interpret their mandate over-zealously and attempt to force Aborigines to become pseudo-Europeans as quickly as possible, rather than encourage them to adopt European ways gradually. This was another of the inherent flaws in the theory of assimilation: that it could so easily be perverted into a campaign of absorption, bordering upon cultural genocide, by those individuals just slightly too eager to make it a success. Despite the attractions which missions and settlements offered in terms of food, accommodation, and health care, many – if not most – Aborigines failed to assimilate. Ironically, the effort which was put into the process was often inversely proportional to the success derived from it.

At its best, the policy of assimilation was charitable, though tainted by a strong streak of paternalism. At its worst, it offered little more than an empty cultural shell to Black Australians. In Northern Territory missions and settlements, as in Australia as a whole, the application of this theoretical policy throughout the 1950s implied the actual policy of coercion at the personal level, in many cases hardly less oppressive than the ‘protection’ policies of the 1930s. The question then arises, ‘If assimilation was fated to failure in northern Australia, was it any more successful in the south, in urban areas, or among people of part-Aboriginal ancestry?’ Again, World War II surfaces as an influential factor.

The war radically altered the demographic pattern for both White and Black Australians in the Northern Territory. For example, tribal boundaries were effectively ignored by the military authorities in their relocation of Aborigines. In southern Australia, the war also wrought striking economic and demographic changes. In the north it was the presence of troops which was the determinant factor. In the south it was the absence of troops, translated into a vacuum in the urban work-force, which was the crucial element – and it produced quite a different type of Aboriginal/white relationship. The first observable demographic trend of Aborigines moving to major urban areas had its inception during the war years, as the demand for labour – especially in military-allied industries – became intense. Steady employment and reasonable cash wages would have been a new experience for many Aborigines but again, the bubble burst when Japan surrendered and the feverish industrial pitch died down.

Rowley has noted the presence of identifiable sub-groups of Aborigines in all major Australian coastal cities in the immediate post-war years.^[172] The promise of permanent employment, though seldom fulfilled, motivated many Black Australians to try their luck in the big cities. Once there, the sense of Aboriginal solidarity, as well as economic necessity, caused many to congregate in particular suburbs or metropolitan areas: Redfern and Surry Hills in Sydney, South Guildford and East Perth in the Western Australian capital, and South Brisbane where, significantly, Black American troops had been housed during the war.^[173] Rowley quotes Adelaide press reports of Aborigines allegedly guilty of drunken and disorderly behaviour in that city in 1946, and of black prostitutes soliciting in the centre of Perth in 1950.^[174] Clearly, once the honeymoon of wartime collaboration was over, civic officials considered that the vices of Aborigines – especially their supposed weakness for (illegal) liquor – made them unwelcome in the cities.

Yet as Rowley perceptively illustrates, ‘the basis for the unrest seems to have been the discharge of numbers of Aborigines from the war-time industries, a practice which seems to have been common to all capital cities’. He also notes Duguid’s justified sympathy for urban Aborigines caught in the double predicament of unemployment and official attempts to expel them from urban areas.^[175] However, despite the difficulty of securing work, once Black Australians had made the initial move to large city areas they were there to stay, as their increasing urbanisation throughout the 1950s attested. Perhaps no better index of the sincerity of the White Australian population’s belief in the worth of assimilation – or lack thereof – was its frequent rejection of Aborigines in these urban areas.

This rejection was many-sided. It was sometimes overt, as in the case of preferential hiring procedures of the ‘Aborigines need not apply’ variety, but it was more often covert and related to what numerous commentators have termed a caste barrier. Considerable research has been undertaken concerning the unofficial caste barrier in the state of New South Wales^[176] and all these studies arrive – at least implicitly – at the same conclusion: such a barrier is the function of ignorance and racism and always necessitates the separation of Aboriginal and White Australians. Regardless of the official governmental policy of assimilation, the unofficial policy – that is, the reality of caste prejudice – worked to drive a wedge between the two races and militated against any more than token assimilation. In short, this period saw just as much distancing of Aboriginal and White Australians as the ‘protection’ era of the 1930s.^[177] The importance of this concept is such that it is worth examining in greater detail.

If it can be accepted that ‘the conditions affecting New South Wales affected the whole country’ in the post-war period and that ‘Aborigines everywhere were in great economic difficulties’,^[178] then the circumstances encountered in two communities of Aboriginal fringe-dwellers in New South Wales in the mid-1950s can be considered fairly representative of those which applied throughout the settled areas of Australia at the height of the assimilation period. Two such areas, populated by part-Aborigines, were exhaustively researched by James H. Bell and Malcolm Calley in 1954-1955,^[179] and their conclusions are fascinating.

Focussing upon the Nowra/Jervis Bay district of the south coast of the state, Bell found conditions which negated the aspirations of the assimilation policy. For example, the Aborigines of the region possessed a fundamental and distinctive conception of security which meant for them, above all, their kin-group affiliations – not the accumulation of earnings or material wealth, as in White Australian society. Second, racial prejudice began at the public school level (‘some teachers on the South Coast believe that the Aboriginal children are congenitally handicapped’^[180] ) and extended into adulthood and into the marketplace (‘White employers on the South Coast, whether they have ever employed Aborigines or not, are highly critical of them as workers’^[181] ). This made it next to impossible for Aborigines who aspired to steady employment (which might lead to some degree of assimilation) to realise this goal. In other words, Black and White Australians were isolated from each other by institutionalised prejudice and rejection which permitted the former only very marginal, seasonal employment. Third, Aborigines themselves would have perceived the assimilation policy as punitive for, in order to educate them in the ‘responsible’ ways of white society, rations on Aboriginal reserves were to be lessened and legal action to recover unpaid rent was to be undertaken.^[182] Fourth, the stations on which Aborigines were living on the South Coast were all located a ‘safe’ distance from towns – a legacy of the protection era – so that life and employment proximate to whites was a geographical impossibility.^[183] Finally, it was clear that theoretical assimilation did not imply any Black Australian self-determination, for even the Aboriginal returned serviceman in the district was deemed unable to manage his own war pension. This was administered by the local Aborigines Welfare Officer, in spite of the fact that the veteran had been competent to fight for his country!^[184]

The picture which Calley paints of Aboriginal station life in northern New South Wales is remarkably similar. For example, wage exploitation of Black Australians was ubiquitous:

Almost identical racial stereotypes are invoked by the Europeans (‘the mixed blood is not worth as much as a white employee … he does not work as hard and is “unpunctual”^[185] ) and there is a similar Aboriginal attitude to paid labour (‘work is undertaken to gain leisure … leisure is regarded as the normal state, and work, something which regrettably interferes with it’^[186] ). It is obvious that as in the case of the South Coast part-Aboriginal communities, those in northern New South Wales and indeed, fringe-dwelling groups throughout Australia, adhered to a lifestyle which was in so many ways inimical to both the theoretical possibility, and the actual policy, of assimilation.

It is natural that the widespread poverty of these communities and the racial rejection of their inhabitants caused many health problems, numerous hardships and much unhappiness. What is perhaps more surprising is to find the pride, solidarity and defiance which survived alongside this despair and alienation. The Pilbara and Darwin strikes exemplified one form of committed defiance, but there were many other forms of rebellion and assertion, often of a personal nature. For example, a number of commentators have noted the prominence of Aboriginal boxers in the sporting world of the 1940s and 1950s.^[187] The successes of fighters like Ron Richards and Dave Sands were an inspiration for hundreds of young Aborigines who entered the ring in the post-war era. Even Calley noted the distinctive ethic of the fringe-dwellers of northern New South Wales, many of whom considered themselves ‘first and foremost to be boxers’.^[188]

Significantly, success in this sport conferred prestige in White Australian society as well; it was one way of vaulting over the caste barrier. Champions in the ring were heroes to both White and Black Australians, as Corris has noted:

There were numerous other Aboriginal achievers as well; for example, Pastor Douglas Nicholls, who also originally made a name for himself in sport but became even better known as a public speaker by the close of the war. The popularity of Albert Namatjira’s painting was widespread and he was at the height of his fame in 1954, the year in which Bell commenced his study of the South Coast Aborigines. In 1951, Harold Blair made his international operatic debut in New York. In 1955, Robert Tudawali and Ngarla [Rosie] Kunoth starred in the first Australian colour feature film, Jedda, directed by Charles Chauvel.

But there is another unfortunate side to these achievements. The fact that they took place in the era of assimilation is extremely significant for, in almost all cases, these Aborigines were held up as models for their race. They were models, not solely because of their talents and skills, but because they had succeeded according to the standards of the White Australian world. They were, allegedly, assimilation personified. But this tokenism had disastrous consequences, which illustrate the inherent flaws of the doctrine yet again. In an attempt to shower fame and recognition upon these Aborigines and to set them upon an assimilationist pedestal, White Australians also – if unwittingly – endeavoured to cut them from their Aboriginal roots. In short, White Australia tried to deny their Aboriginality, except as a somewhat romantic creative impulse. The sorry consequences of this pressure on those such as Namatjira and Tudawali have been documented elsewhere,^[190] but the point remains that assimilation was a potentially and actively destructive doctrine and, above all, this explains why it was doomed to fail.^[191] But only in the 1960s did Australians begin to realise the magnitude of that failure and the folly of the original attempt.

That most perceptive of commentators, W.E.H. Stanner, has put it this way:

But, as he continues, this was a gross delusion:

It is unfortunate that contemporary governmental policies are rarely as perceptive as those which could have been devised with the benefit of hindsight. The signs were there in the Australia of the 1950s that the policy of assimilation was fated to failure, but it was only in the decade after 1961 that a more enlightened alternative was promoted. Significantly, in that later era the voices of Aboriginal representatives became far more audible. New, nationally-based Black Australian organisations emerged, to state their own cases forcefully and effectively – a process which largely traces its roots to the formation of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines in 1958.

I have emphasised that the tenor of the 1945-1961 period was to a great extent determined by international forces and that one of these, World War II, had repercussions which dictated the nature of the most important developments in Australian Aboriginal affairs over that sixteen-year span. To cite yet another example of foreign influence, while a back-bencher in the House of Representatives Paul Hasluck rose to claim that in the international sphere, Australia’s position vis-à-vis human rights was:

But the key point was that the solution to the inequalities suffered by Aborigines had to come domestically. During the years of the assimilation doctrine, few Australians perceived the importance of Aborigines as Aborigines to Australian society as a whole, or saw them in either symbolic or real terms as an integral part of the nation. Some of these perceptive observers were authors, whose works will be discussed in the following chapter. They indicated that the forces impinging upon Aborigines had to have an Australian solution. In this connection, Stanner once again deserves the final word: