Australian MPs and Senators get Information Kits done for them by the Parliamentary Library. One such is headed ‘Anzac Day 2016’ and we have just discovered it. Right down the bottom of Section 2 ‘The relevance of Anzac’ is this paragraph:
The debate about the use of the history of Anzac and what kind of commemorative activities are appropriate has gained pace since the publication of What’s wrong with Anzac [2010] and there are perhaps more dissenting voices now than has been the case in the past. The website Honest History contains a section entitled Anzac Analysed which attempts to promote some of these voices.
This recognition is good to see, though most of the kit is fairly routine ‘received view’ Anzac material and a bit dated. (The kit has been around for a while and is updated annually.) We’ll make sure the Parliamentary Library gets the drum on ‘Anzackery‘ and the forthcoming Honest History book, provisionally titled Honest History: Beyond Anzackery.
Meanwhile, our European correspondent advises that Honest History’s work on the alleged ‘Ataturk words’ (‘Those heroes that shed their blood …’) has received favourable notice from Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, a leading historian of Turkey, who is based at Leiden University in the Netherlands. We have had contact with Professor Zürcher previously. Like us, Professor Zürcher is pretty sure that the words are not Ataturk’s and is telling his classes just that. Our latest piece on these matters is here and Part II is coming shortly.
19 October 2016
