Canberra: ANU Press, 2022. xvii, 307 pp. (Tables, graphs, maps, B&W photos, coloured photos, illustrations.) US$60.00, paper; free ebook. ISBN 9781760465100.
As author Matthew Cunningham acknowledges, a book that examines historical populist political movements is very timely. Since 2016 the world has seen a rise in right-wing populist movements, which have been based on mobilizing the supposed “silent masses.” In Mobilising the Masses, Cunningham focuses on depression populist movements in Australia and New Zealand using comparative and crossnationalist perspectives. He argues that these groups mobilized the silent masses into what he calls “citizen movements,” which then went from being reactionary to radical during the Great Depression. Cunningham focuses on four groups: the All for Australia League, the Citizens’ League of South Australia, and the Australian Citizens’ League, which were Australian, and the New Zealand Legion, in New Zealand. The purpose of the book is to track the development of these groups and to assess the movements, both ideologically and within the political framework of the Depression era. Cunningham points out that these groups have had little attention from historians, and he sees them as an important part of the consolidation of centre-right parties in both Australia and New Zealand during the 1930s and 1940s. He also draws links between the ideologies and operations of the Depression citizen movements and the recent populist political movements.
In the introduction Cunningham lays out some of the scholarly thought around populist movements and addresses the question of whether the groups he studies in the book have any links to fascism. He points out that many conservatives admired aspects of European fascism, but that the movements dealt with in the book often had an incomplete understanding of fascist ideology. By dealing with the debates around citizen and popularist movements in the introduction, Cunningham sets the framework for the main body of the book. In chapter 1 he explores the proto citizen movements that appeared in both Australia and New Zealand in the period between the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression. He argues that the 1920s organizations were the roots of those movements which emerged during the Depression, as they gave those involved in them experience in running populist groups. The rest of the book, chapters 2 through 6, examines the citizen movements which arose during the Depression. Cunningham begins by explaining how some conservatives went from being reactionary in the 1920s, to radical in the early 1930s. He emphasizes the effect the Great Depression had on this shift and gives considerable detail about the various government responses to the Depression and how these fuelled what he calls radical responses. In chapter 3, the ideology of the various citizen movements is explored and the author highlights four similarities in policy across the four groups: anti-political, anti-communist, extolling conversative values like individualism, and reforming “the system.” Chapter 4 is complementary to this as it looks at the membership of the movements and the culture within them. Chapter 5 is focused solely on the Australian citizen movements’ interactions with the established Australian political system. It draws on chapter 3 by highlighting that one of the ideologies of the citizen movements, that of being against political parties, was a very difficult stance to maintain. The last chapter covers the New Zealand Legion’s flirtations with unorthodox economic theories and the effects this had on the movement. It also discusses its demise and briefly touches on the New Zealand Legion’s response to the 1935 election.
The scope of this book is ambitious, and Cunningham attempts to draw some connection between the Australian citizen movements and those found in New Zealand. However, it felt at times that the examination of the New Zealand Legion was dwarfed by Cunningham’s study of its Australian counterparts. The author seemed to find little evidence that they influenced each other any more than similar British movements influenced their antipodean counterparts. This made the book feel disjointed and I was left wondering if the arguments might have been stronger if Cunningham had just focused on Australian movements, as the cross-nationalist comparisons were not strong. The approach was further undermined by the fact that within the Australian Great Depression context, labour governments dominated, but in New Zealand a right-wing party was in power. The difference in what the citizens’ movements were reacting against meant that they developed in different ways. Cunningham did try to cover this in chapter 6, but I would like to have seen further exploration around the effect that the formation of a coalition between what were considered at the time the two major parties had on the development of the New Zealand Legion. This occurred in 1931 and some discussion about whether the formation of the New Zealand Legion reflected an alienation of some members of the dominant party, Reform, would have provided a more nuanced view of the legion.
This book is a useful contribution to the study of popularist political movements. The Depression citizen movements have been overlooked by historians and Mobilising the Masses fleshes out the conservative political milieu during the Depression in Australia and New Zealand. Cunningham points out that these groups deserve to be studied as they contributed to the consolidation of the right in both Australia and New Zealand. The book shows this to be true within the Australian context, but fails to demonstrate how the New Zealand Legion played a part in this process in New Zealand. In the conclusion, Cunningham states that a study of these groups can help us to understand the rise in contemporary movements of a similar nature. By documenting the rise and fall of these historic groups, Cunningham has given us much to think about in relation to similar present-day political developments.
Liz Ward
Marlborough Museum, Blenheim, New Zealand