The Ex‐Services Human Rights Association of Australia, the Vietnam War, and the Remaking of the Anzac Tradition

Abstract

The Ex‐Services Human Rights Association of Australia (ESHRAA) emerged in 1966, supporting conscientious objectors to national service and opposing the Vietnam War. Unlike the cornucopia of similarly focussed groups, ESHRAA members publicly identified as ex‐service people, a privileged category of citizens in Australia with particular purchase on public debate. In this article, I locate ESHRAA within the long tradition of Australian opposition to conscription and national service, describe how the expulsion of its leading personality from the Returned and Services League in mid‐1967 contributed to perceptions of that organisation as increasingly outdated, and finally argue that it sought to refashion the hallowed Anzac tradition from the veneration of brave soldiers to equally valiant resisters. In so doing, I unearth an under‐examined protest organisation during the Vietnam War, challenge the notion of a monolithic ex‐services community, and complicate emerging scholarly understandings of how Anzac was re‐invented in the late twentieth century.