Undesirable Aliens

The NSW State election of 1925 had the ‘riff raff of Southern Europe’ ducking for cover, and demonstrated how hard economic times let the racism genie out of the bottle. Here’s how it panned out at Murwillumbah.

The period post WW1 had been a heady time in the Tweed Shire where the banana industry had led to a spectacular growth rate; between the censuses of 1911 and 21 the population grew 68% (7308 to 12,279), the highest in the Richmond-Tweed region, while Murbah Municipality had come in at 29% (2206 to 2855), giving the business houses cause for much rejoicing. But Australian banana production hit an all time high in 1922 and the local retail price quickly collapsed, leading to a dramatic drop in business around town. With the added anguish of the bunchy top disaster the industry entered Rip Van Winkle land and the production record wasn’t broken for another 14yrs. Planters who had no other means of livelihood such as dairying or grazing, were forced to leave with only personal belonging, said the Tweed Daily in a later ‘look-back article’. The last of the soldier settlers walked off in 1923.

But the dairy industry, the economic mainstay of the Northern Rivers and producing almost half the state’s butter, was also looking very shaky. The wholesale price of butter hit an all time high of just over 2/- a lb in 1920 and wasn’t to see this price again for 30yrs, even with the help of subsidies. Apart from an aberration in 1929, the return to dairy farmers for cream supplied to the factories peaked in 1924 and had drifted to an all time low by 1934. In the meantime the dairy farmers began pedaling like hell to offset these low prices and got caught in the circular trap of increasing production. Paradoxically, at the same time they were joined by a heap of new producers attracted to the industry to augment shrinking incomes from other forms of rural activity, notably bananas and sugar cane in the Tweed district. By the start of WW2 returns had only recovered marginally, but by this time the exhausted dairy farmers and cows had fallen off the treadmill and begun exiting the industry in increasing numbers.

The year 1924 also marked the peak in the benchmark construction industry. Through to that year the expenditure on new housing in Murbah was consistent at around £27,000 per year, but over the next 6yrs drifted to a low of £2,465 before starting a slow recovery.

In early 1925 the Tweed Daily, searching around for a possible distraction, or scapegoat, from the increasingly gloomy economic outlook, started to get excited over the number of Southern Europeans entering the country after America shut its doors and the cunning travel agents of The Messageries Maritimes Company had pointed them in Australia’s direction. All newspapers in the region took up the clarion call but Murbah went over the top. An editorial in the local rag, titled The Foreign Influx, spelt out to the Tweedies the dire consequences of this migration: The continued influx of Southern Europeans into this country is causing some concern. Labor sees in the coming of so many unskilled migrants a menace to its own prosperity and the privileges it has won. Another section of the community, more far seeing, is alarmed lest the racial purity of the race should be endangered unless restrictions are imposed upon the numbers of foreigners allowed entry into Australia. ….
A worse aspect of the case, however, is that these same low-grade foreigners are taking possession of the sugar plantations in Northern Queensland. Working inordinately long hours for a pittance, they secure employment in preference to the Australian workmen. Gangs working together, living on the smell of the proverbial oily rag, save their money, and at length purchase properties of their own… and the North becomes a Mediterranean colony.
Such a state of affairs is a distinct menace to the White Australia policy. Australia, to such people as this, is merely a country where they hope to make as much money as possible in the shortest space of time, and so return home to their beloved homeland. The White Australia policy is as nothing to them. They would not fire a shot in its defence, and even if they would be willing to do so their help would be of no value whatever, inasmuch as their fighting qualities are at the lowest possible ebb, as was demonstrated in the Great War.
Certainly the most insidious, and probably the greatest, danger involved in the unrestricted flow of foreigners into Australia is the menace to the purity of the race. America, striving for an abundance of cheap labour, encouraged the migration of low grade Europeans… but… has now realized its mistake, and has banged and bolted the door against the further entry of this class of people. But it is too late. The purely Nordic population is being swamped by the lower races. Millions of the latter are now scattered over the land, and they are increasing at a faster rate than the superior races. America would give all her millions to be free of what greed had saddled her with, the hordes from the Mediterranean, but she cannot do so.
Australia, instead of profiting by the lessons that America provides, is following suit, committing the same irreparable errors.

Over the next few months the Daily gave regular updates under the heading The Foreign Influx, the first one a couple of days later hinting at a conspiracy theory:…some sinister organization with a secret motive is behind the importation of Southern Europeans…. And a couple of days after that noted that Mr Gradyndier MLC was carrying on that every avenue of unskilled labor is now being overrun by new arrivals, largely the scum of Southern Europe…This was also the beginning of the State election campaign when the Daily actively supported the Progressive Party. It wore its heart on its sleeve and made no pretence at impartiality, but quoted Labour whenever it suited. (Alongside its report on the opening of Labour’s Murbah campaign it ran a scaremongering editorial titled Should Labour Win: …The advent of Mr Lang to power will be followed by wild and reckless financial orgies so characteristic of labor regimes….ta rah dah bom di ay…)

A week after the editorial outburst the Mayor, Alderman A.E. Budd, chaired a meeting to form a league, with a view to preventing foreigners coming to the Tweed…. A number of Jugo-Slavs are said to be employed on the construction of the Ballina-Booyong railway and that local men have, in consequence, refused employment in that undertaking…. (If true, these scabs were probably Macedonians from the Grafton/Dorrigo area.) The driving force behind the league was Mr Roy Whalan, who proposed that …the members of the League avoid, as far as possible, having any dealings with Southern Europeans or Asiatics, and if any Southern Europeans or Asiatics come to the Tweed River, that the League prevent them from gaining employment…. Carried. The fifty foundation members then went off on a preaching and recruiting drive. The Greeks of Murbah may have felt the pinch as this period marked an escalation in the turnover of all cafes, which had started slowly in 1922/23.

[At this time the combined weight of the Italians, Greeks and ‘Jugo-Slavs’ had grown to a threatening 0.1% of the NSW population, with probably much the same percentage on the Tweed, if not less. The best evidence available comes from the 1921 census, which shows 2 Italians and 13 Greeks in the combined Tweed Shire and Murbah Municipality. While numbers in the region started to increase, particularly the Italians, following the lifting of immigration restrictions in 1921, the vast majority settled around the Richmond district, where the Italians were an old and respected community through the New Italy settlement dating back to 1882. The next figures come from the 1933 census, which discloses 18 Italians, 25 Greeks and 5 Yugoslavs in the combined Shire and Municipality, making up 0.28% of the population, way below the state average of 0.38%. But when your knickers get in a twist and cause a rush of blood to the head irrelevant details become a trival and irritating distraction.]

A couple of days later Mr Whalan gave Queensland a broadside over the increasing number of undesirables being allowed into the cane fields: There is no one more surprised than myself to learn Mr Theodore’s (the just deposed Labour Premier) attitude towards those races of people who are endangering our glorious White Australia policy more and more each day. They are working sixteen hours a day for three shillings a day, and live on nothing else but macaroni. They live seven or eight families in the one tiny cottage. In a hundred and one ways they are, bit by bit, lowering our standard of living.
Mr Theodore mentions that they would be better immigrants if they were split up amongst Australians. Is it Mr Theodore’s intention to mix those Southern Europeans with Australians, and so breed a mongrel race of people in Australia? I ask the people of the Tweed not to heed what Mr Theodore says, but to join the Australian Anti-Foreign League, and help keep the unwanted Southern European out of the Tweed district.
(The Daily then proceeded to give regular updates on the alien menace in Queensland.)

Three weeks later the Municipal Council granted the League use of the Council Chambers for its meeting. Amongst a heap of crazy stuff Mr Wailan reckoned that The dairy farmer was also concerned in this question, inasmuch as the Australian workers were large consumers of butter, and the foreigners hardly ate any butter at all. Finding it profitable, the foreigners would eventually intrude into the dairying industry and drive the Australians out, just as they were doing in the case of sugar cane growing…. The sugar growers would also suffer, since the price of cane would fall if wages were reduced.... Business people would also feel the pinch, as the low paid foreigners would have very little money to spend….
The next meeting was held in conjunction with a rally in the main street.

Labour opened its election campaign at Murbah on the same day as the formation of the League, with the President of the Tweed Shire, Mr R.T. Gillies, presiding. Mr T.J. Swiney (third on the Labour ticket) exhibited a photo of 20 Jugo-Slavs photographed in their camp 20 miles from Grafton. They were sent to a sawmill proprietor by the State Bureau. Their fares, tents and food were paid for by the State Government, and also hotel expenses. They were taken to their camp and told that if they left they would be deported. They were earning from 5/-, 6/- and 7/- per day. Was it fair to put these men at work at which Australians had no equal, and when there were thousands of Australians eager to take on the work and pay their own expenses?[These ‘Jugo-Slavs’ were Macedoslav Greeks and gained employment with private logging contractors. Mick Feros of Dorrigo was their sole guarantor for the purchase of necessary tools, tents, basic utensils and groceries from the local general store. See ‘The Immigration and Settlement of Macedonian Greeks’ by Dr Anastasios Tamis.]
While the sons of farmers are drifting to our cities to take up, in most cases, unskilled occupations… the Government was falling back on Southern Europeans, many of whom were illiterate, without money, and without knowledge of our language.… Were our so-called statesmen inviting a problem of color similar to that existing in America?
Such immigration is bound to lower our standard of comfort, and still further depress agriculture, by unfair competition in rural pursuits….
The Nationalist Government would not stop at the importation of Southern Europeans, but would import Chinese, Japanese and Maltese, and allow them to bring their families with them too…..

This was all bull’s droppings, but wonderful scaremongering. None of the parties (Progressives, Nationalists and Labour, aka the dreaded Communists according to the former two) had any constructive economic policies of their own to speak of and spent most of the campaign slagging off at each other, as a number of letter writers were quick to point out. All however, shared the alien phobia. This set the benchmark standard for the seat of Byron over many subsequent elections.

Mr Gillies subsequently won top spot on the Labour team and upon his turn to bowl said he had always loyally supported the ideals of a White Australia. His late father was the founder of the Anti Alien League on the Richmond 25 years ago, and he (speaker) had always adhered to the principles of racial purity for Australia. However, he had to defer to his brother, the Hon W.N. Gillies, Premier of Queensland and Leader of the Labour Party, who opened the batting. W.N., an ex local farmer, had run for the Federal seat of Richmond in the infamous White Australia election of 1910 when all candidates were falling over themselves to show who was tougher on border protection. Gillies lost, and in a fit of pique moved to Queensland where he subsequently won the state seat of Eacham in the Atherton region, eventually rising through the ranks to become top banana. … Returning to the North Coast of New South Wales he could not but notice the evidences of a need for a change of legislators. The district had been credited with being the most conservative and backward in political ideals in Australia … He noticed that there was depression among the farmers, but that there was no decrease in the number of banks…. Continuing, Mr Gillies said he had always stood for White Australia. His policy and his deeds throughout had been for White Australia; his was not a mere lip loyalty. ….

One of his first acts upon becoming Premier in February 1925 was to appoint a Commissioner to inquire into the dagoes of North Queensland. The report was released towards the end of this election campaign and received publicity in most of the regional rags. It was a shocker for the Greeks …They are generally of an undesirable type… and had repercussions for many years. [This episode has been spelt out in Denis Conomos’ wonderful book, ‘The Greeks in Queensland.’]

The retort by Christy Freeleagus, Consul-General for Greece, received wide publicity in north coast newspapers, with follow-up unsympathetic letters. He was most indignant and in a communication to the Premier relative to the report of Mr Ferry, who was appointed to inquire into the increase of aliens in the north, states that the unwarranted general criticism of the Greeks in North Queensland…has caused him pain and surprise. As Consul-General he expressed regret that the cordial relations existing hitherto between Greeks and Australians in Queensland were likely to be seriously endangered.
He challenged the statement that Greeks in the north were an undesirable type. They bore their share of citizenship and what was more important, did not become a charge on the State…. It would appear to him that the Greeks had been made pawns in the game of political chess…. .

The Rev Daniel Maravelis also received local coverage when he tried a different, albeit weaselly, approach: Many so-called Greeks in the North were not really from Greece at all. Certainly they spoke the Greek tongue, but Jugo Slavs, Albanians, Syrians and Macedonians, who had no language of their own, have been regarded, for the purposes of adverse criticism, as Greeks…. Mr Ferry’s strictures were not based on facts. The Greeks in the North were as hard-working and clean living as any migrants….

None of which affected Premier Gillies, who tucked the report under his arm and marched off to see Prime Minister Bruce to urge that only a better class of Southern European be admitted to Australia. Quotas and entry restrictions followed. (Gillies resigned later in the year to take up a £2000 per year job with the new Board of Trade and Arbitration, which he was still serving when he died in early 1928, aged 60. The obituary writers in the local rags thought it appropriate to mention that … He was an active member of the Anti-Alien League, and subsequently president of the New South Wales Sugar Growers’ Defence League, which had been formed principally for the purpose of upholding the interests of the white growers and workers engaged in the sugar industry…)

Meanwhile Mr F.W. Stuart had opened the bowling for the Progressive Party: … While the Socialists advocated a ‘White Australia’, they showed no sympathy towards securing a white Australia standard for the primary producer…-just look at North Queensland…. He effectively had been preselected by the Tweed Daily, with Councillor J. H. McCollum of the Tweed Shire Council and President of the Murbah branch of the Progressive Party, colluding. Cr McCollum himself weighed into the campaign… An effort has been made during the past few weeks to fool the electors with the Queensland brand of Labor politics…. The cane industry is rapidly passing out of the hands of the Australian workers…. If the present policy continues, it will soon be only 10 per cent Australians (working on the cane fields.) …. Surely the cane workers on the North Coast of New South Wales will not vote for the introduction of that policy here. Mr Whalan, elected secretary of the ‘Tweed anti-Foreign League,’ was quick to remind everybody that the immigration laws were administered by the Federal authorities, and that the Bruce-Page Government, and not the Queensland Government, is responsible for the entry of the foreigners into Queensland. To which Cr McCollum relied that both Mr Theodore and Mr Gillies have expressed themselves in favour of the foreigners who are gaining possession of the sugar lands in Queensland.

Cr. McCollum went on to become a long serving President of the Tweed Shire while Mr Stuart, elected as a Byron MLA at this election, later starred as Chairman of the Murbah Internment of Aliens Committee during WW2, a great story on mass paranoia. Mayor Budd also went on to become a Byron MLA.

The election campaign rolled on in the same vein, with the Daily passing on to its readers all the obscure quotes on White Australia it stumbled across. (Bishop Long in speaking at Bathurst said he believed there was sound Christian justification behind the principles of the ‘White Australia’ Policy….) From the field of ten aspiring politicians the Byron selectors finally decided that Missingham (Progresive), Stuart and Gillies should be given a run. The Daily was effusive in its congratulations.

Then almost immediately came the Federal election campaign, and away they went again. Everybody had a solution to the monetary mess, but in this neck of the woods the 'Claytons Depression' still deepened and competition for jobs got worse. The Daily remained consistent, and even when things were getting back on track in late 1937 it chose to produce an editorial on the low physical and mental calibre of Southern European migrants now arriving in Australia…. … A low mental and physical standard affords strong ground for uncertainty whether the newcomers will be able to appreciate the industrial, cultural, and disciplinary standards upon which Australians insist. Aliens of inferior type tend to gather in colonies and to become a potential menace…. It wasn’t until the mid 1950s that the Battleship Daily withdrew to the sidelines, or at least spiked its big guns.

Throughout all this electioneering there were no Greeks game enough to stick their heads up via letters-to-the-editor, or at least have their letters published, as was the case in the preliminary skirmish of the Great Barrow Wars. And the Kytherians appeared to have cut and run. None were identified in Murbab until 1932 when Nick Koukoulis returned, although George Venery looks like he had a short-lived café venture around 1930/31. Conversely, the census of mid 1933 sprung 22 Greeks in Murbah, 21 males and 1 female (Nick’s wife), in a total population of 3895, making the place the largest Greek enclave on the North Coast after Lismore, which in turn has the distinction of forming the largest shantytown for the displaced and unemployed in the region.

Afterthought – 1:

A particularly loveable character who stood for Labour in the 1925 election addressed a rally from the back of a truck in Mullumbimby and … made reference to the influx of foreigners to the country and said if the same benefits were extended to Australians as to foreigners he would own his own farm…. It was next to impossible at present for an Australian to get a block of land, yet people from the South of Europe can come into the country and not only get land but £1000 too. … The foreign influx was detrimental to Australia. They should do what America does and put up a quota, and make all immigrants pass an education test…. The Labour Party repudiated Bosshevism (sic)…. He ran second last in the field of 11 candidates, inclusive of Mr Informal. Mr W. T. Missingham (Progressive Party) romped home and his surplus dragged Mr F. W. Stuart, later Chairman of the ‘Murwillumbah Internment of Aliens Committee’, across the line.

Even as a youngster the budding politician had been to the fore in taking up community concerns. In 1907, aged 18 and loaded up with rifles and ammunition, he wandered off from the family farm at Mullumbimby to do a spot of bushranging and ‘John’ (Chinese) harassing. Unfortunately the police didn’t appreciate his motives and had him ‘arraigned on a charge of being of unsound mind’. He was discharged into the care of his mother and later rejected for WW1 service.

In the middle years of WW2 he was accepted into the ‘rail unit’ and served at Darwin for a couple of months before being discharged. He returned to Mullum qualified for RSL membership, becoming Vice President in 1944 and morphing into a leading crusader over the Greek banana growers. At his inaugural meeting he said it was a peculiar thing that while aliens, whether enemy or otherwise, appeared to experience little difficulty in the acquisition of land, exservicemen encountered many obstacles in their efforts towards this end. He forecast that at the present rate of alien infiltration into North Coast areas, it would not be long before these people established their own communities, together with their own shops, papers, schools, etc in our midst as had been done in other parts of the Commonwealth. If the Government was not prepared to take productive steps towards containing this insidious menace, it was likely that returned soldiers who were deprived of their heritage through the machinations of these unwanted and undesirable migrants would deal with the matter in their own undiplomatic but entirely efficient fashion …’ By this time he was frothing at the mouth and had to be reined in by the President. At subsequent meetings he repeated his rant in much the same words, again using the phrase ‘all aliens, whether enemy or otherwise.’

He was elected to the Mullum Municipal Council in 1945 and by 1958 had a gig as deputy mayor.

Afterthought - 2:

The Tweed Daily evolved from the amalgamation of the ‘The Tweed Times and Brunswick Advocate’ and ‘The Tweed Herald and Brunswick Chronicle’, 2 of 13 newspapers carrying the same message in various degrees of rabidness throughout the Richmond-Tweed region. Like all these regional rags the Daily variously led, moulded and reflected public attitudes, and the evolution of the region’s rightist and righteous ‘corporate culture’ continued as the surviving papers passed through the hands of different editors and proprietors. The reporting progressively toned down, but the conservative bias, of both the rags and the citizens they were catering for, was consistent over the next 30 years. Over this whole period the price of all the regional papers remained at 2d, so the proprietors were dependent on the flow of revenue from the advertisers, mainly the town’s movers and shakers and ruling clique, whom they were unlikely to risk offending.

The Daily’s corporate culture remained true to the vision of the founders, George Nicklin of the Herald and William Baker of the Times. Nicklin was farewelled to Queensland in 1910, after 17 battle-scarred editorial years, and at his send off at Murbah the speechmakers generated much humour over his ‘antipathy to Hindoos.’ His son, Frank Nicklin, became Premier of Queensland in 1957. Baker went on to become Chairman of Norco, boasted as the largest dairy cooperative in the world at one stage, and was instrumental in banning Hindoos from the dairy industry. His nephews opened the ‘White Australia Café’ at Mullumbimby in 1909. His son-in-law, Peter Street, a Murbah solicitor, part owner of the Herald and convenor of anti-alien meetings, became mayor of Murbah and an Independent Liberal candidate at the 1910 Federal election.

Both newspapers played a leading roll in the infamous ‘White Australia Election’ of 1910, sparked after Stan Andronicos and three ‘Hindoos’ won a ballot for crown land near Nimbin. Nicklin was a great mate of W. N. Gillies and gave him plenty of space for his rabid views and mutual backslapping: …..Those of your readers who are patriots and genuine White Australians – and I trust there are no exceptions – must appreciate your efforts during the last few weeks to arouse the citizens of the Tweed to a sense of duty regarding coloured aliens… Gillies’ old man had founded the North Coast Anti-Alien Society in 1897, which by Federation in 1901 was congratulating itself on halving the Hindoo portion of the alien plague upon the Richmond-Tweed to a manageable 269 turbans. Hindoo numbers built back though when refugees, including the dreaded Kanakas, flooded over the border from Queensland after being encouraged to hop on their bikes. [The Kanaka deportation paved the way for the disruptive dagoes to gain a foothold. Said Nicklin in 1907, paraphrasing the loveable Bulletin: Just at present the Dago person is the prospective stand-by of the Queensland sugar industry… the Dago appears a dubious reed to depend upon.]

Afterthought – 3:

Regarding the sequel to the Ferry report: In early 1926 the Northern NSW citizens were informed that the AWU had to soften its stance because it’d found 600 dagoes being exploited by North Queensland farmers paying way below union rates. It decided to lift its embargo and issue the blighters with union tickets because …if they persisted in their refusal there was likely to be a bitter racial fight in the near future and it would damage the union in the far north of Queensland… The motion was carried despite the plea of the union secretary who … declared that men who had been engaged in the sugar industry since childhood had been forced to leave their homes because there had been labour from another land. …. Now the Federal elections were over he would not be surprised if the influx started again shortly…

Neither the Daily nor Mr Whalan commented, perhaps because they had more serious economic concerns by then, but they would have been comforted by figures published next day showing that in the 12mths to 31Dec25 only 315 Greeks had entered the country, a huge decrease from the 1826 who came in 1924. (The same edition carried this article: Surprise For Greeks: The Greeks woke up this morning to learn that, unwittingly, they had all become creditors to the Government virtue of a decree issued last night, ordering a forced loan to be carried out by reducing, by 25%, the nominal value of bank notes in circulation… Not only the Tweedies had economic worries.)

The next Byron election in late 1927 saw the wicked communists become the fallguys. This election introduced single seat electorates, the first appearance of the new Country Party, of which Mayor Budd became the endorsed candidate, and the new pact between the coalition parties, which gave the Country Party a free run on the North Coast for the rest of the century. Budd narrowly defeated Stuart, who stood as Independent Country Party, while Gillies was turfed out on the first count. Labour was routed all over the state by the scaremongering over their pernicious doctrines of communism which have been been introduced in this state during the past few years, said the editorials of all north coast newspapers. Gillies, sniffing the wind, had resigned from the party because he would never ally himself with the destructive sentiments of the communists, and contested the election as Independent Labour, getting less votes than the endorsed Labour candidate. Missingham was handed the endorsed Country Party candidature for the seat of Lismore and won in a landslide.
These days the destructive Greenies are responsible for the end of civilization.]