Amongst the Left at and around the University of Sydney (USyd), we often remark that the University’s criticisms and quelling of protest, such as with the Campus Access Policy (CAP), is inconsistent with its activist history. Two major examples cited are the Freedom Ride of 1965 and the anti-Vietnam war moratorium protests of the 1970s, both of which involved Sydney students taking action and going against the grain for social causes — yet, only the former example is acknowledged and celebrated by the University. While we often draw similarities between the Freedom Ride and Gaza Solidarity Encampment of 2024 being student-led, prioritising affected voices, featuring non-violent direct action, and opposing apartheid, the disparity in the University’s response to them is stark.
What began as a group of 29 University of Sydney students embarking on the “Student Action for Aborigines Bus Trip” to rural New South Wales towns with no route or expectations has, over time, become a famous campaign known and celebrated as the — “melodramatically” named, according to Freedom Rider Aidan Foy — “Freedom Ride.” Across towns visited in the Freedom Ride and at the University of Sydney, 60th anniversary events have been held in recent weeks, but with very different tones and themes.
In an account by Foy of the anniversary event in Walgett, a town that the Ride visited twice, he describes large photos of the Freedom Ride demonstrations and informative plaques around the town, and a tree planted in honour of Charles Perkins, the Arrernte and Kalkadoon man leading Student Action For Aborigines (SAFA). Foy and other Riders were welcomed by Elders, the Governor, politicians, most of the adult population, and “every school in Walgett, Collarenebri, and Brewarrina who had time off to attend because of the historical importance of the event”. The students made capes to celebrate the Riders as superheroes.
Meanwhile, at USyd, the anniversary of the SAFA bus returning was celebrated in an unadvertised formal event tucked away in the Chau Chak Wing museum and featuring a panel led, ironically, by Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott.
The University’s selective ‘memory’ of the Freedom Ride
To explain why and how the Freedom Ride is remembered positively by a University hostile towards activism, I would boil it down to two main things — certain characteristics of the Freedom Ride itself that made it acceptable, eventually, to society and the University, and the way that certain details have been omitted or changed over time in the dominant narrative.
I say this not to diminish the amazing feat of the Freedom Ride and its impact on overcoming segregation in rural towns, or on the overwhelming win of the 1967 referendum. Rather, I aim to highlight how the University and our broader society selectively picks historic events, or even just parts of them, to remember and celebrate. By ignoring the broader Left and activities of unions and students at the time, and by glossing over details like the successful use of unions and pickets on the Freedom Ride, we fail to fully recognise and learn from this significant event.
This selective remembering shone through at the University’s anniversary event. Scott congratulated the four Freedom Riders on the panel for the “historic event” that made a “very significant change” in the country. The elephant in the room was the CAP and its five newly proposed policies seeking to further limit activism and civil disobedience in 2025. Sitting across from the former Gaza Solidarity Encampment whilst in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, we discussed the whitewashed Freedom Ride in a vacuum filled with cognitive dissonance.
It was startling to hear Scott ask a leading question about whether direct action should be embedded in non-violence, seemingly to spur a quick condemnation of violence and civil disobedience. Brian Aarons, one of the Freedom Riders present, responded that Martin Luther King’s 1963 letter from jail, responding to critics about civil disobedience, was a “Bible”, and that Charles Perkins was “fond” of the term “constructive conflict”. It is in this very Letter from Birmingham Jail that King advocated for breaking unjust laws and for nonviolent direct action that “seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Yet, in much the same way that King is remembered solely as an advocate of peace and non-violence, the Freedom Ride has similarly been reduced by the University to a convenient story of a spontaneous fact-finding mission.
Speaking with Freedom Rider Hall Greenland about the irony of Mark Scott’s question, Greenland condemned the “astonishing blatant two-faced approach by the university authorities — embracing the dissidents and trouble-makers of 60 years ago while doing their best to suppress their modern equivalents.” Back during the time of the Freedom Ride, Greenland described the University’s approach to political activity on campus to be “hands-off.” While not opposing activism, it took until the the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Ride in 2015 for the University to celebrate or align themselves with the Freedom Ride, which Greenland calls a “corporate recuperation operation.” It seems that with enough time passing, the University was able to rewrite their own version of the Freedom Ride that suited their needs and image.
It is not surprising to see this cognitive dissonance at play, or for the University to have eventually decided on the Freedom Ride as an event to celebrate. The Freedom Ride featured a diverse group of students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with a range of political views (i.e. not just those pesky radical socialists) and included the University’s first two Indigenous students, Charles Perkins and Gary Williams. For the University this is celebration-worthy, particularly as they were campaigning for a cause that is now widespread belief.
When I interviewed Greenland, he also disclosed that the Freedom Rides were limited by a “liberal and social-democratic attitude” and some assimilationist assumptions for they had “not yet appreciated the settler/colonial framework and the dispossession and colonisation of First Nations people.” These liberal politics of the early campaign still suit the University today. Equally, the Freedom Ride can, and has been, reduced to a succinct 15-day event; it is viewed in isolation from the political environment preceding and following it, which was characterised by strong left-wing unionism and student activism.
In a similar vein, while the Freedom Riders were USyd students, their protest was not on University grounds nor directed at the University, making it something that the University could use to bolster its own image. The Freedom Riders did not have to be subject to the newly crafted (or imagined) restrictions we face today, such as the arbitrary 1901 Inclosed Lands Act that forced our Encampment off the Quadrangle Lawns, or the vague and infantilising CAP claim of protecting “psycho-social safety” used to stop protest or dissent in any vicinity or capacity that may actually reach people. When we protest governments and institutions complicit in apartheid and genocide, we are told that even non-violent dissent and speaking out can be harmful.
At the anniversary event’s close, Mark Scott announced a new scholarship for First Nations students to “keep the memory alive” of the Freedom Ride. But what is the “memory” that he is referring to? The Ride being a peaceful fact-finding mission run by students that appeared out of and disappeared into thin air seems to be the University’s popular and palatable narrative.
The unglamorous side of the Freedom Ride: student protesters, unions, and pickets
However, this runs counter to history and the accounts of prominent leftist Freedom Riders.
In Ann Curthoys’ 2003 book, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers, she chooses to begin this history with a key student demonstration on the 9th of May 1964, nine months prior to the Ride, that occurred outside the US Consulate in Sydney to protest for the civil rights of African Americans. This student demonstration is credited in prompting the Freedom Ride due to its status as a memorable left-wing student protest with future Freedom Riders including Curthoys, Pat Healy, Darce Cassidy, and Powles. It drew criticism from the public due to the protestors’ focus on international issues instead of domestic civil rights, which struck a chord with the students.
Curthoys recounts that as a next step, students formed a committee called the ‘Sydney University Organising Committee for Action on Aboriginal Rights’ in June 1964 to organise for “National Aborigines Day” on the 8th of July. Around 500 students attended the rally-cum-concert in Hyde Park as well as a demonstration the following day that was supported by trade unions and a range of University clubs and societies. Charles Perkins followed up with meetings and discussions with the involved students, clubs, and societies, which led to a 20th of July 1964 meeting called by Perkins, Labour Club student Brian Aarons, and two academics, that settled on the idea of an American-style Freedom Ride.
While Freedom Ride commemorations at the University may now exclude this foundational history of student activism and union activities in the name of brevity, the glossing-over of pickets and protest during the Freedom Ride points to a pattern of whitewashing the event to be more palatable and acceptable. In the anniversary event, there was little-to-no recognition of the involvement of unions and pickets in the Walgett Returned Services League, or the picket outside Moree’s public pool to protest it not letting in Aboriginal children inside.
A recent article by Tom Fiebig outlines the previous indigenous-led struggle of the Ride and the campaign’s significant support from unions, who threatened banning the transport of goods to shops excluding Aboriginal people. A delegation of unionists travelled to Walgett in 1964 to support a mother whose two nine-year-old Aboriginal children were jailed for petty theft, and later rejoined the Freedom Riders in Walgett in February 1965 to picket the RSL.
In a recent Solidarity meeting about the Freedom Ride, Dunghutti activist Paul Silva recognised that the Freedom Ride was an “exciting” moment for many of the Indigenous people around Kempsey (Dunghutti) when the Riders visited, for it exposed the injustice of segregation in their town. Since then, Kempsey gained the first ever Native Title claim in NSW, but Silva mentioned how “Aboriginal people don’t have the right to a home, even on their own land”. He spoke about ongoing crises including the Northern Territory Intervention, deaths in custody, the Voice to Parliament referendum, and over-policing. Today, 60 years on, Silva says “we must stand as one and push out the people that are affecting us, and that… is the government.”
For us to properly commemorate and learn from the Freedom Ride, we need to challenge the narrative put forward by an opportunistic and hypocritical University. ‘Remembering’ what has been moulded into a spontaneous, assimilationist, and peaceful campaign will not allow us to continue to fight for First Nations justice and for decolonisation. If the University thinks it sufficient to offer up a few scholarships to First Nations people while condemning the same indigenous and student activism that underpinned the Freedom Ride, we have to call it out and do what the Freedom Riders did: get organised, and take matters into our own hands.
