Gerard Henderson, and dullness and insularity reach new heights of determined predictability ...

Over Easter we took part in a very exciting campaign to keep Newtown free of Nazis.

Now it's true we didn't actually find any Nazis, at least not of the uniform wearing, goose stepping, sieg heiling kind. You actually have to go off to the British royals to find someone willing to dress up in Nazi uniform for a fancy dress party.

But we frequently discovered something vastly worse sauntering through the streets with an insouciant air. Not tattoo wearers, not lesbians, not hippies, but something far worse: insular left wing intelligentsia.

Yes folks we've been reading Gerard Henderson, and really if ever a dullard could turn in a piece designed as epic self-caricature, it's the quintessential prattlings of Polonius, the musings of a desiccated coconut, to be found in The way we were: quiet, maybe, but certainly not dull.

Yes, it's bloody quiet, and it's bloody dull, as the dull Henderson celebrates the dullness of the nineteen fifties, in a way which has to be said, is exceptionally dull, so dull that you might hear the dropping of dull, solemn dust through the dull morning air ...

And predictable. Did we mention predictable, as Henderson uses the current royal wedding to recall the coronation of the Queen, who was an international celebrity in her day, but somehow even though she still lives, her day and therefore her international celebrity no longer seems to apply.

Best of all?

There was another consideration. Not much happened in Australia in 1954. This in itself was no bad thing...

... Little wonder that so many immigrants sought refuge in Australia. To them, Australia in the 1950s was not a boring place, as it came to be presented later - primarily by the middle-class left-wing intelligentsia.

Funny, even though the Dunera boys arrived in the forties during the war, and copped rough treatment, they found Australia, at least in terms of philosophy, the arts, and a wide ranging outlook on life, a rather insular place.

Their solution wasn't to moan about it, but to participate in the transformation which slowly began in the fifties, as fondly recalled by Ken Inglis in his memoir From Berlin to the Bush. But then they were intelligentsia, who saw nothing wrong with being either intelligentsia or intellectual, and Australia is the richer for their coming (except for having to endure endless prattle by Phillip Adams about them).

But then it's no coincidence that in his piece Henderson at no point mentions the arts, or the relatively insular mind set that led in the nineteen fifties to the shock horror treatment of an artist like Eugene Goossens.

Poor Goossens, who had the imagination to see the Opera House in its current home, got together with Rosaleen Norton, the witch of the Cross, conducted an affair, and then fatally tried to smuggle some photos and props and even gasp - sticks of incense - through Customs, got pinged, and so was sent into exile in utter disgrace, a ruined man ... (Eugene Aynsley Goossens).

It's not hard to imagine Henderson as one of the nineteen fifties mob, pursed lips, prim, proper, shaking the head in a solemn disapproving way, like some version of Australian gothic standing outside an antipodean barn with a pitchfork. Well, I never, such scandalous conduct, the tongues clucked ...

(Above: yes, yes, there's a definite family resemblance).

Henderson spends his time clucking about Manning Clark, a man infinitely more interesting than Henderson, and so subject to constant reproval:

The late Manning Clark was the historian most responsible for fostering the myth that Australia was a backward, insular society in the 1950s. His assessment was motivated by his dislike of the Liberal Party leader, Robert Menzies, who was prime minister from 1949 until 1966. In volume six of A History of Australia, Clark depicted Menzies as ''a tragedy writ large'' who ''served alien gods''.

Ah yes, and so it goes, because it's just another piece by Henderson about the evils of the likes of Manning Clark and the glories and wonders of Robert Gordon Menzies in the nineteen fifties.

Henderson is so dull he doesn't even realise he's being extraordinarily dull and insular, and intolerant in the usual Henderson way, and in much the same way as the Dunera boys were greeted by insularity way back when. Here he goes again:

It was only alienated intellectuals at the time, invariably enjoying life tenure at universities courtesy of the taxpayer, who complained of being bored and who wrote turgid, self-indulgent essays in such left-wing journals as Meanjin concerning their perceived plight.

These days of course we get turgid, complacent, self-satisfied, self-indulgent essays in journals like the Herald moaning about the current ways of the world, and the plight of alienated Sydney Institute intellectuals surrounded by ratbags who think they're moaning, whining alienated fops yearning for formica plastic and the good old days of the fifties.

It's such an innately stupid affair that it's hard to take seriously, but here we go:

The 1950s was a crucial decade for Australia. In the December 1949 election, Menzies had campaigned against the nationalisation agenda of the Labor leader, Ben Chifley. On gaining office, Menzies privatised the Commonwealth Oil Refinery ...

You there, at the back of the class stop nodding off. Mr Menzies privatising of the Commonwealth Oil Refinery is one of the most crucial steps in Australia's history, only matched by his privatisation of the PMG and the Commonwealth Bank ... (oops, I think that might be a little alternative history, just trying to spice things up a bit).

Even when Henderson scores a point, he's quintessentially dull about it.

It's true that the Menzies government introduced a generous Commonwealth scholarship scheme and that lower socio-economic groups gained access to tertiary scholarships in the fifties and the sixties, long before the Whitlam government abolished tertiary fees in the early seventies (and therefore that Phillip Adams is wrong when he suggests working class scrubbers could only dream of a university education before Whitlam, which only proves that Adams is almost as boring as Henderson).

But here's the thing, these scholarships sent young people off to universities to mingle with alienated intellectuals, and to discover that there was vastly more to the world than was imagined in the Australia of Bob Menzies.

There were ideas, there was ferment, and being intellectual was seen as praiseworthy, not some kind of ritual slur by yobboes like Henderson, blessed with a limited insular attitude familiar to those who tended the aspidistra plant in the quiet, dark Victorian hallway and made sure that the water didn't spill on to the antimacassar on the what not ...

Aspidistras? Well with a bit of luck if you attended university, your attention might be drawn to George Orwell, and to his social satire Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes… He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself for ever. (you can find the full book here at Project Gutenberg, and in other places on the web)

That probably sounds like ancient Greek to Henderson as he rabbits on endlessly about the Colombo Plan and high level political agreements with Japan, and a middle ground adequate social safety net, and all the other glories of the Menzies era, but when it comes to the crunch, this is all he's got:

Today most of the footage from the 1950s turns on the royal tour and sporting successes. This suggests most Australians were satisfied with their lot in the 1950s. For those working their way up in society, life was challenging but not boring.

Royal tours and sporting successes. Yep, the fifties and Bob Menzies, at least from the perspective of anyone interested in a life of the mind, was as boring as batshit, and Henderson is the living proof.

Only a few weeks ago he was using the Petrov affair to suggest Australia was at the heart of international conspiracies in the fifties. Oh sainted long lost aunts and uncles, role models for Barry Humphries ....

If only Henderson had mentioned that in the nineteen fifties rock 'n roll burst into Australia, and transformed the world. I still remember my grandmother shielding my innocent very young eyes so I wouldn't see the depravity unfolding on the dance floor as young lust in the dust studs cavorted with wild-eyed sluts, and the entire social fabric of the Menzies era began to unravel well before the nineteen fifties ended ...

Sure on the local front it might only have been Johnny O'Keefe screeching Wild One out of key in 1958, but it was a start, and things have got better ever since. (There's a nice introduction to music of the Menzies era here).

At least it becomes clear why the dullard prattling Polonius thinks Michael Duffy isn't a real conservative. In recent weeks, the Duffster and his co-host have taken to playing bands like Zed Zepplin, and the Kinks and Jerry Lee Lewis, and an abbreviated history of punk music from the early days, along with the likes of Jimmy Rushin and Ella Fizgerald. (Don't believe me? Here are the program details).

It's quaint, but charming, and rather like watching cumbersome conservative elephants get up on the dance floor, get down and boogie. But what the heck, at least they try, when all Henderson can manage is a genteel waltz with Ming the merciless. Not even a bloody fox trot ...

And it explains why, out of the dull Australia of the fifties, came all kinds of exciting aesthetic and philosophical alternatives and new understandings, far removed from the dullard insularity of the Gerard Hendersons of the world. Boring is boring, and rejecting boredom doesn't mean there's a need to bung on a world war to break the tedium ...

But at least it provides a reason for Henderson to exist, as a kind of lighthouse showing where the rocks of dullness are. Avoid him and them and Bob Menzies at all costs.

Go Nazi hunting, read books, listen to music, visit galleries, explore ideas, toss out the antimacassars of the mind ...

The alternative, living in the suburban fifties with a bad case of Bob Menzies idolatry, is simply too awful to contemplate, as Henderson vividly, if routinely, demonstrates. If nothing else, try living in the beat fifties for awhile, and see how it jives ...

I saw the best minds of the Sydney Institute destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night ...

In your drug addled nineteen fifties dreams, Allen, but you can howl along with him here ...

(Below: the Dunera boys in reunion, as celebrated by Ken Inglis. Their one failure? They couldn't sway Gerard Henderson from his dullard insularity. Not to worry, the rest of Australia quite likes a little more than royal tours and sports events).