CAREY, Alexander Edward (Alex)

Family Name:

Carey

Given Names:

Alexander Edward (Alex)

Gender:

Male

Birth-Date:

1 December 1922

Death-Date:

30 November 1987

Marital Status:

Married with 3 children

Age Range:

35 to 65 years

Location:

WA, Geraldton and NSW, Sydney

Occupation:

Writer, Psychologist, Academic

Primary Motivation:

Peacemaker, Anti War

Reason for Court Appearance:

Violation of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, encouragement of persons to not register for national service

Court Name and Location:

Special Federal Court, Sydney

Court Hearing Date:

14 October 1969

Court Outcome:

Convicted and fined $50, in lieu 25 days imprisonment with hard labour

Military Event:

National Service Act and Vietnam War 1964-1972

Further Information:

Alexander (Alex) Carey was born on 1 December 1922 at Geraldton, Western Australia. He was educated at Hale Boarding School in Perth, and at the University of London. He married Joan Elizabeth Ferguson in 1948 and they had three children. Gabrielle, his daughter, is the author of Puberty Blues. Tragically Alex died of suicide on 30 November 1987, aged 65 years. Fron 1958 until his death he was a lecturer, then senior lecturer, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He specialized in industrial psychology, industrial relations and the psychology of nationalism and propaganda. He was founder of the Australian Humanist Society in 1960.

At age 18 years, during 1941, Alex enlisted in the Australian Army. It appears he had extended periods of leave without pay and was discharged during 1944, apparently without serving overseas. Two decades later in the late 1960s and early 1970s he was a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War and Australia’s participation in it. His activism was comprehensive and at a level which can only be selectively described here.

Alex was associated with Avram Noam Chomsky and John Richard Pilger. All were fierce critics of the ‘Industrial-War Machine’ of the west and its propaganda and lies, especially about war and militarism. John was a fellow Australian. Noam is an American and is also known for his pioneering work in Linguistics. Alex had much in common with both men. According to Noam Chomsky, Alex pioneered work in the area of propaganda and lies, particularly corporate or industrial propaganda.

As early as 1965, Alex castigated those who worked to censor reports of atrocities from the Vietnam war. Even those incidents which were reported elicited little interest amongst Australian society, even those alleged to have been committed by Australian soldiers. During July 1966, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales proposed substantial integration of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, with the University. Alex opposed this and stated, Let us make a stand against the sophisticated barbarians of our time who turn so quickly to violence or threat of violence as the only “realistic” way of dealing with international conflicts of interest. Let universities remain distinct from the committed institutes of their society. Let those of us in universities keep as our first responsibility the ideal of its critical detachment from which something can be said and done to warn of the steep places that threaten to carry us into an enveloping sea of violence. Surely we must keep the universities separate from the idiotic arms race and reliance on violence which seem to have deprived our leaders of hope or humanity. And the army, let us remember, is, patriotic shibboleths aside, primarily an organisation of men whose profession is violence.

During 1968 he published a booklet titled Australian Atrocities in Vietnam. It was published by the Vietnam Action Campaign in Sydney, of which he was a member. In the same year he authored Of Professors and ‘pacification’: A note on the Universities Approval for Civil Aid in South Vietnam. He described his booklet as an illustrated pamphlet and stated, …in which the vicious and immoral character of the war our soldiers are obliged, on pain of imprisonment, to fight in Vietnam was documented in detail from completely reputable Australian sources. During 1973 he also published two articles on Vietnam in Meanjin. They were Clockwork Vietnam: Gaining Physical Control and Clockwork Vietnam: The Social Engineers Take Over. Alex wrote in the first article, If we are to cleanse ourselves from Vietnam or rid ourselves of the capacity to endorse comparable barbarity elsewhere, we must discover without evasion what we were accomplice to, and how we came to be so; and we must, I believe, by those discoveries bring doctrinaire, undiscriminating ant-communism into as profound discredit as doctrinaire anti-semitism has come since Auschwitz.

He reflected on Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War in early 1969. He said, I think most people are coming to realize that Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war has degraded and corrupted everything it has touched. It has degraded our language: – 3 million tons of bombs on Asian peasants becomes ‘forward defence’, torture becomes ‘water treatment’; it has degraded our civil liberties – the Crimes and National Service Acts; it has degraded our country and parliament – which first traded 8.000 balloted 20 year olds as ‘protection money’. And then dressed the exercise in nonsense slogans about ‘freedom’, ‘aggression’ and ‘threats to our security.’ Alex was soon to run foul of the Crimes Act he referred to. On 14 October 1969 Alex was amongst thirty-eight persons convicted in the Special Federal Court at Sydney for an offence under the Commonwealth Crimes Act. Specifically, publishing a certain writing which encouraged the offence of failing to register for national service. He was fined $50, in lieu 25 days imprisonment by Magistrate Rodgers. All 38 people stated they would not pay the fines and were prepared to go to jail for the 25 days. They said they would go to the nearest police station when the 14 days to pay the fine was up and give themselves up to the police. P Pile. QC, for the defendants enter a mass plea for the 38 persons. The writing was called Statement of Defiance and had been signed by 72 people, of which 38 were the defendants in court. It is unknown if he was imprisoned, most likely not.

Again, in June 1969, Alex turned again to the propaganda and lies, and the senseless destruction and suffering associated with Vietnam. He stated, nothing of course, now can undo the vast senseless destruction and suffering wrought on Vietnam in the name of invented history. But it is still important to set the histrorical record straight. The peace negotiations in Paris have failed to date because the U.S. has tried to base a settlement on a past and present Vietnam which is largely an invention -which simply does not exist. It is only as this gap between invention and reality is closed that peace will become possible in Vietnam.

Alex attended many anti-war protest meetings and spoke at many venues about war and militarism, and Vietnam in particular. He was a speaker at the Campaign for Peace in Vietnam at a public meeting held 9 May 1972. It was titled Vietnam – testing ground for 1984. The latter is a reference to George Orwell’s future dystopian world from his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Alex was a supporter of and attended the 1970 Vietnam Moratorium. He spoke strongly in favour of a motion on March 3 1970, that the Staff Association of the UNSW be a sponsor of the moratorium. It was defeated 36 votes to 24. He was a speaker at the Symposium on Imperialism in Sydney February 23-27in 1972.

His peace activism, opposition to militarism and defence of liberty continued into the 1980s. He collaborated with Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. In 1988 Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman published their work titled Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media in dedication to the memory of Alexander Carey who committed suicide on 30 November 1987. Alex had collaborated with Chomsky for 12 months during 1978 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on sabbatical during the last year of his life. Some of his unpublished work was published in 1995 with the title Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia.

During August 1985, at a seminar in Canberra, he said that, Australian foreign policy since the 1960s had been built upon lies, deception and an overwhelming concern to secure US involvement in the South East Asian region to serve Australian interests. He told those at the seminar that the Australian Government’s anti-Chinese rhetoric and military commitment to the Korean War and to the Vietnam War had nothing to do with fighting for democracy or averting the threat to world stability posed by China, as the Government maintained, They were simply ploys to secure and encourage US involvement in the region. The Australian Government reasoned that only by ensuring that the US had a genuine commitment to the region could it expect US diplomatic and military protection.

It is no surprise that Alex attracted approbrium from most members of contemporary society given his strong criticism of it. Negative epithets always directed at people of conscience were in abundance when it came to Alex Carey. He was a rat-bag, a lunatic, a communist and a traitor, to name a few. He was considered by some of his extended conservative family to be an outlier. He was undoubtedly a man of great courage and conviction who worked tirelessly for peace and against war, militarism and imperialism. John Barrett-Lennard, a family member, stated that, I remember him when I was a boy and being interested in his intense involvemnet in the anti-Vietnam war movement. He seemed to be reviled in at the time in the 1960s, but also very vocal. Most of his, our, extended family were farmers and politically conservative, and Alex was a great outlier.

After the birth of her daughter in Mexico, Gabrielle returned home to Australia to visit her family. The day before she arrived Alex took his life. Her book In My Father’s House is an attempt to find out why. It has been described as part eulogy and part a moving last letter from a loving daughter.

Confirmatory Sources:

Tharunka 14 September 1965, p.2; 12 July 1966, p.8; 1 November 1966, p.3; 5 August 1969, p.9; 22 April 1969, p.7; 24 June 1969, p.8; 15 October 1969, p.3; 18 March 1970, p.4; 9 March 1971, p.1; 2 April 1975, p.8.

Tribune 13 April 1965, p.10; 7 September 1966, p.3; 10 July 1968, p.8; 17 March 1971; p.7; 11 February 1972, p.8; 4 August 1976, p.3.

Canberra Times, 15 October 1969, p.3; 17 March 1971, p.7; 1 February 1972, p.8; 26 April 1973, p.12; 16 August 1985, p.7.

Alex Carey, Australian Atrocities in Vietnam.1968, Gould, Convenor Vietnam Action Campaign, Sydney.

Alex Carey, Of Professors and ‘pacification’: A note on the Universities Approval for Civil Aid in South Vietnam. 1968, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB12855 accessed 10 September 2024.

Gabriele Carey, In My Father’s House. 1993. Pan Macmillan Publishers, Sydney.

Personal Interview John Barrett-Lennard, OAM September 2024.