Students’ ideas shifted more widely as the post-WWII vision of a world led by the victorious Allies, without racism and totalitarianism, conflicted with the reality of continued racism and imperialism. Old campus facilities struggled with the influx, and students increasingly found themselves chafing against academic and social constraints. The youth railed against the suffocating conservative culture, developing a cynicism toward mainstream politics and an attraction to countercultural music and art.Īs Australian capitalists backed expanding the university sector to secure for themselves a larger layer of better skilled workers and managers, greater numbers of students from a wider range of socioeconomic backgrounds flooded the campuses. The unequal distribution of fruits of the postwar economic boom was highly visible, and low unemployment contributed to increased confidence from sections of the working class to push for better pay and conditions. However, conservatism is never permanent nor homogeneous. A 1968 survey at Adelaide’s Flinders University, in later years a hotbed of radicalism, found that only 8 percent of students opposed the war, 45 percent attended church, and 46 percent were so socially conservative that they opposed premarital sex. In September 1966, a poll in Sydney University’s student paper, Honi Soit, showed that 68 percent supported sending troops to Vietnam. Left-wing activists stuck out like sore thumbs against the prevailing mood of conservative apoliticism. Throughout the 1950s, university administrators accelerated their campaigns of censorship and attacks on dissidents, right-wing religious clubs grew, and the campus left shrunk. The Liberal Party dominated federal politics, and this conservatism was reflected on campuses. The prosperity of the postwar boom was in part secured by a ruling-class onslaught against the trade unions through the 1940s and 1950s, leading to industrial and political defeats for the working class. The radical mood of the late 1960s came after a period of relative conservatism. With the vibe today being one of corporate promotions, patronising advertising and soulless study spaces, it can be hard to believe that Australian university campuses in the late 1960s and 1970s were noted for their rebellious students and the decisive role they played in the campaign to stop Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
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