How Australia excised its British soul
Two countries, two paths
This is a second piece inspired by Neville Meaney’s essays, this was the first.
“We Australians…. shall hold this territory and keep it as a citadel for the British-speaking race.”
— Prime Minister Curtin, 1941, following the declaration of war on Japan
All subsequent Australian leaders down to the 1960s remained true to their cultural faith, hoping to find in imperial cabinets or conferences or in continuous consultation or better information the way forward. Time and time again the British failed the Australians, showing little or no understanding of their Pacific preoccupations, reneging on promises to consult about policymaking or ‘betraying’ them at Singapore. But the Australians, after venting their high indignation, never lost hope. It was as though they said to themselves that next time it would work, next time it would be different. But it didn’t and it wasn’t.
[W]hat surprises is the strength with which Australians clung to this dream of the unity of the British peoples. The power of the British myth in Australian consciousness made it almost impossible for Australians to accept that they had no alternative but to be themselves. It was events outside Australia’s control, the transformation of the British Commonwealth and Britain’s decision to find its future in Europe, which forced Australians finally to see that their British dream was an illusion, to acknowledge that Britain was a ‘foreign country’ and to try to find their own place in the world. From all this it would not then be unfair to draw the conclusion that the history of nationalism in Australia was not one of thwarted Australianness but rather of thwarted Britishness.
— Neville Meaney, Britishness and Australian identity, Australia and the Wider World
In 1948 Hatikvah became Israel’s unofficial national anthem (it was officially sanctioned in 2004). Famously, the anthem speaks of a Jewish soul that yearns towards Zion.
Australia adopted ‘Advance Australia Fair’, its current national anthem, in 1977. Prior to that Australians sang ‘God Save The Queen’ at official events. Australians handily voted for ‘Advance Australia Fair’ over more distinctly local alternatives ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Song of Australia’.
Why did Australia adopt a new anthem in 1977?
Because Britain in 1973 turned its back on Australia and its other colonies. The UK entered the European Economic Community in 1973, the predecessor to the European Union, and so abandoned ‘Greater Britain’. Australians had little choice but to relinquish their symbols of Britannia.
Australia found it difficult to let go of this part of its identity. In 1977, Britishness had been essential to Australianness for well over a century. In 1885 the Premier of New South Wales sent a military contingent to assist Britain in its war against the Mahdi of Sudan, arguing that ‘We do not stop to question, we only know that British blood — Australia blood — has been shed…” — the two being identical. In 1947, 65% of Australians in a Gallup poll said they’d prefer to keep British citizenship over a new Australian citizenship. Australian citizenship as a concept was introduced only in 1949.1 Prior to that, no Australian parliament had considered it necessary — being a British subject was entirely satisfactory. In 1906 the High Court stated that “We are not disposed to give any countenance to the novel doctrine that there is an Australian nationality as distinguished from a British nationality.” Australia was, in the words of Reverend W.H Fitchett, “the very happiest example of the colonising genius of the British race.”
And so despite Britain’s unreciprocated loyalties, and despite having decided to move on and choose an anthem for themselves, Australians chose the most British-flavoured anthem of all. ‘Advance Australia Fair’ was written a century earlier, in praise of Australia’s own Britishness at a new zenith of Australia’s white consciousness. What is less known about this anthem, is that just like Israel’s Hatikvah, it too claimed a soul for Australia:
Britannia then shall surely know
Beyond wide oceans’ rolls
Her sons in fair Australia’s land
Still keep a British soul.
It claimed a British soul for Australia. For Australia had a British soul, at least for most of its history. And at the moment Australia charted its own course after the abandonment of its mother, Australians nevertheless chose the anthem that was written at British Australia’s peak. Except it cut out the stanza about its soul.
Australia has tended to veil this essential quality to Australianness ever since. Australians, if anything, have felt embarrassed by it.
There is something poignant about the opposite courses Israel and Australia took in the middle of the twentieth century. Both felt betrayed by Britain. One leaned into its nation’s soul, the other excised it. Australians have not yet found a substitute.
The reason Australia introduced an Australian citizenship in 1949 was because it planned to chart a new immigration course to include non-British Europeans. Nevertheless, Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell said “for every foreign migrant there will be 10 people from the United Kingdom” and that these foreigners would quickly assimilate into a British Australia. So began our journey to today.
Oh well, nevertheless.
Tbh, it's not unexpected that two *extremely* different countries chose two different paths. But now they are both sending contestants to Eurovision, if I have understood correctly.
When I was a university student in England, I went on long, rambling, half-earnest-half-joking rants about how I was considered an "international student" even though my countrymen had fought for the Empire in multiple wars, my mother tongue was English, and I was a citizen of the Commonwealth; whereas Germans (Britain's opponents in those wars) were considered local students because they were part of the European Union.