National Socialist Party of Australia

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National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) was founded in January 1964. The party was inspired by George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party. The party dissolved in December 1975, definitive and officially in May 1977.

History

Arthur Charles Smith in 1964

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ANSP

The Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP) was formed 1962 and was vigorously anti-communist. The party argued for the perpetuation of the White Australia policy, a defensive approach to Asia and the total annexation of New Guinea. It was led by University of Adelaide physics student Edward "Ted" Robert Cawthron and Sydney council worker Don Lindsay, until they were joined in 1963 by atheist Arthur Charles Smith, a prominent political figure known for his strength of character, but also outward anti-Semitism and challenging tactics.

In 1964, the ANSP had 200 members (mainly men, but also a few women) in Sydney, Australia wth headquarters in Charlotte Street in the suburb of Ashfield. Also in 1964, a Victorian group, the Australian National Renaissance Party, was incorporated into the ANSP. The ANSP's headquarters were raided by police on 26 June 1964, during which Smith and four other party members were arrested. The five were charged with a variety of offenses, with Smith convicted of possessing unlicensed firearms and explosives; he served a four-month jail term. His mother, living in Tasmania, died two weks after his sentencing. While Smith was imprisoned, Robert Pope, who had led the Australian National Renaissance Party, became acting leader, but the party's membership had collapsed following the raid and due to government surveillance. Pope had Smith expelled from the party while he was in prison. Throughout 1965, Smith was engaged in re-launching the ANSP. In early 1966, Smith attracted media attention when he collapsed while speaking at the Domain. Several demonstrations were held in support of the Vietnam War as well as anti-communist and Israel critical demonstrations. At this point, Cawthron and several other defectors formed the competing National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA), which rejected the radicalism of the ANSP. In May 1968, Smith resigned from the party and retired from politics, leaving the leadership to German Australian Eric Wenberg, a long-term party member and militarist. Wenberg made overtures to Cawthron, and the ANSP was merged into the NSPA in that year.

NSPA

The first leader of the NSPA was the colourful Arthur Charles Smith (born 1935). I have discussed Smith in my doctoral thesis. Smith was at heart an Australian radical-nationalist, marginalised by years of isolation in several small neo-fascist type groups (Workers' National Party, Nationalist Workers' Party, National Unity Party) and through association with an equally colourful, if not usually criminal, coterie of associates. Smith found his way to Colin Jordan and then George Lincoln Rockwell and "the gimmick" of Nazism ("the gimmick": Smith's words quoted to police investigators). Here was a way to mobilise and publicise the 'Right' in a dramatic way. Unfortunately, this "gimmick" overwhelmed the nationalist impulse, causing the birth of a very different form of politics - but this takes us to far. We start with the NSPA founded by Smith, and other persons such as Donald Lindsay (10), Edward Cawthron and Brian Raven. Smith was spoken to again for the purpose of this article. As usual, he was precise. He recalled that Rockwell had "promoted" Yockey - which was certainly true at one point in the late 1950's/1960-1. However, there was later "some issue" taken by Rockwell (true: Rockwell denounced Yockey was a "Strasserist", a view favoured by Arnold Leese's spiritual heir, Colin Jordan, a subject discussed at greater length shortly). Smith had "read the book" possibly in the early 1960's, and opined that few in his Sydney circle were interested in it; its complexity left them far behind. "It was Ted Cawthron who took it up". Although from time to time, groups directed by Smith from 1964-72 would book halls under the name of the 'Francis Parker Yockey Debating Society' and so on, the book played no role in that immediate milieu. And as Smith conceded, his version of Australian National Socialism avoided any strident effort at intellectualisation "as Cawthron tried to do."

The NSPA was formed as a more moderate breakaway from the ANSP. The NSPA, originally a splinter group, was led by Ted Cawthron in Canberra. The National Party worked with Freedom Vigilantes (an NSPA front) and Captive Nations against Left activism and the new ‘Moratorium’ movement. In 1967, a new ‘NSPA’ was founded in Canberra with Cawthron as National Secretary. It rejected fly-by-night operations, designed at extracting funds from the gullibleand espoused professionalism. Cawthron wrote:

[...] we must not allow our National Socialism to become merely an imitation or admiration of Hitler [...] do not confuse us with certain individuals or groups who parade around in German style uniforms. The party must be unquestionably Australian [...] If we [...] seek to be the very embodiment of the new Australian Nationalism [...] but adopt the characteristics of another country and people we will not only negate our own ideology but alienate the [...] people. In time, Australian National Socialism will develop its own characteristics [...]

Cawthron challenged the conspiracy dogmas of the LOR, adopted the Henry Lawson − Eureka mythos, took up the Eureka Flag and proclaimed Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium, a classic of neo-fascism first published in 1948, as the NSPA’s philosophical guide. Still, Yockey’s 1950’s tilt towards Stalinism’s anti-Zionism and supposed racial-nationalist politics, alienated the international National Socialism warriors. Cawthron eschewed violence but kept up with some anti-marxist action. In May 1970, in the A.C.T. by-election, Cawthron won 183 votes. In the 1970 Senate poll, the NSPA candidates did surprisingly well. Leftist Tribune propaganda claimed, Cawthron had an arrangement with German, Croatian and Hungarian emigres, who allegedly organized voters in their communities. In mid 1970, the NSPA found an organizer in Cass Young. Young organized city square and Yarra Bank rallies and opened a Carlton shop front as lead-ups to his Senate candidacy.

On 31 January 1971, thousands of Jews and violent leftists and the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) occupied the Yarra Bank to prevent a NSPA rally. WSA impressario Albert Langer incited the crowd to march on the NSPA headquarters. In the ensuing riot, the office was ransacked. In 1971, the leadership of Niemeyer, Raymond Gillespie, Des Hatton and brothel-operator, Gary Mangan, escalated activism at a propitious moment in Queensland politics. The expulsion of Mangan from the NSPA in October 1971 centred on his looselipped talk of the Special Branch connection. Mangan thence organized thirty of the best men into the "Fascist Party" which battled leftists as the hard fist of anti-communism.

Sine 1972, the NSPA operated a combat training camp 32 miles from Melbourne. In April 1972, the NSPA launched a third monthly publication: Stormtrooper with 24 to 32 pages. In June 1972, a WSA mob smashed their way into the new NSPA St. Albans’ office which was also Cass Young's home. Membership records were seized. The expanded NSPA, with 200 members, ran four candidates in the 1972 Federal Poll. On 8 May 1973, at Melbourne’s Dallas Brookes Hall, National Socialists let off poison gas to disrupt Federal Minister Cairns’s reception of a Viet Cong delegation. Violent clashes between police and Maoists took place outside. These events had followed a spate of arsons and firearm attacks.

A Melbourne meeting in November 1973 re-established the NSPA with sections in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Cawthron’s WUNS Secretariat, which hoped to save something from Australian National Socialism, provided Robin Sparrow, an Adelaide University student, as inter-state liaison officer. The NSPA practised Kafka-esque normalism. It had published an Agricultural Programme (1972) and attacked the ALP for abandoning White Australia (1973). It desired to participate in elections to win the middle class. Organizational gravity transferred to Sydney under Secretary Neil Garland, 40, formerly of both the ANSP and NSPA, and Robert Cameron, 25, former Fascist Party member. In March 1974, Cameron acquired the membership list of the Trotskyist Socialist Youth Alliance taken in a 1973 visit at its Glebe offices. In Easter 1974, the NSPA held a Congress.

Brisbane bombing 1972

On 19 April 1972, the Community Party of Australia Brisbane office (291 St Pauls Terrace, Fortitude Valley) was bombed by the "Fascist Party", former NSPA members. The bomb was placed at the doorway of the bookshop. Edward Stevenson was allegedly convicted, Gary John Mangan (a member of the National Socialist Party of Australia 1970-71, the Australian Fascist Party 1971-72 and associated with some NSPA activities in Sydney 1974-75), lead suspect, was charged over the bombing but was acquitted in September 1973.

An odd smell wafted through the upper floor of the three-storey brick building. Something was burning. One of the seven people meeting that Thursday night figured he’d investigate; the offices, bookstore and printing room downstairs were an obvious concern. Then the bomb went off. Placed near the entrance to the building one floor below, sixteen sticks of gelignite lifted the floor above and blew out nearby walls and doors. Roofing iron and filing cabinets were twisted and torn, crockery in the top-floor cupboards shattered like the windows overlooking St. Paul’s Terrace. The shockwave expanded through the upper-floor, past those gathered at the table, finding little resistance from the louvres at the Barry Parade end. Smoke hung throughout the building. Nobody was injured. A literary confetti made of publications stocked by the People’s Bookshop, which shared the building, settled on the lower floor. Soon after, somebody identifying as the bomber called in to either the police station or The Courier Mail — accounts from the time vary. “We will bomb more on Friday if they march in the Moratorium,” they warned. “We tried not to hurt anyone tonight. It’s Hitler’s birthday tomorrow. Heil Hitler.” It was April 19, 1972. Shots would be fired into a Maoist-run bookstore on Elizabeth Street later that night. The following day, more anonymous calls were made, this time to Communist Party members. They were told their homes would be next. This bombing, unlike a firebombing of the same Communist Party of Australia headquarters 5 years earlier, was not covered by insurance. Repair costs were estimated to be at least $3000 — $28 000 today—and a national call-out was made to help rebuild. Money flowed in; the lead suspect flew out. He was arrested interstate, extradited, and later acquitted.

See also

• Lineage of Australian Nationalist organizations and individuals

Further reading

• David Harcourt: Everyone wants to be Fuehrer – National Socialism in Australia and New Zealand, Angus and Robertson, 1972 (Archive)

External links

Videos

• Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP) in 1964