Riots (2025) is the new book by Sydney-based historian Fiona Skyring that exposes a fascinating and often hidden part of Anzac history: the extensive, Australia-wide rioting of returning soldiers.
In this interview, UWAP intern Jess Burns speaks to Fiona about why these riots occurred and why they’ve been hidden, as well as Fiona’s important work securing wins for First Nations peoples in stolen wage settlements.
Jess Burns: This history of riots is not a widely known aspect of our Anzac history. Why is that?
Fiona Skyring: Now that is a really good question and one that is difficult to answer. You can’t read newspapers from 1919 without coming across some reference to these riots, and it has certainly been published about in bits and pieces here and there, but there hasn't been anywhere near enough focus on these events as one would think is warranted.
At the time, these riots challenged the idea of a consensus about what Australia’s role in the war was and how returning soldiers were going to fit into nation-building when they got home. There are a whole lot of conflicts that I include in this book that were illustrated through the riots and through what soldiers said about why they were rioting. They were unsettling comments, and they didn't paint a picture of a unified society at the end of the war, which is certainly one of the things that I think is really missing in contemporary celebrations of the Anzac legend and Australia's role in the First World War.
There are a whole lot of aspects of Australian society at the time that are just completely removed. For instance, the depth of the opposition towards the war and to the prospect of conscription. There were around 40% of eligible Australian men who enlisted, which leaves 60% who didn't. There were varying degrees of opposition either to Australia's involvement in the war itself or to conscription, and the anti-war movement was by no means a fringe movement. It was a really central part of what was going on in Australia during the war.
As I say in the book, these angry and resentful returning soldiers were not part of the celebratory legend of Anzac – they weren't then, and they're not now. I think anything that points to these deep divisions between soldiers and civilian society is really unsettling for contemporary celebrations of Anzac, because we're all supposed to be in it together, and clearly, people weren’t. These are aspects of the response of returned soldiers at the end of the war that don’t fit with the consensus model.
Jess: How did this book come about?
Fiona: So it was actually my PhD thesis from 28 years ago, and I first started out doing a comparative study between returning soldier violence in the United States in 1919 and in Australia in 1919, because there were a lot of similarities in the way that returning soldiers in both countries targeted unionists, anti-war activists and socialist activists. However, once I started the research, I realised that for a comparative study, it was just way too big, so I decided to focus on the Australian story.
While there was a lot of research that already existed about the riots in Adelaide and Melbourne separately, and substantial work done on the Red Flag Riots in Brisbane in 1919, I realised that there was no overall study linking these riots as a national phenomenon. Also, there were several very serious riots that had never been researched in any depth. Each riot has its own origins and its own local context, but there were so many similarities with these riots across the entire country that I felt they needed to be addressed as a national story.
Jess: At the heart of many of the riots was the discordance between returning soldiers and civilian society. Why was there such a discordance?
Fiona: The discordance came from many different areas. Certainly, there was resentment coming from returning soldiers that they weren't getting fair and just recognition for their sacrifice, which was commented on by many soldiers themselves.
The discordance was also that these soldiers were returning to Australia in what was, at the time, intense class conflict. As I say in the book, there were more strike days in 1919 than have ever occurred before or since, and the conflict between labour and capital was open and intense, and there were many soldiers in these riots who allied themselves very firmly with striking rioters against conservative governments and the owners of capital. And that really unsettled a lot of conservative commentators in Australian society.
It was generally a time when there were a lot of conflicts in Australian society that had always been there, but the intensity of those conflicts had increased over the period of Australia's involvement in the war.
Jess: So what kind of society were these soldiers returning to?
Fiona: For some of the men, it seems they just came back to society and went back to their families and jobs, but for a lot of men, that transition was really difficult. They were returning to an Australia that was very different to the one that they’d left. As I’ve mentioned, there were high levels of strikes and intense industrial conflict all across Australia. So, the cost of living had risen dramatically, there had been home front conflicts that the men fighting at the front hadn't lived, like conflicts about Australia's involvement in the war, and the conscription referendums had also really polarised society. And there was also the influenza epidemic in 1919. These aspects of wartime conflict were things that the returning soldiers had not yet experienced, since many of those returning in 1919 had been away for several years.
A photograph of Fiona Skyring by Penny Clay.
Jess: Moving away from Riots for a moment, your work as an expert witness in the native title sector has allowed you to contribute to significant wins for First Nations peoples and stolen wages class actions. Can you speak on your involvement in this and the importance of this work to you?
Fiona: I regard it as a real privilege to have been able to work in this area and to contribute in a small way to positive outcomes for First Nations communities in WA and the Northern Territory. It's never enough, of course. While the stolen wages settlements were laudable, what people actually received does not come close to making up for intergenerational poverty.
In the last 26 years, my historical practice has also included a lot of work for expert reports in relation to native title claims, and I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to do it. It's been incredibly interesting because pretty well every area that I research is a little known history outside of First Nations communities. The whole stolen wages story should be really widely known by everyone in Australia, and unfortunately, it's not.
Jess: What do you hope readers get out of this book?
Fiona: Firstly, I hope that they find it interesting to read, because it really is a dramatic story. I also hope it prompts people to think a little bit more critically about the way that we celebrate Anzac today and think more about the many divergent stories that there were. Today, it is a legend that is presented for the most part as a celebration. But in 1918 and 1919, there was a lot more conflict over the meaning of soldiers' sacrifice. So, in many instances, it wasn't a celebratory time. There was a lot of trauma. There was a lot of grief. There was a lot of anger and resentment. And I think if we try and sanitise that, and if we try and remove it from our contemporary understanding of the Anzac legend, we're not getting the whole story.
I’d also like people to gain a deeper understanding of what actually happened at the end of the First World War and how the Anzac identity was created through conflict – a conflict between soldiers themselves, as well as between the returned soldiers and the home front society. It was a conflict about the roles that returned soldiers were going to play in post war society.
About the Author
Fiona is an Australian historian and award-winning writer. Her book Justice: A history of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia won the WA Premier’s Prize for 2011, along with the WA History Prize and the Margaret Medcalf Award. She wrote the introduction to Five Bells: Being LGBT in Australia, by visual artist Jenny Papalexandris and published by The New Press, New York, in 2016. Fiona has also authored chapters and articles on the topics of writing history for native title in Australia and the history of the stolen wages of First Nations peoples. Fiona has worked as an expert witness in the native title sector and, in recent years, wrote the expert historical reports for stolen wages class actions in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory. These matters in the Federal Court, where the applicants were represented by Shine Lawyers, resulted in government settlements of $180.4 million and $202 million, respectively. Since writing expert historical reports for the Rubibi native title claims in the early 2000s, Fiona has worked with Yawuru people in Broome on several award-winning museum exhibitions, the most recent being ‘Wanggajarli Burugun/ We are coming home’. Fiona lives in Sydney on the lands of the Eora nation.
About the Interviewer
Jess Burns is an upcoming graduate of Curtin University, completing a Bachelor of Arts double majoring in Professional Writing and Publishing, and English and Cultural Studies.