Posted on 01/08/2014 2:13:41 PM PST by naturalman1975
> ...despite the 62,000 Australians who died in the Great War fighting for the British Empire and another 156,000 wounded... staff from departments and cabinet offices have been briefed to concentrate on other British Empire contributions by soldiers from countries such as Nigeria and other dominions in West Africa, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Thanks naturalman1975.
I think you’ll find the 36th Ulsters also reached their objectives, although damn all use it was to them if there was nobody to their left and right.
This isn’t Murdoch’s press stirring the old pommie-bashing up just a wee bit is it?
There seems to be a conflation of two things; an idea about showing how colonial troops (there was no such thing as the “New Commonwealth” back then, isn’t today either if it comes to that) also served, as you say yourself that’s fair enough.
Then asking is there a going to be a specific mention of the ANZACs and the official replied nothing as such yet but it’s a four-year commemoration so they’re bound to come up. Jeez you’d be hard-pressed to discuss WWI and not mention the ANZACs. It’s a bit of a stretch to then say Britain is going to “whitewash” out the Diggers.
A storm in a teacup, not assisted by the sloppy journo-speak, no-one in Britain refers to the New Commonwealth anymore, not since about 1970 anyway and there will be no “federal” election in the UK next year.
I’ve treated Murdoch’s press on Aussie history with a large lump of salt since The Australian said in its editorial on ANZAC Day 2003 something to the effect that hard as it is to imagine now, but back then Australians regarded themselves as British. Hard for whom? No one with two functioning brain synapses and the slightest grasp of Australian history would have difficulties understanding that basic fact.
They're certainly not beyond doing that, but, no, I don't think it is just that. This is the first source I've seen discussing this publically, but I've heard about it in recent weeks from other sources as well - including some I would consider very reliable. The problem isn't just that Australia, New Zealand (and Canada - news.com.au is itself remiss in not mentioning them) aren't being mentioned - we've had reports that deliberate efforts are being made to 'downplay the white' nations (not my phrasing - what I've been told) and emphasise others.
I’ve treated Murdoch’s press on Aussie history with a large lump of salt since The Australian said in its editorial on ANZAC Day 2003 something to the effect that hard as it is to imagine now, but back then Australians regarded themselves as British. Hard for whom? No one with two functioning brain synapses and the slightest grasp of Australian history would have difficulties understanding that basic fact.
Speaking as an Australian-born historian with English heritage who holds both Australian and British citizenship, I think the Australian got it right if that is what they said. It is hard in modern Australia, which has its own sense of national pride for people to understand that as late as the 1950s, and to some extent in the 1960s, Australians still saw themselves as British first and Australian second. It's not about understanding it intellectually, it's about understanding it on an emotional basis. If you read 'On the Beach' by Neville Shute, it has a passage where one of the women is lamenting the fact that she will never be able to 'go home now'. Home is England, a place she's never ever been before. She's Australian born, and she's never left Australia, and she sees England as home. That's a mindset that's gone now (except for cases like myself where as I said, I'm a dual citizen), and it is a massive change in my lifetime.
True in World War II, but not in World War I. Black soldiers did serve in the Army in fairly considerable numbers during that conflict. They were not deployed to anywhere they would be likely to fight Europeans, but served in campaigns against German territories in Africa. At the time (only a little over a decade after the Second Boer War), the South African government was far more concerned about the pro-German sympathies of many of the Afrikaaners than they were about much else. It was also masked a bit by the fact that, as was true, of many British Imperial Forces, soldiers could be considered to be serving in the British Army, rather than in the South African.
I believe that while the designated "combat" jobs were reserved for whites, the South African Army used what they termed "coloured" troops extensively, as pioneers, transport troops, and the like.
Rommel PO'd the South African Army by refusing to provide racially segregated POW camps for his prisoners.
Until well into the American Revolution many of its leaders, especially the wealthier and/or better educated, maintained that they were not revolutionaries at all, but simply fighting to "maintain their rights as Englishmen."
On a more ANZAC note, about a decade ago my wife and I vacationed in England. We stayed at a bed and breakfast where an elderly Australian was a fellow guest. He said that he had been in Spitfire pilot in WWII, and that the British Government gave him a trip to London (a few years before) in 1990, as part of the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain. When he got to Heathrow all the West Germans on the flight strode past customs and immigration flashing their West German EU passports, while he and his fellow ANZACS had to be wait in line to have their luggage examined and be closely question about just what the purpose of their visit was. He said something like "I was so glad that my mates and I had saved the home country from the bloody Germans."
Thanks for the correction. In looking up on this in a historical account of S.A. initially most of the war involved securing Southwest Africa and East Africa from the German threat and securing British communication lines. I found that there was an armed Cape Colored Corps that served overseas (Europe) and that Africans joined in the thousands in the Native Labour Corps to dig trenches and other noncombatant roles in many battlefields. The text I refer to written by Freda Troup states they were not allowed to carry arms. Apparently 600 at one time drowned on the Mendi in 1917 in the English Channel. Upon their return they were disbanded and not honored with any ribbons or metals or acknowledgment really other than memories of false promises by recruiters and new ideas.
I take your point that the paper might have meant that many Aussies might not understand the mindset rather that not being aware of the mindset so perhaps I was being overly critical.
I did write a letter to the editor in which I pointed out that of course the Aussies regarded themselves at that time as “British” for the blindingly obvious reason that most of them were British. About 90% of Aussies at that time were either born in the UK or were directly descended from people born in the UK, they spoke English with a British dialect and wrote in the British idiom, used British weights measures and currency, had a British monarch and were guarded for most part by the British Navy, whilst they might have been citizens of the proud young nation of Australia they were overwhelmingly “culturally British”. I don’t think the paper published it.
I would be outraged if what you say about a deliberate attempt to downplay the “white” dominions in WWI turns out to be true and probably typical of the apologetic nature of modern Britain. I mentioned the 36th Ulsters above, it is noticeable that when the real tough fighting had to be done in British campaigns, the Diggers, Kiwis, Canucks, Saffers, Jocks and Paddies were usually shoved to the fore. I have a friend from Belfast who works in a bank in the City of London he and his colleagues from the dominions regularly dismiss the ex-public schoolboy English guys in the office as “empire losers”.
One last point I seem to recall reading somewhere that one South African officer faced with an advance by Rommel handed rifles to his black drivers etc and admonished them slightly tongue-in-cheek not to shoot any white Germans.
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