On this day in 1963, the Australian intellectual Geoffrey Dutton’s article ‘British Subject’ appeared in Nation. Dutton’s comments brought on a revitalisation of Australian republican ideals, writes Glenn Davies.
In “British Subject” Nation, 6 April 1963, pp.15-16, Dutton argued that Australia should declare itself a republic, elect its own governors, abolish the use of the word “British”, and substitute “Australian”. This ar ticle prefigured the framework of the late twentieth century republican debate with its associated issues of Australian identity, allegiance, the role of the governor-general and the irrelevant anachronism of the monarchy.
No doubt Dutton’s 1963 article raised the idea of republicanism as an alternative but it was Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country in 1964 that put the republican debate back on the public agenda. Horne argued that the ceremonial clinging to Britain was part of Australia’s “delusional structure” and that, in a sense Australia is a republic already”. He was unsure how or when Australia would become a republic but saw it happening within a radical national framework. He continued that:
“To some Australians of fifty years ago ... the radical position then was to be anti-British, to develop an Australian nationalism and to dream of an independent Australian republic.”

Geoffrey Dutton, whose ancestor Francis Stacker Dutton had been Premier of South Australia and a republican, in 1966 attempted to enhance the popular republican debate when he organised a symposium on the “Monarchy in Australia” in which Donald Horne and others argued the republican position. This was the first detailed discussion in the twentieth century of the arguments for and against an Australian republic. Dutton and Horne were both writers and public commentators by occupation and neither were exactly populist. The republican debate was an intellectualist debate rather than a popular debate.

One of the contributors, Max Harris, looked back on these times:
“We thought the sky was certain to fall down, and us with no place to hide ... The sky didn’t fall down. The only thing that was deafening was the silence.”
This could well be due to Dutton’s observation that throughout much of the twentieth century, particularly in the Menzies era, republicanism was relegated to the margins of political debate.

So, on the birthday of Geoffrey Dutton’s Nation article, it is an appropriate time to raise our glasses in memory to two great Australian republicans, Geoffrey Dutton and Donald Horne, and say “Three cheers to the coming republic”.

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