Politics in ballad form – Stockwell and the 1975 Dismissal
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| Whitlam speaking after the dissolution of parliament, 1975. National Archives of Australia A6180 13/11/75/34 |
Stephen Stockwell 1975: The Ballads of the Whitlam Dismissal (Tallebudgera Press 2025)
This book of some 160 pages includes 45 pages of ballads describing the key events of 11 November 1975. Media academic Stephen Stockwell has taken up the poet’s pen to explore politics. Previous publications include ‘The Voyage and the Vision’ and ‘The Phoenician Sonnets’.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Governor General John Kerr, all Australians will consider the strength of our democracy. Those of us who were appalled by the removal of the elected government by a representative of a foreign monarch will no doubt still worry that Australian democracy hangs by a thread. And given the possibility of involvement by the USA because of concerns for the security of its spy and military installations, we will no doubt wonder whether Canberra holds any power except with the permission of the UK and the USA. Stephen Stockwell explores these questions fearlessly.
Much of the content of the dozen or so ballads is explained in the essay which follows called ‘Spies, Lies and Sovereignty’. Stockwell focuses mainly on the foreign influence rather than domestic constitutional politics.
The ballads have titles for themes, such as ‘A Sovereign State’, ‘Smoking Gun’, ‘Loans Affair’, Bad Omens’ and ‘Aftermath’ or for people ‘Michael Hand’, ‘Gough Whitlam’, ‘John Kerr’, ‘Jim and Junie’ and ‘The Fall of Gough Whitlam’. ‘Prelude’ is also in ballad form and is echoed by an ‘Epilogue’. As well as both creative and academic style writing, Stockwell supplies illustrations in the form of original caricatures.
Introducing ‘The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads’ Russell (‘Australian Legend’) Ward explains that a ballad is ‘narrative folk-verse or narrative literary verse written in the style of folk ballads’. There is no point in opening old debates about what ‘folk’ might. John Manifold was sceptical about the utility of the term when he gave his influential book the title ‘Penguin Australian Songbook’. Importantly, Stockwell strives to make his ballads broadly accessible.
Most of the ballads are lengthy, but would be well received at the traditional Poets’ Breakfasts held at folk festivals. For me the shorter verse of ‘Prelude’ and ‘Epilogue’ are more succinct and appealing. The first opens with the question ‘Remember, remember November eleven/ That day of infamy/ When Gough Whitlam was sacked, democracy attacked/ We lost our sovereignty?’
The ‘Epilogue’ asks of the future ‘Will Eureka’s flag fly, o’er a nation that tried/ To live in liberty? Remember, remember November eleven/ As we yearn to be free/ We can’t escape the blame, while we’re pawns in their game/ And still a colony’. Stockwell does not let us off the hook.
In ‘Aftermath’ Stockwell notes that ‘Our scribes and artists are outraged,/ They rally to the cause: There’s Rodney Hall and Midnight Oil,/ The George Miller, of course/ My friend, that sleuth Jan Mkemmish/ Wrote “Gap in the Records’,/ Peter Carey penned “Tristan Smith”,/ Warned of “Amnesia’s” force’.
The irreverent Norman Gunston was there in 1975 on the steps of Parliament House with Whitlam and Kerr’s secretary. Musicians expressing disgust include Red Gum - ‘Tell Malcolm we’re serving, serving USA’ - and John Dengate with ‘Old King Kerr’. As recently as 2022 Bob Wilson and the Goodwills won the Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice Award with a song called ‘When Whitlam took his turn at the wheel’.
Other examples of satire appear in the work of John Clarke and cartoonist Michael Leunig, and in Warren Fahey’s ‘The Balls of Bob Menzies’ (1989). The Gillies Report in 1983 had a special called
‘Il Dismissale’. Most of these works were expressions of outrage at the political damage to the left and the shame heaped upon Australia.
Stockwell’s ballads focus on the broader question of the deleterious effects of foreign interference on our political culture. Stockwell is a musician, a member of ‘Brisbane’s Black Assassins’ an elusive punk band of the 1980s during the ‘Reich of Jackboot Joh’. A CD of the ballads would be a fine addition.
In concluding remarks Stockwell notes the unlikely reconciliation between Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser who took political advantage of the Whitlam government’s difficulties over supply and was known as ‘Kerr’s cur’. Stockwell sees a message of hope there for ‘our democracy, our nation and the sovereignty on which it rests: the Australian people – First nations, colonial settlers and multicultural migrants – we are all in this thing, Australia, together’.
