Revolution is for us

The Left and Gay Liberation in Australia

Liz Ross

• Publisher: Interventions Inc
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780645183986
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

‘The homosexual is essential to the sexual revolution; there can be no revolution, no liberation, without us.’ Australia’s Gay Liberation movement arose at a time when revolution was in the air and gays wanted to be part of it. It was the Left which had a theory and practice of revolution – Marxism. But it is often asserted that the Left was backward and even hostile, that Marxism had no tradition of dealing with sexual oppression. This book challenges those claims and shows that the Left – and the working class – was involved in the earliest gay rights movements and was integral to the new Gay Liberation Movement. It also refutes the claim that the Left has no intellectual tools to explain the oppression of women and gays. The book uncovers the rich history of the Left and Gay Liberation in Australia, an inspiration for activists today.

CHAPTER 1

LOVE’S COMING OF AGE¹

Praise flowed for Edward Carpenter’s Love’s Coming of Age, a book whose mission was “to remove the altar of love from present dens of stuffy upholstery to the high canopy of the stars.”²

This praise came from none other than Victorian Socialist Party firebrand John Curtin, in that year of revolution, 1917. Curtin had just moved to Perth to spread socialist politics in the West, and to edit the Westralian Worker. Although never confirmed, it seems Curtin also took over the role of the paper’s book reviewer, giving himself the name of Vigilant.

Vigilant thought the time was right to “grasp firmly the nettle of social evils and particularly the immediate moment with its surfeit of sex-problem picture shows . . . to direct public attention to some really serious works upon the subject . . . Love’s Coming of Age deals with the sex-problem in its every aspect.”

While it’s not entirely clear what the sex-problem was, Vigilant argued strongly “that the only ultimate complete solution of the sex-problem, bound up as it is with the economic dependence of woman, lies in the emancipation of society. This idea comes naturally to Socialists, who understand the nature of the economic serfdom of today and who cleave to the classic statement [by Engels]: ‘Never shall this problem be solved until there lives upon this earth a race of youths and maidens who have never been obliged, nor even tempted, to enter a loveless match, nor deterred from entering a love match, through material motives – considerations of social prestige on the one hand, or the necessity for a home on the other’.”

The book was definitely challenging, with “daring tentative suggestions” which would probably prevent young people being allowed to read it. But Vigilant was having none of this, seeing it as suitable for adolescents, while adding that “its sweet ideals” should be passed on by parents to their children, so that “when their turn comes, they may approach the enchanted lands of love and marriage with fuller knowledge”. Although these “daring tentative suggestions” must have included Carpenter’s chapter on homosexuality – the Intermediate Sex as he called it – Vigilant never directly refers to homosexuality. In a later issue Vigilant writes about Oscar Wilde, praising him for writing “some of the finest moral essays in the English language”, but notes that his name “is with rough-minded men a by-word for perverted crime”.³

Ross’s Monthly of that same year wasn’t so coy. With its masthead proclaiming a magazine of “Protest, Personality and Progress. A racy newspaper – racy of the soil. (earthy)”, it’s not surprising Ross’s tackled some of the “hot-button” topics of the day. Heading the review of Loves Coming of Age, “A courageous sex book”, it wrote of “a very illuminating chapter on The Intermediate Sex”. Further study, said the magazine, would lead to a considerable modification of views on the subject of marriage and sex relations. From this, the reviewer noted, Carpenter moved naturally to discussion of a possible Free Society.⁴

“A compelling issue” – the early socialists

Sex, including homosexuality, was – and has continued to be – a compelling issue for the left. Other writers also have pointed to the rise of lesbian and gay rights in tandem with revolutions. One of the first examples is the French Revolution of 1791 resulting in the effective decriminalisation of homosexuality. The Napoleonic Code of 1804, based on the ideals of the Revolution, was widely adopted throughout Europe. Equally influential was the Russian Revolution of 1917, with its sweeping changes affecting all aspects of life including the decriminalisation of homosexuality. In 1920, a leading young Bolshevik David Khanin extolled the expressions of love. “In the name of revolution did we suppress in ourselves explosions of feelings and the flesh? No, a thousand times, no! We loved just as other generations...” Historian Gregory Carleton wrote of the times that, “People could not remain silent in the midst of a revolution which was the most audacious effort in history” to free people to love as they chose and put an end to prejudice.⁵

1917 also inspired socialists in Australia. Victorian Socialist Party (VSP) member Amelia Lambrick observed “a time of rapid movement. Old methods, old ideas, old conceptions are in the crucible. Changes vital and far reaching are making themselves felt.”⁶ One of those changes was the formation of a new, revolutionary party. On 26 October 1920, twenty-six women and men from socialist groups, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and some unionists from the NSW ‘Trades Hall Reds’ current met in Sydney to form the Communist Party of Australia (CPA)⁷. A party which explicitly aligned itself with the Russian Revolution and saw itself as a dedicated activist revolutionary party.

The original manifesto insisted that the Communist Party was a fighting organisation and not a debating club. Adds Stuart Macintyre, “The success of the Bolsheviks was taken to validate Lenin’s insistence on the need to seize the revolutionary opportunity; the split in the ranks of the pre-war socialist international was seen as distinguishing those who made revolution, from those who merely talked of one.”⁸ With the working class the agents of change in Russia, the CPA’s overwhelming orientation was to this class. That approach led to significant differences between the new Communist Party and existing socialist groups such as the VSP, even though some from the Victorian Socialists had been part of the CPA’s first gathering.⁹

However as the fledgling workers’ state faced famine, war and the decimation of the working class, the political situation in Russia deteriorated. From the early 1920s Joseph Stalin began his rise to power. Ruthlessly destroying the revolution’s political gains, Stalin transformed Russia into a state capitalist power.¹⁰ The challenges to prejudice and restriction of the early days came under attack as the Stalinist regime vigorously promoted the capitalist nuclear family, tighter divorce laws, restrictions on abortion and in March 1934, the re-criminalisation of homosexuality.

Leon Trotsky, one of the Revolution’s leaders, was a fierce opponent of Stalin and the degeneration in Russia. Particularly scathing of Stalin’s valorisation of the family, Trotsky charged that: “the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family...to consider it, under the threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure... the scope of this retreat.”¹¹ Portrayed by Stalin as an enemy of the revolution, he became a hated figure in the Stalinised Communist Parties. Nonetheless Trotsky’s influence was not completely lost. Exiled from Russia, he called for the formation of revolutionary political groups around the world to carry on the Bolshevik tradi-tion he’d been so much a part of establishing. Some heeded his call, forming “Trotskyist” groups around the world, including in Australia. But the group here was too small to be influential and it is to the other socialist groups, the VSP and the CPA, that we turn to for the history of the left and sexuality up to the sixties.

The VSP, one of Australia’s first socialist groups illustrates some of the early response to the issues of sex and sexuality. ¹² In the VSP, for all its focus on relations between the sexes and other social questions, homosexuality only appeared in an indirect way in book reviews in the pages of their publications. There was no call for ending the criminalisation of homosexual behaviour or other proposals for change. In contrast, in the mainstream press of its time (1905-1923), there were regular mentions of men charged with a variety of homosexual crimes, some on women who cross-dressed or even married other women, a few about lesbians and an article on a “remarkable theory” of homosexuality.¹³

Edward Carpenter’s first mention in the VSP’s weekly paper The Socialist was a letter from him weighing in on the debate within the socialist movement around the question of general strikes. While selections from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Jail were published and the American radical poet Walt Whitman was praised for his working class verses, again no mention was made of either man’s homosexuality or homosexual references in their works.¹⁴

Once The Socialist did respond to the mainstream press coverage. ‘Passing women’, women who dress and live as men, have occurred throughout history and in Australia, often during times of high unemployment. There have been a number of high profile cases, one of which was Marion (Bill) Edwards. In 1906 The Socialist put her case as a strong argument for equal pay, rather than anything to do with sexuality. As the paper wrote: “Marion Edwards who had been dressing in male attire for the last seven years is a Welsh girl. She says she first donned male clothes to enable her to get a living easier than she could as one of the gentler sex. Moral – equal pay for equal work and thorough training for both sexes, with economic freedom for all.”¹⁵

From the beginning, in the socialist and communist press books were routinely recommended for reading, including many about ‘sex hygiene’ and education. Havelock Ellis’s Men and Women, Carpenter’s Love's coming of age, Richard von Krafft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, along with Oscar Wilde’s The soul of socialism and Collected Works, were merely noted as a books for sale with no further comment or review. The Socialist, however, did refer readers to Ross's Monthly – where readers could find Carpenter’s “brave book”, among other detailed reviews.

The book that is key to Marxist sexual politics, Frederick Engels’ Origin of the family, private property and the state was regularly referred to. There were frequent extracts and many articles based on the book, all a mark of how seriously the VSP took the question. August Bebel’s Women and Socialism, Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling’s The woman question and outspoken Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai’s books were also frequently referred to, with extracts printed in the paper’s columns.

If women become rebels

How did the newly formed CPA respond to issues of sex and sexuality? Was it a champion of sexual freedom or did its practice more closely match critic Eric Hobsbawm’s portrayal of post-revolutionary Russia as repressive, puritanical and with “a paralysing fear of love and eroticism”?¹⁶

Sexuality in the early socialist and communist press primarily came up in five contexts: marriage, birth control, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases and censorship. In dealing with sexual questions in a positive light, the socialists were in advance of society. However, there can be no denying that such discussions did not reach the heights of the Russian Revolution. Nor did the party propose legislation similar to the Napoleonic Code in place in some European states. Homosexuality was rarely mentioned. Where it did appear it was mostly associated with right-wing figures or was viewed negatively until the 1950s when more neutral references were made.

Nonetheless, having come from a political environment where socialists did address questions of sexuality, the CPA initially didn’t shy away from covering such issues in its publications. On the front page of the first edition of their paper The Communist, the party published Adela Pankhurst’s “Communism and social purity: An appeal to women.” Pankhurst predicted that if the Party ever became a force large enough to be feared by the capitalist class, “we shall be associated in the press by accusations of Tree Love’ and ‘Communism of Women’.” ¹⁷

Pankhurst turned such accusations back on the capitalist class, arguing that “profits and prostitution – upon these Empires are built and Kingdoms stand.” Instead, though putting it somewhat more conservatively than the Russians envisaged, she argued, “Communism will abolish prostitut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Love’s Coming Of Age
• Chapter 2: Desire, Shame And Rebellion
• Chapter 3: Generation on fire. The sixties
• Chapter 4: Gay liberation. The age of demonstrations
• Chapter 5: Gay liberation. The road to mardi gras
• Chapter 6: Red And Lavender
• Chapter 7: Revolution Is For Us!
• Endnotes
• Bibliography