Who owns Brisbane's radical past?

Abstract

When a history of the Australian environment movement was published several years ago the joke that went around the environment movement was that the first (and sometimes the only thing) purveyors of the book would read was the index to check if their names were there. If some of the reports we have heard from around the bookshops of Brisbane are true, Radical Brisbane, has received a similar response. We feel for Ray Evans and Carol Ferrier, the editors of Radical Brisbane, because everyone who has been around the activist scene in Brisbane over the last forty years will want to see themselves, or at least their organizations, represented. Inevitably, given the limitations of such publications, many have been disappointed. The point of this review essay is not to critique the inclusions and omissions in order to assuage individual egos, but to further an understanding of the basis of radical politics and to interpret why Brisbane has been the seat of dissent as much as of development in this state.