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War and peace, 1914–1928
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
There is another aspect of the Royal visit which Labor regrets. The Australian of radical and democratic ideas who sees the coming of the Duke and Duchess made the occasion for the glorifying of snobs seeking tinsel titles, of degrading intrigues about invitation lists and social precedence, cannot but be revolted. Those who for this reason decide to have nothing to do with the whole affair neither mean nor intend any discourtesy. They stay away because others have set a style in manners which is too blatant to be endorsed. Accident of birth no more justifies ill-will towards those born in the purple than it justifies fulsome snobbery. Labor would greet the Duke and Duchess as the occupants of a distinguished place in the world; it would welcome them courteously and humanly [sic], and hope that their visit has been pleasurable and of value.
These were the views expressed by John Curtin around the time of the 1927 visit to Australia by the Duke and Duchess of York to open the new Parliament House building in Canberra. Written as the lead editorial in the Westralian Worker, they give voice to a powerful stream in Labor's brand of Britishness – a deep-seated disdain for the trappings and trimmings of imperial loyalty and the privileges of an imperial aristocracy. Here the urge of some in the country to genuflect towards their royal guests or to fuss over the order and opulence of officialdom is derided as deeply offensive to Australia's egalitarian, democratic ethos. By throwing themselves so completely at the regal feet, these Anglophiles were denying the distinctiveness of Australian social ideals and mores and perpetuating the inequalities of the old world in a new land. Curtin clearly found such symbols of class pretension repugnant to his idea of an Australia that stood on its own two feet.
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