Operation Manna (Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia)

by James Philip

  On the other side of the World another oddity was the unseemly flight of wealth to Sydney, Melbourne and to a lesser extent, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth as rich American citizens fled their ‘vulnerable’ continent for the safety of a land beyond the range of Soviet missiles. A lot of people in the United States honestly believed the war might break out again at a moment’s notice. Australia and for a few, New Zealand was the preferred choice for ‘relocation’ rather than the majority of South American client states because they were both democracies where the rule of law still meant something. Bizarrely, most Americans stepping off the plane or ship on to Australian soil were completely unaware of their nation’s pariah status throughout the Antipodes.

  The tea trolley squealed to a halt in the corridor and there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ sighed the Minister of Supply, ‘that there is still something that one can rely on in this brave new world!’

  Chapter 16 | Menzies’s Finest Hour

  Friday 18th January 1963

  Parliament House, Canberra

  The Right Honourable Keith Holyoake, the fifty-eight year old Prime Minister of New Zealand took his place in the guest seats reserved for his delegation and the representatives of the other Commonwealth nations who had gathered in the Australian capital in recent days some five minutes before Sir Robert Menzies was due to rise to speak.

  A battery of microphones had been mounted at the special lectern the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had brought into the chamber of the Australian Senate, and a little to the right of where the VIPs waited a big, clumsy live broadcast television camera was positioned to capture the event for posterity.

  Holyoake was a native of Mangamutu, near Pahiatua in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand’s North Island, who was related to George Jacob Holyoake the Birmingham-born newspaper editor; who was thought to be the man who had coined the terms ‘secularism’ in 1851, and ‘jingoism’ in 1878. Keith Holyoake had been brought up within the claustrophobic confines of the Plymouth Brethren. Upon his father’s death, when he was only twelve, he had left school to work on the family’s hop and tobacco farm at Riwaka, while being educated at home by his school-teacher mother. His involvement in politics had initially arisen out of his contacts with local farming co-operatives and self-help groups. First elected to the New Zealand Parliament as a conservative Reform Party member in 1932 he had later been one of the founders of the National Party in 1936, serving in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sidney Holland between 1949 and 1957, appointed Deputy Prime Minister in 1954 and for a few months in 1957, due to Holland falling ill, become his country’s first Prime Minister to be born in the twentieth century.

  The New Zealand electorate had sent the National Party into opposition in 1957 but since 1960 Holyoake had shown himself to be a wily and very steady pair of hands at the wheel of state. In the 1930s he had stood on the platform ‘follow England and vote Holyoake’ and even several rebuffs attempting to protect Anglo-New Zealand trade – in the area of the price levels of meat and wool, and to secure guaranteed access to British markets in the mid-1950s - had done little to tarnish his enduring regard for the old country.

  At home his administration had rewritten New Zealand’s antique criminal legal code abolishing capital punishment, and begun the tortuous process of reforming trade union legislation.

  As soon as he became Prime Minister a second time Holyoake’s government had released the ‘Hunn Report’ concerned with the state of the Maori nation in New Zealand, a no holds barred condemnation of the neglectful, callous policy of all previous governments. There had been other reports into the treatment and condition of his country’s indigenous peoples; Holyoake was the first national leader to actually start to do something about putting the heinous injustices right. At the time of the October War the notion that ‘No Maoris – No Tour’ might scupper all future All Blacks[61] – the name of the New Zealand rugby side - tours to South Africa was already causing diplomatic waves in Pretoria even though the next All Black-Springbok tour was not scheduled until the mid-sixties.

  Holyoake had passed the United Kingdom High Commissioner Sir William Oliver, resplendent in his Lieutenant-General’s uniform, and the more soberly attired Commodore Donald Gibson, the Head of the British Naval Legation to the Australian Government, in his dress whites. He had paused to sombrely shake hands and to exchange nods of acknowledgment with both men. Earlier that morning he had met the Canadian High Commissioner to Australia, Evan Gill, to hear personally the thoughts of his Prime Minister, the redoubtable John George Diefenbaker.

  It would be fair to characterise Gill’s remarks on the subject of his own leader’s analysis of the disasters of the recent months as ‘suddenly finding oneself living next to a giant asylum which has fallen into the hands of the inmates...’

  Gill’s chief, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Howard Green had been trying to lead a delegation to the United Kingdom on a ‘fact finding mission’ but been frustrated by the appalling conditions prevalent in the North Atlantic. All air traffic had been suspended for the last three weeks, and when Green had led his team down to New York to take passage on the Cunard liner Queen Mary they had discovered that the ship had been impounded by the port authorities on account of the shipping line having ‘failed to pay cargo taxes and outstanding oiling invoices’. The latest Gill had heard was that this little ‘local difficulty’ had been resolved when the British Ambassador, Sir David Ormsby-Gore had raised the matter directly with President Kennedy.

  Notwithstanding that Ormsby-Gore had been practically a part of the Kennedy family before the October War, it seemed that not even his good offices could do anything about ‘freeing’ all the other British registered ships currently interned in US ports. Other than that Howard Green and his staff were now onboard the Queen Mary, braving the ferocious winter storms bound for Southampton to discuss establishing a Canada-UK ‘sea and air bridge’ employing whatever resources that his government could spare in these dreadful times, the Canadian High Commissioner to Canberra was in the dark, relying on his British and Australian friends to keep him up to date.

  Gill sat in the row of seats behind the New Zealand Premier, flanked by other Commonwealth diplomats. Everybody rose to their feet when the large, grey, sombre-faced Australian Prime Minister entered the chamber escorted by the Governor General, attired in full Imperial regalia. In a piece of sheer theatre – mostly for the cameras – Sir Robert Menzies turned and shook Viscount De L’Isle’s hand before he stepped up to the lectern.

  There was a moment before the men – and a few women – in Parliament House settled back into their seats, awaiting the cue of the Governor General taking his chair beside the Speaker’s Desk.

  ‘My Lords, Gentlemen and Ladies, and Honourable Members of this House,’ Menzies began, ‘I come before you today in an hour of great global crisis.’

  The hush was palpable, one man’s cough sounded like the jarring report of the discharging of a rifle.

  ‘The great war in the north may, or may not, be over. Like you, I pray that it is for all time. I also pray for all the souls lost in its fires, and for those suffering its terrible after effects. In Australia a new sickness stalks our great cities. War plague, contamination or simply some new strain of influenza, it matters not, the epidemic is upon us and we must bear it stoically and do what we can for our fellow Australians.’

  At first it was suspected that the ‘plague’ – with influenza-like symptoms which could morph into pneumonia within days – had been brought to Queensland by the ships of the British Pacific Fleet. Now it seemed more likely that the contagion had been brought ashore by seaman off ships which had sought refuge in South Western Pacific ports immediately after the war, or by the initial flood of ‘American refugees’ who had packed every flight south from California and Hawaii in November and December. Attempts to curtail this influx – or even to monitor the health of the immigrants – had been angrily denounced by the US Ambass
ador, Bill Battle and his government despite the fact that rumours were increasingly rife that ‘war plague’ was afflicting large areas of New England, the Midwest and the bomb hit Pacific North West of the United States.

  Ambassador Battle had been recalled to Washington for ‘discussions a week ago and was not due back in Canberra for several days.

  ‘I will not dwell on the sickness afflicting our cities,’ Menzies continued, his delivery ringing with stern authority, ‘other than to say that contrary to reports in some quarters its incidence on the ships of Admiral Christopher’s fleet is approximately one-third of that on land and that the first cases onboard Royal Navy ships were not identified until a fortnight after HMS Ark Royal moored off Brisbane in November. In other words medical experts tell me that contrary to the British fleet bringing the sickness to our shore; it was we who infected it!’

  The Prime Minister glanced sidelong to the Governor General who acknowledged his look with a wry half-smile before resetting his ‘official face’.

  Many of those present in Parliament House had attended the funeral of De L’Isle’s wife, Jacqueline, on the 11th January. The image of the tall, handsome war hero diplomat with his arms about the shoulders of his tearful daughters at the graveside was still achingly fresh in the public memory.

  Three of De L’Isle’s children were in the chamber: twenty year old Catherine, seventeen year old Philip and fifteen year old Anne, sitting with the Governor General’s Secretary, Murray Tyrell and his wife Ellen. The eldest De L’Isle child, twenty-one year old Elizabeth had been at home in England at the time of the recent war and nothing had yet been heard of her fate. The Governor General’s youngest daughter, nine year old Lucy, had been left at Yarralumla, her father thinking it best to keep her out of the public eye at this time.

  Forty-nine year old Murray Tyrell, a former personal secretary to Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who had since 1947 served three previous Governor Generals - Sir William McKell, Field Marshal Sir William Slim, and Lord Dunrossil – was one of the few men in Parliament House who had any real sense of what Menzies was about to put to the Australian people that afternoon.

  That his Prime Minister was doing ‘the right thing’ he had no doubt; but as to how it would be received well, that was another matter entirely. The only thing that one could ever say about the Australian people with any degree of certainty was that one could never take anything for granted. The proof was always in the pudding, as it were.

  ‘Three months ago we had reason to believe that we lived in an age of reason,’ Sir Robert Menzies asserted with a gravitas so grim it verged on resignation. ‘That I, that we, were mistaken is no reflection on us; simply the measure of the madness of princes far from our mercifully, undamaged lands.’

  When the New Zealand Prime Minister had been given sight of the text of the speech his Australian counterpart planned to deliver to his Parliament, Keith Holyoake had raised an eyebrow at several of the atypical rhetorical flourishes it contained. But then Menzies was not issuing a personal manifesto, he was speaking for what might in time become the ‘New Commonwealth’, an alliance of equals unwilling to accept as a fait accompli the new world order fashioned by Strategic Air Command on the night of the 27-28th October 1962. That there could be no such ‘alternative’ order without offering succour to the Commonwealth’s last great bastions in the Northern Hemisphere, Canada and the bomb-wracked United Kingdom was axiomatic; the problem was how exactly the independence of the one and the survival of the other might be achieved. Robert Menzies had determined to invest every last ounce of a lifetime’s political and moral capital in what might – in retrospect – soon seem like a forlorn attempt to take the bull by the horns.

  If Menzies fell, Keith Holyoake knew he too would be mortally wounded. In Canada, John Diefenbaker’s conservative administration would probably be the next domino to fall. Their successors might stand by the old country but there were no guarantees, not now.

  What then would happen to the embattled Emergency Administration in distant Cheltenham?

  ‘I have not come before the Australian Parliament, or the Australian people, or those listening in the Commonwealth or in the Americas to plead like a supplicant to the victors of the recent war. Great Empires respect only military power, and more importantly, they quake only before the resolve of those who would stand in their path!’

  There was silence and then one or two mutterings of support.

  Somebody clapped, and then the groundswell of agreement began to murmur, sweeping the chamber, enveloping the Australian Prime Minister.

  ‘Australia will be beholden to no president or dictator. We go our own way and we make our own destiny!’

  This Menzies roared in defiance.

  ‘But to our friends and our kith and kin we are faithful for all time. We do not walk away from our friends when the going gets tough. We do not turn our backs on our history. By the grace of God our great country has survived the catastrophe in one piece; our ‘alliance’ with the United States could have, but did not result in Australia ‘taking the bullet’ for the greater good of the Pax Americana. If the recent war has taught me anything it is that to the Kennedy Administration Australia is just a giant immovable aircraft carrier in the Southern Ocean and a convenient bolt hole for its rich and influential friends. Why were the aircraft flying wealthy ‘refugees’ from North America not flying desperately needed doctors, nurses and medicines across the Atlantic to Britain and Europe? Why are British, and Australian ships impounded in American ports by thieves and scoundrels eyeing their carcasses like vultures circling on high? Why are Commonwealth representatives in Washington DC being treated like emissaries from subject nations?’

  The veteran politician realised his outrage was getting the better of him, and consciously dialled down his angst. Middle-Australia needed to see and hear the quiet man within.

  ‘Australians are practical people. We live in a bountiful but harsh land beneath a southern sun that burns the unwary. We play hard, we play fair, and we bow to no man.’

  Menzies looked up from his script, and surveyed the packed chamber.

  ‘These are the times that try men's souls,’ he said reflectively, quoting directly from Tom Paine’s famous pamphlet. ‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.’

  He let this sink in for a moment.

  ‘I hope that our friends in Washington one day remember their manifest destiny. That they remember their own guiding principles; and that they recant the folly of their present path.’

  There was deep sadness in his voice.

  Despair that things had come to this pass...

  ‘Tyranny, like hell,’ he went on, continuing Tom Paine’s cry for justice, ‘is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.’

  The atmosphere in Parliament House was sombre.

  ‘We stand at a crossroads, my friends. I say to you, my fellow Australians that what we do now will be this nation’s legacy. What we decide to do now will speak more eloquently than any fine words down the years to what it means to be an Australian. We live in a World in which all the old rules have been thrown out of the window. There is no more United Nations, international law seems to be whatever Wall Street decrees it ought to be, and all the while America has turned its back on its devastated European provinces. Is that what we are to become? Are we to become just another province of Greater America?’

  Robert Menzies had always stood apart from so many of his contemporaries because he had never resorted to rabble-rousing or blatant jingoism. To hear him suddenly declaim an appeal to the gut and the heart of Australia frankly shocked many in Parliament that day.

  ‘I say NEVER!’

  So did a lot of the honourable members in the chamber, loudly, and repeatedly.

  ‘Never! I sa
y! If there is to be no United Nations then I say there should be a ‘united’ Commonwealth of Nations loyal to the person of her Majesty the Queen!’

  Even the republicans were rising to their feet.

  ‘Admiral Christopher has pledged his fleet to the defence of Australasia, we are safe for now behind the shield of his mighty ships. As I speak British, Australian and New Zealand warships are patrolling the waters of the Timor and Java Seas and guarding the trade routes of the eastern Indian Ocean and the South East Asian seaborne arteries of commerce with the south. Right now British officers and men are working side by side with their Aussie and Kiwi comrades to speedily mobilise our armed forces. Our allies are working in our bases, on our ships, in our dockyards and staff colleges, and freely sharing the technological secrets of their war-fighting equipment with our military, industrial and commercial leaders. To all intents Admiral Christopher has placed his fleet at the disposal of the governments of Prime Minister Holyoake,’ Menzies paused to gesture towards and acknowledge the presence of his New Zealand counterpart some twenty feet away, before with a nod of respect going on, ‘and of the Australian people. Those among us with long memories,’ he remarked, his mood lightening briefly, ‘will recollect that once many years ago I was honoured to sit in the War Cabinet of that greatest of modern Englishmen, Sir Winston Churchill[62]. Then as now I was in no doubt that we, half-a-world away, were in it together with the old country, in it together with what was then the Empire and is now the Commonwealth of Nations. That, my friends, my fellow countrymen and women, is where we shall always be while I remain your Prime Minister!’

  Keith Holyoake remained in his seat – as did the other VIPs around him, for it would have been inappropriate, crass in fact, to have seemed in any way partisan in this parliamentary setting – but practically everybody else in the chamber was on their feet, including, separated from the other ‘guests’ in the care of Murray and Ellen Tyrell, the three De L’Isle siblings.