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The Queen’s private letters about the surprising dismissal from the Whitlam government have finally been published.
On Tuesday morning, at her home under a virus lock in Melbourne, historian Jenny Hocking finally saw the secret letters she had struggled for years to see.
The scans on her screen were 45-year correspondence between the Queen and her representative in Australia, Governor General Sir John Kerr, during a moment of political turmoil.
Specifically, the dismissal in 1975 of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, a charismatic and progressive leader who had been re-elected by majority only 18 months earlier.
In a political ambush on November 11, he was fired and his government dissolved by Sir John Kerr, who represented the Queen but was supposed to act on the advice of the Australian Prime Minister.
Conspiracies and debate on the decision have since erupted. Did Sir John have the right to do this? Was the queen influential in some way?
A treasure trove of “palace cards” hidden in Australia’s national archives was said to contain the truth.
But when Professor Hocking, investigating nearly a decade ago, went to retrieve them, he found them locked under a royal decree that could never be lifted.
- Letters Show Queen ‘Not Warned’ About Australian Prime Minister’s Dismissal
“These were tremendously important historical documents and yet the Queen had an embargo on them,” he told the BBC.
“Well, for any historian, that will be something you are determined to revoke if you can.”
Thus began a years-long mission, a million-dollar court battle, and trips to London’s dusty libraries to locate remains of evidence.
“The Dismissal,” as it is known in Australia, is taught in all school history classes, seen as the most dramatic episode in the nation’s political history.
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Whitlam, outside Parliament House after his removal, said: “Well, let’s just say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor-General.”
Like many other Australians who were alive at the time, Professor Hocking can recall when he learned of the shocking news.
“He was a science student at university and had been following the events, the tensions, closely for days. When a friend broke the news, I was shocked, I couldn’t believe that would happen.”
It was the first, and remains the only time, that a Prime Minister and government elected by the Australian people had been removed by a Governor-General. Until then, no one had known that the Queen’s representative, a primarily symbolic figure, had such power (and remains a controversial point among legal experts).
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The dismissal was seen as intensely political. It sparked street protests with cries from Whitlam supporters for a “constitutional coup” and suggestions that a “royal prerogative” had been imposed from afar.
Whitlam, who died in 2014, always maintained that he had been the victim of an invented conspiracy between Sir John, a pompous figure who often wore a top hat and tails of coats and played his connection to the Palace, and his conservative successor, Malcolm. Fraser.
Discovering new history
Professor Hocking never thought that she would return to “firing shock” in a professional capacity. For many years she did not approach Australian history, working as a documentary filmmaker and later as an expert in fighting terrorism in the 1990s.
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Professor Jenny Hocking led a long battle for documents to be released
But then, while researching his biography of Gough Whitlam, published in 2012, he discovered that there was much more to learn about the machinations of his departure.
After resigning in 1977, Sir John deposited most of his writings of his time in office at the National Archives.
Upon reviewing those records, Professor Hocking found more evidence indicating his betrayal of Prime Minister Whitlam in 1975: secret meetings held with then opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, and consultations with High Court judges who helped draft the letter of Whitlam expulsion.
These revelations, published in his book The Dismissal Dossier in 2015, transformed the story of Whitlam’s departure as previously stated.
“It was a pretty shocking story of deception and a distortion of the story that followed,” says Professor Hocking. “Kerr really fooled the Australian people.”
But among these crucial records were missing the “Palace Letters,” what the Governor General had told the Queen over the years and the messages he had received.
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Queen with then Governor General Sir John Kerr in 1977
These were withheld as they were labeled “personal” correspondence with the Queen, a notion that Professor Hocking found ridiculous.
However, since they were not classified as state registries, there seemed to be no way to challenge access. So one day in 2015 Professor Hocking came across an essay written by a lawyer in Sydney.
A judicial defeat, then a victory
Tom Brennan, a prominent lawyer, was “appalled” by reports that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a leading Republican, was about to “go to Buckingham Palace and advise the Queen that these documents should be released.” He knew that Australia’s own laws could allow such access.
“I was furious, so I published my article,” he told the BBC. “And that was the end of my efforts as far as I’m concerned. I wasn’t going to do anything more than that.”
“Then out of the blue, Jenny comes up to me and proceeds to say, ‘Well, why don’t we take the necessary legal action to get the letters?
His case against the National Archives began in the Federal Court of Australia in 2016. Professor Hocking’s lawyers were some of Australia’s leading silks, including Brennan, Bret Walker SC, and Antony Whitlam, a former judge of that same court.
Write down the last name. Yes, Gough Whitlam’s eldest son acted as Professor Hocking’s attorney at the first hearing.
They lost that trial, a devastating blow. But Brennan says the historian was determined to move forward with a final appeal at the Australian High Court, which was won in May.
Professor Hocking has often said that the release of the letters would not have been accomplished without her “extraordinary” legal team that worked for free.
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Kerr was writing almost daily letters to the Queen and her private secretary during the crisis.
But Brennan points out that it was the historian who found most of the evidence. “She had the main job of finding all the historical details, which was the basis for us finally winning the thing in Superior Court.”
He notes that Professor Hocking traveled to the National Archives of England in London on fact-finding trips, where she would manually track obscure records, which later turned out to be key to the success of the case.
“We had, as a client, a historian who was everywhere,” says Mr. Brennan, chuckling. “We were opposed by the government, which, on your team, look, they had no historians.”
It also points to the immense financial burden that Professor Hocking bears in handling the case, and his efforts to consistently fund and attract sympathizers to the dark cause.
Finally, there were agreements with the government to limit legal costs if the historian lost the case. But even the basic legal fees for executing an action were almost prohibitive.
For example, a one-day trial in Federal Court will start at A $ 10,000 (£ 5,500; $ 7,000). When the National Archives lost the High Court appeal in May, they were ordered to pay around A $ 2 million in legal costs, a sum charged to the Australian taxpayer.
Brennan says, “Really, [the release of the letters] It is a tribute to his tenacity. I think the country owes him a big debt of gratitude. “
Renewed calls to republic
Letters revealed Tuesday showed that Sir John was not informed in advance of his decision to fire the Prime Minister. This was what most observers expected, who said that the Governor-General would have tried to protect the Crown.
However, the letters reveal a discussion about Sir John’s political power. They also indicate his decision to withhold information from the Prime Minister, whose advice he was obliged to accept.
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The queen remains Australia’s head of state, a constitutional monarchy
“In the crudest possible way, the letters reveal how Australia’s constitutional independence was fatally compromised,” says Professor Mark McKenna, a leading Australian historian.
He told the BBC that the letters showed that, in the midst of a major constitutional crisis, the Queen and her private secretary knew more about Sir John’s intentions than Australia’s Prime Minister-elect.
“The fate of an elected government was largely being determined by an unelected governor-general and his voluminous and almost obsessive correspondence with the Palace,” he said.
“The publication of the ‘Palace Letters’ reinforces the need for an Australian Republic.”
Others, including Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese, made similar calls for a republic on Tuesday after the launch.
Brennan says Professor Hocking’s case also sets a precedent for other Commonwealth nations to access material previously suppressed by the monarchy.
“This is a very important step in the continued movement towards the independence of the country,” said Brennan.
