Anti-Conscriptionism in Australia: Individuals, Organisations and Arguments

Abstract

This chapter explores key individuals and organisations involved in the fight against conscription, and the arguments that they deployed against the proposal. In the end, in a secret ballot system, any conclusions about why people voted the way they did in the plebiscites on conscription held in October 1916 and December 1917 will necessarily be tentative. Leslie C. Jauncey, one of the earliest historians of conscription in Australia, remarked that '[e]xcept in working-class circles there was a tendency for opponents of compulsion to keep their peace'. But active anti-conscriptionists did talk incessantly about freedom; and, in a society where British culture provided so many of the resources of political discourse, it seems plausible that appeals to British liberty had a resonance among 'silent' voters wary of handing over to government greater power over the lives of its citizenry than the state already possessed.