SUPPORTERS of the Eureka rebellion against the British empire plan to disrupt the Queen’s Baton relay as it passes through the site of the 1854 uprising in regional Victoria this week.
For non-Commonwealth readers, the baton is being carried around AUstralia as a prelim to the Commonwealth Games – previously known as the Empire Games.
I always presumed the Empire Games were established so Australia could have off-season Olympic Games training but I could be wrong.
The spokeman,
Marcus Neofitou, is reported as saying;
“These brave men wanted independence from the British Empire. The Commonwealth Games were the Empire Games right up to 1954.”
Imagine the stress of arriving at my point in life and realizing I had been poorly tutored, and worse, all the books I had read were wrong. I was always under the impression that the miners at Eureaka were protesting about Miners licences and the heavy handed monitoring of them by the Victorian police but Marcus says the were protesting against the entire British Empire…..well now, that’s a new approach.
True, there was talk of a Republic at Eureka but let’s face, get two Irishmen together and amidst the alcohol-driven conversatons the words “Republic”, “Bloody” and “British” always gets a mention.
There could be a case for Australia to become a republic but only if it happens because it is seen as best for the country; not just because certain people ‘hate the British’.
However I may still be right and Marcus Neofitou wrong as the
Eureka Centre at Ballarat shares my view. They do quote politicians who think the eureka rebellion was about a republic but their emphasis is not on this issue, it is on the issue of hard policing.
I have to conclude that Marcus has got some press for his nefarious little protest against the British by saying something outrageous.
Poor Fellow, my country has a distinct lack of wars in our long march to democracy. No War of Independance like our American cousins; no religious and monarchist wars like the Europeans; just a plain old get together and make a commonwealth. Given the lack of millions of war dead as the basis for a free country we are left to make do with what we have – 30 miners killed in a fight with the local police.
This makes the Eureka rebellion an important event in our history and it also makes the Eureka flag (depicted on the stamp above) historically significant but unfortunately the
BLF has used the flag as their logo for many years and Australians won’t accept it as a national icon, let alone flag, until the thugs of the BLF are long forgotten.
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