Anzac has hijacked our history

Why do we in 2012 seem to have an endless capacity for military commemoration? Are there not other parts of our history which we should celebrate but which are being neglected?

Two events provoke these questions. First, we have the long-running argument in Canberra over whether we need new memorials to commemorate the dead of World Wars I and II. Secondly, there is the imminent hundredth anniversary of Gallipoli which, according to the Prime Minister, is to be commemorated over the period 2014-18.

Historians Marilyn Lakeand Henry Reynolds have described “the relentless militarisation of our history”, so that “the Anzac spirit is now said to animate all our greatest achievements, even as the Anzac landing recedes into the distant past”. Bob Hawke and John Howard were the pioneers. Nominating Anzac Cove for the national heritage list, Howard said, “You feel as an Australian it’s as much a part of Australia as the land on which your home is built”.

More recently, the proponents of the new memorials in Canberra referred to the two great conflicts as “the wars that matured our nation”. Nothing about democracy, depressions, industrialisation, the growth of cities, globalisation, universal education, mass communications, improved crop yields, the eradication of diseases, the Pill, subsidised health care, immigration, and all the other forces that most countries see as influences on their development and which might be expected to get a mention here, as well. Just those two wars.

Just this week, Julia Gillard added her own bit of rhetoric. “All of us remember, because all of us inhabit the freedom the Anzacs won for us.” The obsession with past conflicts has been driven by the successive anniversaries of the Anzac landing, the much-chronicled deaths of elderly veterans, the mawkish sentimentalism of some remembrance exercises, the rise of military tourism, the sending of expeditionary forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, the celebrity status accorded to Victoria Cross winners, the recruitment of children as aficionados of past battles through the Discovery Zone section of the Australian War Memorial and the promotional work of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) and, finally, the desire of politicians to be associated with military events, even military funerals.

Now, the Prime Minister says, we are to have four years of commemoration to cover the centenaries of Gallipoli and the battles on the Western Front. Indeed, the funding is $83.5 million over the next seven years to run commemorative services, provide grants to local communities so they can set up their own commemoration projects, give money to artists to produce “creations that showcase our military history”, and fund a multimedia education program “that has broad community reach to help Australians learn more about our military history”.

There may be a travelling exhibition of First World War memorabilia. There certainly will be an Anzac Interpretive Centre at Albany, Western Australia. Finally, there is to be “a scoping study for a restaging of the first convoys that left from Albany in November 1914 and carried Australian and New Zealand soldiers to Egypt and Gallipoli”. There is no suggestion of restaging any convoys returning home bearing soldiers blinded, gassed, mad or with missing limbs.

Nor is there any mention in Ms Gillard’s statement of the proposed Peace Studies Centre, recommended by the Anzac Centenary Commission in 2010. The Commission’s report also provided a handy list of some 250 potential commemorations during the period 2014 to 2018. These refer to everything from the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I to the 75^th anniversary of the founding of the Australian Comforts Fund and the 25^th anniversary of the departure of Australian warships for the Gulf.

This list will presumably be what local communities and artists refer to as they agonise about what events they should commemorate. Tallygaroopna perhaps may choose to remember the 95^th anniversary (August 1914) of“the Battle of Emptsa, North Russia, involving a number of ex-AIF serving with British North Russia Relief Force” or the tapestry ladies of Townsville might want to stitch something to remember the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the Australian (later Royal Australian) Regiment (November 1948).

The Lake and Reynolds book What’s wrong with Anzac? (2010) documents how a cashed-up DVA has promoted war remembrance. When the last veteran of World War II dies, there will be no risk that DVA will run short of work – or money. Even before the $83.5 million for the centenaries the department’s 2011 budget documents showed more than $6.5 million earmarked for “Veterans’ commemorative activities” each year till 2014-15. “There is continuing interest”, the department says, “in funding under the commemorations program, Saluting Their Service, and an increased demand for community awareness, education and website resources”. Demand which DVA cultivates assiduously.

But there is more to what is happening than public servants creating work for themselves (and, presumably, cash flow for manufacturers of bunting and fireworks). The burgeoning desire for commemoration can be attributed to much deeper reasons, reasons which say something about the sort of Australia we have become.

War commemoration reinforces our inclination to go off overseas and fight wars that have a tenuous connection to our own defence but where our presence serves as an “insurance policy” with more powerful allies. Even Kim “Bomber” Beazley, one of our most enthusiastic defence ministers, admitted in 2009 that “politicians need the Anzac myth, or they would never be able to convince soldiers to go to war”.

DVA’s work with school children, the upcoming centenaries, army leaders warning against cuts to the military budget (despite the fact that we are already the second-largest importer of military hardware in the world), the denigration of doubters by accusing them of not supporting “our boys overseas”, all of these things “normalise” military adventurism in our culture and provide fertile ground for future expeditionary forces to be sent away to Fiji, Iran, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Syria or wherever the call next arises.

Commemoration of war also drives out commemoration of other subjects. The more we Australians commemorate war, the more it looks as if we define ourselves according to our experience of war. There are lots of other things and people we should be affirming and reaffirming as the things that define us, our scientists and their discoveries, our artists and their works, our inventors and their inventions, our doctors and nurses, our writers and their books and poems, our great public servants, our business people even, our ordinary Australians. There is nothing wrong with commemoration in itself, provided it reflects the diverse strands of our history and is not skewed in a particular direction, as it is now.

Even some forms of war commemoration are supportable. Uneasiness about commemorative circuses should not preclude private remembrance of loved ones who did not return. Some traditional ceremonies, like the Anzac Day dawn service at the Australian War Memorial, have a dignity that contributes in appropriate proportion to our national story; the commemorative splurge promoted by DVA threatens to sink these worthy occasions in a sludge of banal “remembrance”.

The twenty-first century should also see different ways of commemorating. Memorials do not have to be bricks and mortar and commemoration does not have to be Fosters on the beach at Anzac Cove. Consider, for example, the impact in Timor-Leste of a generous donation in memory of the 40 000 Timorese who were killed by the Japanese for helping Australian soldiers during World War II. Or of donations to Vietnam to lessen the effects, still evident today, of the American (and Australian) War 1961-75, where up to three million civilians died. Or donations to the families of service people, sent to Afghanistan and Iraq and coming home maimed in mind and body, the hidden toll behind the relatively small body count.

Why has the urging of Prime Ministers, DVA and the retired military officers spruiking for the Canberra memorials struck such a resounding chord with some of us? Michael McGirr, a former Jesuit priest, used the term “creeping Anzacism” to describe

the way in which the remembrance of war is moving from the personal to the public sphere and, with that, from a description of something unspeakable to something about which you can never say enough. As fewer and fewer Australians actually know somebody who fought in World War I or World War II, the commemoration of war has changed from a quiet remembrance of other people to an unrestrained endorsement of ourselves. As ideology comes to replace history, there are fewer and fewer faces to go with the stories. They have been replaced by a lather of clichés, most of which are as much about filling a void in the narcissistic present as lending dignity to the past. People now seem to believe that in looking at the Anzacs they are looking at themselves. They aren’t. The dead deserve more respect than to be used to make ourselves feel larger. (Bypass, 2001)