by Larry Writer
Rugby fans in South Africa were outraged when news of what was being done to their beloved team filtered back. ‘The Springboks are not sleeping or eating properly and very little is being done about it,’ wrote on-tour correspondent Neville Leck in the Rand Daily Mail. ‘The Springboks will go on with the tour as long as they are asked to, no matter how much pressure is brought to bear on them. Of that I am sure. But I am willing to bet that if they were to be recalled home right now very few of them would object.’ Probably for the first time in his life, Leck found himself agreeing with Peter Hain. The anti-apartheid campaigner had claimed that the 1969–70 demonstrations had turned the Springboks’ tour of Britain into a farce — now, the same tactics of civil disobedience were having a similar effect in Australia.
At the same time, the unabating harassment of the Springboks was, to some extent, backfiring on the protesters. Many Australians, whatever their views on apartheid, began to feel sorry for the beleaguered footballers. The Age columnist Claude Forell summed up: ‘Now that the Springbok tour has begun, without any attempt by the Australian Government to discourage it or to recommend that sporting links with South Africa be quietly suspended, the question now is how the visitors ought to be treated while they are here.’ No one had suggested that the team members were themselves responsible for the exclusion of non-white players, or that they had spoken or behaved offensively since their arrival. It was therefore inappropriate to subject them to personal abuse or harassment.
Forell continued, ‘The Springboks have fairly been described by their opponents as unofficial ambassadors of white South Africa, but it is accepted practice that ambassadors, however despicable the policies of their government, should be received without hindrance or discourtesy. It is open to those who object to their visit to turn their backs in disdain, or to express their displeasure without interfering with the rights of people who wish to welcome them. But the organised opponents of the tour have threatened to act in two ways which are illegitimate, counter-productive and dangerous. These are, first, the decisions of some unions … Any employee who feels a conscientious objection to serving the South Africans may be excused for refusing to do so, and his union would be in order to try to protect him from consequences. It is quite a different matter for trade unions to dictate who should be denied the right to travel or service, and to intimidate those with an obligation to provide such services to the public.’ Also unjustifiable, wrote Forell, were plans by anti-apartheid groups to disrupt rugby games, such as by lying down on the pitch. ‘This cannot be described as “non-violent”. It is naive to expect rugby enthusiasts, who are not always the meekest and calmest of spectators, to accept such provocation with equanimity. Nor can the police be expected cheerfully to protect those who provoke a breach of the peace. Union bans and direct disruption will do more harm than good to the anti-apartheid cause for the simple reason that they divert attention from racist policies in South Africa to union power, public order and civil rights in this country.’
On the evening of the Springboks’ first day in Melbourne, they attended a reception staged by the Victorian Rugby Union and the South African Trade Commission at a venue in Chapel Street, South Yarra. After the protesters learned about the event, it was always going to be a shemozzle. The hosts’ good wishes and fine words were drowned out by the clatter of rocks thrown at the building, the screams of abuse and ‘Sieg Heil!’, and coordinated chants. At the end, soured and fatigued, the Springboks sloped out and were driven to the homes of billeters. One Springbok shook his head at the noisy horde and said to his guardian, ‘Ask them why they’re demonstrating. They wouldn’t even know.’
A supporter of the rugby tour was Melbourne Cricket Club chairman and former test spin-bowler Ian Johnson, who feared that if this tour came to grief, it could jeopardise the cricket tour by the Springbok cricketers later in the year. As he stalked out of the reception, Johnson wheeled on the placard-wavers and yelled, ‘I’m glad you’re not Australians!’ A curious remark, for the vast bulk of the demonstrators were Australian university students.
The protesters beat their fists on the bonnets of the players’ cars and splattered the vehicles with eggs and flour as they drove away from the Chapel Street function. One angry driver aimed his car at a group of students and shunted them aside with his bumper bar. Some protesters, many of whom rode motor scooters, gave chase. To escape them, the rugby cars took roundabout routes to their destinations.
After the violence in Perth and Adelaide, and the Liquor Trades Union pressuring Melbourne’s leading hotels not to accommodate and serve the tourists, private billeting in fans’ and rugby officials’ houses whose locations were unknown to the demonstrators seemed a good option. The food and lodging may not have been of restaurant and hotel standard, but at least the players were among friends for a change and stood a chance of a good night’s sleep.
On the day before the match against Victoria, the Springboks, in mufti to avoid recognition, attended Melbourne lord mayor Ted Best’s official reception in their honour. It was an awkward and joyless affair, boycotted by nine Labor councillors and picketed by protesters outside yelling ‘Smash apartheid!’ So it must have been a relief to the tourists to leave the function and go to Olympic Park, where the match would be played, for a stiff training session. Guarding them at the ground were 400 police, who, as the Springboks completed their training drills, were put through paces of their own, rehearsing strategies to deal with the expected mid-match pitch invasions. To the bemusement of the players, dummy demonstrators — with less hair, bigger bellies, and more conservative attire than the protesters they’d come to know and loathe — ran onto the field to be rounded up by the officers. At Olympic Park, too, were some of the 300 rugby supporters who had volunteered to help the police maintain law and order at the match. The rugby men, like the police, were emboldened by Premier Sir Henry Bolte giving them carte blanche to deal with demonstrators however they pleased. Watching the police manoeuvres, Victorian Rugby Union president G.G. Hunt said he didn’t anticipate trouble, but if trouble should occur, those making it could expect to be bitten by police dogs … or shot!
Bolte, who was 63 in 1971, was reputedly a personable man in private and an amusing raconteur, yet felt a need to portray himself publicly as a gruff arch-conservative. He railed against the relaxation of abortion and censorship laws and, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, was always denouncing ‘Teachers, university students, do-gooders, unionists, anti-Vietnam War protesters and the Age newspaper’. He okayed the demolition of heritage-listed buildings and once defined quality of life as ‘Peace of mind based on a home and garden.’ Sir Henry — he had been knighted in 1966 — supported the Vietnam War and the death penalty. After refusing to commute the death sentence imposed on murderer Ronald Ryan, the last man to be hanged in Australia, Bolte was asked by a reporter what he was doing at the moment when Ryan climbed the gallows. He replied, ‘One of the three S’s … A shit, shave, or a shower.’
William McMahon joined the Melbourne fray from Canberra. He warned the protesters that they were wasting their time because the Springbok tour — and the South African cricket tour, too, for that matter — would proceed as per schedule ‘come hell or high water’. Once more, he took the opportunity to blame Bob Hawke and the union movement and their ‘communist masters’ for orchestrating the demonstrations. The unions were ‘a force hell-bent on tyranny’, he trilled in his high, wavering voice. ‘They are intent on taking advantage of the weak Labor Party to subvert democracy and run Australia.’
If the demonstrators were intimidated by McMahon’s words, or the police and rugby forces arrayed against them, they did not show it. ‘We’re determined to stop the match,’ announced HART’s Gregor Macaulay at anti-Springbok campaign headquarters at Melbourne University. A teacher completing a science degree at the university, Macaulay combined spearheading HART with presidency of the Australian Union of Students. In 1971, Macaulay
proved himself an accomplished strategist and demonstration organiser. He carried a wad of dollars to bail out arrested colleagues. Macaulay was cool in a crisis and led from the front. At one demonstration, he was knocked unconscious, but picked himself up to rejoin the melee. ‘I’m not speaking violence,’ said Macaulay, ‘because I don’t ever contemplate violence. What we do contemplate is going over that fence and onto that field. If it’s got to be done at a run, it’ll be done at a run.’
Macaulay predicted that he’d be leading ‘close to 10,000 protesters’ at the South Africa versus Victoria game. His Adelaide counterpart Ian Yates had turned up to share with Melbourne protesters his experiences at Norwood Oval earlier in the week. Yates, a prominent figure at anti–Vietnam war demonstrations, was lampooned by Sir Henry Bolte as a ‘professional agitator’ with no firm beliefs.
That night, demonstrators blew whistles and horns and shouted slogans outside a house in Kew where they suspected two Springboks were being billeted. Unfortunately, their information was incorrect; there were no footballers at the home. Police were called by the residents and chased the demonstrators off. All over Melbourne, squads of protesters used bright-red paint to daub walls with anti-Springbok and anti-apartheid slogans.
On Saturday 3 July, the atmosphere was electric as, like two armies, police and protesters prepared to do battle. Chaos was expected, was inevitable, but nobody could have imagined the extent of the chaos. Gregor Macaulay’s promise of 10,000 demonstrators at Olympic Park did not come true, but there were more than 3,000, far outnumbering police and rugby vigilantes.
This black day in Melbourne’s history began with an 11.00 a.m. anti-apartheid rally at the Treasury Gardens on Spring Street, where campaigners were orderly and there were no arrests. The adversaries, as it happened, were keeping their powder dry for the afternoon. Peter Hain addressed the demonstrators. ‘We are seeing a concentration-camp-type atmosphere building up around Olympic Park and I welcome this,’ he shouted into a loudhailer. ‘I welcome the stripping of this tour of all its pretension. We are concerned today with committed and active opposition, not lip service opposition to apartheid. Life for black South Africans is a life of misery, deprivation and utter degradation. We are asserting our opposition to the immorality and absolute tyranny of apartheid and to the international racial situation, which is rapidly polarising the world on racial lines. Because of the intransigence of sports authorities, it has been necessary for us to make direct action demonstrations and to physically disrupt matches. We are getting through to black South Africa, and this is absolutely vital. Long forgotten and isolated with no life whatever in the country of their birth, with no access to international opinion, this is now a call to black South Africa that we are remembering them.’ Hain conceded that there would be no holds barred at Olympic Park, but demonstrators should not be afraid; through days such as this the anti-apartheid message would ring loudly in Australia and around the world. The crowd cheered.
After Hain and others had spoken, the campaigners marched to Olympic Park, gathering outside the gates an hour before the 3.00 p.m. kick-off. Tension crackled. Emotions ran high. Some demonstrators taunted rugby fans queuing to enter the ground. Naturally, the fans took exception to being called racists. Some fired back, usually referencing the protesters’ hair and personal hygiene, or shouting, ‘Don’t worry about black … yellow is your colour! Let’s fight!’ The name-calling sparked tussles, which degenerated in some cases into vicious brawls. A small number of protesters peppered police with rocks, knives, sharp pieces of metal, lead pipes, clusters of nails wired together, kitchen knives, screwdrivers, eggs, marbles, and bags of broken glass and tacks. Police retaliated by charging the campaigners, men and women alike. They punched and kicked, pummelled and groped. Women had their hair pulled out by the roots by rogue rugby men bawling, ‘Let’s fucking get into them!’
One horrified onlooker recalled, ‘Anyone who saw what happened that day, no matter their political beliefs, would have felt frightened, sick and ashamed.’ Rugby fans roared appreciatively every time a protester was flattened and hauled away. One police victim was Bill Hartley, union leader and one-time secretary of the Victorian Labor Party, whose eye was damaged by a punch. Hartley would face six charges, including kicking.
Mounted police rode their strapping horses headlong into the demonstrators, who threw marbles into the animals’ path, causing them to panic, slip, and fall; or jabbed pins and knives into their flanks, which made them rear wildly. Anyone who defended him- or herself was courting a crack with a baton before being headlocked and bulldogged into a paddy wagon.
As the brawl raged — and this is before the game had even commenced — around 1,000 protesters climbed fences and stormed through turnstiles to gain entry to the ground and then onto the field, where the pandemonium continued. Demonstrators threw firecrackers at police, many of whom suffered damaged hearing when the devices exploded. ‘Some of the things the demonstrators did were disgraceful,’ remembers reporter Norm Tasker. ‘Melbourne was out of control. Some of those people weren’t protesting about apartheid, they just wanted to have a rumble with the police. I saw them stabbing horses, and attaching lead pellets to bungers with fishing line and lighting them and throwing them in policemen’s faces. Melbourne was fearsome. Only those in the middle of it can know how fierce it was.’
Once the early invaders were taken care of, the game began. Regardless, demonstrators continued to race onto the field. That afternoon, around 800 made it onto the playing area. Some ran about taunting and abusing the Springboks, others lay down on the pitch. They were subdued (some with boots, fists, and batons) and arrested.
Impartial observers saw wrong on both sides. Demonstrators and police alike engaged in unjustifiable violence. The protesters physically and verbally provoked the police, and the police response was unduly heavy-handed as they attacked demonstrators and innocent people who resembled demonstrators with brutal glee. ‘I watched policemen who were dragging one demonstrator from the playing field repeatedly punch him in the body,’ reported Robert Mayne in The Sydney Morning Herald, who found the savagery deeply disturbing. ‘I saw policemen doing knee drops on people they had arrested. One youth who was pulled off the field after running around the players was lying on the ground in front of a police van sobbing, “Please, please … don’t hit me anymore. I can’t stand it.” A police constable then jumped on him.’ Mayne cringed at the prospect of these images being beamed around the world. ‘The [mounted] policemen deliberately ran down the demonstrators and galloped over them. Several appeared to boot the demonstrators at the same time. I saw police who seized demonstrators on a hill on one side of the field run them down a grassy bank and hurl them into a fence. They apparently deliberately dropped many people who had been arrested on top of the steel fence as they tried to throw them over.’
National Socialist Claud Woods wasn’t choosy about who he attacked. The 23-year-old clerk ran about punching anyone within range. He would be convicted for behaving in an offensive manner and for striking Constable Laurence Simmons and Senior Constable Eric Todd as well as protester Raymond Pinkerton.
Peter Hain, who attended the game, told me in 2014 that the police violence in Melbourne was far worse than anything British police had perpetrated during the 1969–70 Springbok tour. ‘There was a lower threshold above which violence was triggered in Melbourne,’ he said. ‘That match at Olympic Park was one of the most frightening experiences I ever had in decades of demonstrating. I’d never seen an escalation so quickly from peaceful demo to violent confrontation. Why? The police were determined to crack heads. They appeared to be enjoying inflicting harm. I’ve never felt more frightened than when stampeding police horses chased us after the game … We were leaving the ground, the demo was over, and the mounted police charged. Some of us were trampled by the horses and badly hurt. I still wonder how people weren’t killed.’
Hain was also stunned by the violence of
the rugby supporters. As a sports fan himself — ‘to the amazement of my [Labour Party] cabinet colleagues, I still read the sports pages before the news pages’ — he says he could understand the anger directed at the demonstrators by ‘sports-lovers who felt we were taking away what they loved, their sport. I felt they were profoundly morally and politically wrong in supporting the tours, but I could understand where they were coming from.’ But what had to be done, had to be done.
Some 217 arrests were made at Olympic Park that day, before, during, and after the match. Twelve demonstrators and five police were hospitalised with serious injuries, including a girl whose leg was broken when she was trampled by a police horse. Scores of demonstrators as well as police and rugby vigilantes suffered cuts and bruises.
Hardened reporters, such as Mayne and Tasker, were sickened by the riot at Olympic Park. One was shaking so much he was unable to file. (Five journalists, in fact, would lodge a formal complaint of assault against police for their actions on 3 and 4 July.)
Displaying their usual forbearance and dedication to the task at hand no matter what, the Springboks again managed to play good rugby, trouncing the locals 50–0, 12 tries to nil.
The following morning, a glowering Sir Henry Bolte left no doubt about whom he blamed for sparking the wildest street fighting in Melbourne’s history. ‘The anti-apartheid people are louts and larrikins and were completely responsible for what happened,’ the premier blared. When a journalist asked Bolte if he was perturbed at the number of injuries suffered by the protesters, he assured him that he was not. ‘Didn’t they go there wanting to get hurt? They went there to upset the game and if in the process they were stopped I give the police full marks. They provoked the situation and if they came out second best that’s just too bad. The police have to handle situations as they come up. Sports-lovers have a right to watch their sport. If louts and larrikins run onto the ground, then the police have to handle it. They put themselves in harm’s way and then they squeal.’