By Joan Coxsedge
"You ought to get down on your knees and say thank you that we've got a police force that is trying to keep society free." — Joh Bjelke-Petersen, when premier of Queensland.
From the beginnings of the industrial revolution, Britain's landed gentry used spies against the landless peasants and workers.
Special Branch and the British police force officially started in 1883 and carried out undercover work against advocates of trade unionism, Irish home rule, contraception, free love and rights for illegitimate children, and against migrants, suffragists, pacifists, conscientious objectors, anarchists, socialists, communists, members of the Labour Party, anti-fascists, volunteers for the International Brigade in Spain, anti-nuclear campaigners and opponents of British colonialism.
In Australia, the equivalents of Special Branch were established within the state police forces under different names and at various times after World War 1. In 1948, all state police commissioners agreed to establish "special branches" to liaise with military intelligence units and the shadowy police "D" branch. When ASIO was established in 1949, the 1948 agreement was put into effect and special branches set up administratively, without reference to parliaments.
Like ASIO, special branches were opposed by left-wing sections of the Labor Party, especially in Victoria. From the early 1970s, I received unanimous support from successive ALP state conferences for motions that an incoming Labor government disband Special Branch as one of its first initiatives. After my election to the Victorian parliament in 1979, I moved for its disbandment in the Legislative Council. Members voted on party lines, and my motion was defeated.
When the Cain Labor government was elected in 1982, the question of Special Branch immediately resurfaced. Mick Miller, Victoria's police commissioner, threatened to resign if it was disbanded.
In mid-1983, at the time of the supposed disbandment, many of us wrote to the Victoria Police freedom of information office asking for our files. No-one was successful. Some appealed and were sent heavily censored extracts. Then, in December, we learned that police had "blundered" due to a "communication breakdown" and destroyed thousands of files and reference cards.
In December 1985, I got hard evidence of what I had suspected all along — that the functions of Victoria's Special Branch had not only continued but had been updated and expanded under the "Counter Terrorism and Explosives Information Section" and "Operations Intelligence Unit".
Despite extensive questioning inside and outside parliament, I was given the mushroom treatment. The truth came from my friend and then NSW parliamentarian George Petersen, after he wrote to the NSW minister of police and emergency services, Peter Anderson, and was given the precise names of each state equivalent of Special Branch.
An appendix to an official Victoria Police document spelled out that the role of these new bodies under the umbrella of the Protective Security Groups was to "maintain previously established links, develop further contacts and liaise with other security agencies and government departments on an intra, interstate and overseas basis", and to "foster and maintain a reliable and confidential network of agents/informers within the ethnic and local communities".
Units of the Victoria Police and their equivalents in other states continued to do much of the legwork for ASIO, gathering information that was passed on to the international intelligence community.
Nothing had changed. Abolishing our Special Branch was a shoddy political stunt. Whatever the branch's new name, the targets remained those who challenge the status quo, making a mockery of the notion that we live in a democratic society.
When I learned about the disbanding of NSW's Special Branch after its corrupt dealings with Judge Yeldham, I assumed we would see a re-run of the Victorian experience. You can bet your bottom dollar that a newer, "more appropriate" version of Special Branch will already be in place to deal with the growing dissent against our ailing, corrupt capitalist system. I wish my comrades in NSW the best of luck and eternal vigilance!