Fraternal greetings from Australia.
Wattle Day
The month of September in southern Australia heralds the beginning of spring. The blossoming of wildflowers, the return of the light, and the desire to get outdoors again echo the Ostara spring celebrations of our forebears.
In more recent times, Australians have celebrated Wattle Day on 1 September. Wattle is the common name for a flowering shrub the Acacia genus, which is an Australian native and common across the continent and in Tasmania. There are many species of wattle – and while some flower as early as 1 August, almost all are in flower on 1 September.
Wattle Day is a seasonal celebration, and more importantly it’s a celebration of national community, love of homeland – and mutual cooperation. How so, you ask?
National community
The modern Australian nation was founded in 1901 with the act of Federation – the coming together of the former British colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Federation was the culmination of decades of work by nationalists who sought to create a new nation – and a workingman’s paradise – on the old continent.
After Federation, Wattle Days emerged spontaneously in different locations around Australia to promote patriotism for the new nation. During the early 20th century, children were encouraged to contribute to fund raising for worthy causes by selling wattle flowers. In this way, young Australians were allowed to contribute meaningfully to their local communities, and at the same time developed an appreciation for the organic national community – the extended family tree - of which they were a part.
Love of homeland
As well as building patriotism, Wattle Day fostered a love of – and respect for – the Australian landscape. By celebrating with a native flower, citizens were connected to the local flora - and the unique physical environment in which a new people was evolving. As the young nation adapted to the land, we shaped it – and it shaped us.
The socialist author, Russel Ward, wrote an excellent book entitled The Australian Legend in the early 1950’s. In it, Ward explained how the development of the Australian national character was formed by both economic and physical/geographic elements during the colonial period. The distances, the harsh climate, the scarcity of labour outside the major cities – these all contributed to an egalitarian and anti-elitist ethos where cooperation, labour radicalism and mutual aid (a kind of paleo-socialism) became part of the cultural norm.
Today, Wattle Day is still regularly used as an occasion to raise money for community groups like bush fire brigades. This is especially noticeable outside the metropolitan centres, in places where ordinary workers retain a living connection to their natural environment.
Mutual cooperation
Before our capitulation to the forces of global capital, the mutual, or cooperative business model was much more prevalent in Australian life. There was a time when the skyline of many of our cities featured the names, or initials, of mutual companies. These mutuals operated in all areas – from providing insurance and pharmacy, to food co-ops, to low-interest building societies. This business model flourished for a time, because citizens wanted control over the quality of goods they were buying – and for-profit businesses were routinely price-gouging to a degree where necessities like food and medicine became unaffordable for many.
So rather than wait for the state to intervene on behalf of working people, our forebears took matters into their own hands and became consumer, employer and (in some cases) worker within an enterprise. These enterprises were created to serve the needs of the community, rather than serving the interests of shareholders.
A Wattle Day badge reflecting the slogan, Our Own for Our Own.
This spirit of cooperation and mutuality is evident through the slogan, often used on Wattle Day; ‘Our Own for Our Own’.
Summary – so what?
Today, Wattle Day is celebrated in a muted way, mainly by some Australian nationalists, and people living in regional areas. It’s a pity that nationalists – and socialists who recognise the importance of the organic nation – don’t celebrate it more enthusiastically. The organic nation is the necessary framework for the development of culturally appropriate forms of socialism.
The four themes explored here are relevant to patriotic socialists everywhere:
. Seasonal festivals as a link to our forebears and the natural earth, which provides for our material needs.
. National community and the shared bonds of the organic nation; the extended family tree. There is no stronger basis for collectivism than shared DNA.
. A love of homeland and a recognition that we’re shaped by the places we live. Like familial relationships, a rootedness in a homeland creates shared bonds. These bonds work against the social atomisation created by hyper-capitalistic globalism.
. Mutualism, cooperation, fraternity. In a brighter world, the nation-state would protect, serve and advance the national community. This would flow to the provision of high-quality, low-cost goods and services. But while we fight to bring about that bright future, there is a role for the recreation and support of mutual businesses.
Do these ideas resonate with you, in the British Isles?
Do you have similar festivals that you could ‘adopt’ to communicate our shared ideals?
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