| Formation | 1930 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 1952[ citation needed ] |
| Type | Secret |
| Purpose | Anti-communist |
Region served | New South Wales, Australia |
The Old Guard was an Australian anti-communist organisation which was founded in 1930 and was primarily active in New South Wales. [1] Its exact origins are disputed. At least one historian has claimed that it existed as early as 1917. [2] It has been described as a paramilitary, quasi-official, vigilante, anti-communist organisation.
The group was primarily concerned with the social conditions arising from the Great Depression, and the actions of the Labor state government in New South Wales led by Premier Jack Lang. [3] Rumours that agitators from the Old Guard were starting bush fires led to the more effective organisation of country bush fire brigades in New South Wales. [4] As fears of a communist takeover subsided, the Old Guard lacked purpose and was dissolved sometime in the 1950s. [2]
The group was sworn to absolute secrecy regarding membership, and was divided into cells so that its leadership would be hard to identify. Media reports on the group in the 1930s were scarce, and information about it has been obscured by the destruction of its own records. [2]
The New Guard split from the group in 1931. [1] Eric Campbell wanted a more visible organisation than the secretive Old Guard. [5] The New Guard was less of a military force than the Old Guard, which opposed the split because it was fearful of communists exploiting the division. [6] Both groups had devised plans to neutralise each other should it be needed. [4]
At the height of its popularity, the Old Guard in Australia had a membership of around 30,000. [1] Members were loyalists and idealists devoted to the British Empire and ready to act pre-emptively to prevent a socialist revolution in Australia. Old Guard leaders were wealthy Protestant Anglo-Australians. [2] Membership in rural New South Wales, and ties to the New South Wales police force, were strong. [2]
At the federal level the Old Guard had its closest ties to the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of Defence. [4]
Like many former officers of the Australian Army George Wootten joined the Old Guard. [7]
New South Wales is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory are enclaves within the state. New South Wales' state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia's most populous city. In December 2023, the population of New South Wales was over 8.3 million, making it Australia's most populous state. Almost two-thirds of the state's population, 5.3 million, live in the Greater Sydney area.
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John Thomas Lang, usually referred to as J. T. Lang during his career and familiarly known as "Jack" and nicknamed "The Big Fella", was an Australian politician, mainly for the New South Wales Branch of the Labor Party. He twice served as the 23rd Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1932. He was dismissed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, at the climax of the 1932 constitutional crisis and resoundingly lost the resulting election and subsequent elections as Leader of the Opposition. He later formed Lang Labor that contested federal and state elections and was briefly a member of the Australian House of Representatives.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been in a steady decline since its peak in 1945. Like most communist parties in the West, the party was heavily involved in the labour movement and the trade unions. Its membership, popularity and influence grew significantly during most of the interwar period before reaching its climax in 1945, where the party achieved a membership of slightly above 22,000 members. Although the party did not achieve a federal MP, Fred Paterson was elected to the Parliament of Queensland at the 1944 state election. He won re-election in 1947 before the seat was abolished. The party also held office in over a dozen local government areas across New South Wales and Queensland.
The New Guard was an Australian fascist paramilitary organisation during the Great Depression. It was the largest and most successful fascist organisation in Australian history.
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Lang Labor was a faction of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) consisting of the supporters of Jack Lang, who served two terms as Premier of New South Wales and was the party's state leader from 1923 to 1939. It controlled the New South Wales branch of the ALP throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s. The faction broke away to form separate parliamentary parties on several occasions and stood competing candidates against the ALP in state and federal elections.
The Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist), which operated from 1940 to 1941, was a breakaway from the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and was associated with the Lang Labor faction and former New South Wales premier Jack Lang.
The State Labor Party, also known as State Labor Party (Hughes-Evans), was an Australian political party which operated exclusively in the state of New South Wales (NSW) in the early 1940s. The party was initially a far-left faction of the Australian Labor Party, strongly opposed to the right-wing faction of the party dominated by Jack Lang, the NSW Premier between 1925 and 1927, and again between 1930 and 1932.
Major General Sir George Frederick Wootten, was a senior Australian Army officer, public servant, right wing political activist and solicitor. He rose to the rank of temporary major general during the Second World War. Wootten earned the respect of his soldiers and superiors; General Douglas MacArthur described him as "the best soldier in the Australian Army who had it in him to reach the highest position". He was famous, in part, for his heavy build; he had given up smoking in 1930, and by 1941—even though he was 175 cm tall—he weighed 127 kg.
Andrew Moore is an Australian historian and academic, a specialist in Australian right-wing politics. He has taught at the University of Sydney, The University of New South Wales, England's University of Lincoln and the University of Western Sydney. His areas of expertise include Twentieth Century Australian History, Irish-Australian history and social history of sport, especially rugby league football. Moore is a leading expert on both the New Guard and the Old Guard.
Socialism in Australia dates back at least as far as the late-19th century. Notions of socialism in Australia have taken many different forms including utopian nationalism in the style of Edward Bellamy, the democratic socialist reformist electoral project of the early Australian Labor Party (ALP), and the revolutionary Marxism of parties such as the Communist Party of Australia.
Eric Campbell, was an Australian army officer and later a solicitor who was the leader of the far-right organisation, the New Guard in New South Wales.
The Sydney University Labor Club is the oldest political society in Australia. It is one of the most influential Australian university political societies. Many of the club's alumni have gone on to prominent political careers. The club is associated with the left of the Australian Labor Party.
The Centre Party, or the Centre Reform Group, and occasionally referred to as the Centre Movement, was a short-lived extreme-right political party that operated in the Australian state of New South Wales. Founded in December 1933, the party's leader and most prominent figure was Eric Campbell, the leader of the paramilitary New Guard movement. That organisation had been established to oppose what its members perceived as the socialist tendencies of Jack Lang, the Premier of New South Wales, but declined following Lang's dismissal in early 1932. The party, unlike most fascist-oriented parties in Europe, acted as a wing of its more prominent paramilitary arm.
The Socialist Labor Party was a socialist political party of Australia that existed from 1901 to the 1970s. Originally formed as the Australian Socialist League in 1887, it had members such as George Black, New South Wales Premier William Holman and Prime Minister Billy Hughes.
The Caloola Club was a bushwalking and outdoors activity club that was based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, founded in 1945 and active until 1963, when it merged with the National Parks Association of N.S.W. The club was an influential part of the 'second wave' of the conservation and environmental movement in New South Wales during the post-WWII period.
Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and White supremacy as they manifest in Australia.
