Legal bid to obtain palace letters on Australia’s 1975 “constitutional coup”

Mike Head

History professor Jenny Hocking last week launched a Federal Court application for the release of secret letters between the British Queen and John Kerr, the Australian governor-general, in the lead-up to Kerr’s dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on November 11, 1975.

The correspondence could reveal further details about the role of the royal family and perhaps other elements within ruling circles—including the Australian, British and US intelligence agencies—in the “Canberra Coup” that removed the Labor government.

Hocking, a biographer of Whitlam, is challenging the National Archives of Australia’s decision to withhold the palace letters by classifying them as “personal and private” correspondence between Kerr and the Queen. This designation took them outside the reach of the Archives Act, which requires all “Commonwealth records” to be made public after 30 years, although always subject to vetting by the intelligence agencies.

According to Hockey, she was given two conflicting reasons for denying access to the letters. The National Archives referred to Kerr’s “Instrument of Deposit,” in which he set out the conditions of access to his records.

However, when Hockey made a separate freedom of information application last year directly to the governor-general’s office, she was told the letters were “under strict embargo,” not at Kerr’s request but “at Her Majesty The Queen’s instructions.”

The embargo was for 50 years after the end of Kerr’s term of office, that is, until 2027. Even then, Hockey was informed, any release would be “subject to consultation” with the British monarch’s private secretary and the governor-general’s official secretary. In other words, the letters might never be disclosed.

Last year, on the 40th anniversary of Whitlam’s dismissal, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would ask the palace to release the letters. He told the Australian he had consulted with Attorney-General George Brandis and concluded the letters could not be described as “personal.”

The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly reported that Turnbull’s request would “probably involve the prime minister giving formal advice to the Queen.” It would be “extraordinary” for the Queen to rebuff advice, Kelly insisted.

Since then, however, Turnbull and Brandis have said nothing publicly on the issue, and the ban on the letters’ release remains in place. High-level authorities in London and Canberra are clearly intent on blocking public access to the correspondence.

This cannot be explained simply by a desire to cover-up the role of the royal family. As a result of other documents released in recent years, it has already been established that the Queen was personally involved in Whitlam’s removal, contrary to official denials.

In a book published last year, The Dismissal Dossier: Everything you were never meant to know about November 1975, Hocking cited six “extracts from letters” found in Kerr’s private papers. They indicated that Kerr wrote “regular and extended” letters to the Queen and her private secretary Sir Martin Charteris during the period leading up to the dismissal.

Written from early September 1975 onward, the letters reported to London that Kerr was considering ousting Whitlam, using the “reserve powers” of the monarchy, which are embedded in the Australian Constitution. In fact, Kerr wrote up to three times a day on the issue, raising the danger that Whitlam could seek his removal from office before he could dismiss Whitlam.

Just one week before the dismissal, Charteris informed Kerr of the Queen’s intentions if Whitlam asked the palace to eject Kerr from his vice-regal post. Charteris told Kerr that should this “contingency” occur, the Queen would “try to delay things” for as long as possible.

In other words, the Queen would pause any request from Whitlam to dismiss Kerr until after Kerr appointed a new prime minister to replace Whitlam. It was, in effect, a green light for Kerr to proceed.
In 2012, other documents revealed that Kerr also spoke to Prince Charles, the Queen’s son, in September 1975 about the prospect of dismissing Whitlam. The two men discussed the issue in Papua New Guinea, during ceremonies for that former colony’s formal independence from Australia.

Even if the palace letters are reclassified as public records as a result of Hocking’s law suit, there is no guarantee they will be released. Under the Archives Act, access can be banned permanently to “exempt documents” that might “cause damage to the security, defence or international relations of the Commonwealth.”

Whitlam’s dismissal remains a sensitive issue to this day precisely because it involved more than the machinations of Kerr and the palace. Every key state institution was implicated in the removal of an elected government: the judiciary, the intelligence agencies, the military, the public service chiefs and the corporate media.

Kerr himself had intimate links with Australian, US and British intelligence agencies, dating back to World War II. The governor-general secretly conspired with at least two members of the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, before making his move, and the military was placed on alert to deal with the anticipated public opposition.

It is inconceivable that the Queen would not also have collaborated with key figures in Britain’s intelligence and military apparatus, which has close ties to Washington. There is no doubt that the CIA was actively involved in the intrigues, as revealed by US intelligence whistle-blower Christopher Boyce, who reported that senior CIA officials referred to Kerr as “our man Kerr.”

Whitlam was a loyal supporter of the US alliance and the capitalist profit system itself, but he was removed because of the concern in ruling circles, both in Australia and the US, that his government had failed to stem the powerful movement of the working class that had brought it to office in 1972, after 23 years of conservative party government.

The unstable political conditions in Australia were part of the international upheavals that erupted between 1968 and 1975, shaking the foundations of capitalist rule. Amid a global upsurge of the working class, which had begun in France with the May–June general strike in 1968, strikes and social struggles erupted in Australia in 1973–74, just as the US defeat loomed in Vietnam and US President Richard Nixon faced impeachment over the Watergate affair.

After the Murdoch media launched a campaign to discredit and destabilise the government, the Liberal-National opposition, led by Malcolm Fraser, used its majority in the Senate to block financial supply to the government, creating a political and constitutional crisis. This provided the pretext for Kerr to invoke the royal powers to dismiss Whitlam and his government.

The lengths to which the ruling class is going to prevent any access to the 1975 palace letters is another warning that, just as four decades ago, it is prepared to resort to authoritarian methods when its interests are directly threatened. Another convulsive period has begun, with youth and working people worldwide coming into struggle against the worsening social and economic conditions, violation of basic democratic rights and threat of war.