Brisbane 1919 - racist red flag riots

This history comes from: The red flag riots: a study of intolerance by Raymond Evans, Riot Acts: The History of Australian Rioting by David Lowe, the SBS television programme Remembering Brisbane's anti-Russian Red Flag Riot and from my own Russian-Australian family. For a more personal history, see the work done by Marett Leiboff:  “The main thing is to shut them out: The Deployment of Law and the Arrival of Russians in Australia 1913-1925". Your Brisbane Past and Present provides good information on Brisbane's Russian Orthodox Cathedral and Russian Jewish Synagogue in the post WW1 era.

Brisbane was a gateway into Australia. In the years 1908-14, Australia operated an Immigration Bureau in Brisbane for eastern immigrants who were largely Russian - intellectuals, profess­ionals, workers and political prisoners from Siberia. They were searching for freedom yet they were not warmly welcomed; they were not British-Australian, were not Anglican and were not truly white. Worse still, these new immigrants wanted equality for all the workers.

Even though Brisbane was not a large city, a Russian com­mun­ity of 3,500 formed there with Merivale St as its centre, in the vicinity of their synagogue. In 1913 a Russian Club was established in South Brisbane, for coffee, discussion and reading Russian newspapers from abroad. A Russian language play was produced and staged in Brisbane. A local Russian newspaper began regular publication.

When WW1 broke out, Russian-born Australians quickly enlisted. [Read the book Russian Anzacs in Australian History by Elena Govor]. Then came the extraordinary news of the 1917 Revolution, greatly exciting workers across the country. A ship was soon chart­ered and 500 Russian im­migrants from across Australia returned to the country of their birth. Meanwhile all non-British immigration into Australia stopped.

When Leon Trotsky signed an early truce with Germany to end WW1 in Dec 1917, the Brisbane Russians became enemy aliens. People who hated the idea of non-British immigrants attacked the new commun­ity in newspapers and suggested that all Russian-born Australians be interned. The Governor-General of Australia contacted the Secretary of the State for the Colonies in London to ascertain that Britain's recent deportation of 100 "Russian Jew Bolshevist Propagandists" could serve as a precedent for Australian deportations to proceed. The Daily Mail called for the same deportation of socialist leaders from Brisbane, and 8 of these men were promptly deported by the Federal government.

Raymond Evan's book, The Red Flag Riots,

University of Queensland Press, 1988

Meanwhile the working people of Brisbane became divided over the symbolism of the red flag. While many workers’ organisations proudly flew it, others bitterly opposed what the flag represented. The conservative press grew more virulently anti-socialist.

Since May 1918 sections of the Commonwealth government’s Military Intelligence, the Special Intelligence Bureau and the Commonwealth Police were promoting anti-revolutionary initiatives by encouraging right-wing vigilante activism. Brit­ish loyalists merged with the rightist Returned Soldiers' Organisations. The Queensland Commissioner of Police, Frederick Urquhart, organised an anti-socialist, paramilitary vigilante force to defend loyalty to Britain and to ensure White Australia. Common­wealth surveillance identified the activist Alexander Zuzenko and Peter Simonoff, the new Soviet Consul in Queensland as particularly problematic.

Consul Simonoff was interned. In protest, a peaceful march wound its way through Brisbane’s streets, led by Russian-Australians. After the march, lists of dang­erous Russians who had taken part were compiled. Military raids seized revolutionary mater­ial. The Russian Hall was wrecked; the Russian community faced evictions from their rented homes and job dismissals; their newspaper was closed; their leaders in prison, with some facing deportation. The synagogue was threatened. What shocks me is that most of the rest of the local labour movement did not rush to their aid.

New Russian club premises were established in Merivale St.

But it was now illegal to march under the red flag. In March 1919 a 400 workers met outside Brisbane Trades Hall. Police looked on. Surveillance agents mingled with the crowd. Suddenly Alexander Zuzenko and his followers opened three large red banners for the crowd. The march began and increased in size as the marchers app­roached the Domain. Police on horses attempted to move against the workers, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. The Russian-born workers seemed safe.

That night, several thousand ex-servicemen violently attacked a union meeting at North Quay. Russians and workers were seized, mauled and stabbed. Then 2,000 men crossed Victoria Bridge to attack the Russian headquarters. Police stood by and watched.

Early next day military police ransacked the treasured workers’ lib­rary stored at Merivale St and Russian homes were ruined. That night, fuelled by alcohol, anti-Russian editorials and an inflammatory meeting at North Quay, 7,000 British-Australian ex-servicemen and loyalists marched on the Russian Club chanting ‘Burn their meeting place down!’ and ‘Hang them!’ Commissioner Urquhart was wounded.

After the Brisbane Courier defended the actions of the pro-British mob, further violent riots went for three days. The riots were followed by months of intimidation and individual assaults upon people who were, or might have been Russian-born. For the terrified Russian community, the Brisbane pogroms had started.

The Brisbane Courier Mail

25th March 1919

The police force was not mustered to protect Russians, so this was confused reporting.

Instead of punishing the rioters, commonwealth and state authorities turned against the victims i.e the Russians and the workers who had been the target of public attack. They gaoled 15 workers for flying banned red flags. The state govern­ment offered its police forces and gaols to the Commonwealth, helping in the deportation without trial of 11 Russians. Lists were compiled for the expulsion of 60 more, but this was thwarted by British Authorities. For 2+ months after the riots, enormous rallies loyal to British Australia decried anything foreign or radical in their midst.

**

In what context can we possibly understand these racist riots in Brisbane? By early 1919 local fears of the Bolshevik Revolution became mixed up in conservative minds with hatred of non-British immigration. Feeding these fears was the local conservative press, describing revolut­ionary Russians as Bolshevik swine, guilty of repulsive bestial­ity, lawlessness and lust. And leaders of the Catholic and Protestant churches were preach­­ing against the alarming spread of ungodly, atheistic communism.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the civil liberties march of workers, including Russian-born Australians, from Trades Hall on the 23rd March 1919. The march was planned to protest the continuation of the draconian War Precautions Act in peacetime and internment of the Russian Consul Simonoff. But what chance did these young migrants have? The vast crowd was literally screaming for lynchings.

Both newspapers, the Brisbane Courier and the Daily Standard, reported the following day that something quite exceptional had happened. The Daily Standard viewed the rioting as one of the maddest and most disgraceful scenes ever witnessed in any part of Australia. But The Brisbane Courier saw only wild and thrilling magnificence in the riots. Nothing approaching it, the editor gushed, had ever been witnessed in Brisbane before.