This seminar will look at the origins of Australia’s close connection with the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), including the role played by Australian Prime Minister ‘Billy’ Hughes in the Commission’s establishment. Hughes had already pledged widespread support for returned servicemen (and women), a commitment shortly to draw criticism for its allegedly undue pressure on the public purse. In a similar vein, he told the Imperial War Conference in London in June-July 1918: ‘We shall be very glad to pay our share for the sake of our brave soldiers… however great it may be, we shall pay it as a small tribute to their valour’. Indeed, as in Australia’s relatively generous provision for veterans (compared to other Allied countries), so support for the IWGC extended in Australia to provisions not specified by the IWGC, notably definitions of those entitled to war graves.

However, belt-tightening in the 1920s and the Depression years of the 1930s placed increased and largely unforeseen pressure on government expenditure. In 1933, for example, the ‘participating governments’ in the IWGC (UK, Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia) were asked to increase their contributions to the Commission. At first, Australia demurred, and then requested a review of IWGC expenditure to identify areas where costs might be cut. This, in turn, prompted a furious reaction in Australia, with the RSL and others detecting a retreat from Hughes’ original declaration. The tortuous story of the Australian Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux is a telling case study of these competing tensions – from grandiose plans approved in 1925, the Memorial was subject to continuing scrutiny, at one stage on the verge of being abandoned altogether, and was not completed until 1938, on a much reduced scale and at a fraction of the cost.

Philip Payton is Honorary Professor in the School of History at the Australian National University. He has full academic status as Professor of History at Flinders University, and is Emeritus Professor of Cornish & Australian Studies at the University of Exeter. He holds doctorates from the universities of Adelaide and Plymouth, and is an Hon. Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The author/editor of more than sixty books, his most recent titles are Cornwall in the Age of Rebellion 1490-1690 (ed. University of Exeter Press, 2021), Vice-Regal: A History of the Governors of South Australia (Wakefield Press, 2021; winner of the 2022 Keain Medal, Historical Society of South Australia), and More Than Miners: Cornish Essays from South Australia (ed. with Jan Lokan, Wakefield Press, 2023). Philip is currently completing D.H. Lawrence and Cornwall: The Search for Utopia, to be published by University of Exeter Press later this year, and is writing Their Name Liveth For Evermore: A History of the Office of Australian War Graves for the Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA).

Philip has written three earlier volumes for DVA, reflecting his own status as a veteran. He served in the Royal Navy for thirty years, a dozen as a regular and the rest as a reservist. Appointments ranged from the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, and he was for a time Head of the Media Operations specialisation. In 1993 he served with UN Peacekeeping forces (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia, and in 2003 served in Iraq.

Please note that this seminar will run in-person only.