page_title: Sydney Push
section_title: Academic contributors
hierarchical_section_title: Sydney Push / Academic contributors
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lincoln Coffee Lounge is said to be the birth place of the &quot;Sydney Push&quot; movement in its early days, just after the war. A popular meeting place for artists &amp; writers, it comprised a mixture of university students, lecturers, Bohemians &amp; Libertarians. Format: Photograph Find more detailed information about this photographic collection: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=111528 Search for more great images in the State Library's collections: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/SimpleSearch.aspx From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales www.sl.nsw.gov.au
context_page_description: The Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Well known associates of the Push include Richard Appleton, Jim Baker, Lex Banning, Eva Cox, Robyn Davidson, Margaret Fink, John Flaus, Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Harry Hooton, Clive James, Sasha Soldatow, David Makinson, Jill "Blue" Neville, Paddy McGuinness, Frank Moorhouse, David Perry, Lillian Roxon and Darcy Waters. From 1961 to 1962, poet Les Murray resided in Brian Jenkins's Push household at Glen Street, Milsons Point, which became a mecca for associates visiting Sydney from Melbourne and other cities.
  The Push operated in a pub culture and comprised a broad range of manual workers, musicians, lawyers, criminals, journalists and public servants as well as staff and students of Sydney University—predominantly though not exclusively in the Faculty of Arts. Rejection of conventional morality and authoritarianism formed their main common bond. From the mid-1960s, people from the New South Wales University of Technology also became involved.
context_section_description: Amongst the key intellectual figures in Push debates were philosophers David J. Ivison, George Molnar, Roelof Smilde, Darcy Waters and Jim Baker, as recorded in Baker's memoir Sydney Libertarians and the Push, published in the libertarian Broadsheet in 1975. Other active people included psychologists Terry McMullen, John Maze and Geoff Whiteman, educationist David Ferraro, June Wilson, Les Hiatt, Ian Bedford, Ken Maddock and Alan Olding, among many others listed in the article. An understanding of Sydney libertarian values and social theory can be obtained from their publications, a few of which are available online. There are also interesting critical articles in the Arts Society's annual journal Arna by Baker and Molnar whose essay on Zamyatin's We concluded:
  ... Orwell spins out to its last conclusion the illusion that the fate of freedom depends mainly on the colour of the ruling party. We, precisely because it presents its rebels as apolitical, as individualists if you wish, cuts through this falsehood. Zamyatin's superior social insight, although presented and presumably gained artistically and not by way of scientific analysis, consists first in his firm rejection of the rationality or finality of history and, second, in his recognition that anarchic protest against those in power, not the capture of power, is at the core of freedom.
  A representative collection of Sydney Libertarian essays was published by L. R. Hiatt in The Sydney Line, printed in 1963 by the Hellenic Herald, whose proprietor Nestor Grivas was a prominent non-academic Push personality and champion of sexual freedom.
  John Anderson, the Scottish-born Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University from 1927 until his retirement in 1958, was seminal in the formation of Sydney Libertarianism of which, however, he vigorously disapproved. In 1951, a group of his disciples, led by Jim Baker, had formed a proactive faction which split Anderson's Free Thought Society. They asserted that it was natural and desirable for critical thought to engender commensurate action, the principle on which the Libertarian Society was launched.
caption: The Lincoln Coffee Lounge, located on Rowe Street, is said to be the birthplace of the "Sydney Push" movement in its early days, just after the war. A popular meeting place for artists & writers, it comprised a mixture of university students, lecturers, Bohemians & Libertarians.
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