Abstract:
December 20 1917. A date that John Hewson, Jeff Kennett and other Australian conservatives seem to have forgotten as they declare a new class war on workers, women, the poor and dispossessed This was the date when Australians across the country decisively rejected the idea of sending conscripts to die on the killing fields of the First World War. The jingoistic Prime Minister, Billy M. Hughes, recognizing that he did not have the parliamentary support to impose conscription, called two referenda, the first in October 1916 and the second in December 1917, to secure a public mandate for sending conscripts overseas. Despite intense pressure for a Yes vote from the government of the day, media and mainstream establishment – a campaign that sought to brand anyone who voted No as a traitor or friend of the Germans – a majority of Australians voted against the measure in 1916 and by an even greater majority in 1917.
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