Alternative Anzacs

Thanks to Ms Bridget Cook for her report on Casey council’s plans to engage developers to commemorate the Anzac centenary next year with special community projects (Honouring Anzacs, News, Thursday 30 January 2014).
I can only assume that the developers will be paid from Casey ratepayer’s funds to provide the Casey community with what is really a very unbalanced view of our history.
According to Casey Mayor Geoff Ablett, it is the Anzac spirit now which infuses our national character and to which we owe a very important debt.
Mayor Ablett believes Australia’s culture and history was, in fact, made by the Anzac tradition.
Well this is a view that is strongly contradicted by Australian history professors Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds in their book What’s Wrong With Anzac?
They argue that the Anzac obsession distorts our understanding of the past, replacing historical fact with mythology.
The Anzac legend has been shown by Professor Henry Reynolds to be nothing more than a deliberate distortion of Australian history and a celebration of militarism.
Australia’s egalitarian reforms were, in fact, evident long before WWI.
There had been progressive legislation on women’s rights, pensions, award wages and the benefits of the welfare state introduced as a result of the efforts of many citizens from all walks of life and not as a result of any soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the service of imperialism.
Thanks to our militaristic political leaders, Australia was really a very divided nation during WWI.
Nonetheless, successful community campaigns were fought over attempts by governments to impose military conscription in Australia.
Without the leadership of Archbishop Daniel Mannix and the industrial workers of the world, who were subsequently imprisoned by authorities, many thousands more Australian lives would have been lost in the service of imperialism.
Daniel Mannix and all those who fought against conscription were the real legends of WWI.
That is the tradition that the Casey community needs to remember.
John Glazebrook,
Endeavour Hills.