The struggle for Anzac Day 1916-1930 and the role of the Brisbane Anzac Day Commemoration Committee

Abstract

Contrary to widespread opinion, Anzac Day did not happen 'spontaneously', although this is apparently assumed by both secular-humanist historians and at least one evangelical historian. These scholars have ventured to write about the subject without posing the question about the institutional origins of the day. The most explicit example of the 'spontaneity theory' is the work of the late Dr Eric Andrews, an outspoken secularist, who claimed: "It was entirely natural that the first Anzac Day should be celebrated wherever Australians found themselves in 1916. Australian and New Zealand Troops did so more or less spontaneously - in small units at bases in Egypt and the Middle East, in France (where they had just arrived) and Britain. The landing on Gallipoli in 1915, and all the excitement that it had entailed, ensured that the day would be celebrated in Australia also." The Hobart-based historian and evangelical Christian, Richard Ely, too, seems to prefer the spontaneity theory, or a variant of it, and it prompts the question, why is there little interest in the actual institutionalisation of the day?