We all know about how "Advance Australia Fair" was first performed in the middle of a outbreak of race riots, right?

As @LukeLPearson points out here, the cosmetic change of one word is pretty pathetic.

But we've genuinely forgotten the context in which the song was written: an outbreak of anti-Chinese violence in 1870s Sydney, which ultimately led to Federation.

https://t.co/9eIsmEqRl1
Here's the Sydney Morning Herald's account of its first performance on St. Andrews Day, 30 November 1878:

https://t.co/6DunDKIbvB
On the adjoining column is an account of an incident the same week when two well-dressed men in black coats and white shirt-fronts brutally attacked a Chinese man in Essex Street in the Rocks with a hammer:
This wasn't an isolated incident. In fact, racist anti-Chinese agitation in November 1878 in Sydney was a crucial turning point in Australia's Federation as a unified country.
There had been periodic race riots against Chinese miners on the goldfields of Victoria and Queensland since the 1850s but the 1878 Seamen's Strike was the first time this came to urban Australia.
The Seamen's Union started agitating against the Australasian Steam Navigation Company in July 1878 about its hiring of Chinese labourers as ship crew. By November it had turned into a mass strike.
There was very serious unrest. After a meeting in Hyde Park on 4 December a few days after "Advance Australia Fair" debuted, a mob of 2,000 people carrying torches attempted to burn down a Chinese-owned business and attacked people in the street:

https://t.co/Y8Ktav0ZmD
The agitation spread like wildfire.

The Sydney Evening News edition reporting another early performance of "Advance Australia Fair" in early December 1878 records anti-Chinese meetings in Bathurst, Mudgee, Goulburn, Wellington and Brisbane:

https://t.co/kOsHmp4nAH
The Seamen's Strike was arguably the start of the union movement in Australia. It also led to 1881 legislation restricting Chinese migration into New South Wales.
The reluctance of most states to pass such legislation in line with NSW and Victoria was one of the driving forces behind Federation.
Read the original four-verse text of the song – with its lines about "English soil and fatherland" and promises to "rouse to arms" against "foreign foe" — and consider the race riots that were playing out in the same city when it was first performed.

https://t.co/jH9k2jqEm3
There aren't many good national anthems IMO, but that history does leave a particularly bad taste in my mouth, regardless of how much the lyrics are cleaned up.

More from Culture

One of the authors of the Policy Exchange report on academic free speech thinks it is "ridiculous" to expect him to accurately portray an incident at Cardiff University in his study, both in the reporting and in a question put to a student sample.


Here is the incident Kaufmann incorporated into his study, as told by a Cardiff professor who was there. As you can see, the incident involved the university intervening to *uphold* free speech principles:


Here is the first mention of the Greer at Cardiff incident in Kaufmann's report. It refers to the "concrete case" of the "no-platforming of Germaine Greer". Any reasonable reader would assume that refers to an incident of no-platforming instead of its opposite.


Here is the next mention of Greer in the report. The text asks whether the University "should have overruled protestors" and "stepped in...and guaranteed Greer the right to speak". Again the strong implication is that this did not happen and Greer was "no platformed".


The authors could easily have added a footnote at this point explaining what actually happened in Cardiff. They did not.
. THREAD 1/x

David Baddiel is getting lots of coverage and feedback on his book which again focuses on so called 'left wing' antisemitism.

I will start by saying that I have seen antisemitic comments made by Labour members and some genuine cases.

However, I have huge concerns.


2/x

Let's look in detail at this article written in April 2019 in the @Guardian - and I will explain the concerns.

The areas highlighted guide you to believe this was all Labour - IT WASN'T.

It also occurred before 2015! Detail follows...

https://t.co/cK59FP83aG


3/x

So as you see the writer of this rather deceitful piece starts with

"THAT CHANGED IN SEPTEMBER 2015" 🙄

This was done to point the timeframe as Corbyn's leadership. Yet the article goes on to describe things that are not even related to Labour, which occurred in 2014.


4/x

So... What in fact the @Guardian writer is discussing here is this case - where a group of Neo-Nazi's spent months inflicting abuse on Jewish MP Luciana Berger

All the detail is in the Court Notes when Bonehill-Paine was sentenced by the judge.

https://t.co/wAyo6Yro5Q


5/x

The Justice sentencing remarks to Neo-Nazi explain the previous cases too. See the date 2014.

Yet the Guardian writer refers to this NON LABOUR case to effectively make her article a lie.

"Star of David" - this was Garron Helm another neo-Nazi..

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