Knopfelmacher, Frank --- "The Crown in a Culturally Diverse Australia" [1993] SGSocUphAUCon 4; (1993) 2 Upholding the Australian Constitution 15

• Chapter One: The Crown in a Culturally Diverse Australia
• Dr Frank Knopfelmacher

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Chapter One:
The Crown in a Culturally Diverse Australia

Dr Frank Knopfelmacher

It is more helpful in a paper such as this, to alter the title from "Crown" to the more verbose expression "English system of government", for this is what we must be, essentially, dealing with, unless we desire to regurgitate trivialities, and eventually confirm Karl Marx's famous quip, that it is the mark of fools to analyse social and political systems on the basis of their formal constitutions.

It would be also both tedious, and by now vacuous, to repeat in a paper such as this the long history which culminated in the present English system of government (in which Australia also participates) and which is generally known as "The Queen in Parliament". Also, it must be firmly asserted that not only the word "Crown" but the very term "English" is now inaccurate and "foreign" in use. Continental Europeans use it for all inhabitants of the British Isles and often also for their clearly identifiable overseas offspring (eg. the German term "Englander"), irrespective of whether they refer to Cockneys, Glaswegians, Dubliners or, indeed, Melburnians, without being aware of possible ethnic slights. Among those slights, the linguistic annexation of Celts to Englishmen appears to some particularly obnoxious.

To avoid such naming issues, not without importance in a paper on ethnic culture and politics, we have coined the term anglomorph for all native inhabitants of the British Isles and their overseas descendants. Anglomorphy thus refers not only to the institutionalized population of a few offshore European Islands, but also to the more or less powerful "antipodean" and otherwise distant colonial offspring of those Islands, whose men, guns and ships exported anglomorphy both the human stock and the cultural and political structures to form a mighty global "colonial" set of establishments. The present Australian state ("Commonwealth") is one such anglomorph establishment ie. politically and culturally "English".

A more realistic title of this paper would, therefore, become a query: "Can ethnically diversifying Australia remain anglomorph?"

Before analysing the problem as it looks at present, an important empirical distinction has to be made. The most notorious and culturally influential factor in Australian politics, historically linked to ethnicity, has been the presence of the Irish in this country. And yet in the light of present analysis the Australian Irish are "anglomorph". Their politics, culture, religion, etc. are colonial co importations from the plural mother country to Australia. Without their contributions, "English" literature, religion, and, yes, warfare would shrink to little. And this applies, of course, very much to "trade unions" in the often proudly selfproclaimed "most unionized" country in the world. The AngloIrish conflicts, seminal to Australian politics, are, therefore, not locally generated provincial problems but coimported mothercountry issues, along with football, cricket, pudding and almost all varieties of grog. And, of course, religion yes, particularly Catholicism.

The Irish Catholics of anglomorphy may share with baroque Continentals their trust in the mysteries and invisibles, but anything that can be seen, sensually appreciated and socially assessed is of a different world. Sceptics are advised to visit, say, Prague, for testing this pseudoheretical proposition.

The overall conclusion about the effect of Irishness on Australian ethnic diversity is only seemingly paradoxical: the presence of a powerful Irish element in Australia not only does not enfeeble this country's homogeneity, but it decisively strengthens its cultural and political unity by bringing into Australian politics and culture the decisive formative influence of homecountry rooted organic Irishness, almost totally linked to this colony's distant origins. Few things are more anglomorph than an AngloIrish conflict within an anglomorph Commonwealth. It is, therefore, essential to separate Irish politics from other ethnicities, such as they are.

Until the end of World War II, the more or less unspoken population policy of Australia was the retention of anglomorphy. The term "white Australia" was a partial misnomer of this policy, the underlying assumption being that coloured Asians such as the Chinese must be more different from anglomorphs than, say, Slovaks and Serbs. Yet the emotive impetus was the proposition that colours cannot mix, that those who look like colonial "natives" ("coolies") cannot coexist with Sahib material, however well disguised. The underlying economic motives of "white Australia" were perhaps not more but equally important.

The policy of exclusive anglomorphy as a necessary condition for immigration was given up in stages, and after a period of admitting growing quotas of European whites, the "white Australia policy" was given away, at first verbally and eventually, at least in part, seemingly altogether.

The differences thereby visibly generated to the character of the country seemed greater than the reality. Before the postwar immigration programme was launched, Australia was about 90 per cent anglomorph. By 1975 anglomorphy dropped to 77 per cent, the principal "intruders" being Southern Europeans. The "coloured" quota remained virtually unchanged. At present there seems to be a shift from anglomorphy to "ordinary" Europeans and a distinct shift to Asians.

The "racial origin" of immigrants any immigrants is overrated. The real question is this: Can and will the offspring of nonanglomorphs, both Asian and European, coloured and white, become "normal" Australians, that is anglomorphs?

This writer strongly believes that they "ought to" for the alternatives are, inevitably ghettoized cultures, permanent strife and eventually civil wars. This writer is one who does not "theorize" (in the pejorative sense of the word, for many theories are necessary and some are good) on matters of "multiculturalism". A (sole) survivor of a holocaust family, a mature witness of the Sudeten crisis and the outbreak of World War II in Germany, with subsequent months in the Palestine Police under British rule and for years as a frontline combat soldier in Libya and Normandy under Montgomery, he literally knows what he is talking about, in the English sense which traditionally since Hume links the term "knowing" with "perceiving". A near miraculous survivor, now of declining years (past three score and ten), he has only one remaining duty: to warn.

So far there is no evidence that the postWorld War II intake of nonanglomorph immigrants generates opposition to our hegemonially anglomorph culture and political system. The occasionally ethnic islands such as those of Greeks in the Victorian ALP are ethnic "accidents" sometimes exploited or exploitable by ethnic operators who might actually not clearly belong to the culture which they claim to represent. And then there will always be the "Wiener Schnitzel" symptom (already Australianly misspelt by virtually all butchers), linked to the vanishing palates of the founder generation, and hopefully improving globally for ever the notoriously frightful gustatory appetites of the anglomorphs.

Love of old country does not vanish with emigration, induced by poverty, general disadvantage, and persecution as almost all of our immigrations are. Some deviant ethnicity is bound to remain, passing itself on with the young generations and forming more or less attractive regional fashions. They are minor culture innovations quite independent of the major culturepolitical system.

Occasionally such ethnic diversions can be exploited to subvert our general system. Such attempts ought to be opposed prudently and intelligently. The main supporters of "multiculturalism", ie. the desire to disrupt the anglomorph structure of Australia, are our own, mostly ethnically anglomorph selfhaters (Blainey's "Black armbanders"). They must be fought, politically, to the death.

With our victory in the Cold War against Communism (and like all victories this one bears also bitter fruits), the strategic situation of our Continent may become precarious in hitherto not fully predictable ways. And for that kind of contingency there is only one, the oldest, device of statecraft: military power, the sword enmeshed in flexibly intelligent alliances.

Let us, by all means, subject to economic inevitabilities, take any immigrants we can. Let us not discriminate against the best and the ablest ones (I mean, of course, the Chinese) in the tradition of our bogus egalitarianism. Let us admit as many refugees from Indochina, and in the near future from Hong Kong, for our honour (and not only or even mainly our interests) dictates it. If they come as political resistance fighters, the otherwise strict requirement of induction into anglomorphy may be relaxed, balanced by interests of the Australian State.

A good symptom of a correct policy is that it is being enacted before becoming official. A destructive policy is usually being urged by bogus elites in places such as the world of certain Arts faculties. This simple fact makes Patrick Moynihan's celebrated phrase "benign neglect" for the optimal way of assimilating strangers such a powerful, for so obviously truthful, phrase.

Our nonanglomorph intake breeds Australians. It has done so in the past and it will continue to do so in the future. No threats or bribes from ethnic fuehrers can alter it. There can be no reason for deanglifying a country such as this, and this includes the bogus striving for a "true Australian culture". There is no such a thing and cannot be. Anglomorphy as a dominant way of life is good enough where a country is marked or Crowned by it.