Fraternal societies have been crucial to the shaping of modern, ‘European’ Australia. [EA] For more than two centuries they maintained a massive, colourful and often outspoken public presence and influenced political, social and economic outcomes, big and small, across the continent. Collectively, they have been enormously popular – their wide-spread occurrence is easily shown – and their memberships have reached into the hundreds of thousands. Today, however, they are largely invisible despite physical evidence for their importance still being everywhere in plain sight. And they have been almost totally ignored by historians. Re-instating these societies to their rightful place in the EA narrative will fundamentally alter how Australians see themselves.

But further to a correction of the record there are benefits to be gained from knowing why they have been deliberately airbrushed from history. On opposing sides in the revolutionary wars between Britain, France and the United States, just as the convict fleets were being fitted out, the original ‘fraternals’ adapted to the demands of modernity by splitting functions and by creating ‘false histories’. These early examples of ‘fake news’, emphasising exploitation of the vulnerable for the good of entrenched interests, travelled wherever the British Empire sought to impose its will. They became the ‘accepted wisdom’ of the New World and have been taught in schools and universities ever since. This ‘wisdom’ continues to underpin thinking about and policy-making in the areas of industrial relations, welfare and gender relationships, minorities and immigration, and resource exploitation.

Before this imperial propaganda can be replaced once and for all its formation and transmission has to be understood. This manuscript brings the separated ‘fraternals’ back together and explains how centuries of mis-information have distorted and diminished their potential for community building. ‘Mateship’ is only a shadow of what might have been achieved.

Introduction

…we need historians

It seems the origins of European Australia [EA] are still being contested. We are being asked, again, to choose between differing versions of ‘our’ history, and, by default, of our future.

…in EA historians appear to be missing

Critically, this time the study of our history is at a low ebb and our historians appear demoralised.

There are certainly some of this fraternity who will assert that they remain major players in the ‘Humanities’, that non-indigenous Australians are learning the relevance of ‘ancient wisdom’ and that there is still time to restore mutual respect and co-operation. Their ‘evidence’ includes a list of ‘essential books’ for EAs to read on Australia Day 2025. Out of ten, it contains three that are by ‘old’ EAs. One, Russell Ward’s Australian Legend’ (1959) is dismissed with a laugh, a second by Keith Hancock, Australia (1930) and the third by Stuart Macintyre, ‘Winners and Losers’ (1985). The other seven are by indigenous scholars or emphasise pre-1788 conditions.

Such references are welcome. They will, however, continue to have no effect on EA public policy as they continue to miss the salient point.

Contributions by a variety of Federal politicians to Australia Day events in, 2025 exhibited the depth and strength of EA’s entrenched thinking, attitudes in place well before Hancock’s publication. Suggestions by professional scholars around the same events amounted to a belief that their analysis of ‘how we came to be where we are’ remains an adequate response.

A lack of indigenous views have never been the problem. The ‘ancient wisdom has been available to EA since at least 1788 and yet here we are. The question to be asked is why acceptance hasn’t happened already?

The answer is in the culture brought by the invaders and in the processes whereby their attitudes have been repeatedly endorsed many times since. The problem – a lack of acceptance of a need for change – has been apparent within the ranks of the teachers of history for some time. Yet a sense of self-congratulation is apparent in their most recent effusions: ‘We need a clear strategy to turn things around…the History discipline and its staff and students – needs urgent and sustained attention.’ ⁱ Their concerns appear to be primarily their own survival: ‘There are fewer and fewer positions in History, and there are fewer students. Cognate disciplines…can provide a few refuges for aspects of the discipline and its practitioners, but they are insufficient.’ (Crotty 2024)

Their spokespersons only vaguely perceive a need to redirect criticism inwards: ‘The biggest danger… is perhaps not even the loss of livelihoods. It may rather be the loss of conviction in history’s defining ability to discern the difference between power and truth.’ ⁱⁱ

…fundamentals

Although centuries overdue, professional self-scrutiny is critical, because so many issues, people and events have been left out or mis-represented in EA’s national narrative. Fundamental assumptions in need of review include:

• The Enlightenment
• The British Empire
• The Selling of EA
• Mateship and ‘the Fair Go’

Not acknowledged in ‘our’ national narrative:

The Invasion

The Military Occupation

Secret Societies and the Role of Conspiracies

The Official Cover-ups

The Regular Re-Writing of History

…global culture …

In the northern hemisphere, at least since James Blaut’s 1990’s critique of world history,ⁱⁱⁱ professional historians and politically active social commentators have been debating ‘imperial history’, ‘post-colonial’ and ‘global/universal history’. In Britain, Caroline Elkins has coined the term “legalised lawlessness” to describe the self-serving methods by which Britain spread the rule of law only to viciously bend it to serve imperial ends.^iv An Indian academic, now in Europe, Patel Mishra, observed in 2020 that: ‘…The moralising history of the modern world written by its early winners – the many Plato-to-Nato accounts of the global flowering of democracy, liberal capitalism and human rights – has long been in need of drastic revision…’ ^v

In another place he wrote: ‘What I didn’t realise until I started to inhabit the knowledge eco-systems of London and New York is how evasions and suppressions had resulted, over time, in a massive store of defective knowledge about the West and the non-West alike.’ ^vi A US researcher, Gerald Horne claimed, also in 2020, that ‘the seeds of (an) apocalypse’ – by which he meant slavery, white supremacy and settler colonialism – had been planted in the 16th century and had ‘eventuated in what is euphemistically termed ‘modernity’.^vii

The ‘Culture Wars’ have been agitating some people in EA for decades. I remember when Manning Clark was accused of being a Communist spy and ASIO thought he might be a plant for the Roman Catholic Church? ^viii Before that there was Russell Ward’s appointment to the University of New England. These were high points for the local profession making itself known.

A self-described conservative Tom Switzer last year (2024) wrote: ‘Australia ought to be in the world’s gaze for being a successful, affluent, confident country that serves as a model for democracies around the world, with a commitment to the rule of law and liberty. Instead, it has now become the habit this time every year for the world to focus upon us as a model of the divisiveness and bitterness caused by the pursuit of identity politics.’ ^ix

…invasion

Switzer explained that the latest ‘front’ in the local war is the effort by ‘woke activists’ to eliminate celebration of Australia Day on January 26 – the commemoration of the British First Fleet of convicts arriving in Sydney Cove in 1788. Opponents say this is no day for celebration because it marks the anniversary of the dispossession of indigenous Australians and the “invasion” of their land.

…definition…

He didn’t offer an alternative to ‘invasion’ for a sudden arrival of armed troopers with clear intent to take possession by force of land already occupied by others. Since this problem has been incubating since EA’s earliest days a return to ‘the crime scene’ is a tribute to the vigour of indigenous scholarship. But it can’t be allowed to remain there for that’s not when planning for ‘the crime’ began.

Details of ‘the landing’ can be easily checked and the argument ‘invasion-non-invasion’ quickly resolved, one way or the other. Except that, as on previous occasions, the dispute is about assumptions behind the arguments rather than what is written on the page. Switzer knows that the single word ‘invasion’ carries seriously explosive baggage but he avoided spelling that out, as his cohort in 2025 has done.

… EA’s taught history has been fake, not true history…

‘Australia’, ie EA, has long been promoted as an example of modernity in the public mind to attract settlers. One particular image was often used to teach us ‘our’ origins. A rendering of the 1788 European landing at Botany Bay, it’s been used on calendars, in schoolbooks and on TV. It’s fair to say that the assumptions behind it became how ‘we’ liked to be seen and that it became ‘the truth’ by default.