‘A foolish young man, who can perhaps, be straightened out in his thinking’: The Brian cooper sedition case

Abstract

In late 1960 Brian Leonard Cooper was arrested in Sydney and charged with sedition. Formerly employed in the Cooperative Section of the Department of Native Affairs in the territory of Papua and New Guinea, it was alleged that he had incited a number of local men in Madang to violently expel the Australians from the territory. A young man with liberal political views and progressive attitudes toward race relations, he was an outsider and vulnerable to exploitation by political opportunists. This article considers the period leading up to his arrest and the ways that his prosecution benefited those with a vested interest in his downfall.