‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s

‘Patronised servants’: Australianscientists in the 1940s

PHILLIP DEERY AND LACHLAN CLOHESY

The relationship between scientists and Western governments has had a long anduneasy history. During World War II, new links were forged between

governments and the military on the one hand and civilian scientific communitieson the other. Global war required the mobilisation and ongoing participation ofcivilian scientists in military research and development. The wartime partnershipbetween science and the state, culminating in the development of the atomic bomb,was a highly successful one. Western leaders were utterly convinced that scientificbreakthroughs in military technology had helped secure victory. No group was moreimpressed with science as an instrument of national power than the defenceestablishment, and none was more determined to harness that power for its ownpurposes in the postwar period.

The fresh hopes of defence departments for considerable command over militaryresearch clashed, however, with the existing peacetime tradition of civilian controland the pre-war relationship between science and the state. The social relations ofscience became an overriding preoccupation of scientists during the war years.Scientists nurtured their own postwar ideas about how a partnership with scienceshould be structured and to what purposes it should be directed. There were alsovital questions about the role that scientists should play in military research, thenotions of responsibility for the results of this research, and the extent to whichscience should be held accountable to public authority. The implications of these andsimilar questions were played out during the early Cold War.

With the onset of the Cold War, global conflict again appeared imminent and theuse of atomic weaponry a distinct possibility. In this context, the safeguarding ofscientific secrets was deemed vital. Scientists became embroiled with issues ofnational security and the purpose of science itself became redefined.1 By 1945,partly as a result of the war, a great many scientists were deeply committed tonotions of social responsibility of science. They shared a sanguine, perhaps naive,faith in the potential for international cooperation and sharing the fruits of scientificresearch even, or especially, with the former wartime ally, the Soviet Union. World

115‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s

War II had emphasised cooperation between allies and confidence that this wouldcontinue into the ‘brave new world’ after 1945 was high. The formation of the WorldFederation of Scientists exemplified this optimism.

By 1949, however, scientists occupied a defensive position in the political arena,the room for manoeuvre outside the Cold War consensus was negligible, innovativescientific activity was stultified and barriers against international cooperation hadbeen erected. In short, at the end of World War II, scientists attempted to shapepublic policy; within four years, they were being shaped by it. In this way, attemptsto construct the politics of science in the immediate postwar years were successfullythwarted by the new imperatives of the Cold War. For the most part, it was not untilthe early 1950s that the anti-communist crusaders mobilised effectively against‘subversive’ public servants, educators, trade unionists, writers and entertainers. Butfor scientists, the assault on their loyalty and patriotism began in the immediatepostwar years; for them, the Cold War started much earlier.

This paper seeks to probe those politically engaged scientists who were preparedto desert their ivory towers, exchange the laboratory for the soapbox and assumesocial responsibility during a shifting political environment. It will examine thesescientists through the lens of the Australian Association of Scientific Workers(AASW), which vigorously resisted the push for science to serve the needs of thestate and, equally robustly, defended the long-held but increasingly besiegedtradition of social responsibility in science. The paper will examine this tradition:that science was not an endeavour that occurred in isolation, but was – and shouldbe – influenced by society. In determining whether the goals pursued by AASWscientists changed during the early Cold War, or whether they remained largelyconsistent with pre-war and wartime goals, the paper will argue that the AASW wasill-prepared for, and overwhelmed by, the speed with which Cold War anti-communism moved from the margins to the mainstream of social and political life.

The Australian literature on the interrelationships between science, politics andsociety is extremely sparse. It is restricted to brief discussions of the political impactof post-World War II pressures on Australian science in biographies,2 organisationalstudies3 and other works with unrelated themes.4 Indeed, the most systematicanalysis of the relationship between science and politics can be found in anunpublished M.Phil thesis on the AASW by Jean Moran.5

This historiographical neglect is not universal. In contrast to the paucity ofAustralian studies, the literature on American scientists in the 1940s, for example, isrich. The political involvement of scientists – notably physicists in the AtomicScientists’ Movement (not dissimilar from the AASW) – prior to their silencing byMcCarthyism has received generous attention.6 There are also numerous importantstudies of individual scientists drawn from different political backgrounds whoconfronted and were adversely affected by the Cold War political environment.7 This

116 JRAHS Vol. 99 Part 2

paper will therefore fill a small historiographical gap in its analysis of Australianscientists committed to social responsibility during and immediately after WorldWar II.

The Australian Association of Scientific Workers was formed in July 1939 andwas constituted with divisions in Sydney and Melbourne in October. It wasmodelled on the British Association of Scientific Workers (ASW), with numerousissues of its organ, the Bulletin, reproducing articles from the ASW’s ScientificWorker.8 The forerunner of the ASW was the National Union of Scientific Workers(NUSW), which held its first meeting in 1918.9 World War I prompted scientists toreflect on how science and scientists were utilised. J.G. Crowther – whose 1941book The Social Relations of Science was later referred to as ‘the “Bible” of theAASW’10 – suggested that the war had drawn attention to the social relations ofscience and exposed flaws in the English industrial and military system. In addition,the social chaos unleashed by the Great Depression had also caused British scientiststo consider their position in society.11

Crowther sought to understand, through a detailed examination of scientifichistory, the relationships both between scientists and the state, and between the stateand science. He also investigated the social influences on scientific work,particularly their impact on the direction of scientific enquiry. The AASW came tobe heavily influenced by Crowther’s views; in particular that scientific discovery didnot occur independently of society, but was instead (and, in fact, ought to be) shapedby it. Thus Crowther, more than any other scholar, spotlighted that issue which becamea central preoccupation of the AASW and which is a central concern of this paper:the social responsibility of science, and the relationship between science and the state.

Like its overseas counterparts, the AASW emphasised the widest possiblepromotion, application and sharing of scientific knowledge for the benefit ofsociety.12 This emphasis was made explicit in its 25 aims. With the onset of WorldWar II, and the consequent pivotal role of science to the overall war effort, theAASW soon acquired a respectable public face, acknowledged by both the scientificcommunity and the federal government. As its Bulletin noted in December 1941:‘Science plays a vital part in modern war, and … scientific research is a nationalresource that is being recognised to an increasing extent’.13 It became highly activein a variety of fields, from the development of anti-malarial drugs to air raidprecautions to its contribution in overcoming shortages of raw materials.14

One of its members, Eric Ashby, a Professor of Botany at the University ofSydney (1938-46), embodied the AASW quest for the ‘scientist as citizen’: heconducted a federal government enquiry into the enlistment of scientists’ resourcesin wartime, established and directed the Scientific Liaison Bureau, and played acrucial intermediary role between the Drugs Subcommittee of the AASW and theDefence Department’s Medical Equipment Control Committee. In 1944 he was

117‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s

appointed by the Curtin government to the Australian Legation in Moscow to studySoviet science.15

Thus, in wartime the AASW commanded respectability and the authority ofscientists was clearly recognised. Scientists had every reason to believe they wouldbe influential in the shaping of a postwar order. Within a few years, however, theAASW was a pariah, and its members politically impotent. This paper is, in part, anexploration of why this occurred.

Initially, the AASW was concerned with protecting and advancing theconditions of employment for scientists in Australia. It sought to become, in effect,a trade union for scientists and, accordingly, lodged an application in May 1942 tobe registered as an Organisation of Employees with the Arbitration Court.16 Theapplication was gazetted in June 1943, and those with objections instructed to lodgenotification with the court. Five objections were received, all relating to theoverlapping of the aims of AASW with similar organisations.

Preferring to negotiate out of court, the AASW opened discussions with otherorganisations, particularly the Federated Scientific Employees’ Association (FSEA).

Professor Eric Ashby embodied the quest for the ‘scientist as citizen’ and urgedcloser liaison between scientists and government during wartime.

(Source: Australian War Memorial collection/082272)


The AASW and FSEA, sharing similar aims, formed a joint committee that decidedto found a new organisation, the Federation of Scientific and Technical Workers(FSTW). The FSEA then dissolved, while the AASW withdrew its application forregistration. The AASW would continue independently of the FSTW, with scientistsable to become members of the new organisation.17 This distinction is important, asthe AASW did not act as a trade union from 1943 onwards. It devoted itself to itsother activities, such as war work, the promotion of science and – significantly – awidening of the understanding of the social relations of science.

After its formation on 16 September 1943, the FSTW duly lodged an applicationto the Arbitration Court. However, its registration was rejected in 1944 because itinadequately defined the industry that it claimed to represent. An appeal in 1945against this decision was also rejected and it was not until September 1946 that itfinally became a federally registered union.18 The FSTW could now fulfil its ambitionof being ‘a registered body to represent all scientific and technical workers’.19

This development enabled the AASW to focus on the broader ethical andpolitical implications of science. In a keynote address to the AASW conference on13 May 1944, Sir David Rivett, chief executive officer of the Council for Scientificand Industrial Research (CSIR), delineated what he viewed as the AASW’s loftyrole and heavy responsibility:

I seem to find in the AASW something more than just a desire for another union toorganise meetings, raise status and salary and attend to all the other desirable factorsof professional scientific life. I believe there is a feeling abroad, especially among theyounger men and women, that, in this world of chaos and of frustration, ofdisappointment and of so much utterly unnecessary human suffering, people fired bythe scientific spirit, aware of the past accomplishments of free, enquiring minds, andskilled in the techniques which will lead on and on to still greater heights of humanknowledge, carry a load of responsibility towards their fellows which cannot bedescribed as other than grave.20

Rivett, who had ‘watched with interest and sympathy’ the recent growth of theAASW, then discussed the key questions of the application and control of science.While he considered repugnant the application of science to the pursuit of death anddestruction, he believed that the biggest problem facing scientists was not the effectof ‘science on society’, but rather ‘society on science’. His discussion of the future– and this is more than a year before the end of hostilities – was a prescientprediction of the problems of the postwar period:

If I am not mistaken, there is a fight ahead in Australia (and not only in Australia) tokeep Science as the pioneer, the discoverer, the leader, and not just the patronisedservant called in at times of distress and low dividends to act as the clever artisan tokeep the ship of Industry in motion (or to keep the dogs of war supplied).21

‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s 119

Rivett referred to scientific knowledge, not for knowledge’s sake but forhumanity’s sake, when pursuing what he termed must be the ‘upward route’. Theprerequisite was an ability to conduct scientific research autonomously and without‘planning’, for which he expressed distaste. With the foundation of the FSTW,Rivett’s assertion that the AASW was more than ‘another union’ was entirelycorrect. Indeed, given that the FSTW assumed responsibility for problems of wagesand employment conditions, the AASW could now devote itself entirely to morehigh-minded questions concerning the roles and responsibilities of science.

Despite Rivett’s dislike of the term, planning was a central theme thatconfronted scientists grappling with concepts of social responsibility. Thisengagement stretched back to at least 1931, when the Second International Congressof the History of Science, held in London and attended by eight Soviet scientists,had several effects. The Soviet delegation, led by Nikolai Bukharin, provided theimpetus for debate on the social relations of science, and extolled the virtues of

‘Not just the patronised servant’ … chief executive officer of the CSIR (later CSIRO), DavidRivett, left, was a strong advocate of independence for scientists. Here he is seen with Liberal

minister Richard Casey, CSIRO chairman Ian Clunies Ross and CSIRO scientist Walter MoritzBoas. (Photo published with permission of CSIRO.)


Soviet planning. One of the papers in particular, Boris Hessen’s ‘The Social andEconomic Roots of Newton’s Principia’, was extremely well regarded andsupported notions of the impact of social conditions on science.22 The delegation’svisit proved an inspiration to politically committed scientists, such as J.D. Bernal,who asked whether it was ‘better to be intellectually free but socially totallyineffective or to become a component part of a system where knowledge and actionare joined for one social purpose?’23

The concept of planning had obvious immediate advantages in the wartimeenvironment; indeed it reached its apotheosis in the Los Alamos desert in the formof the Manhattan Project. The ASW held a conference on the ‘Planning of Science’in 1943, with a report reproduced in the Bulletin by the AASW.24 In the wake of theongoing debate overseas, the AASW held its own conference in May 1944. TheBulletin suggested that those opposed to planning constituted only a ‘vocal andlong-winded minority’.25 Planning was a fraught area for left-wing scientists. Manybelieved, as Bernal did, that the Soviet Union was the exemplar of the coordinationof science for social good. Stalin’s successive five-year plans were accompanied bysteep increases in expenditure on scientific manpower and research institutes. Whenscientists railed against planning in Western democracies in the postwar years, it waslargely because of the ends to which science was being directed. It was notcoordination and planning they feared, but fear of scientists becoming the‘patronised servants’ of which Rivett spoke.

The issue of social responsibility of scientists had long been considered by theAASW and its overseas counterparts. Ken Otway, who joined the University ofMelbourne’s Chemistry School in 1943 and was a frequent contributor to theBulletin, outlined two schools of thought. He considered the older idea that ‘scienceis a thing unto itself’, and therefore unconcerned with social issues. This view wasnot one to which he subscribed. Instead, he favoured ‘the newer, diametricallyopposite idea which states that in order to reach the maximum degree of fulfilmentscience must be related directly to society, not only by the social student, but mostof all by the scientist himself’.26 Otway’s position typified the increasingly popularperspective of the politically engaged Australian scientist.

During the war years such scientists increasingly took it upon themselves toapply scientific method and principles not just to the problems of society, but alsoto society itself. Many Bulletin issues were concerned with how society should beorganised after hostilities ceased. In January 1941, Professor Frank Goldby, amedical scientist, addressed a meeting at the University of Adelaide, in which heclaimed that ‘the social organisation of civilised communities’ on the basis of politicsor religion had failed. He argued that alternatives were needed, and that there was‘reason to expect that the problems could be solved by scientific method’. 27

A Bulletin supplement considered that scientific growth throughout history had


been ‘broadly governed by urgent human needs of the time’. In a tumultuous timewhere competing political systems – fascism, communism, and democracy – hadplunged the world into war, the organisation of society appeared to be an urgenthuman need.28 The Bulletin approvingly quoted Sir Richard Gregory, who declaredthat scientists had a ‘duty to assist in the establishment of a rational and harmoniousworld order’.29 Wartime debates in the pages of Bulletin discussed alternatives asdiverse as a return to London’s guild system of the Middle Ages, a ‘ManagerialRevolution’ which borrowed aspects of fascism, and the Soviet model, which waslauded as ‘a system which in many respects leaves ours far behind’.30

Dr Arthur Wade exemplified the scientific approach to social organisation byarguing that, as scientists, systems such as fascism, national socialism andcommunism could not be rejected without proper scrutiny. He also disagreed withthe assertion of the opposition leader, Robert Menzies, that ‘our present system ofgovernment’ was ‘the best that human ingenuity can devise’. Instead, Wadecontended ‘the science of government is not the only science which has reachedfinality’.31 Others argued for democracy as the only political system that had thecapacity able to ensure freedom from state interference in the pursuit of science.32

Freedom in science was inextricably linked to the internationalisation ofscience. The draft constitution of the AASW, published in October 1939,emphasised the transfer of both scientific personnel and information betweennations. From its inception, the AASW looked to its parent organisation in GreatBritain. It frequently published ASW material, commented on ASW proceedings,and compared ASW annual membership figures with its own. This reflected itsgenesis as a British offshoot.

However, the international focus was not limited to Great Britain. Messages ofsupport were sent to the American Association of Scientific Workers (AASW) andthe American Association for the Advancement of Science following theengagement of the United States in the war.33 After the Soviet Union entered the war,the AASW enthusiastically embraced the prospect of scientific interchange with thisnew wartime ally. The Victorian, NSW and South Australian divisions of the AASWsent telegrams of support to the Academy of Sciences in the USSR, pledging theirfullest support in the mutual military struggle against Hitler. Their message was readon Moscow radio and a reply received.34 The NSW Division of the AASW went sofar as to affiliate with the newly formed NSW Aid Russia Committee.35 The Bulletinpublished contributions from Soviet scientists in particular, and a May 1942conference was themed ‘Science in the USSR’.36 The AASW also prepared apamphlet, Science in the USSR, on behalf of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society,with a foreword by Rivett.37

In August the Victorian Division considered a cable from the Soviet Academyof Sciences requesting scientific information; it decided to supply the requested


material and recommend to the prime minister an exchange of ambassadors in orderto more easily facilitate scientific information.38 Such support of the USSRcontinued throughout the war, with the Victorian division organising part of aNovember 1943 ‘Congress of Friendship with Russia’.39 Such expressions ofsupport for the Soviet Union, it must be emphasised, were congruent with thegenerally favourable community attitudes, then, towards Russia. Soon, the AASWwould be haunted by such sympathy.

Before the war’s end, the AASW also supported calls for internationalcooperation of scientists in the new postwar world order. Dr Joseph Needham, avisiting scientist from Cambridge, gave the Bulletin an interview in which headvocated the creation of a United Nations organisation to promote theinternationalisation of science.40 In June 1945, the Bulletin reported on an ASWconference held in February that had advocated the ‘fullest interchange of scientificand technical knowledge ... between scientists in Great Britain and the Dominions,USSR, France and USA’.41 The detonation of the atomic bomb in August 1945would add both gravity and urgency to the task of establishing effectiveinternational scientific collaboration and control and, as we shall see, raise thespectre of secrecy in science.

By the end of the war, the ongoing, if not expanding, influence and legitimacyof the AASW seemed guaranteed. It had clear objectives, a highly respectablewartime record of service to Australia, and its members were entrusted withadvising government departments. Like its parent organisation in Great Britain andits sister organisation in the United States, as well as the American Federation ofAtomic Scientists, the AASW was both sanguine about the potentialities of theapplication of science and concerned about the unfettered development of thatscientific breakthrough – atomic power.

Emboldened, perhaps, by the resounding success of the series of conferences inevery state in mid-1944 on the ‘Planning of Science’ – in Melbourne alone morethan 1000 attended42 – the AASW planned a major public conference in 1946 on‘Atomic Power and the International Co-operation of Scientists’. It had the blessingof Mark Oliphant who, until April 1945, was closely involved with the ManhattanProject. It was to be held at the University of Sydney from 12-14 April. Thetwinning of these two issues would soon become explosive: to those concerned withnational security it meant, in essence, sharing the most prized secrets with anadversary. It became a short step to allegations of disloyalty and subversion, and thiswas to prove the undoing of the AASW.

The case that best captures the concerns of this paper – social responsibility,political engagement of scientists, internationalism, and secrecy and security – cameearly. It began in 1943 and it involved espionage. It triggered a chain of events thatsignificantly escalated Cold War tensions and cast a dark shadow of suspicion over


the AASW. A member of the British Association of Scientific Workers, the physicistDr Allan Nunn May, was employed at the Chalk River laboratory, an annex of theManhattan Project, near Montreal, Canada. There, he was recruited by Sovietmilitary intelligence. Under the code name ‘ALEK’ he supplied the Soviets with arange of atomic information including details about the Trinity and Hiroshimabombs, the Alamogordo bomb tests and outputs of plants. On 9 July 1945, hesupplied microscopic samples – of limited value – of uranium isotopes U233 andU235.

The revelations of Igor Gouzenko, a KGB officer stationed in Ottawa, whodefected in 1945, led directly to Nunn May. Because British intelligence hoped thatfurther insight into Soviet penetration of the Allied atomic bomb program could begleaned, and because Gouzenko’s defection was still secret, Nunn May waspermitted to return to London in September 1945. He was arrested in March 1946and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. After a strong plea for mitigationfrom his defence counsel on the grounds that the Soviet Union was then an ally andthat the information he passed was of a general nature of restricted use to theSoviets, Nunn May was sentenced in May 1946 to 10 years imprisonment. Heinsisted he was simply sharing scientific knowledge with an ally in order tocontribute to the safety of mankind.43 Given the death sentence imposed upon Juliusand Ethel Rosenberg in 1951, this was relatively lenient. But at the time, it wasconsidered draconian by members of the AASW.

On 12 May 1946, the executive committee of the AASW protested ‘strongly’against the sentence, demanded its ‘drastic reduction’, and argued, incorrectly, that‘Dr May had no connection whatever with problems of the construction of theatomic bomb’ and therefore ‘could not have been able to reveal any information onthe “know-how” of atomic bomb manufacture’. It upheld that position, whichbecame a mantra for left-leaning scientists’ associations throughout the Westernworld in this immediate postwar period: ‘The need to achieve freedom for the fullestdiscussion and interchange of scientific knowledge knowing that such freedom isessential both for scientific progress and for international co-operation.’44

A special meeting of 130 scientists organised by the NSW branch of the AASWon 12 June similarly invoked ‘international freedom of science’ as the basis fordemanding Nunn May’s release.45 The meeting explained away his espionage byreferring to the ‘positive contribution’ his scientific work had made to winning thewar. But, in a harbinger of an imminent pattern, the sanitised report of this meetingexcluded the fact that the original guest speaker, British nuclear physicist Dr W.D.Allen, who had worked at Los Alamos and was visiting Sydney, ‘at the last minutegot cold feet and backed out’.46 The meeting, originally scheduled for 29 May, waspostponed, and all posters and placards were destroyed.

Also unknown to Bulletin readers was the presence of a security officer at this


meeting. That officer, from the Commonwealth Investigation Branch (CIS) – theforerunner of the Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIO), created in March1949 – reported on the demographic composition of the audience (many from ‘thestudent class’ and an equal gender distribution), identity of the speakers and extractsfrom their speeches. Dr Allen’s replacement, J.P. Callaghan of the Royal NorthShore Hospital, was of particular interest. While he did not ‘utter the termCommunism’, the theme of his address was allegedly pro-Soviet. He was quoted assaying, for example, that ‘exclusion of the Soviet Union from the atomic secrets wasnot in the best interests of the world’ and that the trial of Nunn May was a ‘spy scare’that amounted to ‘a terrific blast of propaganda’ against the Soviet Union.47

The CIS report omitted that the resolution demanding Nunn May’s release was‘bitterly opposed’ by a small section of the audience; this was noted instead byTribune, the Communist Party newspaper.48 The Sydney Morning Herald, however,provided more insight into this opposition. It was not, as might be assumed,opposition from strident anti-communists, although, as we shall see, this hadoccurred and would continue in the future. The critics of the resolution opposed theposition of the AASW and the role it attempted to assume.

The American-born Dr R. K. Murphy, a charismatic and influential chemicalengineer,49 attacked both the resolution and the conference itself. He claimed the‘meeting was the most unscientific one he had attended’ and believed the issuesdiscussed were instead ‘political and philosophical’, and ‘based on facts which hadnot been presented’. He contended that ‘scientists had got a little bit hysterical andlost their sense of balance’.50 Dr J.L. Pawsey, a radiophysicist and radio astronomerwith the CSIR, believed the resolution would split the AASW and ‘give it areputation for irresponsibility’.51 The earlier, central concern of social responsibilityof science was being lost. While other scientists may have held similar reservationsabout the apparent new direction of the AASW, by far the more vocal criticism ofthe organisation would come from anti-communists who saw the AASW as aninternal threat to national security.

The Nunn May case, then, proved to be the nemesis of the AASW. Its supportfor the British physicist made it especially vulnerable to claims of communistinfluence. As the Australian nuclear physicist, Mark Oliphant (then at Harwell,Britain’s atomic establishment), remarked in 1948, ‘Since the Nunn May case noscientist is above suspicion’.52 Such fears were intensified by the arrest of thenational chairman of the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers, Dr RaymondBoyer. The arrests, and subsequent defence by the AASW, of those scientistsimplicated in the Gouzenko affair, led anti-communists in Australia to accuse theAASW of being both infiltrated by communists and engaged in treasonousactivities. The most vocal of these accusers was the virulent red-baiter and futureLiberal Party member for the federal seat of Mackellar, W.C. Wentworth.


William Charles Wentworth, the scion of one of Australia’s oldest establishmentfamilies, had taken up the crusade against communism very early in the Cold Warperiod. His apocalyptic views on defence – he had predicted a Japanese invasion ofAustralia in 193953 – had morphed into a strident anti-communism as he began to seecommunists as ‘the main enemy’ in the postwar world.54 Even before the end ofWorld War II, however, Wentworth had shown his antagonism toward the AASW byattempting to disrupt the 1944 Planning Conference.55 In pursuing communists thisearly, Wentworth was certainly an exception, but his actions foreshadowed thecoming Cold War environment, particularly as it impinged on scientists.

Determined to continue the ‘exposure’ of communism in the scientificcommunity, he also attended the April 1946 conference on ‘Atomic Power and theInternational Co-operation of Scientists’. The conference passed several resolutionsincluding one, a precursor to the AASW executive committee protest of 12 May, thatviewed ‘with great concern the recent arrests of Dr Nunn May in Great Britain andof Dr Raymond Boyer and others in Canada’ seeing a ‘direct threat to freedom ofscientific discussion’.56 According to a newspaper report, Wentworth, in opposingthe motion, ‘said that he was amazed that the conference, reputedly a meeting ofloyal citizens, should carry a motion of protest against the arrest of men who wereapparently Communist quislings’.57

Another motion urged the ‘immediate removal of all restrictions on thepublication of scientific information regardless of the application or potentialapplication to military use’.58 This was more than Wentworth could countenance.Opposing it, Wentworth spoke on the need to reform the United Nations beforecountries such as the Soviet Union devised the means of constructing the atombomb.59 Wentworth then launched into an extraordinary attack on the AASW itself,claiming it ‘has the Communists with it just as much as they are with its sister traitororganisation in Canada and this conference is stiff with Communists’.60 Hecontended that the Associations of Scientific Workers overseas were hosts for ‘theactivities of a treasonable Communistic nucleus’ and suggested that the Australianorganisation was headed the same way.

Wentworth publicly criticised both the AASW and the FSTW, alleging they hadpenetrated the CSIR and that the organiser of this ‘treasonable conspiracy’ was DrR.E.B. Makinson, a lecturer in physics at Sydney University. Wentworth would laterrefer to Makinson as an ‘embryo Dr Fuchs’, a reference to atomic spy Klaus Fuchs,convicted of espionage in 1950.61 Despite criticism in some quarters – BrianFitzpatrick later labelled Wentworth the ‘Mad Mullah from Mackellar’ – he was notalone in these attacks.62 His arguments were taken up in parliament by the CountryParty member for New England, Joseph Abbott, a member of an extra-parliamentaryanti-communist propaganda and research group set up by Wentworth called thePolitical Research Society.63 He was joined in this offensive against the AASW by


his party’s leader, Arthur Fadden, the Liberal Party’s Eric Harrison and, later, by themaverick MHR for Reid and former New South Wales premier, Jack Lang. Urgingparliament to investigate communist associations within the AASW and CSIR, on 7March 1947 Abbott ‘named’ six members of the AASW as security risks.64

With the development of the Cold War, to be a scientist and a communist, orsuspected communist, was lethal. The AASW was a broadly based organisation thatincluded communists. During the war years, when the Soviet Union was an ally, thiswas acceptable. But circumstances were swiftly changing. The politicalenvironment had altered; the views of the AASW had not. Even if most members ofthe AASW remained consistent in their long-held positions, especially regarding thesocial responsibilities of scientists, Cold War anti-communism was in theascendancy and the room for manoeuvre of politically engaged scientists drasticallynarrowed. To speak out, especially with a radical voice, about ‘political’ issues, suchas secrecy in science or the development of atomic power, was to attract ‘interest’from the security services.

Unlike the espionage activity of Allan Nunn May or Raymond Boyer, noevidence exists of any member of the AASW being implicated in spying, no secretinformation from CSIR was ever disclosed, and Makinson was certainly no ‘embryoFuchs’. AASW members, such as Rivett, saw the role of science not an instrumentof Cold War politics but as stimulating positive social change. Yet their advocacy ofopenness in scientific inquiry and their calls to lift the veil of secrecy shroudingscientific research, once legitimate, were now anathema. Potentially, scientists weresuspect: they held the secrets that kept the West safe but they could surrender thesesecrets to Cold War enemies. Thus, science and secrecy became synonymous duringthe Cold War. Choices about who could be trusted were choices about who could doscience and what kind of science they would do; about who conformed and who wasto be marginalised. Stripped of its hyperbole, Wentworth’s statement in 1948 echoedthe concerns of a great many politicians on both sides of the government benches:

The activities of the AASW, with its pro-Soviet orientation, reach deeply into theCSIR, a body which is closely concerned with our defence secrets. In fact some of themost vital Australian scientific posts are controlled by the CSIR, which is itself underMinisterial control; and it is pretty evident that Communists are well infiltrated intoit. Surely the Security Service knows what is going on – if not, a thoroughinvestigation into Communist influence in the CSIR is long overdue.65

In June 1948 newspaper reports, undoubtedly read by increasingly anxiousAASW members, appeared alleging that Great Britain was urging greater secrecyfor Australia’s scientific pursuits, chiefly the long-range weapons program based atWoomera, and that the CSIR was ‘frozen out’ of top secret research.66 A month later,in July 1948, reports surfaced that the United States refused to share classified


scientific information with Britain unless given undertakings that such informationwould not be transmitted to Australia, where security was ‘lax’.67 The issue becamea front-page story for metropolitan newspapers. Fuelling allegations of laxity werethe long-held sentiments expressed by the CSIR chairman, Sir David Rivett, in1948: ‘As to all this business about classified information, security, secrecy and therest of it I just loathe it ... I have the utmost distrust of secrecy practices particularlywhen they are influenced by military people.’68

However, the ‘military people’ triumphed: in March 1949, the Science andIndustry Research Act was passed, the CSIR was restructured, and the new CSIROemployees were subjected to strict secrecy obligations equivalent to the BritishOfficial Secrets Act.69 By the time Rivett retired from the CSIRO in April 1949 hisfears in 1944 of science becoming a ‘patronised servant’ of the state had beenrealised.70

Three months later, on 31 July 1949, the AASW was formally dissolved.Primarily, it was a casualty of the Cold War. Its continued advocacy of closerrelations between scientists and society, and its repudiation of secrecy in the atomicage, could not co-exist with the changing Cold War imperatives. They seemedunable and unwilling to adapt or conform to the changes in society during the earlyCold War period. It became subject to what Rivett described as the effect of ‘societyon science’. When the AASW was calling for more freedom and openness inscientific pursuits, the governments of the West were intent on increasing secrecyand controls. The association of communism with the AASW meant that the debatebetween freedom and secrecy was defined along Cold War lines. The advocates ofopenness and international cooperation were seen as linked to internationalcommunism and thus invested with sinister motives.

Because scientists were in the frontline of debates about security and secrecy,the Cold War came early for members of the AASW. Attacks on its the loyalty of theAASW that followed the Nunn May espionage case were highly damaging. By1947, membership had rapidly declined, with fewer than a quarter of members thatthe association enjoyed at its peak. A 1948 CIS report noted ‘a rapid decline ininterest on the part of members generally and, in consequence, activity on the partof the organisation’.71 The Bulletin of March-April 1948, which made no mention ofthe Cold War pressures, provided a self-deluding but unconvincing explanation forthe organisation’s demise when it claimed that ‘the interests of the majority ofAASW members have been drawn to organisations such as the FSTW’.72 Thosemembers, instead, had deserted the firing line for the safer territory of politicalneutrality. It was easier to keep one’s head down.

The case of the AASW is significant on several levels. It allows a glimpse intothe prevailing scientific mood of the 1940s, which sought to understand therelationship of science to society rather than accepting the ‘ivory tower’ analogy at


face value. Scientists believed that existing methods of governance had provedthemselves inadequate, and that they would play a leading role in reshaping thepostwar world based on scientific principles of sharing and cooperation. Theyenvisaged science being used to address social issues – rather than providing societywith the means to destroy itself. While the scientists of the AASW hoped tochampion the positive effects science could have on society, their experiencereflected the opposite.

The aims of the AASW were largely consistent throughout its brief existence.They sought to understand the social relations of science, advocate planning, preachinternational collaboration and remove secrecy. It was society, not the AASW, whichchanged. Atomic development meant that, for governments, secrecy was vital tonational security, while deteriorating relations with the Soviet Union led tosuspicion of communists on the home front. Scientists’ ideas of social responsibilitywere thereby sidelined. Rather than defining the relationship between science andsociety, they came to be defined by it in ways they were unwilling to accept, butpowerless to prevent.

College of Arts, Victoria University

Notes1 Simultaneous developments were also occurring within the Soviet Union; see Ethan Pollock,Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2006, pp 72-103.2 Stewart Cockburn and David Ellyard, Oliphant: The Life and Times of Sir Mark Oliphant,Adelaide, Axiom Books, 1981, chapter 14; Marjory Collard O’Dea, Ian Clunies Ross: ABiography, Melbourne, Hyland House, 1997, chapter 16; L.R. Humphreys, Clunies Ross:Australian Visionary, Melbourne, MUP/Miegunyah Press, 1998, chapter 6. The Cold Warinfluences are overlooked in Ed Muirhead, Leslie Martin at Melbourne: Profile of a PhysicsDepartment (1945-1959), Melbourne, University of Melbourne, 1998 and in the numerousAustralian Academy of Science biographical memoirs prepared by the Australian ScienceArchives Project.3 C.B. Schedvin, Shaping Science and Industry: A history of Australia’s Council for Scientificand Industrial Research, 1926-49, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987, chapter 8; Sir Frederick White,‘CSIR to CSIRO - the events of 1948-1949’, Public Administration, vol 34, no 4, December1975, pp 281-93.4 Peter Morton, Fire Across the Desert: Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946-1980, Canberra, AGPS, 1989, pp 102-4; Frank Cain, ‘An aspect of postwar relations with theUnited Kingdom and the Unites States: missiles, spies and disharmony’, Australian HistoricalStudies, vol 23, no 92, April 1989, pp 193-4; Ann Moyal, ‘Scientific and technological change,1939-1988’, Australia 1939-1988 A Bicentennial History Bulletin, no 3, May 1981, pp 58-67;Tim Sherratt, ‘“A political inconvenience”: Australian scientists at the British Atomic WeaponsTests’, Historical Records of Australian Science, vol 6, no 2, 1985. In contrast to the postwarperiod there is a fuller literature on Australian science during World War II; see, for example,R.W. Home, ‘Science on Service, 1939-1945’, in R.W. Home (ed), Australian Science in the


Making, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1988, chapter 10; Roy M. MacLeod (ed), Scienceand the Pacific War: Science and Survival in the Pacific, 1939-1945, London, Kluwer, 2000.5 Jean Moran, ‘Scientists in the political and public arena: a social-intellectual history of theAustralian Association of Scientific Workers, 1939-49’, unpublished M.Phil, Griffith University,1983, chapter 7. An abbreviated version can be found in Jean Buckley-Moran, ‘AustralianScientists and the Cold War’, in Brian Martin et al (eds), Intellectual Suppression: Australiancase studies, analysis and responses, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1986.6 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American thought and culture at the dawn of the atomicage, New York, Pantheon, 1985, chapter 4; Donald A. Strickland, Scientists in Politics: TheAtomic Scientists Movement, 1945-47, Indianapolis, Purdue University Studies, 1968; AliceKimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America, 1945-47, Chicago,Chicago University Press, 1965.7 The best studies are: Julian M. Pleasants, ‘A Question of Loyalty: Frank Porter Graham and theAtomic Energy Commission’, North Carolina Historical Review, vol 69, 1992, pp 414-37;Jessica Wang, ‘Science, Security and the Cold War: The Case of E.U. Condon’, Isis, vol 83, 1992,pp 238-69; Martin D. Kamen, Radiant Science, Dark Politics: A Memoir of the Nuclear Age,Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, chapters 12-13. There is a vast literature on theOppenheimer case, which is discussed, most recently and superbly, in Ray Monk, Inside TheCentre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jonathan Cape, London, 2012, and Kai Bird andMartin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2005.8 The British Association of Scientific Workers is distinct from the British Association for theAdvancement of Science, founded in 1831, commonly known as the British Association and nowas the British Science Association.9 The NUSW became the ASW in 1927. For consistency, subsequent references will use the latername to refer to either organisation.10 G.W. Leeper, ‘The Social Relations of Science’, Bulletin of the Australian Association forScientific Workers (hereafter Bulletin), no 50, June 1944, p 2. All copies of the Bulletin, from itsfirst issue in January 1940 to its final issue in 1948 (no 74, April-May) have been generouslydonated by Les Dalton, secretary of the Victorian division of the AASW from 1947 to 1949.11 J.G. Crowther, The Social Relations of Science, Macmillan, London, 1941; William McGucken,‘The Social Relations of Science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1931-1946’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol 123, no 4, August 1979, p 237.12 By April 1945 associations of scientific workers with similar aims existed in Britain, theUnited States, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand; see Bulletin, no 60, April 1945, p 4.13 ‘Science and the Government’, Bulletin, no 22, December 1941, p 1.14 See, for example, Annual Report, NSW Division, AASW, 1942, pp 1-4, Noel Butlin ArchivesCentre, ANU (hereafter NBAC), E101A/16. 15 See Phillip Deery, ‘Eric Ashby: A Scientist in Russia’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick and CarolynRasmussen (eds), Political Tourists: Australian Travellers to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2008, p 262.16 ‘Australian Association of Scientific Workers and Federation of Scientific and TechnicalWorkers’, ASIO Report, 3 November 1952, A6122, 2019.17 Ibid.18 ‘Australian Association of Scientific Workers and Federation of Scientific and TechnicalWorkers’, CIS report, 5 June 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018; Bruce A. Smith, ‘Federation of Scientific and Technical Workers (1946-1971)’, Australian Trade Union Archives,


http://www.atua.org.au/biogs/ALE0521b.htm, accessed 28 February 2013.19 ‘What is the FSTW?’, NBAC, E101B/14.20 ‘An Hour of Stocktaking’, 13 May 1944, in Sir David Rivett papers, Basser Library,Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, MS 083, 83/13.21 Ibid.22 William McGucken, Scientists, Society and State: The Social Relations Movement in GreatBritain 1931-1947, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1984, p 73; Crowther, The SocialRelations of Science, pp 614-16.23 Cited in McGucken, Scientists, Society and State, p 73.24 ‘Planning of Science’, Bulletin, no 41, July 1943, pp 1-2. John Desmond Bernal was then amember of the Communist Party of Great Britain; in 1939 he published the landmark The SocialFunction of Science, which argued, inter alia, that scientists must be involved in far more thanthe individual pursuit of abstract knowledge.25 ‘Sidelights on the Sydney Conference’, Bulletin, no 50, June 1944, p 2.26 ‘Science and the New Order’, Bulletin, no 35, January 1943, p 3.27 ‘Social Functions of Science’, Bulletin, no 11, January 1941, p 1.28 ‘Why Study the History of Science?’, Bulletin supplement, no 48, April 1944. 29 ‘Science and Society’, Bulletin, no 33, November 1942, p 2.30 Arthur Wade, ‘Alternative System for Democracy’, Bulletin, no 42, August 1943, p 3. See also‘Book Review’, Bulletin, no 58, February 1945, p 3; K.H. Otway, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Bulletin,no 44, October-November 1943, p 4; L. Hart, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Bulletin, no 45, December-January 1944, p 4.31 Arthur Wade, ‘Alternative System for Democracy’, Bulletin, no 42, August 1943, p 3.32 Moran, ‘Scientists in the political and public arena’, p 163.33 ‘Letter to American Scientists’, Bulletin, no 23, January 1942, p 4.34 ‘Support to Scientists in the USSR’, Bulletin, no 20, October 1941, p 4.35 ‘NSW Division’, Bulletin, no 22, December 1941, p 4.36 G.K. Batchelor (honorary secretary of Victorian Division of AASW), Summary of Minutes ofthe Australian Association of Scientific Workers, 30 April 1942.37 Science in the USSR, Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, Melbourne, 1942.38 Minutes, AASW (Victorian Division), 24 August 1942.39 ‘Science and Engineering Commission of the Australian Congress of Friendship with Russia’,Bulletin, no 46, February 1944, p 4.40 ‘International Collaboration in Science’, Bulletin, no 61, May 1945, p 2.41 ‘Science in Peace’, Bulletin, no 62, June 1945, p 1.42 See the front pages of successive issues of the Bulletin, June-October; for its British origins,see ‘Planning of Science’, NBAC, E101B/16/3.43 See ‘Russia’s Fifth Column in Canada’, American Affairs, vol 8, no 4, October 1946, pp 231-37; Amy Knight, How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies,McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2005, pp 75-81 (on Nunn May); Reg Whitaker & Gary Marcuse,Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Security State, 1945-1957, University of TorontoPress, Toronto, 1994, chapters 2-3.44 ‘Statement on Dr Nunn May’, Bulletin, no 68, June 1946, p 1.45 Ibid. See also ‘Atomic Spy Scare’, Bulletin, no 67, April-May 1946, p 1.46 Private correspondence, L. Hibbard (federal secretary, AASW) to R.C. Traill, 28 June 1946,NBAC, E101B/17. According to one report, Allen feared he might breach the UK Official SecretsAct and suffer ‘the same fate’ as Nunn May, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 15 June 1946.


47 Report to deputy director, Commonwealth Investigation Branch (hereafter CIB), NSW, No38396Z, 13 June 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018. As the CIS director had already been informed,Callaghan was ‘head of the Science Bureau’ of the Communist Party, memo, deputy director,Sydney, to director, Canberra, 12 June 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018.48 Tribune, 14 June 1946, p 3.49 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murphy-robert-kenneth-11206, accessed 11 February 2013.50 ‘Nunn May Supported’, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 13 June 1946, p 4.51 SMH, 13 June 1946, p 4.52 Cited in Cockburn and Ellyard, Oliphant, p 187.53 W.C. Wentworth, Demand for Defence: Being a Plan to Keep Australia White and Free, W.C.Wentworth, Sydney, 1939.54 For Wentworth’s views on defence, see Lachlan Clohesy, ‘Australian Cold Warrior: The Anti-Communism of W.C. Wentworth’, PhD thesis, Victoria University (Melbourne), 2010, chapter 1.55 Buckley-Moran, ‘Australian Scientists’, p 14. The Bulletin was undoubtedly referring toWentworth when it reported that ‘several recalcitrant individuals’ had refused to allow motionsthat were not ‘devoid of political or social significance’, Bulletin, no 50, June 1944, p 2.56 ‘Public Conference on Atomic Power and the International Co-Operation of Scientists’,Bulletin, no 67, April-May 1946, p 7.57 SMH, 15 April 1946, p 4.58 ‘Public Conference on Atomic Power and the International Co-operation of Scientists’,Bulletin, no 67, April-May 1946, p 7.59 SMH, 15 April 1946, p 4.60 Ibid.61 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House, 5-6 June 1952, pp 1619-22.62 Brian Fitzpatrick and R.O. Chalmers, ‘Mischief-Making Mr Wentworth’s Slander onScience’, Australian News-Review, vol 2, no 15, August 1952.63 Articles of Association of the Political Research Society, Limited, 6 March 1945, in theRecords of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), 1943-1987, National Library of Australia, MS6590, Box 18. The IPA was actively anti-communist from 1944; see Warwick Eather and DrewCottle, ‘The Mobilisation of Capital behind “the Battle for Freedom”: the Sydney banks, theInstitute of Public Affairs (NSW) and opposition to the Australian Labor Party 1944-49’, LabourHistory, no 103, November 2012, pp 168-70, 173.64 They were Makinson, L. Hibbard, J. Callaghan, Sid Conway, A.M. Richardson and J. Henry.Excepting Henry, who was not in fact a member of the AASW, the CIS had named all of Abbott’stargets as suspected communists. Hibbard and Conway were reported as coming ‘under notice’in 1946, Secret Extract for HQ, CIS Deputy Director, 23 July 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018. Anearlier note refers to Conway as ‘believed to be a Party member’; CIS deputy director J.Galleghan to director, 12 June 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018. Makinson had been recorded by the CISas a speaker at Marx School in June 1945; NAA, A6119, 1219. He later admitted he was acommunist at a meeting where a CIS officer was present, Secret Memorandum to Attorney-General’s Department, 20 September 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018. A later CIS note lists him amongthree ‘known or suspected Communists’, CIS report on AASW, 8 May 1947, NAA, A6122, 2016.Another CIS report describes Richardson as ‘a suspected Communist previously referred to’, CISreport on AASW, 8 June 1948, NAA, A6122, 2016.65 SMH, 19 March 1948, p 2.66 SMH, 15 June 1948, p 5.67 SMH, 26 July 1948, p 1; Argus, 1 October 1948, p 1.


68 Cited in Margaret Gowing, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945-1952, Volume I: Policy Making, Macmillan, London, 1974, p 149. See also Rohan Rivett, DavidRivett: Fighter for Australian Science, Melbourne, [np], 1972, p 194.69 For a fuller discussion of the restructure of the CSIR, see Brad Collins, Fields of Discovery:Australia’s CSIRO, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2002, pp xiii-xvii.70 For the broader context of American and British defence and security concerns aboutAustralian scientists, the Woomera rocket range and the CSIR, see Phillip Deery, ‘Science,Security and the Cold War: An Australian Dimension’, War & Society, vol 17, no 1, 1999, pp 81-99, especially pp 88-92.71 ‘Australian Association of Scientific Workers’, CIS deputy director R. Williams to director,31 December 1946, NAA, A6122, 2018.72 ‘The Future of the AASW’, Bulletin, no 74, March-April 1948, pp 2-4.

‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s

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