Answering the “International Call”: Contextualising Sydney Anti-Nuclear and Anti-War Activism in the 1960s

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough recent work on protest in the 1960s has placed organised opposition to the war in Vietnam in a transnational context, there is as yet no history of the Australian anti-nuclear campaigns of the early years of the decade. By examining anti-nuclear activism in 1961 and 1962 in relation to anti-war protest in 1965 and 1966, this paper argues that Sydney activists understood themselves as part of a transnational protest movement well before they began to agitate against military involvement in Vietnam. Lessons learnt while mounting solidarity protests with the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament informed the repertoire of practice that Australian anti-war activists used to mount their protests against the conflict in Indochina.