Tuesday, August 16, 2005
DOCUMENT SPEAKS
Anti-Howard obsessive Tony Kevin in today’s Age:
Apparently every World War II veteran still living recently got a letter from Howard and his Veterans’ Affairs Minister. Robin Gollan of Canberra told me: “A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly. They thanked me for my part in protecting ‘the Australian way of life in times of conflict’ and for helping to build ‘our community in times of peace’."
Gollan said that to Kevin? Interesting. Here’s Alan Ramsey in today’s SMH:
Last week Gollan, now 87, got a letter. It came with a commemorative medallion marking the 60th anniversary of the end of his war. The letter rekindled memories of his dead friend. It fired up a lot else, too. “I’ve been boiling for so long,” Gollan said yesterday. So he sat down and wrote a letter of his own.
This is what he wrote.
"A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly. They thanked me for my part in protecting ‘the Australian way of life in times of conflict’ and for helping to build ‘our community in times of peace’ ...
So Gollan’s comment to Tony Kevin was actually a published letter, which goes on to condemn John Howard for surrendering “the self-reliance, for which we fought, to curry favour with the most dangerous military power in history. He has stoked the fear of terrorists who may target us because of his fawning subservience to US President George Bush.” Whatever you say, Mr Gollan. Ramsey describes Gollan (a friend of his since 1982) as a former schoolteacher who, following his WWII service, became a lecturer at Sydney Teachers College before a thirty-year career at Canberra’s Australian National University. This apolitical biography sells Gollan a little short:
In August 1952, Labor MHR Daniel Mulcahy had placed a question on notice regarding the appointment of communist sympathisers Dr Robin Gollan and Michael Lindsay to the staff of the Australian National University (ANU).
Gollan wasn’t merely a sympathiser:
Republican and veteran Marxist Robin Gollan has offered an interesting explanation why Australian republicanism was weak during the late 1930s. In Gollan’s account, “all the effort” of “the far Left, particularly the Communist Party and those influenced by its ideas”, was “put into building an anti-fascist front to force conservative governments to pursue the policy of collective security”.Gollan did not remind his readers that those anti-fascists of the Australian Left opposed rearmament before 1939, and that between 1939 and Hitler’s invasion of the USSR they denounced the war as an imperialist conflict of no concern to the Australian people.
It was actually Australian commies like Gollan who curried favour with “the most dangerous military power in history”—the Soviet Union. Which is why, presumably, Ramsey omitted his friend’s fascinating poltical background.
(Via reader Jay Santos)
UPDATE. Reader Harold points out another apparent omission:
None of these people mention that the medal doesn’t just arrive - you had to apply to receive it.
My mother and father were eligible for this medal (not ‘medallion’) through their service in the Army during WWII, as were their old army friends. To receive it they had two weeks to apply to receive the medal and nominate whether they just wanted it sent to them or presented to them by their local MP.
I guess it would take some of the shine off Gollan’s story if he admitted that he actually applied to receive the medal.