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A New Britannia
'Cock-eyed and parochial' Donald Horne labelled this provocative book when it was first published - a few years after his own celebrated Lucky Country .This stimulating new edition of Humphrey McQueen's irreverent classic charts the origins of the Australian Labor Party. In tracing the social forces that produced the ALP, he shows it was anti-socialst from the very start. Along the way he reveals a colonial passion for pianos and uncovers the proto-fascist ideas behind Henry Lawson's popular writings. An expanded Afterword brings the ALP into the current phase of globalising.Racism rears its many heads throughout this challenging story, and Humphrey McQueen shows that the desire for land was the basis for much of what passed as radicalism and socialism. For Australians, it would seem the land boom has never ended.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 10, 2023
Masterful. Must read for all Australian revolutionaries. Do not skip it.
March 1, 2022
Honestly I think the writing and organization of ideas in this book is not that great. Just a strange way to structure an argument. But it has a lot of great insights into early Australian history and does a decent job of showing how the founding myths (mateship, you know, whatever) are basically made up. The best thing it did was show how insanely racist australian society was. There are so many quotes from people that universities are named after in here that literally sound like a nazi said them. Lots of newspaper quotes from socialist newspapers that are just like "we don't like yellow people because the are genetically inferior and are going to ruin the purity of the white race, solidarity forever!" and stuff like that. Kind of blew my mind. It tries to show how australia's particular place in the british empire probably contributed to this. I guess it really tries to trace the material reasons for why australia be like it do, I don't think it 100% succeeds but it's still a good read if you skip over the boring stuff.
September 23, 2017
This author has an interesting collection of titles, unfortunately his writing does not seem available electronically, The comments by Donald Horne say more about Horne to me, and I wonder if he author wrote the dusk jacket comments. ALP History is woven through the book which discusses various "ists" nationalists and militarists and poets and "japs" each with their own chapter. Like all really useful books it has interesting leads for further reading in the chapter by chapter references. I scoured Abels books for other titles by Humphrey McQueen and you will still find them when you look. Well written and interesting insights into political and union history. Petition the publisher for electronic versions, the writings of Mr McQueen deserve to enter the electronic age and have equal if not more merit than many other writers.
February 3, 2022
deliberately provocative appraisal of the origins of the Australian nation, with some chilling reminders about complacency and future directions; important contribution to Australia's polity
January 10, 2025
your da is gonna love this one, brings a lot of secondary sources and accounts together. could drag in some sections, and the analysis would pull you back in.
The overarching purpose of the book is to trace out the racist cultural origins of Australia post colonisation up to the period post WWI. Further it breaks down class oppression in Australia, and looks at the role of land, yeomanry, diggers, and squatters. McQueen draws out the racist, particularly anti-Chinese, Sub-Content and Pasifika, and middle class origins of Australian political parties, honing in on the Labor Party. It creates a great argument to show that the origins of the ALP have always been against the interests of workers.
There is a great exploration of the underwhelming progress of workers struggle in Australia, detailing the slow formation of a proletariat class across specific industries. In the introduction McQueen targets the ‘mateship’ ethos as a key myth underpinning Australian culture.
The book may have a slight misunderstanding of the convicts and criminals who made up much of the British emigration, although it provides interesting insights into bushrangers. I still think McQueen goes too hard on the view that convicts were sent for subsequent crimes and were delinquents, aka not good souls. Convict history does do show that there is an even spread of criminals, and just poor people. england and britain may have been offloading its poor and avoiding responsibility to care for its people, many youth were transported for minor and first offences.
Exposing the pervasiveness of racist belief and the dominance capitalist thought does well to undermine the stereotype of the ‘friendly’ Australian. I think this critique could have been developed further tho.
Glaringly, and maybe of central importance there is an overwhelming lack of analysis into the treatment of Aboriginal people. I think this is key to imperialism in australia, and has a significant relationship to the general cultural absorption of capitalist thought and the suppression of worker solidarity. Similarly, there is a lack of analysis into the experiences and exploitation of women.
The 1970 first edition of the book is 236 pages long. I think there is a second edition with an additional chapter but i haven’t read it.
The overarching purpose of the book is to trace out the racist cultural origins of Australia post colonisation up to the period post WWI. Further it breaks down class oppression in Australia, and looks at the role of land, yeomanry, diggers, and squatters. McQueen draws out the racist, particularly anti-Chinese, Sub-Content and Pasifika, and middle class origins of Australian political parties, honing in on the Labor Party. It creates a great argument to show that the origins of the ALP have always been against the interests of workers.
There is a great exploration of the underwhelming progress of workers struggle in Australia, detailing the slow formation of a proletariat class across specific industries. In the introduction McQueen targets the ‘mateship’ ethos as a key myth underpinning Australian culture.
The book may have a slight misunderstanding of the convicts and criminals who made up much of the British emigration, although it provides interesting insights into bushrangers. I still think McQueen goes too hard on the view that convicts were sent for subsequent crimes and were delinquents, aka not good souls. Convict history does do show that there is an even spread of criminals, and just poor people. england and britain may have been offloading its poor and avoiding responsibility to care for its people, many youth were transported for minor and first offences.
Exposing the pervasiveness of racist belief and the dominance capitalist thought does well to undermine the stereotype of the ‘friendly’ Australian. I think this critique could have been developed further tho.
Glaringly, and maybe of central importance there is an overwhelming lack of analysis into the treatment of Aboriginal people. I think this is key to imperialism in australia, and has a significant relationship to the general cultural absorption of capitalist thought and the suppression of worker solidarity. Similarly, there is a lack of analysis into the experiences and exploitation of women.
The 1970 first edition of the book is 236 pages long. I think there is a second edition with an additional chapter but i haven’t read it.
January 5, 2025
Conservatives, and liberals even more so, have long wrapped Australia’s past in sentimental myth. The classic white (male) settler is presented as a larrikin: good-natured but tough, ready to shout a beer, ready to thumb his nose at wowsers, the church and Pommy snobbery. In truth he was saturated in a racism that permeated mainstream politics, literature and the labour movement.
In the current era these fond illusions face some challenge. But in 1970, when A New Britannia was first published, the myth held ground almost everywhere, even in parts of the far Left. McQueen’s book broke through to the truth.
On the cultural front the beloved poet Henry Lawson warns “I see the brown and yellow rule/The southern lands and southern waves.” For Lawson, Australia’s destiny is imperilled, McQueen says, “by a combined assault of international Jewry and Japanese monkeys.”
Early Australian nationalists were not, as commonly supposed, opposed to British influence. As McQueen shows, they simply doubted that Britain would be sufficiently involved and aggressive in defending Australian capitalism. “Never,” McQueen writes, “did Australian nationalists shed their race patriotism and reject the British people… Britannia’s naval supremacy was the precondition of Australia’s independence”.
In the current era these fond illusions face some challenge. But in 1970, when A New Britannia was first published, the myth held ground almost everywhere, even in parts of the far Left. McQueen’s book broke through to the truth.
On the cultural front the beloved poet Henry Lawson warns “I see the brown and yellow rule/The southern lands and southern waves.” For Lawson, Australia’s destiny is imperilled, McQueen says, “by a combined assault of international Jewry and Japanese monkeys.”
Early Australian nationalists were not, as commonly supposed, opposed to British influence. As McQueen shows, they simply doubted that Britain would be sufficiently involved and aggressive in defending Australian capitalism. “Never,” McQueen writes, “did Australian nationalists shed their race patriotism and reject the British people… Britannia’s naval supremacy was the precondition of Australia’s independence”.
October 26, 2022
Pretty strong book. Found the layout slightly unusual but provided useful insight into the forces that generated the ALP and some of the reasons behind the absence of a mainstream socialist party in Australian history.
January 18, 2018
A must-read for anyone interested in Australian history.
October 5, 2025
Great book, must read for communists in Australia
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews