The arrest of an individual allegedly connected to Reclaim Australia on anti-terrorism charges made headlines last week, but it is not the first time that the Australian far right has been accused of acts of political violence. For example, Jim Saleam, then of National Action, was jailed in 1991 for his part in a shotgun attack upon African National Congress representative Eddie Funde, while Australian Nationalist Movement leader Jack van Tongeren spent 13 years in a Western Australian prison for arson offences.
At other moments in time, far right groups have swung the other way, seeking to build “mass parties” and contest elections. Thus since the 1960s, the far right in Australia has oscillated, as the saying goes, “between the bomb and the ballot box”, often with the same individuals involved, merely jumping from organisation to organisation.
In the 1960s, the Australian National Socialist Party and the National Socialist Party of Australia both came into being, mainly to organise against the growing radicalism of the period, calling for the continuation of the “white Australia” policy and rallying against communism.
With the rise of the anti-Vietnam war movement between 1965 and 1975, both organisations rallied small numbers to counter these demonstrations, often leading to fights with the police. These minute groups were monitored by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), but were considered not much of a threat due their tiny size and “poor quality” membership. The NSPA gained notoriety in the media due to its announcement that it would run candidates in the 1970 half-Senate election, but a 1972 Asio report noted it stilled relied on “provocative baiting and counter-demonstration action as a means of gaining publicity”.
On the back of the infamy of the National Front in Britain during the 1970s, a small group of young and old nationalists met in Melbourne in 1978 to form the National Front of Australia. The NFA attempted to seize the initiative presented by the British NF, creating an antipodean version of the UK organisation, aimed at “controlling the streets” and then eventually contesting elections. Looking to the situation in the UK, Asio believed that violence between the NFA and left-wing protest groups was likely, partly because of the NSPA background of some involved in the NFA and also because, “[r]ightwing extremist groups have tended to attract violent elements whether the leadership welcomes them or not”. However, the NFA never fulfilled its ambitions and was quickly wound up after contesting two Senate seats in Queensland in the 1980 federal election.
A number of those disillusioned with the short-lived NFA defected to the National Alliance, a rival organisation than looked more to the US radical right than the UK. From the National Alliance, Jim Saleam and a few others formed National Action in 1982. This group was much more confrontational and eschewed electoral politics in favour of “direct action”.
Academic Troy Whitford has shown that this direct action attracted the attention of Asio and the special branch of the NSW police force, who both took extensive measures to monitor and infiltrate the organisation. By the late 1980s, National Action had grown a reputation for racial violence, with a 1991 national inquiry into racist violence in Australia noting that members of the group had been involved in intimidation of public figures that opposed racism.
A breakaway group led by Jack von Tongeren in Perth, the Australian Nationalist Movement, took this violence further, with attacks upon those who challenged the ANM’s racist posters and evolving into arson of Asian business in the Western Australian capital.
With both Saleam and Van Tongeren jailed in the 1990s, their groups faded away even further, but many who were within the orbit of the far right were buoyed by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the late 1990s. One Nation represented a shift for many on the far right towards electoralism and populism, with a chance of success, but while gaining a number of seats in Queensland and NSW between 1998 and 2001, the party quickly imploded. By this time, One Nation had also shed most of its supporters from the hardline far right in a relationship of mutual distrust.
Many have argued that the shift by the Liberals after 2001 towards the right in terms of the discourse on “boat people” and the “war on terror” co-opted the rhetoric of the far right (and the appeal of One Nation) and toned it down for mainstream consumption. This, in turn, robbed the far right of its traditional support base.
Attempts to build on the sentiment seen on the streets of Cronulla in 2005 by Saleam’s newest venture, the Australia First Party, and the rival Australian Protectionist Party, were unsuccessful. Over the last decade, the AFP have again chosen the electoral path, contesting elections at state and local level. While most candidates have only attracted a handful of votes, in 2006 and 2012, AFP candidates have won seats in local council elections, although in both cases, these councillors have left the AFP shortly after gaining their seat.
Inspired the English Defence League and the German anti-Islam movement, Pegida, Reclaim Australia (and its breakaway the United Patriots Front) have, until recently, looked to buck the trend of the Australian far right since the 1960s, building a (relatively small) social movement that neither pursued a programme of “direct action” nor electoral politics.
With provocative street demonstrations held across Australia in 2015 and 2016, Reclaim Australia could have been considered the most “successful” far right movement in Australia since the New Guard in the 1930s, but organised anti-racist resistance to them, as well as media scrutiny, has stalled its momentum for now. However the recent election of four commonwealth senators (including Pauline Hanson) to a revived One Nation might present the far right with a more promising parliamentary vehicle for the foreseeable future.
Success at the ballot box may stave off pushes for “direct action” for the moment, but judging by the history of the far right in Australia, failure to build on One Nation’s recent electoral victories may shift the pendulum to the other extreme.
Evan Smith is a visiting adjunct fellow in the School of History and International Relations at Flinders University. He has published widely on political extremism in the UK and Australia, anti-racism and the politics of border control.
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