Humphrey Dennis McQueen is an Australian political activist, socialist historian and cultural commentator. He is associated with the development of the Australian New Left. His most iconic work A New Britannia gained notoriety for challenging the dominant approach to Australian history developed by the Old Left. He has written books on history, the media, politics and the visual arts.
Early Life and Career
McQueen was born in Brisbane to a working-class family that were active in the Australian Labor Party. He was educated at Marist College Ashgrove, and later edited the Queensland Young Labor newsletter. McQueen joined the ALP at the age of fifteen, and was instrumental in establishing the Queensland Young Labor organisation. In 1961, McQueen served as the ALP campaign organiser for the seat of Ryan. He completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the University of Queensland in 1965. McQueen was an active participant in the anti-Vietnam War movement in Australia, campaigning against conscription as chairman of the Melbourne-based Revolutionary Socialist Group in 1968. His organisational engagement shaped his interest in Maoist and Gramscian theory, influencing his subsequent historical work. From 1966-1969 he was employed as a teacher at Glen Waverley High, Victoria. In 1970, he moved to Canberra, where he taught Australian history as a senior tutor at the Australian National University from 1970-1974. It was there that he met and befriended the historian, Manning Clark. McQueen had been head-hunted by Henry Mayer after reading McQueen's articles 'Convicts and Rebels' and 'A Race Apart'.
Major contributions
''Convicts and Rebels''
McQueen’s early academic writing was intent on dispelling the approaches to labour history generated by the Australian Old Left, especially Russel Ward's The Australian Legend. His critique was first developed in Convicts and Rebels, in which McQueen contested the Australian Whig history associated with the Old Left. As he argued: In the article, McQueen doubted the authenticity of a democratic and egalitarian tradition emanating from Australia’s convict history. He challenged the egalitarian aspect of the tradition, highlighting the prominence of racism in convict society.
''A New Britannia''
In 1970, McQueen wrote A New Britannia, an historical analysis of the emergence and development of the Australian labour movement. It influentially argued that the history of the Australian labour movement, from colonisation to Australian federation, should be understood as an extension of Imperialism within the British Empire. The argument challenged existing account of the labour movement emerging from the Australian Old Left, which had mythologised the nation-building and democratic nature of the movement. In seeking to challenge accounts of Australian history presented in the Old Left, McQueen established the grounds to contest the Whig tradition in Australian scholarship. He identified that British imperialism cannot be separated from the experience of capitalism in Australia, and that Australian identity should be reconsidered in light of the role that racism and Patriarchy had played in development of the Australian labour movement. Together with an application of British New Left theorists, Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn, the approach redefined the nature of Australian historical enquiry, which would prove to be influential in the discipline of history. Receptions of the book were mixed. Terry Irving in reviewing A New Britannia, highlighted the work’s theoretical legacy, but also the need to produce a more developed theoretical engagement. He stated that A New Britannia “Will provoke angry discussion, but I hope it will also provoke the new left to develop the methodology necessary to write a new history”. This observation would influence the development of another hallmark of the Australian New Left, Class Structure in Australian History.
