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A1.5.1 April 23, 1993: Geoffrey Blainey’s ‘The Black Armband view of history’
speech.
Blainey used his speech at the Latham Memorial Lecture (April 23, 1993) to assert his view
that there was an overemphasis on the negative aspects of Australia’s past at the expense of
celebratory milestones. Two key phrases set up as binaries to create a polarisation between
historical perspectives held by historians and non-historians alike can be attributed to
Blainey’s speech. The ‘Three Cheers view’ and the ‘Black Armband view’ of Australian
history have been instrumental in establishing two separate and distinct perspectives of what
versions of Australian history should be published.
Blainey was motivated to begin this national debate on versions of Australian history, by his
disappointment that the celebratory grand narratives of Australia’s past achievements were
being ignored. In part, he spoke of this Black armband view of history as follows:
In recent years it has assailed the generally optimistic view of Australian history. The
black armbands were quietly worn in official circles in 1988, the bicentennial year.
Until late in that year Mr Hawke rarely gave a speech that awarded much praise to
Australia’s history. Even notable Labor leaders from the past – Fisher, Hughes,
Scullin, Curtin and Chifley – if listening in their graves in 1988, would have heard
virtually no mention of their name and their contributions to the nation they faithfully
served. Indeed the Hawke Government excised the earlier office slogan, ‘The
Australian Achievement’, replacing it with ‘Living Together’ – a slogan that belongs
less to national affairs than to personal affairs...
...Manning Clark, who was almost the official historian in 1988, had done
much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful
prose and his Old Testament phrases. (Blainey, 1993, n.p.)
Statements, such as the following excerpt from a speech to the members of the Canberra
press gallery from then-Treasurer, later Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating at Canberra
on December 7, 1990 is a clear demonstration of the perspective Blainey was explicitly
criticising.
Now Curtin was our wartime leader, and a trier, but we’ve never had that kind of
leadership. And it’s no good people saying, ‘But there’s 230 million people in the
US.’ There weren’t 230 million people when Thomas Jefferson was sitting in a house
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