50th Anniversary Lecture : Kelly and his Times

In this lecture, Weston Bate says at the beginning that ‘the truth about Ned’ is ‘what we have come for, though I must admit I am a trifle disconcerted that Professor Clark suggests that three truths are encapsulated in any one truth it is possible to lay down – the truth according to the sympathisers, the opponents and the explainers, to which last group I am professionally attached.’

Bate sets out what he thinks ‘needs to be explained’ : How did Ned Kelly become the kind of man he was, what were the reasons for the support he had and the reasons it took the Police so long to deal with him, and lastly, what explains the rapid growth in the Kelly legend? The Lecture mostly focusses on the first question.

He talks firstly about the effect the railway had on life when it opened in the North east in 1873. Farmers suddenly had much more direct access to urban markets and so farms and profits improved dramatically for those with the capital to take advantage of the new opportunities. However, he says, ‘many people missed out’, and so there was a widening gap between rich and poor.

Next Bate discusses his idea that ‘centralisation’ had a role to play in the Kelly outbreak. The administration of the Police force, the Courts, of land and of Politics was all ‘centralised’ – ie controlled - from Melbourne, where the rich all had contacts and access that the poor people didn’t enjoy, and so were at a disadvantage. Centralisation meant also that the decision makers were out of touch with the needs of the rural community, couldn’t respond quickly or knowledgeably to conditions and demands from the periphery, and he suggests the authorities in Melbourne used the fog of remoteness as an opportunity to misrepresent rural conditions in whichever manner it suited their political purpose, whether it was in land administration, the functioning of the Courts, Policing or the enactment of legislation.

Class antagonism is Bates next theme. He cites a couple of stories to illustrate the hardships selectors and the poor had to confront:  a woman was almost raped in her Wangaratta bark hut because it was so flimsy she couldn’t lock  a door to keep the assailant out;  a selectors letters to the Lands Department reveal the struggle he had in developing the land and providing for his seven school age children, pleading for extensions of time to pay his rent, and then dying soon after he was granted the lease; a man found on a roadside, returning home from a paid job ‘in the north’ collapsed with heat stroke and hunger, naked and near death having starved himself in an effort to save money.

He argues that the poor witnessed the general disregard of ethics and morality by the well-off in their pursuit of the ownership of land and wealth, but by contrast lesser crimes of the desperate poor such as sheep stealing were punished. “In such circumstances is it not surprising that, like the Kelly’s, some took the easier way of dealing in the stock of people who were doing well. They had felt the injustice of the way the squatter could muster his team of dummies and tie up the best land in the whole district. And they argued quite directly that if these men could do what they wanted with the law by taking  land far beyond their rights, why should sheep stealing or horse stealing be such a desperate crime?” ‘There seemed to be one Law for the rich, like Whitty and Burns, and one law for the poor in this lovely country’ Bate also suggests the concern expressed by ‘the propertied classs about horse-stealing’ was exaggerated to encourage the Law to keep the  working classes in check.

He writes “ …Kellys attitude at Jerilderie  expresses a groundswell of revolt. His actions were eloquent of a general sympathy with the poor not just the poor of his own district”

Finally  he reflects on ‘the Irish tradition (that) bred angry men (…) Certainly Irish hatreds fed upon all these background conditions and the  erupted as I think they did at Eureka. (…) Why should Ned have rejected the views of is family when there was so much evidence before his eyes that the necessary revolt was against others?’

Bate concludes with this : ‘The poor man had always been easier to nail. His reply was to make a hero of the man who was brave enough and bad enough to make war on society’

Dees Commentary:

Weston Bate is described in the proceedings of the Symposium as a senior Lecturer in charge of Australian History at the Melbourne University, and ‘married, and has six children’ I wondered if his large family meant he was a Catholic and therefore possibly inclined to be sympathetic to Ned from the outset, because in this Lecture he most certainly is. In the last few comments following his Lecture they discuss the ‘gentlemanliness’ of Ned. One audience member who said he had lived in Glenrowan for many years, claimed Jim Kelly ‘was one of the most beloved men in the whole of the district’ Bate responded saying ‘if one wishes to take the gentlemanliness of Ned to extremes, Curnows attitude may be seen as that of the alien schoolteacher not understanding or sympathising with local traditions and so on, putting his own construction on, or even distorting the facts of what happened’. He then asked  if ‘there indications of people being really frightened by the Kellys?’ and is told “I do not think any of the people in the District were ever frightened of any of the Kellys’

Audiences  today would be much better informed about Kelly history than they were in 1967, and I doubt many would accept that nobody feared the Kellys, or would not know that for all his decency in later life Jim Kelly was a serious criminal who almost murdered a NSW policeman in earlier times, and would anyone accept that Curnow had not understood what was going on at Glenrowan and perhaps shouldn’t have stopped the train?

The interesting thing about this Lecture is that it is proposing the exact opposite view of Ned Kelly to the one just proposed by Professor Manning Clark, but nobody in the audience seems to notice, or if they did, wants to point it out. Clarks view of Ned was that he was consumed by the personal and the private, was full of rage and anger and unreason, and in a kind of cosmic sense his attacks on society were destined to fail. On the other hand Bate explains Ned in terms of the Political and the public, in terms of social and historical issues, in terms that are logical and rational, in terms of a cause that found a leader in Ned.

I think the problem with Weston Bates view is that he has made an a priori assumption about Neds behaviour and then, in his lecture has set about looking for explanations for it. The simplest explanation of Ned Kellys behaviour is that he was an actual criminal. Finding conditions and circumstances that COULD have given rise to behaviour like Neds doesn’t mean that they DID give rise to it – what has to be shown is the direct link between these conditions and Neds behaviour because otherwise EVERY Irish criminal in the North East could offer the same explanation for his behaviour, and how would anyone be able to differentiate between the actual criminal and the Political activist? Bate makes no attempt to establish that link, but has assumed it right from the start.

A consequence of such lectures and their proposed explanations, has been the stimulation of more research and thinking about the Kelly story and so now we know lots more about the Kelly Outbreak. Analysis by Doug Morrissey has refuted much of Bates analysis of the lot of the Selector, the majority of whom went on to pay off their leases and become landholders. We also know that the central justification for Neds claimed revolt, persecution and harassment which audience members expressed certainty about in 1967, is a myth.

50th Anniversary Lecture : Good Day to you Ned Kelly

‘Good day to you Ned Kelly’ was the title of the lecture given at the Easter 1967 Ned Kelly Symposium by the already famous and widely respected Australian intellectual and  historian, Professor Manning Clark. There seemed to be a growing suspicion at the time that Ned Kelly may have been an unrecognised but important figure whose ideas and activities were significant contributors to the development of the Australian psyche and national identity.  Its ample testimony to the huge interest that there was in discovering the real meaning of the Kelly story back then that someone of Manning Clarks stature would become involved in such a seminar. But he was not alone – there were two other professors who also attended and contributed to the Symposium  - professors Louis Waller and Weston Bate.

Clarks view, expressed in this lecture, was that “mad Ireland had fashioned Ned“  and that, as contributors to this Blog have also recently suggested, because of the environment  and the circumstances that he grew up in, Ned didn’t stand a chance at being anything other than a rebel. Clark believed Ned Kelly was a man who wanted to live “fearless free and bold” but instead was driven by a torrent of raging passions and emotion, what he called “that madness in the blood which had caused him first to steal and then to kill”. He wrote of Neds ‘blind fury’, of ‘the unquenchable fire in Neds heart’, of “that recklessness which was driving him on to his doom” a man who had given “free rein to the tempest in his blood, a man not driven by some lofty ideal to take down the mighty from their seat and send the rich empty away, but rather to hurt and destroy the ones who had caused the dark undying pain to his mother, his brother, himself and men of his kind” But in diametric opposition  to the view of Ned as a forward looking visionary expressed later in the Symposium by Ian Jones, Manning Clark saw Ned as being ‘weighed down by the dead hand of the past”. Ned went bush when the drift was increasingly to the townships, Ned took to the saddle just as the trains arrived in the north-east, and Neds grievances weren’t with ‘the deeper causes of poverty, degradation and misery of the selectors”. Instead his rage was directed against the gaolers and the Police and the  bankers, ‘and not against the  deeper reasons why he and his people had lived in such darkness’

Clarks view of Neds life is full of biblical references to such things as ‘the gallilean’ to demons, to redemption, and to the Commandments, and there are also references to the Greek Gods, Apollo and Dionysius. Manning Clark saw the course of Neds life as a clash of Biblical, mythical proportions between ‘civilisation’ and the demonic urges being expressed by Ned that could have only one possible outcome : Neds annihilation: Ned ‘had to be defanged if civilisation was to survive’.  Neds ultimate fate was inevitable.

In the discussion after the lecture he said that if the Fitzpatrick incident hadn’t triggered the outbreak, someone or something else  eventually would have. Furthermore Clark believed that Ned himself, at the end, realised too that his struggle was doomed, his rage was impotent, and realised that in the end he needed to accept his defeat, and ‘die like a Kelly’. Clark thought he saw a glimpse of Neds struggle with this realisation as far back as at Jerilderie, which was a moment of great and intoxicating triumph for Ned, where “for days Ned lorded it over the forces he loathed and despised – the police, the bankers and all the respectable people” :

A moment of triumph, and yet, Clark draws our attention to the confrontation between Ned and Mr Gribble, in which the Clergyman discerned something to appeal to in Ned, and Ned seemed to sense briefly the futility of his struggle, and to relent, albeit momentarily:

“A member of the gang took a watch from the Reverend Mr Gribble, the local Methodist clergyman. With great courage Mr Gribble asked Ned to order his mate to hand the watch back. For a moment two mighty opposites confronted each other in that hotel parlour in Jerilderie. Mr Gribbble represented those very forces Ned was fighting. He was that upright man who feared God and eschewed evil – that man who honoured the law and the prophets – a symbol of that that giant of English philistinism with its harsh wisdom for mankind, namely that if civilisation is to prevail then men must behave like tame geese. ……

Yet at this moment in Jerilderie Ned resisted the temptation to humiliate the man of law and order. He ordered his mate to  hand back the watch. Mr Gribble had his moment of wisdom in that Hotel parlour in Jerilderie. Sensing perhaps that like all the supporters of law and order he was also a secret sharer of the unquenchable fire in Ned’s heart, he bowed to him and said “Good day to you Ned Kelly”

Further elaborating his theological interpretation of Neds life, Clark saw Father Gibney as another clergyman who began to “tame Ned and to prepare him desperately late though it was, for  redemption and acceptance – to get him to see that that  though men find some things right and some wrong, to God all things are fair and just and right”

At the end, Clarks proof of the success of Neds redemption is seen in how he reacts to Mr Justice Barry “a symbol of all that had provoked Ned to his impotent rage and to his desperate quarrel with God and man”. Ned had just been convicted of murder but before he passed sentence on him at the end of the Trial was asked by Justice Barry, the man who sentenced Neds mother, if he had anything to say :  “And Ned said quietly, ‘I do not blame anybody’ -  for wisdom and grace were coming to him as the fires died down”

Professor Manning Clarks  Ned Kelly is huge, dramatic, wild, untamed and furious, a man virtually exploding with passionate energy that was horribly misdirected and self destructive and drew him inevitably to a confrontation he could never be allowed to win. Manning Clark didn’t see Ned Kelly as having been a visionary or potential leader of a rebellion – for Manning Clark Neds vision was all about his own pain. It’s ultimately a sympathetic view of a tragic figure, whose life because of its starkness and its drama ‘encouraged people to think about fundamental things in our history’ (…) perhaps there is some deeper wisdom about the meaning of life to be learned from Neds stormy days on earth”

DEES COMMENT :

Manning Clarks understanding of Ned Kelly was ahead of its time, because the serious published work till then, notably J.J. Kenneally, and the Max Brown and Frank Clune biographies  mostly saw Ned as more akin to a noble rational heroic figure, a person responding in a more or less justifiable manner to injustice and institutional corruption. Clark recognised the madness in Ned Kellys behaviour and thought and word, and the unique combination of that with his times and his physical abilities generated a rare and viiolent but fascinating beast of a human being upon whom we project our own hopes and fears. Ian Jones also recognised the madness in the Kelly story but refused to believe what he was seeing and instead justified it by proposing Ned was at War, and what looked like madness was actually a bold revolutionary plan to transform the political landscape pf North east Victoria.

Manning Clarks idea that at the end Ned Kelly accepted his fate is an interesting idea that nobody else seems to have adopted. Ive wondered myself on occasion about how quiet and unrebellious and almost meekly he went to the gallows, but decided it was because he was so badly injured and so weak from blood loss he had no energy left to keep struggling. Nevertheless in Court he exhibited a little bit of spark insisting if he had been able to conduct his own defence things would have turned out differently. (yeah, right!)

Manning Clarks view of Ned, in 1967 is where I think the Kelly story is returning, as the Jones view of the Kelly republic and all the associated creative history telling is now more or less completely dispelled by rigorous modern research. In the intervening years the public mind had been seduced by the Kelly myths promoted so brilliantly by people like Ian Jones and other notable academics, not to mention the power of the Nolan imagery, TV and Hollywood. Now we recognise the ‘madness’ boldly pointed out by Manning Clark 50 years ago as being the truth, somewhere along the spectrum of the psychopathic personality. Exploring and understanding the nature of the psychopath is probably where the Kelly story needs to go next. Then we will probably finally arrive at the final truth about him.

It was 50 years ago today...

You wont find Ned Kelly in amongst all these famous people

The Beatles Sgt Peppers album, released in June 1967 is probably still at the top of the list of the greatest albums of all time, and the Album cover, itself a landmark in album design at the time remains an iconic image of the sixties and the hippie generation. 1967 was the year Rolling Stone Magazine was founded. In Australia 1967 was the year that Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared when swimming, TV was black and white, a referendum was held to decide if Aborigines would be included in the Census ( hard to believe isn't it? ) and that year Ronald Ryan was hanged for murdering a prison warder while escaping from Pentridge Prison, the very place where at that time Ned Kellys bones were buried. Ryan was the last criminal to be hanged in Australia : Capital punishment was abolished in 1985. 

There was also an event of particular interest to Kelly enthusiasts that year,  on the easter weekend which was at the end of March in 1967. It was the Symposium on Ned Kelly at Wangaratta, the aftermath of which was a great national awakening of interest in the Kelly story. The publication that resulted from the Symposium was the first of many books to follow, along with the development of Kelly history as a tourist attraction in Victoria, the creation of special museums and public and private Kelly touring routes and guides, and in general a great flourishing of interest and excitement about the discoveries and insights being made and yet to be made of a somewhat flawed and tragic figure who appeared to embody many of the values and ideals that Australians wanted to call their own.

However, 50 years later, I am sure to the disappointment of many, the Kelly Legend is in its twilight years. The great hopeful vision of the attendees and their teachers at the symposium, which for a long while appeared to be solidifying into a substantial truth has now been eroded to the point of near collapse, like a fantasy sand-castle, unable to withstand the incoming tide of scholarship and scrutiny. In spite of - or perhaps as a result of the advent of the Internet age, social media and mass communications, interest in, and acceptance of the Kelly legends as true history is on the decline. The Kelly descendants are at war with each other, and Iron Outlaw, the great monolithic internet site that dominated the on-line Kelly world for 15 or more years is a silent ruin, its once busy halls now only occasionally visited by its spent owner and the odd spectator passing through. The myriad of hopeful Kelly websites that sprang up in its shadow have been and gone, like the Glenrowan skyrockets which were supposed to be a call to arms, but fell to earth in 1880, burned out and were never seen again. Forums like the once buzzing Ned Kelly Forum disintegrated under the pressure of internal bullying, others have all closed their doors for good and disappeared without trace. There’s one that’s  just surviving, but only because they've pulled down the blinds so nobody can see in except the members who are nervously hunkered down inside with the doors locked, and they’re not letting anyone else in. All that’s left are Bill Denhelds amazing Iron Icon website, this Blog - which is growing rapidly -  and a few 'pro-Kelly' Facebook pages, desperately scanning the newspapers for something to talk about.

In the more traditional world of publishing, where new books about Ned Kelly were numerous and always referenced the legend and the hero, now the tide has turned and for five years, beginning with the 2012 landmark 'Kelly Gang Unmasked' by Ian MacFarlane,  the dominant themes have been sceptical. As a mark of how things have changed, in 2017 Kelly sympathisers are saying the latest work is a balanced book, and praising it, yet its author repeatedly described Ned Kelly as a dangerous criminal, said nothing about the Kelly republic, and rejected Ned Kellys explanations  about the Fitzpatrick affair, the killings at Stringybark creek, and many other once revered dogmas of the Kelly mythology.

But exactly fifty years ago this Easter, it was a different story altogether. In Wangaratta on Easter weekend 1967 the Adult Education Centre invited the general public to attend a Symposium to which noted Guest speakers came to discuss and to celebrate Kelly history. This was a landmark event in the Kelly story, being the first such event ever held, and it attracted huge interest. The Symposium was ‘designed to pare away the layer of myth and Legend, of lies and innuendo, of half remembered truths and remembered half-truths, of romance and sentiment that encloses the Kelly incident; and to get at the flesh of the case, the truth of the man and his times.” In addition to public lectures from academics like the famous historian Professor Manning Clark there were three from the up and coming Ian Jones and there was also an exhibition of Kelly  relics, documents  and photographs, and finally a guided Tour of Kelly country. I would have moved heaven and earth to get to such a Symposium myself, but sadly theres nowhere near the public enthusiasm or academic interest in the Kelly story now as there was then to enable such an event to ever be staged again.  In 1993, a 25th Anniversary symposium was held in Wangaratta but it was of much smaller scale, it was dominated by Ian Jones and no publications resulted.

In one sense though, it could be said that the 1967  weekend was a failure, because if it had successfully got to ‘the truth of the man and his times,’ as hoped, the debate would have ended right there. Instead what really happened was the symposium started the debate which has continued to this day. Following that weekend, interest in Kelly history blossomed over the next 40 or more years, and many new books were written, both fiction and non-fiction, other seminars and exhibitions were held, two full length feature films were produced, the Kelly Gang armour was reassembled and some went on permanent public display, the annual Beechworth Ned Kelly Weekend came into existence featuring such things as re-enactments of the Trials, the very influential TV Series  ‘The Last Outlaw’ was produced, Ned Kelly images were beamed around the world at the opening of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 as a celebration of Australian larrikinism, and in 2012 Ned Kellys remains were dug up from the grounds of the Pentridge prison and reinterred in Greta, with great public fanfare - all that and so much more. Looking back we can see that The Wangaratta Symposium marked the beginning of a Golden Age of Ned Kelly.

“Ned Kelly : Man and Myth”, edited by Colin Cave was the book that emerged from the Wangaratta symposium and it was published in 1968. The book includes the text of seven lectures that were delivered. It also includes transcripts of the question and answer sessions that followed each lecture, wherein some of the most interesting material can be found, as members of the assembled audience brought their own contributions and questions and stimulated interesting debates about all sorts of related and sometimes almost unrelated topics.

Even the Bibliography of this book is fascinating to read, because  in 1967 “A Short Life” by Ian Jones, the essential reading of Kelly enthusiasts  today was yet to be written, as were the other standard texts of today such as those written by  Molony, McQuilton, McMenomy and Corfield. The main references were newspapers from the time of the Outbreak, JJKenneally, Max Brown and Frank Clune. Its not easy to imagine a time without the detail and insights of all these newer works.

It was  an important event in the history of the Kelly legend and I think it should be commemorated. In a series of Posts  to follow up to and after the Easter weekend in 2017, we will look back at those seven Lectures and analyse the arguments in light of all the new findings and undertandings that have been developed since. It will be interesting to discuss how much closer we have come to ‘the flesh of the case, the truth of the man and his times.' 

The Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges

This is the memorial erected at Mansfield in honour of the police slain in the Wombat Ranges

Stuart Dawson is doing some interesting research into the Kelly story.  He showed by detailed critical analysis of the major element of the Kelly legend known as the  "Fitzpatrick Incident" that it was a myth.Dawson showed that Fitzpatrick, whose name has been forever blackened by the Kellys, told the truth about what happened and it was the Kellys and their associates who were the liars. In another paper, Dawson researched the origin of the words "Such is life" which were supposed to have been Ned Kellys last, but they weren't. They were made up by a journalist. 

Dawson is obviously continuing to do groundbreaking research into Kelly history, but in the process has produced a wonderful little gem that he wants to share for free with everyone else who is interested in Kelly history. This time its the complete text of a work originally published in 1879, after the Fitzpatrick incident, after the murders at Stringybark Creek, after the Kelly gangs two Bank robberies but more than a year before the finale of the Outbreak, the debacle at Glenrowan. The Gang had been outlawed, meaning anyone could capture or kill any of its four members with legal impunity, they were on the run and public interest in the pursuit was at fever pitch. The entire state and beyond were  gripped by a mixture of horror fear and fascination at the Gangs exploits - for a journalist and publisher it was the perfect opportunity to write  and publish a book about the Gang, and make a tidy sum from what they no doubt hoped would be, and probably was, a best seller?

'The following is the Text  I received a few days ago from Stuart Dawson. I take it as a complement to this Blog that he wants me to publicise his generous free gift to the Kelly world here ; Ive downloaded and read the book already and would encourage everyone else to do likewise.

_____________________________________________________________

Thanks to Dee for letting me announce the release of a free, accurate transcription of the full text of G.W. Hall’s book, “The Kelly Gang, or, the Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges”, published in February 1879. There are only four copies in Australian state libraries, and no known private copies surviving. In this day and age it is great to be able to computer-search texts for words, persons, and places, but the only digital versions I have been able to locate (right up to this week) have textual errors, as well as spelling and punctuation mistakes. As I needed an accurate copy for research and citation, I made one myself from the Victorian State Library copy.

Having triple checked it for accuracy, it seems a shame not to share it. I have long believed that historically significant, out-of-copyright books should be freely available at no cost, whether as scans or transcriptions. This transcript is paginated exactly as per the original book. I have added some explanatory footnotes for obscure words and references. That should make this the most useful version of Hall’s text available.

As well as being free to download, it is also free to circulate and redistribute, email to friends, put on your website for others to download, use as a teaching resource, and so on. The only condition, as stated on the cover, is that it cannot be sold. It must always be free

Bill Denheld has kindly agreed to be the first download host of this new free PDF transcript of Hall’s “Outlaws of the Wombat Ranges”, and also did the great facsimile reconstruction of the title page. Grab yourself a copy from his fantastic IRON-ICON website at http://www.ironicon.com.au/gw-hall-the-kelly-gang-1879.htm  and share it around.

George Wilson Hall was the publisher of this work, but its authors are not named. It was most likely a collaboration between Hall and the unnamed ‘traveller’ (see the text, p. 123; Mr. Blank, p. 131). The preface is signed ‘The Authors’ as plural, on page vi, and it is dated 22 February 1879, shortly after the Jerilderie bank robbery of Monday 10 February.

Ned Kelly had unsuccessfully sought to have copies of his “Jerilderie letter” printed in that town. This book is a massively important historical document in its claim to give an impartial account of the Kelly outbreak up to the time of writing, regardless of Hall’s being on the committee for the ‘Murdered Police Memorial Fund’ (p. 104).

Hall was necessarily reliant on ‘inside’ information from the gang through an intermediary. He gives some skewed interpretations of events, such as that “Kelly did not recognize Lonigan at the time of the murders, so that his … death amounted to merely a coincidence” (p. 41). Yet Hall acknowledges McIntyre’s statement, that Kelly told him at first he had thought Lonigan was Flood (p. 44). If true, the “coincidence” vanishes, as Kelly repeatedly said he was out to kill Flood. At other places, too, Hall must be read with some alert scepticism.

After the Stringybark Creek shootings, “Within weeks, a hasty rewrite of ‘Fleeced; or, The Vultures of the Bush’, an eight year old bushranging play by Archibald Murray, re-subtitled ‘The Vultures of the Wombat Ranges’, was playing at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre” (R. Fotheringham, ed., ‘Australian plays for the colonial stage: 1834-1899’ [UQP, 2006], p. 553). Did that influence Hall’s subtitle for his Kelly gang book a couple of months later? We’ll never know!

Cheers, 

Stuart