Guerrilla Warfare after Whitlam's sacking

Ug, I thought I'd seen the last of this one.

This concept doesn't have legs. The chances of any sort of movement like this were and are nill. For the most part Australia is the most politcally stable country in the world.

No movement could get any sort of popular support. The moment it suggests hurt fellow Aussies is when it would tear itself apart. We may have our diffrences state to sate, but we're all Aussies
 

Cook

Banned
Add to that the Gunston factor; it is hard to rally the revolutionaries when the whole thing is scooped by Norman Gunston addressing the ‘angry Mob’ on the steps of old Parliament House before they all trooped off to the pub.
 

aussieman1

Banned
Guerrilla Warfare after Whitlam's sacking: my attempt at an update

Let's say for ASB purposes that supposing the violence had been of a hit, run attack nature or supposing they just make arson attacks instead? Just think a small group of people would be harder to catch. The guerrilla group might have called itself the Workers Defence Forces. Just supposing that the guerrilla group gained support by offering wage increases to workers when they rose to power? Just supposing that the situation was so intense that Mr Fraser had barely escaped with his life, went to live in exile in London, Mr Kerr had been assassinated? Possibly the leader of Australia WOULD NOT BE the Liberal leader of the day or the then Labour Prime Minister but instead a person who is opposed to capitalism instead, instead of a resources tax being watered down the opponents would simply be arrested, the tax would have been implemented completely unaltered! Afterwards the Workers Defence Forces would invite members of existing left wing groups to help them govern the country. Another result would probably be no GST unlike in the Original Time Line where we do have a GST, instead of anyone saying 'get used to it' the tax would never have been made legislation.
 
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Let's say for ASB purposes that supposing the violence had been of a hit, run attack nature or supposing they just make arson attacks instead? Just think a small group of people would be harder to catch. The guerrilla group might have called itself the Workers Defence Forces. Just supposing that the guerrilla group gained support by offering wage increases to workers when they rose to power? Just supposing that the situation was so intense that Mr Fraser had barely escaped with his life, went to live in exile in London, Mr Kerr had been assassinated? Possibly the leader of Australia WOULD NOT BE the Liberal leader of the day or the then Labour Prime Minister but instead a person who is opposed to capitalism instead, instead of a resources tax being watered down the opponents would simply be arrested, the tax would have been implemented completely unaltered! Afterwards the Workers Defence Forces would invite members of existing left wing groups to help them govern the country. Another result would probably be no GST unlike in the Original Time Line where we do have a GST, instead of anyone saying 'get used to it' the tax would never have been made legislation.

Well that's a model of rationality ;). Not least because of the fact that after the violent overthrow of the Commonwealth and the establishment of a left wing dictatorship I doubt there would be any privately owned mines too be taxed.
 

aussieman1

Banned
About the thread

You have a point. A left wing government would already own the mines. my bad for forgetting that fact. Australia would have had a genuinely independent foreign policy as well, that would have meant Australia would have condemned the US invasion of Grenada. Unlike Australian governments in the Original Time Line. There would as well never have been intervention in the Northern Territory. States probably wouldn't want to secede because Australian states economies are part of the Australian economy, I don't think that any of the states could survive economically on their own. About public transport: A left wing government would either make it cheaper or free.
 
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Cook

Banned
Okay, so Kerr’s been assassinated and you’d better have Fraser assassinated too. Don’t let the ersatz Fraser we have now fool you; Malcolm Fraser in the 1970s was as hard as they come, the only way you’d stop him from becoming Prime Minister is if you killed him, and then you’d better drive a steak through his heart and chop off his head to be sure.

The death of the Governor-General results in their immediate replacement with the most senior State Governor which in 1975 was New South Wales’s Governor, Sir Roden Cutler, VC, AK, KCMG, KCVO,CBE. If you want a steady pair of hands in a crisis you couldn’t do better than Cutler.

Which brings us to the December ’75 Federal Election. Labor was on a hiding to nothing anyway and it is now generally agreed that militant union behaviour at Labor election rallies, far from strengthening Labor’s position weakened it, driving voters further into the arms of the Coalition, not that they needed much prompting in ’75. An assassination, even one that was proven to be conducted by a small group of drug crazed numbats with no connections at all to the Labor Party would be devastating to what was left of the Labor vote and given the very short time frame involved, proving beyond doubt that there was no connection before the election would be doubtful. The Australian electorate does not respond positively to violence; an aggressive handshake ended Mark Latham’s career.

So Labor would be in for a defeat not just greater than Australia had seen since World War Two, they’d be in for a hiding of unprecedented proportions; the Federal Labor Party would be able to hold their caucus in a telephone booth.

Andrew Peacock would become Liberal Leader and Prime Minister with John Howard as Federal Treasurer. Without Fraser there to prevent it you can expect economic and industrial relations deregulation to kick off earlier, around 1980 if not even earlier. With the Coalition having a much larger majority you can expect the progress of deregulation to take place faster than it did under Hawke.

The B.L.F. and the other militant unions may have been crushed before Hawke ever became P.M, assuming he still did at some stage around the mid eighties.

Sweet.
:)
 
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Thank You Cook.I'm pretty sure that you've finally put the nail in the coffin, but allow me to put the first sod of earth on it.;)

There is the issue that the "Left" in Australia have never really been unfied to any great extent. It'd be as likely that any left wing guerrilla movements would act against each of as they would the 'Establishment'.

I'll say it again.

The main reason that any movement would be doomed to failure is the fact that all successful guerrilla movements have operated with the support of a large segment of the population. There is no way that any movement could get this after making attacks that would unavoidably harm the greater public.

How are these guerrillas supposed to get their arms? If they recieve them from 'comrades' overseas then they'll be accused, by some of their own supporters even, of making Australia a puppet for them. They wouldn't be able to steal them from the military because the moment something goes down the entire defence force would be put on alert .Even with the odd mistakes that it makes, the Australian army isn't known for being that dumb.

If someone really wants try to this timeline out, move it to ASB and have some fun
there.
 

aussieman1

Banned
My reply about the subject

They could buy the arms, ammunition and sneak back into the country or they could just obtain gun licences in Australia as well as buy the guns as well, after that they could plan their first operation which could have been causing a diversion so that people who clashed with Fraser supporters or the police could escape arrest. The guerrillas could help hide the people who had benefited from the diversion that the guerrillas themselves made. That would be an example of the general public not being harmed. Surely the public would be glad that no one was harmed. Maybe the guerrillas could just keep helping Whitlam supporters escape arrest, only used violence in self defence and they would probably kill Fraser, Peacock and Kerr, Cutler, anyone else who replaced them. Well there would have been idiots, Liberal lackeys who would whinge about that.The Liberals would have screamed like stuck pigs calling it "an attack on law, order". The Labour leaders would have sincerely condemned the guerrillas actions killing any Liberal hopes of using those incidents to smear Labour thereby preventing an even greater defeat. Perhaps just perhaps it would be Labour who punished the guerrillas NOT some Liberal idiot or some peabrain fascist military type.

I'm not sorry for writing it the way I have I could add more but I don't have time at the moment.
 
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