Arthur Calwell called it right on folly of the Vietnam War

On this day 50 years ago, May 4, 1965, opposition leader Arthur Calwell delivered one of the most important speeches in Australian political history: the Labor Party’s formal response to the decision by Robert Menzies’ Coalition government to send combat troops to Vietnam.

With its lyrical phrases, sheer courage and a logical argument at its core, the speech predicted what would happen: that the war would be a complete failure, it would not serve the interests of the US or Australia, it would be catastrophic for the people of Vietnam, and many Australians would die.

This speech, which powerfully animated Labor’s opposition to the Vietnam War, was not popular. The party was trounced at the subsequent 1966 election.

This newspaper, in contrast to the establishment Fairfax mastheads, also took a principled stand and vigorously opposed the Vietnam War.

“The Australian,” said an editorial following Calwell’s speech, “believes our long-term interests have been badly served by a politico-military gambit of the Vietnam type.” On the US, this paper argued: “Australia needs a good, healthy dose of independence in her relations with her ‘powerful friends’.”

When Calwell delivered his speech, the House of Representatives chamber was full and the galleries were packed. The mood was tense. Earlier, the Labor caucus was almost unanimous in its view Calwell should deliver a stinging attack on the government. There were, however, more cautious voices inside the party. Deputy Labor leader Gough Whitlam was one of them.

“The government’s decision to send the first battalion of the Australian Regular Army to Vietnam is, without question, one of the most significant events in the history of this commonwealth,” Calwell began. The “crucial test” that must judge policies, words and actions, he said, is “national security” and “national survival”.

He methodically outlined why these tests would not be met by engaging in a “cruel, costly and interminable” war. It would not help fight communism, curb Chinese influence in the region, serve Australia’s strategic interests or do anything to “promote the welfare of the people of Vietnam”.

Calwell said the US, having failed to understand the nature of the conflict, would be defeated or forced to withdraw after “becoming interminably bogged down in the awful morass of this war”. He correctly assumed Australia would increase its troop commitment over time and use conscription to satisfy it.

For Labor supporters, Calwell made this pledge: “We will be vindicated (and) generations to come will record with gratitude that when a reckless government wilfully endangered the security of this nation, the voice of the Australian Labor Party was heard, strong and clear, on the side of sanity and in the cause of ­humanity.”

It was a war of folly, predicted by Calwell with clarity and conviction, which was to be opposed no matter the cost to Labor at the ballot box. It is a magnificent speech that rings with oratorical power and shrewd judgment.

Graham Freudenberg, who drafted the speech, recalls it is remembered mostly because of the accuracy of the predictions it made. The dilemma, he says, was how to oppose US intervention in Vietnam without opposing the US or imperilling the alliance. The speech achieves this balancing act. It also offered unqualified support for “our fighting men”.

Calwell’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth, told this column her father had delivered several speeches opposing the war since the first Australian military advisers were sent in 1962. Opposition to conscription in both world wars had defined his career. When Menzies reintroduced national service in 1964, Calwell called it “the lottery of death”.

The principled stand Calwell took almost cost his own life. On June 21, 1966, Calwell addressed an anti-Vietnam meeting in Mosman, on Sydney’s north shore. Sitting in his car after the speech, he was shot at through the window and shattered glass fragments pierced his chin, drawing blood.

Long after the fall of Saigon, the legacy of Vietnam continues to be hotly debated. Robert McNamara, who served as US defence secretary under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, argued in 1995 that the war was “terribly wrong”.

Malcolm Fraser, who served as army and defence minister during the war, told me last year the troop deployment was based on a “flawed judgment” by Menzies aimed at keeping the “US engaged in the region”. But the US was always going to remain involved in the Asia-Pacific. Vietnam, he said, was “a busted flush” by the time the first troops were sent.

Peter Edwards is the official historian of the Vietnam War. His book, Australia and the Vietnam War (NewSouth), has not been given the attention it deserves. Edwards offers a damning judgment of Menzies over Vietnam. He argues Menzies had “blind faith” in the US, failed to properly consult and did not fully understand the conflict.

“Menzies believed that in making the commitment he was simply repeating a winning formula that would achieve military success in Southeast Asia, strengthen the alliance with the US, and divide the Labor Party’s right and left wings,” Edwards writes. It remains a black spot on Menzies’ otherwise laudable legacy.

Calwell later reflected that his speech served another equally important purpose. “There are great issues that demand every politician should stand up for the truth as he sees it and take the consequences,” he argued. Calwell was, like all politicians, imperfect. But on Vietnam, he was right.

Five decades later, Australians are still being sent to fight wars in foreign lands. Not all wars are folly. But there is no doubt the Vietnam War was a military, strategic and humanitarian disaster. The lessons of Vietnam continue to echo long after Calwell’s principled stand in May 1965.