VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
(Above; ADF Reserves can be called on to control civil unrest. Source: https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/ )
Moves to boost the military reservist forces in Australia carry all the hallmarks of an expansion of Cold War civil defence. The initiative carries considerable baggage from the previous Cold War; there are few safeguards to prevent the massive erosion of civil liberties.
Elsewhere, within the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing organisation, examples of previous abuses of power have been well recorded; in Australia, itself, the legacy of the Salisbury Affair in South Australia should stand as a warning to all, particularly at the present time.
Early in the New Year the Australian Government issued a carefully worded report about how Defence had adopted a new approach to recruiting and training Defence Force reservists, drastically reducing the usual two-year program to a mere six weeks. (1) Fears have arisen in Defence circles in recent years about failure to recruit and train sufficient numbers of military personnel to maintain defence and security projections into the next decade and further. (2)
Total ADF numbers for military personnel last year were 59,194; projections have suggested Australia requires about 69,000 by the early 2030s, and 80,000 for 2040. (3)
The recent announcement about reservists is contained in a 78-page report and due to be operational and phased in during February, 2025. (4) It leaves little to the imagination. A statement that 'the ability of the reserves to provide an extension base for the ADF in times of crisis', reveals personnel will receive basic training and then be kept on lists for if and when required, in times of military hostilities. (5) The intention, furthermore, is designed to re-evaluate 'the reserves workforce to better integrate it with the ADF, including a larger operational workforce … and … would focus on delivering short-notice capacity'. (6)
The model already adopted by the ADF has followed a training program specifically for Ukrainian soldiers organised by the UK; Operation Kudo included recruits being provided with basic training for five weeks which included basic war-fighting skills, first aid, explosive hazard awareness and marksmanship. (7) Intelligence-gathering was not officially noted although implicit in all military training, through the chain of command.
The trainers of such military provision do not seek professional and highly disciplined graduates as a back-up to regular forces; they are merely legitimising para-military type organisations which will then return to civilian roles awaiting their call-up. In the meantime they reside in the grey area of the eyes and ears of those wielding class and state power.
The official government statement issued by Canberra also drew attention to military and industrial partnerships, whereby the 'civilian workforce and infrastructure with Defence at critical points in time … and the … sharing of the workforce between the private sector and Defence', was to become a standard working practice during peacetime and on operations. (8) Trade-unions should perhaps take note: the problem of security vetting, in some industries undertaking defence contracts, is already an issue raising serious concerns.
The planned model, however, is hardly new; it amounts to a re-vamping of previous civil defence-type provision from within the Five Eyes during the previous Cold War.
Civil defence under the Tatcher regime
During the early 1980s, for example, the Thatcher government in Britain established the Home Service Force (HSF), a broad-based military reserve for former trained personnel and Defence Police Officers and others who had received basic training deemed useful elsewhere. Recruits were provided with one training course, designed to provide basic awareness, then formally attached to official military facilities with the specific role to 'guard key points and installations likely to be the target of enemy special forces and saboteurs, so releasing other units for mobile defence roles'. (9) The emphasis was upon identifying 'fifth columns'.
Concerns had arisen in Whitehall about the ability of those assessed as adversaries being able to undermine defence and security provision in times of crisis. Main roads connecting important cities were a foremost concern. Railways and power stations were another.
The main road between Manchester and Sheffield, for example, was one with which the HSF appear to have developed a major preoccupation; they were two major industrial areas. Another was the link with Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and the High Peak area in Derbyshire across the Pinnines; the road was also used for access to a sensitive communications facility at Holme Moss and a large reservoir nearby. It was also not particularly difficult for HSF personnel to be mobilised across the vicinity; they had bases in Huddersfield and Stockport, near Manchester. Both road links, furthermore, converged upon the small town of Glossop in the High Peak area of Derbyshire. Users of the roads in question may have noticed cars frequently monitoring their movements, usually driven by older, middle-aged men wearing car-coats, with a tendency to keep a relatively low profile to not attract undue attention.
During the 1984/85 Miner's Strike, however, the roads were used by striking miners and their flying pickets; it was not coincidental, therefore, to note that a helicopter would frequently be stationed above Holme Moss, early in the morning and late at night, seemingly monitoring transport movements.
Members of local Miner's Support Groups were also approached during the period by suspicious characters, who were not local people; one was informed he was on a government list for detention, if a State of Emergency was declared. (10)
The HSF was subsequently disbanded in the early 1990s with the demise of Thatcher.
Elsewhere in the Five Eyes, in Canada, between 1971-74, similar local level surveillance of those associated with protest movements was conducted by the state. The national program of 'counter-measures' was conducted under Operations Oddball and Check-Mate. (11) A later official inquiry noted political developments of the time were different to the 'Communist threat' of previous times and linked increasingly to the growth of the far-left and agitation focussed upon outside of workplace issues; extensive profiling took place. (12)
In Britain, a similar inquiry established large-scale surveillance of about a thousand different political groups and organisations over a forty-year period; the Anti-Apartheid Movement was closely monitored. (13) No doubt the notorious South African secret police were kept well informed; links between the British and South African intelligence services have been well recorded elsewhere. (14)
During the same period the British military were also training officers about internal subversion, for example, at Camberley Staff College. Their focus and main preoccupation and obsession were listed as: trade-unionists, Whitehall 'moles', urban guerillas and Scottish nationalists. (15) It revealed a military mindset based, not in perceptive intelligence assessments, but narrow Cold War paranoia.
Enhanced ADF Reserves training
Surveillance techniques inside the Five Eyes and elsewhere tended to closely follow US-led training and defence and security provision. Declassified documents have revealed whole societies were routinely spied on and then profiled into black, grey or white lists in order to identify potential adversaries. (16) The US had an obsession with 'subversives'; anyone who was assessed as not being supportive. People pursuing what were deemed 'alternative' life-styles were especially liable to be targeted.
It is, therefore, interesting to note the new Australian recruitment and training policy for reservists has followed what has been officially recorded as 'enhanced training opportunities … for the ADF and its regional allies and partners'. (17) Some of the countries involved, notably South Korea, for example, have a strong commitment to civil defence provision which has often mobilised alongside joint US- ROK military exercises. South Korea has draconian defence and security provision, enforced through legions of spies and informants.
Whether the ADF uses recently expanded and upgraded facilities in Queensland and the Northern Territories for the new training of reservists has yet to be established. The new Greenvale Training Area (GUTA) in northern Queensland near Townsville, for example, is already used for exercises linked to the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy. (18)
The Australian new recruitment and short-term training of reservists, it should be noted, would appear to be linked to shadowy civil defence-type operations designed for local level surveillance rather than traditional military reservist operations.
SA: Lessons of the Salisbury Affair
Australians should be aware of the dangers, particularly following the Salisbury Affair in South Australia, decades ago during the darker days of the previous Cold War. SA, at that time, had one of the most militant workforces in Australia which promoted progressive legislation and regulations.
Those wielding class and state power in South Australia, at the time, were not content, however, to merely spy on workers and trade-unions through usual workplace espionage techniques. They also used their flunkies and others on their pay-rolls inside their patronage systems to spy on all those deemed responsible for associating with them, collectively; families, friends, colleagues residing at the same post-codes and so on.
Mistaken identities and so-called 'intelligence' based little other than hearsay was commonplace.
The business classes and their Liberal Party supporters had also been responsible for recruiting Harold Salisbury, former British Chief Constable of York, and the North and East Riding of Yorkshire. He was appointed as Police Commissioner for South Australia in 1972.
The whole episode was, and remains, a classic example of the uses and abuses of power:
A subsequent official inquiry noted the following response, when information was requested from Salisbury about those who had been spied upon and their files:
Obviously anyone who shows any affinity towards Communism – that's common-sense - the IRA, the PLO, and I would say anyone who's decrying marriage, family life, trying to break that up, pushing drugs, homosexuality, indiscipline in schools, weak penalties for anti-social crimes, pushing that sort of thing. Oh, a whole gamut of things like that could be pecking away at the foundations of our society and weakening it.
Interviewer – And do you regard those people as subversives?
Salisbury – Well, in a word, yes. (19)
Needless to say, Salisbury was eventually sacked by the State Premier, Don Dunstan; a huge number of the files for which he was responsible were subsequently destroyed due to their compilation being conducted outside usual legal procedures and processes, amounting to an abuse of power.
In conclusion, it might be worth noting that those who fail to learn the lessons of history have to repeat them, over and over again! The fact the agendas of those who organise such endeavours are never straightforward is also something which remains an important consideration when evaluating their political behaviour.
1. See: Ukraine training model for reserves, Australian, 6 January 2025.
2. Long-term recruitment a problem for the army, Land Forces 2024 Supplement, Australian, 11 September 2024.
3. Ibid, and, ADF to welcome Five Eyes recruits, Australian, 30 December 2024.
4. See: Strategic Review for the Australian Defence Force Reserves, December 2023 to April 2024, Canberra, 18 December 2024.
5. Australian, op.cit., 6 January 2025.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Strategic Review, op.cit., page 51.
9. Wikipedia: Home Service Force; and, Britain's 1980s Cold War Dads Army / Home Guard – The Home Service Force, website - Cold War Conversations.
10. Confidential Source.
11. The Ties That Bind, J.T. Richelson and D. Ball, (Sydney, 1985), page 293.
12. See: Commission of Inquiry – Canada, (August, 1981), Freedom and Security under Law, Volume One, page 268.
13. Undercover Police spied on UK's anti-apartheid movement for decades, inquiry, The Independent (U.K.), 5 November 2020; and, BBC – What is undercover policing inquiry?, 2 November 2020.
14. See: Vorster's men get psycho-war kit, The Sunday Times (U.K.), 3 April 1977.
15. BBC 1, War School, 9 January 1980; and, State Research, Volume 16, February-March 1980, pp.63-64.
16. Lost History: Project X, Robert Parry, The Consortium Magazine, 31 March 1997; and, Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997.
17. Alliances enhance domestic training, The Land Forces Supplement 2024, Australian, 11 September 2024.
18. Ibid.
19. Special Branch supply false information, State Research, Volume 23, April-May 1981, pp. 100-01.