Sydney Push

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This article is about the intellectual sub-culture. For the criminal gang, see Rocks Push.
The Royal George building in April, 2004. It has been renamed the Slip Inn. Fittingly, it's the pub where Mary Donaldson met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark during the Sydney Olympics in 2000. In earlier years, the Sydney Push met in the "back room", a little above ground floor, at left.
The Royal George building in April, 2004. It has been renamed the Slip Inn. Fittingly, it's the pub where Mary Donaldson met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark during the Sydney Olympics in 2000. In earlier years, the Sydney Push met in the "back room", a little above ground floor, at left.

The Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual sub-culture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early '70s. Well known associates of The Push include John Flaus, Harry Hooton, Margaret Fink, Lex Banning, Eva Cox, Paddy McGuinness, David Makinson, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Robert Hughes, Frank Moorhouse and Lillian Roxon. In 1961-2, poet Les Murray resided in Brian Jenkins's Push household at Glen Street, Milsons Point, which became a mecca for associates visiting Sydney from Melbourne and other cities.

The Push operated in a pub culture and comprised a broad range of manual workers, musicians, lawyers, criminals, journalists and public servants as well as staff and students of Sydney University—predominantly though not exclusively in the Faculty of Arts. Rejection of conventional morality and authoritarianism formed their main common bond. From the mid-1960s, the New South Wales University of Technology (later renamed the University of New South Wales) also became involved.

Contents

[edit] Academic contributors

Some of the key intellectual figures in Push debates included philosophers David J. Ivison, George Molnar, Roelof Smilde, Darcy Waters and A. J. (Jim) Baker, as recorded in Baker's memoir Sydney Libertarians and the Push, published in Libertarian Broadsheet in 1975[1]. Other active people included psychologists Terry McMullen and Geoff Whiteman, educationist David Ferraro, June Wilson, Les Hiatt, Ian Bedford, Ken Maddock and Alan Olding, among many others listed in the article. An understanding of libertarian values and social theory can be obtained from their publications, a few of which are available online[2]. There are also interesting critical articles in the Arts Society's annual journal Arna by Baker[3] and Molnar[4] whose essay on Zamyatin's We concluded:

. . . Orwell spins out to its last conclusion the illusion that the fate of freedom depends mainly on the colour of the ruling party. "We", precisely because it presents its rebels as apolitical, as individualists if you wish, cuts through this falsehood. Zamyatin's superior social insight, although presented and presumably gained artistically and not by way of scientific analysis, consists first in his firm rejection of the rationality or finality of history and, second, in his recognition that anarchic protest against those in power, not the capture of power, is at the core of freedom.

A representative collection of Sydney Libertarian essays was published by L. R. Hiatt in The Sydney Line, printed in 1963 by the Hellenic Herald, whose proprietor Nestor Grivas was a prominent non-academic Push personality and champion of sexual freedom.

John Anderson, the Scottish-born Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University from 1927 until his retirement in 1958, was seminal in the formation of Sydney Libertarianism of which, however, he vigorously disapproved. In 1951, a group of his disciples, led by Jim Baker, had formed a proactive faction which split Anderson's Free Thought Society. They asserted that it was natural and desirable for critical thought to engender commensurate action, the principle on which the Libertarian Society was launched.

[edit] Social and cultural life

The intellectual life of the Libertarians was mainly pursued in and around the university, including neighbouring pubs like May's, the Forest Lodge and the British Lion. On evenings and weekends, it overflowed into the much larger 'downtown' social milieu known as the Push, which flourished at a succession of pubs and other places of refreshment including the Tudor, Lincoln, Lorenzini's Wine Bar, Repin's Coffee Shop and, of greatest notoriety, the Royal George Hotel in Sussex Street.

Since the mid-1950s, before extended pub hours replaced 6 o'clock closing , Push nightlife commonly consisted of a meal at an inexpensive restaurant such as the Athenian or Hellenic Club ("the Greeks") or La Veneziana ("the Italians") followed by parties held most nights of the week at private residences. These were very lively occasions with singing of folksongs and bawdy ditties such as 'Professor John Glaister' and many others.[5] Accompaniments were provided by accomplished guitarists and lutenists (Ian McDougall, John Earls, Terry Driscoll, Don Ayrton, Brian Mooney, Don Lee, Beth Schurr, Marian Henderson and others).[6] The late Don Henderson [7], Declan Affley and Martin Wyndham-Read [8] are but three well known artists who learned much in the Push.

[edit] Protest and activism

Sydney Push associates Ian Parker (left) and Bob Gould in a 1960s pavement demonstration outside the Queen Victoria Building. Parker has since died; Gould is a bookseller [5].
Sydney Push associates Ian Parker (left) and Bob Gould in a 1960s pavement demonstration outside the Queen Victoria Building. Parker has since died; Gould is a bookseller [5].

Sydney Libertarianism adopted an attitude of permanent protest recognisable in the sociological theories of Max Nomad, Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels, which predicted the inevitability of elites and the futility of revolutions. They used phrases such as "anarchism without ends," "non-utopian anarchism," and "permanent protest" to describe their activities and theories. Others labelled them as the 'futilitarians'. An early Marx quotation, used by Wilhelm Reich as the motto for his The Sexual Revolution, was adopted as a motto vis:

"Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be."

Nevertheless, Push associates regularly assisted in organising and turning out for street demonstrations, e.g., against South African apartheid and in support of victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre; against the initial refusal of immigration minister Alexander Downer, Snr to grant political asylum to three Portuguese merchant seamen who jumped ship in Darwin; and against Australia's participation in the Vietnam War.

In line with the libertarians' rejection of conventional political models, electoral activism was foreign to the Push, save to urge non-voting and informal voting. At the election after prime minister Harold Holt failed to return from a swim, artist and film-maker David Perry produced a highly acclaimed poster featuring a stylised pig wearing a bow tie. Its message was Whoever you vote for, a politician always gets in!

[edit] References

  1. ^ See Baker AJ Sydney Libertarianism and the Push[1]
  2. ^ Articles and Essays of and by Sydney Libertarians
  3. ^ Baker A. J. The Politics of 1984 pp. 34-43, Arna (S.U. Arts Society, 1958)
  4. ^ Molnar, George Zamyatin's "We"—a libertarian viewpoint pp. 11-20 , Arna (S.U. Arts Society, 1961)
  5. ^ S Hogbotel & S Fuckes (1973). Snatches & Lays -- Songs Miss Lilly White should never have taught us. Sun Books, Melbourne. ISBN 0-7251-0164-4. 
  6. ^ Fahey, W Australian Folklore Unit [2]
  7. ^ Making of a song-writer—interview [3]
  8. ^ Martin Wyndham-Read official site [4]

[edit] Bibliography

  • A.J. Baker (1979). Anderson's Social Philosophy: The Social Thought and Political Life of Professor John Anderson. Sydney, N.S.W. : Angus & Robertson Publishers. ISBN 0-207-14216-5. 
  • A.J. Baker (1997). Social Pluralism: A Realistic Analysis. Glebe, N.S.W. : Wild and Woolley. ISBN 0-646-32616-3. 
  • Alan Barcan (2002). Radical Students: The Old Left at Sydney University. Carlton South, Vic. : Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-85017-0. 
  • Anne Coombs (1996). Sex and Anarchy: The Life and Death of the Sydney Push. Ringwood, Vic. : Viking. ISBN 0-670-87069-2. 
  • (1957-1960) Libertarian Nos 1-3. Libertarian Society at Sydney University. 
  • Judy Ogilvie (1995). The Push: An Impressionist Memoir. Leichhardt, N.S.W. : Primavera Press. ISBN 0-9589494-8-4. 
  • (1963) The Sydney Line. ed. L R Hiatt, printed at the Hellenic Herald. 

[edit] External links