Days of Rage – In Conversation with Judy Turner

In 1971, when the South African Springboks toured Australia and played at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Judy Turner was on of 49 people arrested protesting against South Africa’s apartheid policy. After an elaborate, month-in-the-making scheme concocted by ANU students to tunnel underground through drainpipes, on the day police were at the top of the drain blocking entry, so none of the underground protestors made it onto the field. Judy and her friend Sue climbed down from the audience and were the only two who reached the oval to protest. Judy remarks, with a certain perplexity, that they must have had to buy tickets to get into the game.

This is just one of many stories Judy tells me from her days as an undergraduate student at ANU from 1971-1974, when she devoted far more time to activism than to her formal studies. She was involved in the major ANU activist group at the time: the ANU Labour Club (not connected to or to be confused with the Australian Labor Party), an anti-capitalist activist group that organised heavily in the ‘60s and ‘70s on many progressive causes. These causes included fighting against the Vietnam War, South African apartheid and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, campaigning for low-cost accommodation at the ANU and the democratisation of the University, and supporting Aboriginal land rights activism.

The ANU Labour Club

Judy recalls the ANU Labour Club gaining momentum after the 1971 Day of Rage, a demonstration Clive Hamilton describes as, “a rambunctious protest by university students against just about everything.” For Judy, the protest was intended as a message from students across the nation that students did not like the world they were about to enter into as adults. From then on, she says choosing campaign issues was almost like choosing university courses. While their campaigns were undoubtedly dictated by their context, they would have group meetings to pick their campaign focus for the year.

Identity and Anti-Racism

In a surprising synchronicity, Judy and I discover that both our families were Jewish communists from Eastern Europe. Her family’s left-wing background gave her an early interest in anti-capitalist struggles. Yet, in terms of her engagement in fights around anti-racism, such as anti-apartheid campaigning, it is not her Jewish background she singles out, but rather her years growing up in Papua New Guinea and witnessing racial discrimination there, that she says instilled in her a concern for the pernicious violence of racism.

Judy conveys that she had a strong awareness of the importance of knowing her place in activism— of listening and learning from those whose struggles she sought to support, rather than attempting to lead or take ownership of the issue. She describes her involvement with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and recalls the ANU Labour Club responding to a call from them for bodies on the ground to defend the Embassy against police demolition. The group saw themselves as “shock troops”, as the frontline there to face down police. She recalls, “we were kind of like hired muscle, we were pretty aware it wasn’t our struggle but we were sympathetic to the cause and prepared to go and offer support.”

Trawling through online archives, I find an article Judy penned at the time, responding to what she perceived to be a smug and ignorant portrayal of student support of the Tent Embassy. She decries the patronising tone of the original author in claiming student credit for Aboriginal activism and writes that “the students were … aware at all times of the need to be followers not leaders, and of the fact that they were mere appendages of the black movement.”

While discussing her anti-apartheid activism, Judy frequently repeats the adjectives “fun” and “clandestine”. She describes the “mock-guerrilla” activities they engaged in to disrupt everyday events, including having a load of sand delivered to the South African ambassador’s driveway. Etched into her mind is the less enjoyable, yet nonetheless exciting memory of camping outside the South African Embassy in the biting cold of the mid-winter Canberra as part of a constantly manned vigil that lasted several months.