engleski

Dreams of socialist utopia under the southern sun come to nought: from the Legend of the Nineties to Manus Island detainees

It was already Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter that was a cry against injustice toward the common man, against the system and the government that has wronged his class. His refusal to suffer the police to blow him to pieces in his “own native land” when they knew Fitzpatrick had wronged the family still resonates in popular culture. Instead of punishing the policeman “they would rather riddle poor unfortunate creoles.” William Lane in his The Workingman’s Paradise envisaged a New Order, a new country Australia could become. Seeing a big chance for major social change in the big Maritime Strike he grows dimmer as the novel progresses, but still ends on a hopeful note calling for fellow Australians to “strive of ourselves to be men, to be worthier to be the dwelling houses of this Thought of which even the dream is filling the world with madness divine.” The dream of a socialist republic was supported by the Bulletin, as well. It announced that it stood for one person, one vote ; state revenue deriving directly from the land ; secularization of education, reform of criminal code and prison system, and united Australia protected against the world. Australian dream featured prominently in the writings of Australia’s bard, Henry Lawson. And while the dream was upheld by the post-World-War-II Australian scholars as authentically and distinctively Australian social trait, a hundred years on there is Behrouz Boochani detained at Manus Island, writing of the Australian government turning immigrants into crushed, terrified and annihilated people. Focusing on the above texts the paper shall explore how the dream came to nought.

Ned Kelly, Jerilderie Letter, William Lane, The Workingman’s Paradise, Bulletin, Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains

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