'What role did the queen play in the governor-general Sir John Kerr's plans to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, which unleashed one of the most divisive episodes in Australia's political history? And why weren't we told?
'Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the Palace had no warning of or role in Kerr's actions.
'In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia.
'Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr's archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the private role of High Court judges, the queen's private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr's actions, and the prior knowledge of the queen and Prince Charles.
'Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents.' (Publication summary)
Epigraph : 'Reporter : Do you think the Queen knew about this course of action.
Gough Whitlam : I shouldn't think so, but I don't know.
Reporter : Do you think the governor-general took any advice from Buckingham Palace?
Gough Whitlam : I don't know. I don't know. I was not informed that he had. - 11 November 1975'
'Archives are the meat and drink of the historian. The pursuit through the archives can be tedious and exhausting: ‘Turn every page’, LBJ biographer Robert Caro exhorts. But it is also thrilling – the intense emotion of finding the lock of hair from a long-dead lover or the torn-up shreds of the letters of a discarded husband; or the ‘a-hah’ moment when a scribbled note provides the final piece of a jigsaw you have been carefully putting together.' (Introduction)
'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.' (Introduction)
'The release of the palace letters has put paid to any comforting assumption that the monarchy is above politics, or that the Queen as Australian head of state guarantees national stability. John Kerr’s correspondence with her private secretary Martin Charteris proved that royal impartiality, when put to the test, revealed itself as merely notional and without substance. Yet the disheartening truth is that this was not greeted with public outrage, which suggests the lesson hasn’t sunk in.' (Introduction)
'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.' (Introduction)
'Archives are the meat and drink of the historian. The pursuit through the archives can be tedious and exhausting: ‘Turn every page’, LBJ biographer Robert Caro exhorts. But it is also thrilling – the intense emotion of finding the lock of hair from a long-dead lover or the torn-up shreds of the letters of a discarded husband; or the ‘a-hah’ moment when a scribbled note provides the final piece of a jigsaw you have been carefully putting together.' (Introduction)
'The High Court has ruled that Sir John Kerr’s correspondence with the queen comprises “Commonwealth records”. This means access to them is now in Australian hands and can no longer be vetoed by the private secretary to the queen.' (Publication summary)
'Forty-five years after they were written, hundreds of previously secret letters between the queen and the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 will be released in full by the National Archives of Australia this morning.'
'The release of 211 letters from 1975 to 1976, between the then governor general Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace, after a hard-fought court battle by historian Professor Jenny Hocking, reveal collusion between the Palace and Sir John Kerr in the sacking of a democratically elected Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam.'
At Her Majesty's Pleasure : Sir John Kerr and the Royal Dismissal Secrets' by Jenny Hocking
2020
20181079
2020
single work
podcast
criticism
'In 1975 the governor general, John Kerr, removed a democratically elected Labor government, amid great intrigue and subterfuge. The dismissal of the Whitlam government remains one of the blights on our democracy – perhaps the most controversial event in Australian political history. And yet the full record of what happened in the weeks and months leading up to the dismissal is still unavailable to Australian citizens because of the intransigence of Queen Elizabeth and the expensive lengths to which the National Archives of Australia have gone to suppress access to John Kerr’s correspondence with Buckingham Palace.' (Introduction)
'The release of the palace letters has put paid to any comforting assumption that the monarchy is above politics, or that the Queen as Australian head of state guarantees national stability. John Kerr’s correspondence with her private secretary Martin Charteris proved that royal impartiality, when put to the test, revealed itself as merely notional and without substance. Yet the disheartening truth is that this was not greeted with public outrage, which suggests the lesson hasn’t sunk in.' (Introduction)
