The history of Australian Republicanism has been dominated by the primary figures having a libertarian streak, and an individualistic stance that often placed the Republican movement on a back foot for lack of organisation. John Dunmore Lang founded the Australian League in 1849 to promote Republicanism, but it did not have any staying power. Until the Australian Republican Movement's founding in 1991 there was no real formal Australian Republican organization. Prominent Australian Republicans, such as Charles Harpur and Frederick Vosper have been more inclined to view Republicanism as an individualistic expression of civicism.

The Australian League

An early backer of John Dunmore Lang's Australian League was Henry Parkes, who had a flirtation with Republicanism before becoming a strident, and fawning monarchist. But Parkes soon dropped his support of the League once he determined that Lang was not getting the numbers to make the League a strong and permanent political entity.

Lang's early recruitment drive ended up with him being stuck in a Tasmanian jail, for debt, and the Melbourne chapter of the Australian League ended up having a drive to raise money to get Lang out of jail. Lang then used the Melbourne chapter as his electoral office in order to get elected to the Victorian seat of Port Phillip. Between Lang's jailing, and his spending time in Sydney, he was defeated at the polls.

Lang's speeches, did not overtly mention the establishment of a Republic, but contained many of the policies that were synonymous with Australian Republicanism in 1850. These included universal manhood suffrage, removing malapportionment and the cessation of convict transportation. Monarchists such William Wentworth who were entrenched in the squatter dominated Legislative Council, opposed such reforms, and moved to have Lang removed from the ballot, by attempting to exclude clergymen from public office. This was over-ruled by the NSW Attorney-General.

The Australian League had not been used by Lang as a political organization to advance Republicanism in Australia. It had instead been used to advance Lang's political aspirations for election, and once he was elected, it lost influence. When William Wentworth advanced his vision of a Kings, Lord and Commons version of NSW government in 1854, which Dan Deniehy pilloried as the "bunyip aristocracy" , Lang tried to revive the Australian League again, but to no avail. Possibly because Australian Republicans did not want their cause usurped to support Lang's political ambitions.

Charters Towers

Labor supporters in Queensland prior to the Shearer's Strike in 1891 formed an Australian Republican Association (ARA), which despite the contentiousness of the name, the association did not include a republic as one of its objectives. But this is a good example of what the word republic has come to mean in Australia. In 1890 it meant the establishment of individual and political rights.

One of the great Republican firebrands of the era, Frederick Vosper, became the editor of the Australian Republican, a publication which came out of the ARA's movement in Queensland. If the ARA didn't advocate open Republicanism, Vosper most certainly did, proclaiming;

a grand United Republic under the Southern Cross which, profiting by the experience and errors of others, shall be as pure and perfect as it is possible for things human to be.

Vosper was a purist, believing the Republicanism was an expression of the civic individual, and not subservient to factional politics or religion. I use one of his well known republican motto's in my signature on south sea republic - that of;

Sworn to no party, and of no sect am I.

This was despite Vosper writing for a Labor backed publication. Audrey Oldfield wrote that, "Vosper sometimes forgot the political leanings of his audience" . During the Shearer's Strike, Vosper advocated the use of force, and threatened a Republican Revolution. This brought him before Horace Tozer's Queensland courts on a treason charge. Not a pretty notion at the time, as Tozer had enabled the arms of government, including the military, to act in violent and arbitrary manners against the Shearers. The judge which heard the case was an advocate for freedom of speech, and a republican to boot, but it required two juries for Vosper to be acquitted.

The Australian Republican newspaper only lasted fourteen months, and with the Shearers focusing on establishing Labor as a political party, and as a voice for their individual and political rights, the notion of an Australian or Queensland republic was not pursued. The ARA was replaced with what to become the Australian Labor Party.

The Lawsons

Another attempt to create a movement was by the Lawson family in 1887 to complement their newspaper, the Republican. The Australian Republican Union initially contained the same members as the contributors to the Louisa Lawson's paper. The Union gained some momentum, before being replaced by George Black's Republican League. Black later went on to become an editor of the rabidly Republican Bulletin .

The experience of the Lawson's and Black were similar throughout the country. Australian Republicans maintained a individualistic streak, not collapsing their belief in the superiority of a Republican form of government, and the precedence of individual and political rights into a popular political movement. For Australian Republicans it has been a personal belief system.

This is not to argue that Monarchists and Conservatives have been benign in the suppression of Republicanism. They have not, often going to tyrannous lengths to thwart, isolate and silence Republicans. As a consequence Republicanism in Australia has been one of individualism, and the resistance to government tyranny. This can be seen in the actions of people, and groups such as the Ballarat Reform League, whose charter contained ;

That it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey - that taxation without representation is tyranny.

That, being as the people have been hitherto, unrepresented in the Legislative Council of the Colony of Victoria, they have been tyrannised over, and it becomes their duty as well as interest to resist, and if necessary to remove the irresponsible power which so tyrannises over them.

This formal statement, is not much different to what Vincent Lingiari faced from the Vesteys. When Lingiari led the Gurindji people off the Wave Hill station to Wattie Creek in 1966, he did so as a strike against oppression and tyranny from the Vestry's and the Northern Territory government. Lingiari is under-celebrated in this country, his stamping his foot in the ground for his rights and liberties, led to the land rights movement. Vincent Lingiari is quite simply, Australia's greatest patriot.

Charles Harpur

No Australian Republican represented the individualistic streak more than Charles Harpur. Like Vosper, he was unable to give himself to a political faction to further the cause. His early beliefs were that Republican government was the natural evolution of social organization from monarchism as long as humanity was pursuing perfection. He later became depressed by the imperfectability of humanity, in corruption, nepotism, nomineeism and other negative factions. But his dominant belief that Republicanism was the natural social and moral progression of humanity was not shaken. Elizabeth Perkins writes;

Harpur regarded all other forms of government as unnatural, although explicable in terms of primitive social organizations and stunted human moral development. In the nineteenth century, it was only the continuing influence of courtly and aristocratic traditions, he believed, that prevented civilised people from embracing equality in the political and social obligations. Freed of these traditions, within a few generations, nations would abandon the aristocracy of the privileged. Civilised people, Harpur told the readers of the People's Advocate in 1849; 'are republicans ... and mostly democrats also, before they can render a definite reason, it may, for the faith that is in them.'

His last quote is a very apt description of the history of Australian Republicanism. Most have seen republicanism as an individual doctrine, a philosophy that is pursued as an intrinsic part of our social, moral and political being. I too see Republicanism in this way. One of the failings of the modern Republican movement is in communicating this aspect. A republican form of government is not only superior to a constitutional monarchy, but is a more accurate reflection of the people's inherent social, moral and political nature - it will mirror the values that we carry inside us.

We Are All Republicans

Harpur's and Vosper's view of Republicanism shows why Monarchists see it as a such a dangerous philosophy to their belief system. It cannot be eradicated while it is an internal expression that stretches to all aspects of our individual interactions in the social, cultural and political sphere.

This also explains why Republicans have not been able to form into a popular political movement, for Australian Republicans, it is fait accompli, the inevitable republic, as utterly rational. This describes why the Australian Republican Movement during the 1990s just said, "republic" to the Australian people and expected it to be accepted. Ironically it nearly was, Australians are republicans inside, but they are pragmatic ones, and know when conservative professional politicians are pulling the wool over their eyes.

The next step for Australian Republicans is take it beyond Harpur and communicate a wider Republican philosophy and doctrine. One which reflects the republican leanings of the Australian people, and the Australian desire to transcend themselves. From such a point the difficult process of Constitutional change to one of Australian Republicanism can begin - and be ratified via referendum.

cam