Australia First Movement

Not to be confused with the Australia First Party.

Australia First Movement was a proto-fascist movement which grew out of the Rational Association and the Victorian Socialist Party. Adela Pankhurst Walsh, of the famous suffragette family was involved in it, along with W. J. Miles, Rhodes scholar Percy Stephensen, Xavier Herbert, as well as famous novelists Miles Franklin and Eleanor Dark. Its advocacy of independence from the British Empire attracted the support of the Catholic weekly, The Advocate as well as the Odinist Alexander Rud Mills. It was anti-semitic and by 1938 was advocating a national socialist corporate state, and a political alliance with the axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Compromised by direct links with Japan, the organisation was suppressed in 1942, with some members being interned.

Many of its members had come out of hard left backgrounds. For example, both Walsh [1] and Stephensen [2] were former Communists.

References

1. The Australia-First Movement by Barbara Winter, ISBN 1-876819-91-X
2. The Puzzled Patriots by Bruce Muirden, 1968