June Vigil and Those Who Came Before

From Geraldine: Standing on the Women in Black Vigils in Melbourne is for me quite special, always fun, as well as encouraging. It gives me a strange sense of deju vu, though.

I have just finished compiling a website and book on the Women's Movement in Victoria, and standing with you makes me aware that we are not the first to be standing on the streets of Melbourne for peace. It is a good feeling. I feel the presence of ghosts and I think they approve.

During WW1, feminist women stood on the streets of Melbourne selling their paper, The Women Voter. Their message was peace. It wasn't just the pleasant chat with the public that I experience on our vigils, they were attacked by the crowd at least once. Perhaps it is not surprising--these women did not mince their words, as these quotes show:

"WHO LOSES THE WAR? The men who lose their lives. The women who lose their husbands, brothers and sons. The children who lose their fathers. The workers who lose their wages, who have to pay high rents and high prices. The fathers who love their boys. The mothers who have to go out and work too soon before and too soon after the boys' birth. The child who goes to work instead of school. The babies who die from want and lack of care, sacrificed to feed the fires of war...The soldiers widows and orphans who will starve on their pensions. The nation which is robbed of its young men and unborn children. All those who have brains to think and hearts to love humanity...War is out of date. Under modern conditions it cannot accomplish what those who support war want it to accomplish. Every deadly weapon is met with the invention of a still more deadly weapon..."

Also like Women in Black, these women insisted on talking with women from the other side. in 1915, women of different nations--from "enemy," allied and neutral countries--held an International Congress of Women for Permanent Peace at the Hague, Holland. Their words all those years ago: The following resolutions have been adopted by the International Congress at the Hague and also by the Women's Peace Army, Headquarters, 215 Latrobe Street, Melbourne--This international Congress of women of different nations, classes, creeds and parties is united in expressing sympathy with the suffering of all, whatever their nationality, who are fighting for their country or labouring under the burden of war. Since the mass of people in each of the countries now at war believe themselves to be fighting, not as aggressors, but in self- defence, and for their national existence, there can be no irreconcilable difference between them, and their common ideals offered a basis up on which a magnanimous and honorable Peace might be established. The Congress, therefore urges the governments of the world to put an end to this bloodshed and to begin Peace negotiations..."

Three Australian delegates--Vida Goldstein, Cecilia John and Eleanor Moore--travelled ten weeks to attend the Congress. Their first act was to demand the raising of the blockade in Germany, immediate relief measures and if necessary food rationing in every country. They believed there would be another war in 20 years if the Versailles treaty went ahead, in their words, "creating all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars, generations condemned to poverty, disease and despair."

It seems to me that with the Women in Black vigils, we are following a tradition amongst feminist women that probably wasn't even new a century ago. We stand with their words and their courage in our hearts. (More information about Australian women's involvement in the peace movement, can be found in her book, Women Working Together:Suffrage and Onwards, 2009, www.womensweb.com.au)