The Right to March
Channel: Workers BushTelegraph
Date: 12/02/2022

‘The day of the political street march is over‘ – Premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke-Petersen on 4th September 1977

Two days after this edict was announced, Dan O’Neill gave a speech arguing for a delay in marching against the ban on street marches. The full text of his speech showed a curious mix of idealism and populism in laying out the parameters of the kind of campaign that he hoped for.

To its credit, the forum voted in favour of marching, but O’Neill’s prediction of a wall of police came true, not in Roma Street as he predicted; but with a phalanx of 300 police at Check-Point Charlie at the entrance of the University on the following. However O’Neill’s predicted repetition of the 1967 march did not eventuate, at least not on that day. On the 7th of September, just three days after the ban on marches there was to be no repetition of ‘another battle with the police in Roma Street’.

No permit was applied for, then or later; and this became a plank of the ensuing street march struggle that all that was required was a system of notification, something that later became part of the Peaceful Assembly Act 1992 that still prevails today.

Did O’Neill really think that the professions, many of whom received their training at the conservative University of Queensland, would throw their weight behind a radical Joh Must Go campaign? From the outset, chants like ‘Fight Joh, join the march’ could be heard on the streets. It did not take long for the struggle to move off campus, as the arrest lists show, students were soon outnumbered by unemployed workers and union members. The Zaphir case referred to in his speech resulted in a campaign where two hundred (200) waterside workers marched on the footpath without police intervention through the city to the rally where 5,000 people were massed to protest the erosion of trade union and democratic rights.

O’Neill was not alone in opposing marches of defiance. Derek Fielding from the Civil Liberties Council warned others that there were dangerous elements advocating violence. He claimed wrongly that a lecturer from Kelvin Grove teachers college, Gary MacLennan, an Irishman from Belfast, was one such dangerous person. This characterisation of MacLennan was false, however MacLennan was expelled with others from the Socialist Workers Party when he marched against the ban.

Fielding, the Civil Liberties Council and the Churches had fallen for the line by Bjelke-Petersen and the mainstream media that the marches were led by violent radicals when the reverse was true; the government and its police force were intent on inflicting as much harm on the demonstrators that they could get away with. Fielding should have known better because the year before, a female student was bashed by Inspector Beattie on a TEAS march. Eventually the government’s refusal to investigate violence by police led to the resignation of the police Commissioner Whitrod.

Dean George, the Anglican prelate in Brisbane, refused to speak on the same platform as the CLCC representative, Jane Gruchy, in a large public meeting in Festival Hall in 1978.

Peter Annear (AUS representative on campus and leading member of the SWP) argued for applying for a permit and negotiating with police but not to march. Ironically Annear was one of the first arrested on 12 September 1977 when police trampled and charged people sitting on the steps of King George Square. It became clear there was a long campaign to follow. The Communist Party of Australia also opposed marching, however its members and fellow travellers turned up on 22 October 1977 to do just that and some were arrested. The Queensland Labor Party was absent, denying its members any kind of option other than the ballot box. In a parliament of about 80 members there were only 10 ALP MPs.

The Trades and Labour Council did not endorse the campaign of defiance until the 3rd December 1977.

Video was shot by Bruce Dickson on an EIAJ Sony J-format, half-inch, reel-to-reel "portapack."