'Sack the bastard!' - 'David Kent, (the now vilest man alive)'

Abstract

The title of this Note - 'Sack the Bastard' - 'David Kent, (the now vilest man alive)' - is made up of two quotations from letters provoked by something I researched and wrote over thirty years ago. The first was a demand addressed to the Dean of Arts from someone who felt that, given my views, I should not be allowed to teach impressionable young minds at the University of New England. The second replaced the more conventional 'Dear Mr Kent' in a letter calling down all manner of retribution on my head. For a few weeks, until Geoffrey Blainey provided an alternative target after his Warrnambool speech on Asian migration to Australia, it was open season on yours truly. The usually anonymous hate mail and abusive phone calls flooded in, including a death threat, and I dutifully filed away the letters thinking, perhaps, that one day I might do something with them. At History Australia's prompting, and with the centenary of the Gallipoli landings in mind, I recently re-opened the file.