Old Guard In response to the election of
Jack Lang as
Premier of New South Wales, and rising pressure from
trade unionists, counter-movements began to rise in opposition to the
Labor Party. Among them was the
Old Guard, a secret organisation purported to exist as early as 1917, which at the time of the Great Depression was administrated primarily by businessmen Roger Goldfinch and Robert Gillespie, among other anonymous committee members. The Old Guard was a coalition of imperial
loyalists, devoted to the British Empire and ready to act preemptively to prevent a socialist revolution from taking place. At the height of its popularity the organisation enjoyed close ties with the
NSW Police Force,
Attorney-General's Department and the
Department of Defence, and boasted 30,000 members comprising strongly of rural New South Welshmen and wealthy
Protestant Anglo-Saxons.
Old-New Guard schism Among the Old Guard's members was
World War I veteran
Eric Campbell, an
army officer and former gunner with the
First Australian Imperial Force. Campbell had been introduced to the Old Guard by John Scott, a fellow member of the board of Sydney insurance company Sun Insurance. The New Guard was officially formed on 16 March 1931, built on a common ideological system of
monarchism,
classic liberalism and
anti-communism. Campbell was voted Chief Commander.
Anti-leftist action (1931-32) The New Guard was a paramilitary group, its military capability was extremely limited and vastly overstated by its leadership. with ex-military making up the majority of the group's membership, including the likes of early aviator
Charles Kingsford Smith the Guard rallied in public, broke up 'Communist' meetings, drilled, During December 1931, Captain
Francis de Groot organised around 1,000 New Guardsmen to attack leftist meetings. On 11 December 1931, three policemen were injured in a fight between New Guardsmen and communists in Darlinghurst. On 13 February 1932, 700 New Guardsmen practised military drills in
Belmore and a number of journalists who attempted to document the drills were assaulted. A few days later, 13 members of the New Guard were arrested after violently disrupting a political meeting in
Coffs Harbour. Violent attacks on leftist meetings continued for weeks as part of a 'general mobilisation'. and the New Guard became increasingly common as the New Guard attempted to discredit the left by starting brawls or other breaches of the peace. Though the New Guard sought to work as a supplement to the police in the event of a socialist revolution, they were significantly opposed under orders from the Lang government. Of particular use to Lang in opposing the New Guard was William John MacKay, who was appointed Acting Metropolitan Superintendent following the 'Battle of Bankstown' on 26 February 1932. During the opening ceremony, army officer and zone commander
Francis de Groot upstaged Jack Lang by slashing the ceremonial ribbon with his sword. De Groot was supplied with a horse by fellow New Guardsmen Albert Reichard and he rode to the ceremony in his World War I
15th Hussars uniform, managing to slash the ribbon before Lang. De Groot was pulled from his horse and detained, later being fined £9 (equivalent to $859.99 in 2017). The Mayor of North Sydney, Hubert Primrose, an official participant at the opening ceremony, was also a member of the New Guard.
Assault on Jock Garden On 6 May 1932, Trades and Labour Council secretary
John (Jock) Garden, an influential member of Lang's inner circle, was assaulted by members a New Guard faction known as the Fascist Legion. Garden was assaulted at his home by eight hooded men in
Ku Klux Klan-like gowns. The incident caused massive resignations from the New Guard.
1933: Exploration into fascism Campbell's memoirs state that due to the New Guard's opposition to party politics and unwillingness to align themselves with either side, they were often dubbed "fascists". Though the New Guard bore resemblance to the militant
Blackshirts in
Italy, its strong adherence to
individualism found it disqualified it from this definition. Campbell was curious to learn about fascism from the source however, so in 1933 during an overseas business trip, he met with
Sir Oswald Mosley and wife
Lady Cynthia at their
London home to discuss the matter. His experience was overall positive, and while unimpressed with the members of Mosley's
British Union of Fascists, he was reminded of his own New Guardmen when he attended an
Imperial Fascist League meeting. With Mosley's recommendations he later progressed to
Berlin where, unable to meet
Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler, he was able to see
Foreign Affairs Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, as well as
Alfred Rosenberg. In
Rome he was likewise unable to see
Mussolini, instead meeting with
Secretary Achille Starace, though their mutual unintelligibility and failure to use
French as a medium was no use. Nevertheless, Campbell's tour across the fascist powers of
Europe left him deeply impressed with the ideology. However, on his return to Australia, Campbell's support for an "openly pro-fascist policy" was met with strong opposition from the Guard's "anti-fascist moderates". the New Guard entered into party politics. The
Centre Party was officially established in December 1933 at a meeting of over 1,000 people, with
The Sydney Morning Herald reporting that 100 branches of the party would be established. The majority of the shrinking organisation endorsed its move into electoral politics, which was, according to Campbell, "necessitated by the failure of the UAP governments, at both federal and state levels, to accede to the New Guard's demands". At the
May 1935 New South Wales state election, the Centre Party contested five out of the 90
Legislative Assembly districts, all in suburban
Sydney, and polled 0.60 percent of the total vote. In two seats,
Hornsby, contested by Fergus Munro, and
Lane Cove, contested by Campbell, only the Centre Party and the
United Australia Party fielded candidates, with the former polling over 15 percent of the vote in both seats. In the other seats it contested, the Centre Party candidates failed to poll more than 5 percent of the vote. The party's relatively high vote in Hornsby and Lane Cove is thought to have represented "merely the level of protest against [UAP Premier] Stevens" in the absence of other candidates. In
Arncliffe, the only seat that required a preference distribution, the majority (56.78%) of Centre Party preferences flowed to the United Australia candidate,
Horace Harper, who was defeated by
Labor's
Joseph Cahill, a future premier. and
contested the
seat of Rockdale for the
Liberal Democrats at the
1944 state election. Additionally, Aubrey Murphy, the candidate in Concord, served on two occasions as mayor of the
Blue Mountains City Council in the 1950s, and was named an
MBE in the 1960
New Year Honours. With the exception of occasional speaking engagements, Campbell largely withdrew from public life following the election, Campbell's 1965 autobiographical account of his involvement in the New Guard,
The Rallying Point, considered "confused", "highly unreliable" and a work of "historical fiction" by Moore in any event, Later writers have suggested that the party's lack of success at the 1935 election represented "an electoral brick-wall", with the party overall a "failure" and Campbell's movement having "lost most of its drive". ==Organisation==