[Oe List ...] CF&LC revisited

[frank bremner]

Dear colleagues

I enjoyed reading the excerpt of Chapter 2 from Doug Rossinow's book that was posted on the Dialogue.  I've since bought and read the whole chapter, and the whole book.  
 
I enjoyed his take on Christian existentialism, even though some of you will be able to spell out "what actually happened" in more detail and with greater accuracy.  His line about JWM and co going off to Chicago "to start the Ecumenical Institute" brought on a chuckle - maybe some of you will have to supply Rossinow with a few (many?) corrections etc for his second edition.
 
Some reflections on the whole book.  
 
1
It clarified some of those early RS-I images about the GI Bill and returned soldiers etc.  In Australia I found some of those images like "uh?"  
 
2
In Australia we have a smaller population, and a smaller percentage of our population who have been to university (or "to college", as you folks would say).  (Mind you, academically, Australia does pretty well, "punching above its weight" - Nobel Prize winners etc.)  So trying to develop a movement of the New Left around the campuses here was more difficult.
 
John Burbidge (sp?) may have some reflections on New Left activity in Perth.
 
At Flinders University in the early-mid 70s there was a "cadre" or "corporate chaplaincy" around the office of Andrew Paterson, the Methodist chaplain at the time.  Some students went to EI courses, and January summer programs.  I lot of those people are still around - Ian Yates, Michael Raupach, Becky Roberts (now Llewellyn), .....
 
There were some attempts at groups like the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA), trying a Maoist (?) approach to getting students out of the ivory tower.
 
But Rossinow's accounts of New Left fragmentation rings a bell.  The "hyphen soup" of Marxist-Maoist-Leninist-Trotskyist-Moscow-line-Peking-line groups, all seeking ideological purity, was beautifully sent up in Monty Python's Life of Brian.  In the TV series The Long Search Martin Marty described this as "the Protestant principle" - continual splitting to find doctrinal perfection.
 
But one slogan still resonates.  At Adelaide University the Students for Democratic Action (SDA), definitely a New Left group, had a weekly newsheet called Grass Roots - the sub-title was Imagination is Revolution.
 
3
A lot of the book covers the various "causes" that the New Left, in its varuus forms, tried to take up - most of which fall under the umbrella of what in the late 70s and early 80s we called "The Seven Revolutions" - the women's revolution, the youth revolution, the ...... etc.  We were more comprehensive, I suggest.
 
In Australia these are seen, separately, as "rent-a-crowd causes" that previous Labor governments have used as a support base, and which have thus been ridiculed by conservative forces, successfully.  Any linkage between such "causes" tends to appear in corners such as journals, occasional speeches etc - but not mainstream.
 
4
Somewhere in the back of my mind is a memory of some courses at the Sydney Academy in Sep-Nov 1972, in which Gene Marshall and others spoke of "forming a movement" etc.  SM-A, SM-B, SM-C etc.
 
This opens up the whole category of "awakening/conscientizing people", and "forming them into a movement".  Much theory and documentation of experience here - Sandanistas, Che, Castro, Kenyetta, Gandhi, Lenin, Kerensky, Mao, John Mott, Wesley, etc etc.
 
5
I was intrigued with Rossinow's use of the phrase "beloved community" - I assume it refers to Civil Rights Movement groupings.  What was/is the Australian equivalent?  Currently it would be the Reconciliation Movement.
 
Best wishes
 
Frank
 
 
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