News / History
Modern day crackdown on protest has echoes from the past
Events in Brunswick played a pivotal role in shaping Victoria’s free speech laws
Nina Pasqualini
NINETY-TWO years ago today, during the dark days of the Great Depression, Brunswick’s Sydney Road became the stage for a dramatic confrontation over free speech that would change Victoria’s protest laws forever.
Nestled into Phoenix Street, just off Sydney Road, political orators and crowds of supporters would meet frequently. Under the direction of Police Chief Commissioner Thomas Blamey, the street meetings were criminalised and more than 50 people, including Labor and opposition politicians and council members were convicted.
On the night of May 19, 1933, Communist Party cadet Reginald “Shorty” Patullo climbed on top of a cable tram headed down Sydney Road just outside Brunswick Town Hall. The tram driver, refusing to stop for police in solidarity, continued as bystanders rallied behind a string of police cars. Patullo was shot once in the groin in the struggle to topple him from the tram.
With the police distracted by the Patullo’s commotion, a young artist called Noel Counihan rolled into the scene inside a steel elevator cage chained to a horse-drawn cart which was tied to a verandah that would later become part of the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel.
Using a megaphone, Counihan demanded “maximum organised support for the Free Speech campaign” then moved onto “the plight of the unemployed” until police managed to break through the steel bars of his lorry of liberty using a battering ram, ending a dramatic 25-minute confrontation.
“Police reinforcements have been ordered to Brunswick only because those who wish to defy the law by holding street meetings have chosen Sydney road as their battle-ground,” The Argus newspaper reported on May 24.
A headline in The Herald on May 22 read: “Speech from Steel Cage – Young Artist Fined 15 pounds”.
When Patullo limped into a Melbourne courtroom in the weeks following the ‘Battle of Phoenix Street’, he was charged with riotous behaviour and fined 20 pounds. Counihan was slapped with a heavier penalty which was later overturned.
The incident humiliated the Victoria Police force and galvanised support behind the Free Speech League’s demands to strengthen protest rights. Later that year, the Victorian Parliament passed laws to end the ban on public assembly and scale back police break-up powers of public speeches.
The free speech memorial on the corner of Dawson Street and Sydney Road is a permanent reminder of Noel Counihan’s brave stand in a cage in 1933.
The legacy of Noel Counihan and Reginald Patullo should be remembered not only as a renunciation of outdated and draconian Depression-era laws, but as a relevant reminder for all Brunswickians to protect the freedom of speech and protest that Counihan and his comrades fought for.
Just last year the Victorian government introduced plans to ban symbols of listed terrorist organisations in public, the use of face masks at protests, and the use of glue, rope, chains, and locks “that protestors use to cause maximum disruption”.
Victorian community legal organisations claim these laws will only give police more power to unlawfully break up protests and public assembly, and arrest peaceful protestors protected under the 2006 Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, and the reforms which followed the Battle of Phoenix Street.
Counihan died in 1986 at the age of 72, a renowned artist of social realism and a political revolutionary. The then-Moreland City Council named the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick in his honour in 1999, where his work often has pride of place alongside contemporary and political exhibitions.
A major retrospective of Counihan’s oeuvre was held at the gallery in 2022.
Nina Pasqualini is a first year journalism student at RMIT University
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