Name Peter McGregor | ||
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Died January 11, 2008, Sydney, Australia | ||
Peter James McGregor (10 November 1947 – 11 January 2008) was an Australian Anarchist known for his political activism, University teaching and commitment to direct action. He was actively involved and often led the major Australian and international political campaigns of the last 40 years.
Contents
- Anti Vietnam War Movement
- Anti Apartheid Movement
- Political Philosophy
- Squatting
- Political Activities and Campaigns
- Awards
- References
Born in Sydney NSW Australia he was brought up by his mother Alice McGregor (née Alderdice) and maiden Aunt, May Alderdice. His father, Charles Roy McGregor, and mother split up soon after his birth and as a consequence of not having a strong male role model in the household, he appreciated and loved the company of women. His partner of 28 years, Johanna Trainor, worked with him on many of his political publications and campaigns.
Peter went to North Sydney Boys High School and continued onto the University of Sydney where he majored in Psychology and Maths (1967). He later received a Graduate Diploma of Education from the University of Sydney (1970), a Graduate Diploma Librarianship (1978) and a Master of Arts (Media and Communication) (1984) from the University of New South Wales.
McGregor’s first foray into political action was a (2 person) demonstration in SUPPORT of the hanging of Ronald Ryan the last Australian to be executed, in Victoria in 1967. Then in 1967 he joined a sit-in at Sydney University’s Fisher Library over increases in library fines.
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
McGregor was initially tentative in his choice of activism. He found he was most tempted by the social injustices that he had become aware of, issues like the horrors of the Vietnam War, the poverty and oppressive conditions of indigenous Australians, and then, amazement at the institutionalised racism of apartheid.
"When initially confronted with the Vietnam War, I was quite immature, though 20 years old, and sat on the fence concerning both conscription and the war in general. Then the good fortune of not having my birth date picked in the conscription lottery of 1967 prompted me to check the war out more thoroughly. My tentative involvement with the anti-war movement began cautiously and indirectly with my joining the humanitarian aid group Australian Committee of Responsibility for the Children of Vietnam (ACORFCOV), founded by the wonderful Sheila Rowley. ACORFCOV was inspired by the (US) Committee of Responsibility (COR) chaired by Dr. Benjamin Spock. Evidence of what was happening being done to Vietnamese civilians and children was enough to move one to joining anti-war actions and then the movement itself."
ACORFCOV supported humanitarian aid for the civilian victims of the war and education on what was happening to civilians as a basis for fundraising to provide medical aid and personnel.
In 1970 McGregor worked for a year as a Maths high-school teacher. Initially he failed his Teachers Certificate because the day the Inspector (who was a member of the Returned Services League – RSL) came to assess his teaching he was demonstrating at one of the Vietnam Moratorium marches, which were against Educational Department Policy.
Anti Apartheid Movement
McGregor was more concerned with campaigning against racism ‘over-there’, in South Africa, through a group that bordered the humanitarian and the political, he joined (1969) the South Africa Defence and Aid Fund (SADAF - set up by John & Meg Brink, white South African refugees). Again a group that was focused on educating and raising consciousness in order to collect money to aid political prisoners.
It was early in 1971, and the campaign against apartheid sport in Australia was reaching its coup de gráce. The main activist organisation in Sydney, the Anti-Apartheid Movement (with Meredith Burgmann and Denis Freney) needed a full-time organiser. McGregor took the chance of becoming a full-time ‘professional’ activist and was employed at $20 per week. After the massive mobilisations against the 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia by the Springbok team for that coming winter, effectively stymied future South African involvement in international Rugby. By September Donald Bradman made the statement that " the South African cricketers would not come until they stopped racially selecting the team" and officially withdrew their cricket invitation. With the proposed cricket tour for the summer of 1971-72 cancelled by the Australian cricket authorities the substantive Australian sporting contact with apartheid sport was over.
McGregor was then employed by the World University Service in Australia (WUSA) – an international, radical aid organisation based in universities in Western countries - as an organiser campaigning about southern Africa. In 1973 he toured New Zealand/Aotearo as an outside agitator supporting the campaign against the forthcoming NZ Springbok tour.
Apart from building grass roots activities in Sydney as well as network interstate, perhaps the most high-profile event during McGregor’s tenure with WUSA was the report on the Australian (Whitlam) Government breaking sanctions on Rhodesia. Despite having spoken out strongly against apartheid, & Ian Smith's illegal Rhodesian regime, Whitlam wasn't doing enough. A high-profile Australian Government delegation was about to tour several independent African nations, & WUSA’s Report reached those African Governments just in time for them to raise the issue with Whitlam’s delegation, to the Australian Government’s diplomatic & public embarrassment.
Political Philosophy
However, by the mid 70s McGregor’s politics had evolved to an anarchist position, under the influence of Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity (UK) and the Brisbane Self Management Group.
Of the established left, McGregor quickly dismissed the various Communist parties – both the Aarons/Sydney independent-of-the-Soviet Union grouping, the Melbourne Maoists, and the pro-Soviet Clancy/Socialist Party (the current Communist Party). Then there were the Trotskyists – all 37 varieties – and the Spartacists (International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)) who had the most coherent theoretical position – which appealed to his new-found interest in theory. But it was the grouping round Nick Origlass, Izzy Wyner and Hall Greenland who were the closest to self-management… Because it was the Brisbane Red & Black Bookshop folks – the Self Management Group (SMG) that really excited him.
As a recent convert to a born-again -anarchist, McGregor embraced a purist position, of refusing to reproduce capitalist daily life - commodity, exchange relationships - by abolishing the limits imposed upon people by wage-labor & private property. Namely, for instance, don't work & don't pay rent. In the purist spirit of Charles Fourier's - Some Advice Concerning the Next Social Metamorphosis: "Never sacrifice a present good to a future good. Enjoy the moment; don't get into anything which doesn't satisfy your passions right away. Why should you work today for jam tomorrow, since you will be loaded down with it anyway, & in fact in the new order you will only have one problem, namely how to find enough time to get through all the pleasures in store for you." And Fredy Perlman's - The Reproduction of Everyday Life: "The task of capitalist ideology (= the spectacle - PMcG), is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life; the task of critical theory is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent, to make the reproduction of the social form of capitalist activity visible within people's daily activities."
His re-birthing from politics as external issues - activism for a cause; war, racism, explicit political repression- to activism as a way-of-life meant not merely protesting to bring about reforms, but critically exploring the basis of social systems and embracing revolutionary change via a politics of everyday life. Extending the feminist take on the personal being political - addressing interpersonal relations as a primary site of gender/class/race/etc politics. And also integrating one's living arrangements ('home'), and what one is doing ('work') into as coherent as possible a life-style. Not unlike, 'be the changes you want to see in the world', and 'change the world by changing yourself', and 'the means are the ends in the making'. So, since property was theft, why not squat; and since work was wage-slavery, then don't.
Squatting
In 1974 he helped resurrect the Sydney Anarchist Group to organise an Australian Anarchist conference in Sydney in January 1975. He later gravitated with other Sydney anarchists around a three-story mansion at 130 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe. The group commenced a successful rent struggle against an intermediate landlord on the Glebe Estate (formerly owned by the Anglican Church), and against the Whitlam Labor Government's Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD). Many of the squatters from Victoria St, in Kings Cross, had moved to Glebe, where there was an abundance of empty homes, resulting from the transition of The Glebe Housing Estate sale from the Anglican Church to DURD (750 properties). The SAG’s first squatting tabloid RISING FREE, seemed to find both an 'audience' as well as a range of keen contributors.
McGregor discerned considerable similarities between the Situationist International (SI) & Socialism or Barbarism (SoB), let alone more general parallels between the SI (including its Libertarian Marxism) and Anarchism, especially in its council communist form.
Among other Anarchists from Melbourne and Brisbane and the SAG, McGregor’s interest in Situationism coincided with a period of 'anything goes' carnival anarchism. Spontaneity was essentially the name of the game during 1975 and early 1976 in Sydney. 'Situations' like a room full of stoned people suddenly deciding to go out and do a paint up on the local billboards and buildings often occurred. The local Police Station and Commonwealth Bank and the Medical Association building were often targets.
In June/July 1976, a range of folks - in friend or affinity groupings, who hadn't necessarily know each other previously - had seized-the-time and moved in & sqautted the corner block of Palmer & Stanley St’s Darlinghurst Sydney. The DMR (Department of Main Roads), in order to construct their Freeway, had bought out local residents in preparation for demolition... But there were delays, because of disputes between State and Federal Governments, Green Bans from the NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), and resistance from local resident groups. Bordered by the lane from Palmer to Bourke Sts, 'The Compound' was born with considerable idealism. Internal fences between the houses were knocked down, and levels of communalism and conviviality blossomed. Back-yards, tools, a washing-machine, electricity, etc. were shared, community gardens were planted, a food coop and a squatters shop on the corner were established. Lots of partying, making and listening to music, drinking, cooking & eating, dope (Cannabis (drug)) & LSD, sex & raving occurred.
MORE TO COME...
Political Activities and Campaigns
1969
1971
1973
1974
1975-77
1978
1979
1980
1985
1987
1988
1989
1993
1996
1997
1999
2000
2001
2002-5
2006
2007
Awards
His contributions to activism in the Vietnam anti-war movement and the Australian anti-apartheid movement which successfully disrupted the 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia , as well as more recent activism such as his attempt to effect a citizen's arrest of Attorney General Philip Ruddock, for war crimes for Australia's involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, were recognised by the Eureka Australia Medal award conferred by Dr Joseph Toscano and the Anarchist Media Institute at Bakery Hill, Ballarat on December 3, 2007.