The eleven scholars who have published Surrender Australia? took the second course, presumably knowing that they would then be criticised by those who agree with Blainey (including many members of the general public) or those who thought it bad form to attack the doyen of Australia’s most prestigious History Department. The contributors had to choose between denouncing Blainey’s views on immigration or attacking his standing as a historian. The former course is fairly easy. Blainey’s All for Australia, published last October, is a very bad book, full of prejudice, false argument, and plain mistakes. It was written in a hurry and should never have been written at all. Post-nuclear archaeologists, sifting through the ruined libraries of the world, may well ask ‘was this the same Blainey who wrote The Causes of War, Triumph of the Nomads, or Tyranny of Distance?’ It is the rather daunting task of most contributors to argue that there are connections between Blainey’s more serious work and his political pamphlet on immigration. Blainey, at least, thinks there is such a connection. Others may feel that he has joined the coterie of conservatives like John Stone, Lauchlan Chipman, or Leonie Kramer, who exploit their deserved reputations in other fields to gain publicity for views which are often very silly and which would not receive attention if put forward by others.

Blainey is the most prolific of Australian historians and, with Manning Clark, almost the only one with a broad popular following. Australian historians had to establish their discipline against the jibes of those who asked, ‘and what do you do in the afternoon?’ Their strengths have been in biography (as with La Nauze or Alan Martin), in labour history (as with Turner or Gollan) and in macroeconomic history (as with Butlin). Blainey has not been very concerned with these three areas. His main interest has been in mining history, in state and local history and in the influence of transport. Once established he moved out into the newly developed field of Aboriginal history and into international relations with a book which is justly renowned and very popular with students. He had never shown much interest in party politics, in immigration (other than tangentially in The Tyranny of Distance), nor in broad ideological themes and schemes. His attempt to paint a broad picture of Australian history on television was not very successful, though it undoubtedly enhanced his large popular following. His critics had to question his views on immigration, link those views to his general work, and illuminate the ideological underpinnings of that work. They do not altogether succeed. The idol is shown to have at least toes of clay, but is not brought toppling from his eminence.

Part of the problem is that the book is too short. Several contributions are little better than book reviews. The argument is just becoming interesting when the page is turned to reveal its termination. There is a very helpful chronology of relevant articles and. letters provided by the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, but no critical bibliography of Blainey’s work nor an extended review of the offending All for Australia. Readers in the future will be puzzled, having forgotten much of the detail of a controversy which will either have ended or changed its form. They will want to know whether Blainey was ‘really’ a racist, or simply made many unguarded remarks typical of someone from his generation and provincial background. They will certainly want an assessment of his vision of the ‘real’ Australian. Blainey belongs to that influential group which grew up in the best little university, in the best little city, in the best little state, in the best little country in the world. Other younger Australians, who have not shared this experience, might want more guidance than is given here as to whether he is reactionary, conservative or simply parochial.

Among the most telling contributions are those by Professor Ricklefs, Murray Goot, Henry Reynolds, and Ann Curthoys. Ricklefs takes up one of the most incomprehensible aspects of Blainey’s current position, his constant reference to ‘Asians’ and his confirmation that in this category he includes Lebanese and Turks as well as Vietnamese and Chinese. Even under the White Australia policy, Lebanese were permitted entry, although they were sometimes classified as ‘alien races’ in the Census. As Ricklefs points out, there is no such thing as an Asian. If Blainey is to be cleared of the charge of ‘racism’ (which Surrender Australia? does not make strongly), he really must say what he means. Is he only against Chinese/Vietnamese immigration? As the conservative critic, Robert Manne argues in the March Quadrant, that means he denied Australian responsibility for the consequences of the Vietnam War. Is he really against all ‘coloured’ people? Then we really are back to White Australia, which kept out Pacific Islanders as well as Chinese and ended up colour-grading Sicilians. Or is he simply against immigrants who might upset native Australians by their appearance? Then, as Murray Goot suggests with reference to public opinion polls, it might be best to keep out everyone who is not visibly British, as many Australians have always opposed ‘foreign’ immigrants. But then, as Goot also points out, what people say to pollsters is not necessarily connected with their behaviour in concrete situations.

Andrew Markus, John Rickard, and Ann Curthoys concentrate on the historical dimension of White Australia. Markus has got himself into an esoteric argument with Blainey about levels of unemployment in the 1920s. Markus points out that there was as much unemployment in the 1920s as there is now but that this did not necessarily lead to heightened racism. Curthoys, too, argues that anti-Chinese feeling was at its peak in the 1880s, when there was an economic boom and Chinese immigration had declined. She is quite right in saying that previous concentration on labour movement racism obscured the general liberal consensus that a free society could not be built on the labour of a subject race.

Nevertheless the most virulent racism was expressed in the journals and resolutions of the labour movement, and continued to be so expressed until remarkably recently in historical terms. Surprisingly Curthoys (who would not object to being called a feminist) does not draw attention to the sexual dimension of nineteenth century racism. The Chinese and the Pacific Islanders were overwhelmingly male, coming into a society with a severe shortage of women. Even the most casual glance at the propaganda of the 1880s shows a strong current of sexual fear and jealousy, which many Marxist writers with their explanations based on labour competition overlooked. Such a dimension seems to be completely lacking in the current situation. What is also lacking is a massive influx of British migrants (as in the 1850s and 1880s) bringing prejudice with them.

There are several widely accepted analyses of racism, which are not necessarily exclusive. Like Curthoys and Markus, most analysts now accept that there is no single cause, and thus no single solution. Causes are variously seen as: inherent in human nature – based on aggression, territoriality, sexual fears, competitiveness; caused by capitalism – hegemonic ideology, colonialism, division of the working class (deliberate or fortuitous), reduction of the price of labour through immigration; caused by ignorance – false theories of race, false theories of different capacity, ignorance of other cultures; created through politics – vote catching, ethnic bloc manipulation, scapegoating. While there is no consistent ideological strand in Surrender Australia?, most of its arguments are liberal and optimistic, in assuming that with understanding racism can be eliminated. Blainey, in contrast, seems poised uncertainly between conservative pessimism and liberal optimism. He is unduly concerned with social harmony and cohesion. He does not really want Australia to be ‘racially pure’ but feels that most people would be happier if it were. But some of the most severe social tensions in Australia were manifest in the 1890s, the 1920s and the 1940s, when the principles and practice of White Australia were consensual and complete. In a crisis people look for someone else to blame. They may pick on the government, on the capitalist system, even upon themselves for not working hard enough. If they pick on immigrants or ethnic minorities they fall back into the irrationalism which made earlier generations pick on witches. Intellectuals like Blainey should not lend credence to such superstitions. But more radical intellectuals should not imagine that such reactions can be argued or wished away.

With much of the general argument in Surrender Australia? there should be no fundamental disagreement. As Andrew Markus writes, the ‘scientific theories’ of race confused measurable differences (in cranial capacity or more recently in blood group) with differences in character or ability. These theories were dominant in nineteenth century Australia and are still widely held among the uninstructed masses. It is unlikely that Blainey subscribes to them and most of his account of Aboriginal life in Triumph of the Nomads suggests that he does not. The sociology of ethnicity is not concerned with physical anthropology anymore. But it is centrally concerned with cultural difference. Some of the contributors seem so concerned to prove that all mankind is equal that they almost argue away most modem sociology. It is all very well to claim (as does the introduction) that there were few real differences between Chinese and Anglo Australians. This is true in the sense that there are few differences between men and women, as compared, for example, with the differences between humans and kangaroos. But the whole point of ethnic and race relations, whether as an academic study or as political confrontation on the ground, is that a multitude of differences is perceived both by those in the minority and by the ‘host’ majority. The differences between a Catholic and Protestant Ulsterman or a Maronite or Shi’ite Lebanese are enough to get you killed. And yet they may be less than between an Anglo-Australian professor and an Anglo-Australian wharfie.

One area in which both physical and cultural difference has been central to Australian race relations is in Aboriginal affairs. There is only the slightest difference between Charles Perkins, Doug Nicholls, or Neville Bonner and the purest of Wentworths or Bonythons (or Blaineys). Yet read their biographies and the social difference, the experience of subjugation and humiliation, is only too obvious. Blainey made a highly controversial entry into Aboriginal studies in 1975 with Triumph of the Nomads which was a very skilful summary of much that is known about the human occupation of Australia up to the European invasion. The general picture is of a people well adapted to their environment, by no means static and yet having no real incentive to follow other peoples (from whom they were isolated) in agriculture or permanent settlement. Blainey clearly regards his account as very sympathetic, and in many ways it is. As Henry Reynolds points out, Blainey had not previously paid much attention to Aboriginals, even in his writing on mining in areas of high Aboriginal population such as Mount Isa. In any contest of qualifications there is little doubt that Henry Reynolds knows more about white/Aboriginal conflict than does Blainey and his criticisms must be taken seriously. His main accusation is that Blainey uses very limited sources to prove the widespread and destructive character of conflict within Aboriginal society. In doing so he tends to mask the disastrous impact of British colonisation. Moreover, his uncritical developmentalism keeps him in the nineteenth century tradition that the Aboriginals had to be subjugated in order that modern Australia be created. On this view, Blainey is not saying that the Aboriginals were racially inferior, merely that they were redundant. Unfortunately, the the logical implication of this view is that they remain redundant until they become fully assimilated – no longer nomads and no longer Aboriginals.

Historians have frequently set themselves up as ideology makers. They interpret society to itself, define nations, prognosticate and even predict. In the Oxbridge tradition much Australian history has tried to avoid this. Meticulously detailed and documented, some Australian history stays at the level of Victorian railway timetables and the laundry lists of colonial politicians. Aboriginal and women’s history has now broken with that tradition. Ethnic and immigrant history has not yet taken off. A handful, like Manning Clark and Blainey, have set out to describe Australia in Anglo male terms. Much labour history went further and even wrote immigrants out of the script, a fault just remedied in Verity Burgmann’s excellent In Our Time. The charge against Blainey is not so much that he is racist as that he is perpetuating an old-fashioned myth. Australia is presented as developing economically because it is peopled with male British pioneers who bend the environment to their will. All others are marginal. Go back to The Tyranny of Distance and you really do find ‘fuzzy-haired natives’ rowing their canoes through the Torres Strait and – yes, there it is – the Chinese ‘invading’ the goldfields (where almost everyone was an immigrant). Blainey writes brilliantly and without niggling reservations. But his vision of Australia is old-fashioned and comfortable. That is what led him into the sights of the younger and more critical generation represented in Surrender Australia? That is what led him into the intellectual morass represented by All for Australia. Many Anglo-Australians will want to stay with Blainey, with Ned Kelly and the toy koalas that play Waltzing Matilda. Australian history had to be created, by Blainey among others, by treading on established toes a generation ago. Now it needs to be shifted out of its narrow nationalism. Quite fortuitously, Blainey’s excursion into immigration policy has prompted this collection which, for all its faults, should expedite that necessary process.