(en) Australia, Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group - END
ANZAC DAY by ablokeimet
This leaflet was originally published and distributed on Anzac Day (25 April) 2015. ----
One hundred years ago today, Australian soldiers landed on the shores of Gallipoli, a
Turkish peninsula not far from Istanbul. They were part of an invasion force comprising
British, New Zealand and other allied troops, in a plan to knock the Ottoman Empire out of
World War I and deprive Germany of an ally. The episode was a fiasco from day one and
ended when the last of the invaders left with their tails between their legs in January
1916. In the interim, over 100,000 died. ---- WWI was no accident. Although triggered by
the assassination of an Austrian Archduke by Gavrilo Princip in 1914, it was a conflict
waiting to happen. The Balkan War of 1912 had nearly ignited war between the Central
Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) and the Triple Entente (Britain,
France and Russia), but diplomacy narrowly kept the lid on things. The fact that the
respective belligerents hadn't quite finished preparing their forces probably had
something to do with averting the war, too. And if diplomacy had worked in 1914, something
else would have sparked it the next year or the one after. This was a showdown which would
not be long delayed.
Australian troops were fighting in no noble cause. The Gallipoli campaign was a side-show
in WWI, which was a crime against humanity. It was a clash between two rival imperialist
alliances, a squalid contest over resources, markets and territory in which 15 to 18
million soldiers and civilians were killed to advance the power and profit of their
rulers. The Australian troops fought not for "freedom and democracy", but for "God, King
and Empire". The empire in question was British and there was precious little freedom and
democracy in British India, in Britain's African colonies or even in Ireland. The empire
on which the sun never set was also one on which the blood never dried.
The other belligerents in WWI brush up no better. France had snapped up a huge colonial
empire in Africa. Germany, a late-comer to the colonial game, wanted a bigger share of
peoples to dominate. Austria-Hungary was a feudal relic, full of mutually hostile
nationalisms. The Ottoman Empire was worse, a decomposing wreck kept backward for
centuries by its Sultans. Russia was notorious for the autocracy and oppressiveness of the
Czars. Italy conducted an auction, finally siding with the Entente after being promised a
slice of Austria. And Belgium, poor little Belgium, over which the British Government
cried crocodile tears, maintained a particularly gruesome empire in the Congo. We could go
on - about Serbia, Bulgaria, the United States, Japan and so on, but the picture wouldn't
change.
There was resistance to the war, though you'd never guess it from the memorials across
Australia, or from the militarist propaganda disguised as histories of Australian troops'
actions at Gallipoli, on the Western Front or in Palestine. Not everyone was prepared to
follow Andrew Fisher, the Prime Minister of the day, who promised to fight "to the last
man and the last shilling". At the very start, the Industrial Workers of the World, a
revolutionary syndicalist (i.e. revolutionary unionist) organisation, denounced the war in
the strongest terms. Defying massive pressure from the Government and all official
institutions, they described it as a war for profits and called for those who owned the
country to do the fighting for it, as the workers had no stake either way.
After the debacle at Gallipoli, Australian troops were sent to the Western Front. Trench
warfare had reduced the situation to a stalemate, where generals regularly wasted tens of
thousands of lives in futile offensives trying to break through the other side's lines.
Sandbags, barbed wire and machine guns, however, gave entrenched defenders an overwhelming
advantage, so when officers ordered their troops over the top, most were mown down.
The rapidly rising death toll depleted the armies of all belligerents. In Australia, Billy
Hughes, Labor Prime Minister in 1916, decided conscription was necessary. To get around
mounting opposition in the Labor Party, he sent the issue to a referendum. The IWW's
anti-war work had born fruit, however, and the referendum was narrowly defeated.
Hughes wasn't one to take "No" for an answer. He ratted on the ALP, took 24 accomplices
with him and kept the post of Prime Minister as leader of the new Nationalist Party. He
tried another conscription referendum in 1917 and lost it by a bigger margin than the
first time. The anti-conscription forces were also more radical the second time around,
with outright criticisms of the entire war being more prominent.
Hughes, though, had his revenge. In 1917 he banned the IWW and began a wave of persecution
that crushed the organisation. The Sydney 12 were framed for arson and received long
sentences. A major defence campaign eventually succeeded in freeing them, but the IWW
never fully recovered and the Government had established a precedent for union-busting in
the name of national security.
Back in Europe, the strains of war brought many of the belligerents undone. Russia erupted
in revolution in 1917 as the Czar's autocracy was compounded by military and economic
incompetence. At the same time, the French army was convulsed by mutinies - and the German
generals, not wanting their troops to get the same idea, threw their armies against
British sectors of the front.
In 1918, however, the entry of the United States to the war and the deployment of new
technology like tanks helped to break the stalemate. Germany's increasing military
setbacks provoked desperate measures by the High Command. The fleet was ordered to launch
a suicidal attack on Britain's Royal Navy. The sailors responded with mutiny and, within
days, Germany was afire with revolution. The Kaiser abdicated and the new government
agreed to an armistice. In the aftermath, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires also
collapsed.
Anzac Day is built on a lie. World War I was ended by workers' revolution, not by the
heroism of Australian or any other military forces. Anti-war movements broke the
governments of Russia and then Germany and threatened to sweep away several more. And it
is workers' revolution which can sweep away the governments of all imperialist powers,
including Australia, which wage war on oppressed countries today.
Today's capitalist politicians use the blood of the Anzacs to create backing for current
and future wars. This is especially the case with Tony Abbott, the current Prime Minister,
who shamelessly boosts militarism in order to convince people in Australia that they need
to support the imperialist war being waged in West Asia at the moment. Instead of
glorifying the military prowess of the Anzacs, we should be building the working class
movement which can sweep away all capitalist States. We need a revolution that will
establish libertarian communism, a world of liberty, equality and solidarity, where war
and militarism exist no more, except as exhibits in museums and lessons from history.
END AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM
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