Eric Butler
Encyclopedia
Eric Dudley Butler Australia
n political activist and journalist, was the founder of the Australian League of Rights
.
Butler was born in the Victoria
n country town of Benalla, although he lived most of his life near Melbourne
. In the 1930s he became a follower of the British economist C. H. Douglas
and his Social Credit
theories. From 1938 Butler wrote for the Australian Social Credit newspaper New Times.
Butler served in the Australian Army
during World War II
. According to one of his obituarists: "He served as a gun sergeant for twenty months without leave in the Torres Straits, taught troops as an instructor at Canungra Jungle Training School for six months, transferred to the Officers Training School at Seymour, Victoria and was honourably discharged at the end of the Pacific phase of the war."
By this time his political activities were under surveillance by the security authorities, as is shown by documents in the Australian Archives. In July 1940 the Victorian publicity censor, Crayton Burns (father of Creighton Burns
, a later editor of The Age
), wrote: "I have taken steps to warn the provincial and country press that the activities of this gentleman and his assistants are being closely watched by the authorities. There is no doubt that the general trend of their propaganda is damaging to the financial side of the war effort."
In December 1941, the Commonwealth's chief publicity censor, E.G. Bonney, banned a series of Butler's New Times articles, one of which described Soviet Russia as "a Jewish slave state ... controlled by international Jewish financiers in New York."
In 1945 the Attorney-General, Dr H.V. Evatt, began an inquiry into Butler's activities. He told Parliament: "In the opinion of the Director-General of Security, Butler has written articles constituting an attempt to create adverse public reaction to war loan campaigns and to the war effort generally." Butler was not charged.
In 1946 Butler published The International Jew, in which he claimed that Winston Churchill
, Franklin D. Roosevelt
and John Curtin
were covert communists, that the Russian Revolution
was a Jewish plot and that the Nazi Holocaust was a myth. Butler's eulogist Nigel Jackson described this book as "an essay built around an analysis of the controversial Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In it Butler challenged the Jewish role in international finance and its connections with communism. Of all Butler's publications, this was perhaps the one which roused the greatest fury." This was hardly surprising in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, particularly since the Protocols were well known in 1947 to be a forgery.
Butler founded the South Australian League of Rights in 1946, centered on the anti-bank nationalisation campaign, and subsequent state branches before the Australian League of Rights was established in 1960. Butler served as its National Director until his retirement in 1992. Although Butler ran for the Australian House of Representatives
(as an independent) in 1951, the League was not intended to be a political party. Rather it was a lobby group and "grass roots" organisation, promoting Butler's mix of anti-communist, social credit, monarchist and pro-British ideas.
Besides the New Times, the League's many publications included the weekly On Target and the monthly Intelligence Survey. In 1949 Butler began contributing articles on national and international affairs to the Melbourne morning newspaper The Argus
, then a conservative paper, but when it was revealed that the articles were based on a League of Rights study course, the series was cancelled.
In the 1960s, the League garnered much unfavorable publicity when it was revealed that members were also participating in the Liberal and Country Parties. Country Party
, a mainstream conservative rural party (now the National Party of Australia
). A close associate of Butler's, Arthur Chresby
, was elected to Federal Parliament in Queensland as a Liberal. This tactic achieved some success elsewhere, particularly in areas where small farmers were under economic pressure, such as Gippsland
, the Riverina
, the Darling Downs, the Yorke Peninsula
and the Western Australian wheatbelt. The League pamphlet They Want Your Land alleged that "international financiers" were trying to force Australian farmers off their land by manipulating commodity prices. Successive Country Party and National Party leaders warned against League infiltration and League-controlled branches were occasionally disaffiliated. Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell
was particularly outspoken in attacking League infiltration of the Queensland Nationals.
A Liberal
federal MP, James Killen
, was identified as a League supporter in the 1960s, and travelled to Europe with Butler in 1962, but later severed his connections with the League. In the 1960s and '70s Butler devoted much time to defending the apartheid system in South Africa
and the white-minority regime of Ian Smith
in Rhodesia
. He travelled several times to South Africa and Rhodesia, which he saw as bastions against communism in Africa. He was also Far Eastern correspondent for American Opinion, magazine of the John Birch Society
.
In July 1972 Butler achieved some public attention when he debated Max Teichmann
, senior lecturer in politics at Monash University
, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
's Monday Conference program. Teichmann confronted Butler with his many explicit anti-Semitic statements from the 1930s and '40s and challenged him to disavow them, a challenge which Butler evaded. The program highlighted the issue of League infiltration of the Country Party in the period before the December 1972 federal election, at which the long-serving conservative government was defeated.
Other League fronts included the Institute of Economic Democracy and Ladies in Line Against Communism (LILAC). In the 1990s the League lost its position as the leading extreme right political organisation in Australia. Butler complained that Pauline Hanson
and her One Nation Party
had stolen his policies. It also lost support to the Citizens Electoral Council
, which had been a League front, but which was taken over by followers of the American cult leader and convicted swindler Lyndon LaRouche
, and developed a much higher public profile than the League itself.
Butler lived most of his life in rural Victoria, in his later years on a farm at Panton Hill
, where his home was used as a meeting place for League and other extreme right activists. In the 1950s he was a member of the Eltham Shire Council for some years and served a Shire President. He retired as League Director in 1992, handing control of the organisation to David Thompson, but remained politically active until shortly before his death. In 1999 he chaired an address by the Holocaust denier
David Irving
.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n political activist and journalist, was the founder of the Australian League of Rights
Australian League of Rights
The Australian League of Rights is a long-lived far right and anti-semitic political organisation in Australia founded by Eric Butler with its basis in the economic theory of Social Credit expounded by C. H. Douglas. It describes itself as upholding the virtues of freedom...
.
Butler was born in the Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
n country town of Benalla, although he lived most of his life near Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. In the 1930s he became a follower of the British economist C. H. Douglas
C. H. Douglas
Major C. H. Douglas MIMechE, MIEE, , was a British engineer and pioneer of the Social Credit economic reform movement.-Education and engineering career:...
and his Social Credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
theories. From 1938 Butler wrote for the Australian Social Credit newspaper New Times.
Butler served in the Australian Army
Australian Army
The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. According to one of his obituarists: "He served as a gun sergeant for twenty months without leave in the Torres Straits, taught troops as an instructor at Canungra Jungle Training School for six months, transferred to the Officers Training School at Seymour, Victoria and was honourably discharged at the end of the Pacific phase of the war."
By this time his political activities were under surveillance by the security authorities, as is shown by documents in the Australian Archives. In July 1940 the Victorian publicity censor, Crayton Burns (father of Creighton Burns
Creighton Burns
Creighton Lee Burns, AO was an Australian journalist and academic, who was editor-in-chief of The Age newspaper in Melbourne from 1981 to 1989.-Early life and naval career:...
, a later editor of The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
), wrote: "I have taken steps to warn the provincial and country press that the activities of this gentleman and his assistants are being closely watched by the authorities. There is no doubt that the general trend of their propaganda is damaging to the financial side of the war effort."
In December 1941, the Commonwealth's chief publicity censor, E.G. Bonney, banned a series of Butler's New Times articles, one of which described Soviet Russia as "a Jewish slave state ... controlled by international Jewish financiers in New York."
In 1945 the Attorney-General, Dr H.V. Evatt, began an inquiry into Butler's activities. He told Parliament: "In the opinion of the Director-General of Security, Butler has written articles constituting an attempt to create adverse public reaction to war loan campaigns and to the war effort generally." Butler was not charged.
In 1946 Butler published The International Jew, in which he claimed that Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and John Curtin
John Curtin
John Joseph Curtin , Australian politician, served as the 14th Prime Minister of Australia. Labor under Curtin formed a minority government in 1941 after the crossbench consisting of two independent MPs crossed the floor in the House of Representatives, bringing down the Coalition minority...
were covert communists, that the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
was a Jewish plot and that the Nazi Holocaust was a myth. Butler's eulogist Nigel Jackson described this book as "an essay built around an analysis of the controversial Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In it Butler challenged the Jewish role in international finance and its connections with communism. Of all Butler's publications, this was perhaps the one which roused the greatest fury." This was hardly surprising in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, particularly since the Protocols were well known in 1947 to be a forgery.
Butler founded the South Australian League of Rights in 1946, centered on the anti-bank nationalisation campaign, and subsequent state branches before the Australian League of Rights was established in 1960. Butler served as its National Director until his retirement in 1992. Although Butler ran for the Australian House of Representatives
Australian House of Representatives
The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....
(as an independent) in 1951, the League was not intended to be a political party. Rather it was a lobby group and "grass roots" organisation, promoting Butler's mix of anti-communist, social credit, monarchist and pro-British ideas.
Besides the New Times, the League's many publications included the weekly On Target and the monthly Intelligence Survey. In 1949 Butler began contributing articles on national and international affairs to the Melbourne morning newspaper The Argus
The Argus (Australia)
The Argus was a morning daily newspaper in Melbourne established in 1846 and closed in 1957. Widely known as a conservative newspaper for most of its history, it adopted a left leaning approach from 1949...
, then a conservative paper, but when it was revealed that the articles were based on a League of Rights study course, the series was cancelled.
In the 1960s, the League garnered much unfavorable publicity when it was revealed that members were also participating in the Liberal and Country Parties. Country Party
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
, a mainstream conservative rural party (now the National Party of Australia
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
). A close associate of Butler's, Arthur Chresby
Arthur Chresby
Arthur Albert Chresby was an Australian politician. Born in New South Wales, he attended state schools before becoming a journalist, then a car salesman, and finally a public relations consultant...
, was elected to Federal Parliament in Queensland as a Liberal. This tactic achieved some success elsewhere, particularly in areas where small farmers were under economic pressure, such as Gippsland
Gippsland
Gippsland is a large rural region in Victoria, Australia. It begins immediately east of the suburbs of Melbourne and stretches to the New South Wales border, lying between the Great Dividing Range to the north and Bass Strait to the south...
, the Riverina
Riverina
The Riverina is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales , Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation. This combination has allowed the Riverina to develop...
, the Darling Downs, the Yorke Peninsula
Yorke Peninsula
The Yorke Peninsula is a peninsula located north-west and west of Adelaide in South Australia, Australia, between Spencer Gulf on the west and Gulf St Vincent on the east. It has geographic coordinates of...
and the Western Australian wheatbelt. The League pamphlet They Want Your Land alleged that "international financiers" were trying to force Australian farmers off their land by manipulating commodity prices. Successive Country Party and National Party leaders warned against League infiltration and League-controlled branches were occasionally disaffiliated. Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell
Ron Boswell
Ronald Leslie Doyle "Ron" Boswell , Australian politician, has been a National Party member of the Australian Senate since 5 March 1983, representing Queensland. Since 2008 he has been the Father of the Senate....
was particularly outspoken in attacking League infiltration of the Queensland Nationals.
A Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
federal MP, James Killen
James Killen
Sir Denis James "Jim" Killen, AC, KCMG , was an Australian politician.-Education and early career:Killen was born in Dalby, Queensland and educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland, where he graduated in law...
, was identified as a League supporter in the 1960s, and travelled to Europe with Butler in 1962, but later severed his connections with the League. In the 1960s and '70s Butler devoted much time to defending the apartheid system in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and the white-minority regime of Ian Smith
Ian Smith
Ian Douglas Smith GCLM ID was a politician active in the government of Southern Rhodesia, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1948 to 1987, most notably serving as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 13 April 1964 to 1 June 1979...
in Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
. He travelled several times to South Africa and Rhodesia, which he saw as bastions against communism in Africa. He was also Far Eastern correspondent for American Opinion, magazine of the John Birch Society
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....
.
In July 1972 Butler achieved some public attention when he debated Max Teichmann
Max Teichmann
Max Edwin Teichmann was an Australian academic and political commentator. A former politics lecturer at Monash University, Teichmann was known for his independent views and trenchant criticisms of both the Left and the Right.-Early years:Born in Melbourne to a German-born father, also Max, and a...
, senior lecturer in politics at Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's Monday Conference program. Teichmann confronted Butler with his many explicit anti-Semitic statements from the 1930s and '40s and challenged him to disavow them, a challenge which Butler evaded. The program highlighted the issue of League infiltration of the Country Party in the period before the December 1972 federal election, at which the long-serving conservative government was defeated.
Other League fronts included the Institute of Economic Democracy and Ladies in Line Against Communism (LILAC). In the 1990s the League lost its position as the leading extreme right political organisation in Australia. Butler complained that Pauline Hanson
Pauline Hanson
Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a political party with a populist and anti-multiculturalism platform...
and her One Nation Party
One Nation Party
One Nation is a far-right and nationalist political party in Australia. It gained 22% of the vote translating to 11 of 89 seats in Queensland's unicameral legislative assembly at the 1998 state election and made major inroads into the vote of the existing parties...
had stolen his policies. It also lost support to the Citizens Electoral Council
Citizens Electoral Council
The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia is a minor nationalist political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It reported having 549 members in 2007...
, which had been a League front, but which was taken over by followers of the American cult leader and convicted swindler Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. is an American political activist and founder of a network of political committees, parties, and publications known collectively as the LaRouche movement...
, and developed a much higher public profile than the League itself.
Butler lived most of his life in rural Victoria, in his later years on a farm at Panton Hill
Panton Hill, Victoria
Panton Hill is a town in Victoria, Australia, 32 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Nillumbik...
, where his home was used as a meeting place for League and other extreme right activists. In the 1950s he was a member of the Eltham Shire Council for some years and served a Shire President. He retired as League Director in 1992, handing control of the organisation to David Thompson, but remained politically active until shortly before his death. In 1999 he chaired an address by the Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
.
External links
- Essay on League from Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History, 1997.
- Australian League of Rights (This website contains a complete online archive of On Target since 1965.)
- Fascist fruitcake held surprising political sway, The AustralianThe AustralianThe Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
, 13 June 2006 - Lion for Freedom (eulogy by Nigel Jackson at the Adelaide InstituteAdelaide InstituteEstablished in 1994, the Adelaide Institute was formed from the former Truth Mission that was established in 1994 by Dr. Gerald Fredrick Töben. The Adelaide Institute is a Holocaust denial group in Australia and is considered to be anti-Semitic by the Australian government's human rights...
website)