Marking the beginning of OTR’s Advanced News Writing Profile Month, OTR journalist Robert Hicks speaks to former SA premier Lynn Arnold, who reminisces on his time protesting the Vietnam War in the sixties and offers advice for current activists looking to create change. (Image supplied: Australian War Memorial)
By Robert Hicks | @robert_a_hicks
Few people can say they have been a teacher, Premier of South Australia, chief executive of World Vision Australia, and a priest at St Peter’s Cathedral.
In fact, just one can.
The Hon Rev Dr Lynn Arnold AO has been all the above, but the accomplishments listed speak little to the hard path that came before them all; one of protest, of civil activism, reflecting true passion towards peace.
He and I sit beside a glass top table in fine leather chairs, surrounded by the looming presence of the records of democratic debate itself — the Parliamentary Hansard — these rows of individual volumes adorning each side of every wall.
There, he recalls his earliest forays into politics.
“I’ve always had politics in my blood,” Arnold says.
“When I was six, I said I wanted to be Prime Minister and my mates wanted to be policemen and firemen. And we all failed. They never got to be policemen or firemen and I never got to be Prime Minister,” he says.
“When I was a teenager, I was a tragic because my most exciting Saturday nights were election nights. And that’s before computers spoiled all the fun. The TV would broadcast the election count, and you’d have to work it out yourself on pieces of paper on the floor.
“I only got a great night once every three or four years, and everyone else got a great Saturday night every Saturday night.”
During Arnold’s final year at Adelaide Boys High in 1965, he became invested in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
“I was a student radical,” he said.
“People perhaps lose sight of it … we thought this war was so wrong and it just grabbed us in the stomach.
“We want to stop this war. We wanted to stop what was going on there.”
Due to his father’s sabbatical, Arnold’s intentions to protest were stalled, but upon his return he started university and joined the movement.
“I became very active very quickly and, in fact, very soon rose up and became one of the leaders of it, organising demonstrations and so on,” he said.
Arnold let the air linger for a moment, before warning me not to be shocked. “I ultimately got arrested four times and spent five days in Adelaide Gaol for refusing to pay a fine.”
He recalls it like it was yesterday.
“We were handing out leaflets in Victoria Square and, in those days, you needed permission to hand out leaflets. And we said, ‘no, you shouldn’t have to. In a democracy you should be able to hand out anything you want’,” Arnold says.
“The police come up and said, ‘Give us your name and address. We’re going to charge you,’ and I said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ because we wanted to get arrested. So, they took me to the watch house.”
Those protesting days are over, but Arnold recalls them well.
“They have their own magnetism, their own electricity,” he says.
“You’re going up the street, you’re a brotherhood and sisterhood, all linked arms together. You’re all in a camaraderie together and you’re shouting slogans. ‘What do we want? Peace. When do we want it? Now.’ And ‘We don’t want your lousy war.’
“There’s a whole chemistry that exists. Sometimes the chemistry is added to by people in the crowd who hate you, and so they sometimes cause a bit of a problem. Well, that adds to the atmosphere of it.”
Arnold would visit Vietnam in 1970 as part of an International Fellowship of Reconciliation peace delegation. There, they were taken to meet various people working for peace, including university students in Saigon (named Ho Chi Minh City after 1976) who were protesting at the time.
“There was a big rally, a thousand students at the University of Saigon— in the middle of a war — so we joined. They said, ‘We’re going to march up the street to the American embassy.’ We said, ‘Okay, we’ll join.’”
They marched up a wide boulevard and, in the distance, saw rows of shields.
“The next thing we know there’s smoke landing. We’re being tear gassed,” Arnold says.
“We flee, and there’s high walls either side of us, so we either squeeze through little apertures or we clamour up the wall,” he says. “There were old Vietnamese women the other side who had lemon — they must have been prepared for this — and they rubbed the lemon on our face. If you’re tear gassed, do that, because it solves the problem for your face.”
“They arrested a lot of the Vietnamese. They didn’t arrest any of us international people, I think they didn’t want to cause an incident.”
Arnold still has a souvenir from that protest.
“Some of the students were so on the mark that they souvenired some of these canisters, and they gave them to us,” he says.
“They were spent, mainly, and I put them in a plastic bag in my luggage and I fly back into Sydney.
“Customs open my bag, and they see this plastic bag with these metal things inside. The guy opens it, says, ‘What’s this?’ and puts his face in.”
Arnold began to grin. “They were spent, but not absolutely spent.”
“The guy comes up with his face quite red — not amused.”
While not an active participant in protests anymore due to age and family commitments, Arnold knows the challenges of protest movements have not changed and offered some advice to current and future activists.
“You have to stay the distance for a long period of time. You have to understand that even though your cause may become popular, you yourself may become unpopular,” he says.
Arnold recalls the night after a meeting where he and a few other protesters were threatened by the barman of the Botanic Hotel, who said, “I’ve got a shovel with each of your names written on it, to smack you around the head”.
Arnold took it in stride.
“He obviously didn’t agree with us, so we just quietly said to ourselves, ‘He gets no tip’,” Arnold says.
“Barmen wanting to hit you on the head with a shovel indicates that there are people out there who don’t like having these views,” he says.
“And if you’re not prepared for that, then you shouldn’t be there. But be prepared for it because sometimes if you have the courage for what you believe in, you should stay the distance.”
Something that helped the Vietnam movement, Arnold tells me, was that it had two simple agendas: stop the war and stop conscription — the compulsory military service of 20-year-old men, who were chosen through a lottery based on date of birth.
“Sometimes protest movements get far too muddy with too many different things, and that dulls their effect,” he says.
Ideologies clashed outside of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Inside the movement, however, people put their differences aside and agreed on those two things: stopping the war and stopping conscription. Crucially, they talked to others as well, to understand their point of view.
“The protest movements need to understand people who don’t agree with you. You have an obligation to try and talk to them,” Arnold says.
Arnold tells me that you never do these big things alone, it’s always a team effort. Take pride in playing a key part, being a part of a larger whole. Find your passion in what you believe, keep it simple, and try to understand others who do not think the way you do, and you may just find yourself marching with hundreds of people who agree with you.
ontherecordunisa.com 