Abbreviation | AFM |
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Formation | October 1941 |
Dissolved | 1940s |
Type | Political organisation |
Legal status | Defunct |
Headquarters | Sydney, New South Wales |
Region served | Australia |
Official language | English |
Main organ | •The Publicist |
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Far-right politics in Australia |
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The Australia First Movement was a fascist movement, founded in October 1941. [1] It grew out of the Rationalist Association of New South Wales and the Victorian Socialist Party, and was led by former Rhodes scholar Percy Stephensen and Adela Pankhurst. It has been alleged that writer Miles Franklin was also involved in the AFM[ who? ] as she attended three AFM public meetings in December 1941, and had long time literary associations and friendships with Stephenson, Herbert and Dark, however historian Jill Roe has documented Franklin's clear opposition to the political views of the AFM in her 2008 biography of Stella Miles Franklin.</ref> which was inspired by the activities of retired businessman, William John Miles, who had campaigned during the 1930s under the "Australia First" slogan.
Between 1936 and 1942, Miles published 16 volumes of a newsletter titled The Publicist, [2] to which he contributed. [3] He was a leading member of the Rationalist Association, and used The Publicist as his mouthpiece. [4] Before 1939, it described itself as being "for national socialism" and "for Aryanism; against semitism". [5] In January 1942, the ailing Miles transferred editorship of The Publicist to his co-author Stephensen, and had no involvement in the Australia First Movement, dying later that year.
The Australia First Movement has been characterised as anti-Semitic, [6] anti-war and pro-isolationist, and advocated Australia's independence from the British Empire. It attracted the support of the Catholic weekly, The Advocate , as well as the Odinist Alexander Rud Mills. By 1938, those who were later associated with the Australia First Movement were advocating a political alliance with the Axis powers of Germany, [6] Italy and Japan. A number of members came from a far-left background: Stephensen, Pankhurst and Walsh were former Communists. [7] [1]
In March 1942, four members of the Australia First Movement in Perth, and sixteen in Sydney, were arrested, based on the suspicion that they would provide help to Japanese invaders. [2] Two were convicted of conspiring to assist the enemy, and others were interned for the duration of the war. Adela Pankhurst, of the famous suffragette family, had visited Japan in 1939 and was arrested and interned in 1942 for her advocacy of peace with Japan. [7] In his official history of Australian involvement in the Second World War, Paul Hasluck criticised those internments as the "grossest infringement of individual liberty made during the war". [1] [8]
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin, was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936.
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Sylvia was eventually expelled.
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand.
Adela Constantia Mary Walsh was a British born suffragette who worked as a political organiser for the WSPU in Scotland. In 1914 she moved to Australia where she continued her activism and was co-founder of both the Communist Party of Australia and the Australia First Movement.
Alexander Rud Mills was an Australian barrister and author, interned in 1942 for his Nazi sympathies and fascist beliefs. He was also a prominent Odinist, one of the earliest proponents of the rebirth of Germanic Neopaganism in the 20th century, and an anti-Semite. He founded the First Anglecyn Church of Odin in Melbourne in 1936. He published under his own name and the pen-names "Tasman Forth" and "Justinian".
The Australian Abo Call, also known simply as Abo Call, was the first Aboriginal-focused publication printed in Australia, with all issues published in 1938.
Rachel Barrett was a Welsh suffragette and newspaper editor born in Carmarthen. Educated at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth she became a science teacher, but quit her job in 1906 on hearing Nellie Martel speak of women's suffrage, joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and moved to London. In 1907, she became a WSPU organiser, and after Christabel Pankhurst fled to Paris, Barrett became joint organiser of the national WSPU campaign. In 1912, despite no journalistic background, she took charge of the new newspaper The Suffragette. Barrett was arrested on occasions for activities linked to the suffrage movement and, in 1913–1914, spent some time incognito to avoid re-arrest.
Dorothy Frances Montefiore, known as Dora Montefiore, was an English-Australian women's suffragist, socialist, poet, and autobiographer.
Ian Mayelston Mudie was an Australian poet and author.
Percy Reginald Stephensen was an Australian writer, publisher and political activist, first aligned with communism and later shifting support towards far-right politics. He was the co-founder of the fascist Australia First Movement, alongside businessman William Miles, and he was the author of The Foundations of Culture in Australia.
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragist, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
Verna Susannah Coleman was an Australian biographer, whose work concentrated on neglected aspects of controversial expatriate literary and political figures.
Thomas Walsh was an Irish-born Australian trade unionist.
Helen Alexander Archdale was a Scottish feminist, suffragette and journalist. Archdale was the Sheffield branch organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union and later its prisoners' secretary in London.
Sarah Jane Baines was a British-Australian feminist, suffragette and social reformer. She was the first suffragette to be tried by jury, and one of the first hunger strikers. She was known as 'Jennie Baines' in the suffragist movement.
Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and White supremacy as they manifest in Australia.
The history of Suriname during World War II was mainly focused on protecting the bauxite industry and guarding the borders with French Guiana which was part of Vichy France. From November 1941 onwards, 2,000 American troops were stationed in Suriname who transformed Airstrip Zanderij into a major airport, and constructed defensive works. No actual battles took place in Suriname. There was a political crisis in 1943, because Governor Johannes Kielstra used the state of emergency to imprison political opponents.
William John Miles was an Australian businessman and far-right political activist.