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The Sydney Push was an intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Its politics were predominantly left-wing libertarianism. The Push operated in a pub culture and included university students, academics, manual workers, musicians, lawyers, criminals, journalists and . Rejection of conventional morality and authoritarianism was a common bond. Students and staff from Sydney University, mainly the Faculty of Arts, were prominent members. In the 1960s, students and staff from the University of New South Wales also became involved.
Well known associates of the Push include Richard Appleton, Jim Baker, Lex Banning, Eva Cox, Robyn Davidson, "Robyn Davidson, the 'Camel Lady'", Australian Museum Margaret Fink, John Flaus, Germaine Greer, Lynne Segal, George Molnar, Robert Hughes, Harry Hooton, Clive James, Barry Humphries, Sasha Soldatow,A 1970s associate, subject of David Marr's obituary " A spirit gone to another place" Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 2006 David Makinson, Jill "Blue" Neville, Paddy McGuinness, Frank Moorhouse, David Perry, Lillian Roxon and Darcy Waters. From 1961 to 1962, poet Les Murray resided in Brian Jenkins's Push householdAlexander Peter F. Les Murray: a Life in Progress, Oxford University Press, 2000 at Glen Street, Milsons Point, which became a mecca for associates visiting Sydney from Melbourne and other cities.
... George Orwell spins out to its last conclusion the illusion that the fate of freedom depends mainly on the colour of the ruling party. We, precisely because it presents its rebels as apolitical, as individualists if you wish, cuts through this falsehood. Zamyatin's superior social insight, although presented and presumably gained artistically and not by way of scientific analysis, consists first in his firm rejection of the rationality or finality of history and, second, in his recognition that anarchic protest against those in power, not the capture of power, is at the core of freedom.
Hiatt and Nestor Grivas's Helenic Herald published a collection of Sydney libertarian essays as The Sydney Line in 1963.
The Royal George was the headquarters of the Downtown Push, usually known as just the Push.... As well as the Libertarians and the aesthetes there were the small-time gamblers, traditional jazz fans and the homosexual radio repair men who had science fiction as a religion. The back room had tables and chairs. If you stuck your head through the door of the back room you came face to face with the Push. The noise, the smoke and the heterogeneity of physiognomy were too much to take in. It looked like a cartoon on which William Hogarth, Daumier and George Grosz had all worked simultaneously, fighting for supremacy.
Since the mid-1950s, before extended pub hours replaced 6 o'clock closing, Push night-life commonly consisted of a meal at an inexpensive restaurant such as the Athenian or Hellenic Club ("the Greeks") or La Veneziana ("the Italians") followed by parties held most nights of the week at private residences. These were very lively occasions with singing of folksongs and bawdy ditties such as "Professor John Glaister" and many others, often accompanied by transvestite piano player Herbert Dye. Accompaniments were also provided by accomplished guitarists and lutenists (Ian McDougall, John Earls, Terry Driscoll, Don Ayrton, Brian Mooney, John Roberts, Don Lee, Beth Schurr, Bill Berry, Marian Henderson and others).Turnbull, Malcolm J. " Key players on the Sydney coffee lounge scene", at warrenfahey.com.au Don Henderson, Making of a song-writer—interview Declan Affley and Martyn Wyndham-Read Martyn Wyndham-Read official site are three well-known artists who were influenced by their time in the Push.
Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be.
Nevertheless, Push associates regularly assisted in organising and turning out for street demonstrations, e.g., against South African apartheid and in support of victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre; against the initial refusal of immigration minister Alexander Downer, Sr. to grant political asylum to three Portuguese merchant seamen who jumped ship in Darwin; and against Australia's participation in the Vietnam War.
In line with the Libertarians' rejection of conventional political models, electoral activism was foreign to the Push, save to urge non-voting and informal voting. At the election after prime minister Harold Holt failed to return from a swim, artist and film-maker David Perry produced a highly acclaimed poster featuring "a continuum of pigs (inspired by Orwell's Animal Farm)" with the slogan "Whoever you vote for, a politician always gets in."Perry, David. "Memoirs of a Dedicated Amateur". Valentine Press, 2014, p. 50
The retired education professor Alan Barcan has published a personal account of his view of activism at Sydney University during the 1960s. Though he was not an eyewitness of Push life, he provides some relevant insights into how student life became infected by Push doctrines of freedom and rebellion, to a point at which the social movement was superseded and its leading personalities were dispersed or replaced with a new breed of social critics.Barcan, A Student activists at Sydney University 1960–1967, Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES), January 2007 As described by Barcan, this period saw the emergence of mainstream talents like poets Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann, journalists David Solomon, Mungo MacCallum (Jnr) and Laurie Oakes, Oz magazine satirists Richard Neville, Richard Walsh and Martin Sharp, and maverick writer Bob Ellis. These were people who did not actively embrace the Push life but were strongly influenced by it. Push personalities who emigrated to the United Kingdom included Clive James,who sailed on the Bretagne, New Year's Eve, 1961, as recorded in his Unreliable Memoirs (1980) p. 166 Paddy McGuinness, Chester (Philip Graham) and Ian Parker (pictured above) who returned to Sydney in the late 1970s and was knocked down and killed while drunk, in Dixon Street. Appleton stated that he had been with Parker at a Balmain pub on the morning preceding Parker's death. For some reason, a false account was promulgated that he died in a London street.e.g., Bob Gould My enemy is dead and I mourn him Statement at the funeral of P P McGuinness, February 2008. (Gould seems to have been misled into thinking Ian Parker was killed in London.) Paddy McGuinness returned to Australia in 1971, working as a film critic, Labor ministerial staffer, right-wing newspaper columnist and journal editor until his death in 2007. Folksinger John Earls went to Bolivia and former Tribune (Communist Party of Australia newspaper) cartoonist Harry Reade went to join Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba (and returned in 1971 at the same time as Paddy McGuinness). The disabled poet Lex Banning travelled to England and Greece from 1962 until 1964 but returned and died in Sydney in 1965. The folksinger Don Ayrton departed to settle at Kuranda in Queensland where he committed suicide in 1982. A tragedy occurred as Paddy McGuinness was departing for Italy by ship in May 1963. The farewelling crowd included a young Push lady, Janne (or Jan) Millar, who fell to the concrete dock floor from a height and suffered fatal head injuries. A number of other tragic deaths occurred in this decade, including some from substance abuse which was becoming a regular part of Sydney culture at the time.
Many young Push associates simply moved on to careers in the professions and academia. A reunion organised by André Frankovits at the Royal George/Slip Inn in 2000 attracted around 280. Another, at the Harold Park Hotel in February 2012,Personal communication from Andre Frankovits, 29 March 2014 drew nearly 200, including some who had travelled from Hong Kong, North Queensland and Perth to attend. Later annual re-unions have attracted around 50.
On the demise of the Push, Anne Coombs has stated: "... in 1964, the year the Beatles came and brought into the open that new phenomenon: 'youth culture'." Citing this, Alan Barcan added "In advocating free love and opposition to authority, the Push and the Libertarians anticipated the new post-1968 morality. But the adoption of many of their ideas by society undermined their ".
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