The Fuss That Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey

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Summary: A report from the history wars.
Review: Geoffrey Blainey (1930 - ) is the most productive historian in Australia with over 30 books to his credit. His career was quite unique because for many years after graduation he earned his living outside the universities, writing the histories of mining companies and other firms and institutions, including his alma mata The University of Melbourne. One of his books on mining was titled "The Rush That Never Ended".

In 1984 be became the most controversial historian in the country on account of his public expression of concerns about the rate of migration, especially from Asia and its impact on traditional Australian communities. Anyone who complained about this was likely to be shouted down with charges of racism. Blainey suffered this treatment with both barrels, being allegedly subjected to ostracism in his own university department and shouted down at public meetings on campus.

This book contains the proceedings (though not his own paper) from at a recent seminar on Blainey's work and career. Ostensibly this was a gesture of reconciliation from the profession, which is dominated by people who disagree with Blainey's views on many issues including multiculturalism, Aboriginal land rights and the republic. Two decades on the tide of political correctness may have receded. If so, this can be attributed to Blainey's ongoing efforts to speak for commonsense and the silent majority, also to the circuit-breaking impact of an independent politician (Pauline Hanson), a detailed study of the rorts by the multicultural industry ("Among the Barbarians" by Paul Sheehan), revelations of seriously defective scholarship by "black armband" historians ("Fabrication of Aboriginal History" by Keith Windschuttle) and the rise of internet bloggers who are not captives of the mainstream media.

There are signs of olive branches being waved at the seminar, Stuart Macintyre has occupied the middle ground, dismissing as absurd the assertion that "Blainey's views seem almost to run in a straight line from Mount Lyell to the Warrnambool Rotary Club" while denying the counter-claim by "mischievous commentators such as Peter Ryan" that Blainey was silenced by jealous and small-minded colleagues. More information is required, in my view Ryan is a man of sound principles and he has been around the University of Melbourne long enough to know where the bodies are buried.

Many of the papers pay tribute to Blainey's industry and the pioneering value of his work, though some of the complimentary pieces manage to insert a pathian shot (like "living in the ashes of empire" and a strange reference to his performance as a pilot, failing to acknowledge that he sailed in uncharted waters, unlike the coastline of Port Phillip and the vicinity of Corsair Rock). There are carping criticisms from the usual suspects, the radical feminist (not enough about women), the black armband historian (no sensitivity to the indigenes), the labour historian (no interest in the conditions of work), the environmentalist (not Green enough).

There is a somewhat technical and inconclusive paper on his determinism and the strength of connections that he sought in his narratives. A more interesting technical point to pursue would be the value to be added to his analysis of economic history by reference to the ideas of the Austrian school of economics (Menger, Mises and Hayek) with their emphasis on the role of the entrepreneur and the downside of ill-conceived state interventions in the marketplace. That theoretical framework fits the story of the mining companies like a glove, unlike the numerology of mathematical economics and Keynes. Austrian analysis would have sharpened his perception of the benefits of deregulation, so he might have predicted a rebound of more vital manufacturing industries to replace those that have declined.

As for the Marxists and other labour historians who are upset that Blainey became a fellow traveller with the H R Nicholls Society! They need to understand that the real exploiters of the poor and the weak over the last two centuries have not been the factory owners or the capitalist system but the better paid and more organised members of the trade union movement, using the threat of violence on the picket line (and beyond) to maintain their own benefits at the expense of everyone else. (See "The Strike Threat System" by the British 'Austrian', W H Hutt).

The organisers of the conference are to be congratulated to the extent that their purpose was reconciliation and enlightenment. The resulting papers are the usual mix of good, bad and indifferent that one expects on such an occasion. The jury is still out on the question of whether the history profession, the universities and our intellectual life at large can recover from the ashes of civility and rational debate which were victims of the Vietnam era of confrontation and bad faith. Just to balance the ledger on that account, I would like to condemn the Government of that time which sacrificed its intellectual and moral credibility by using conscription, supposedly in the cause of freedom. We are still reaping the whirlwind of that tragic and catastrophic error. The "fuss that never ended" is just one of the consequences.