A Decade of Dissent: Vietnam and the Conflict of the Australian Home Front by Greg Langley

The years of the Vietnam War were a time of conflict and change in Australia, as they were in the United States.
   By 1970 Australia had seen wide-spread protests against the war. Police clashed with demonstrators. Young men were jailed for refusing to fight. Women and students were finding a voice. Families, workplaces and Churches were split apart by the Vietnam issue; and 23 years of conservative rule were approaching their end with the election of the Whitlam Labor government.
   The Australian moratoriums were among the largest in the world. On 8 May 1970 more than 200 000 people across the country took to the streets to protest against the war and the draft which, at the drop of a marble from a Tattersall barrel, sent young men to fight in the jungles and rice fields of Southeast Asia.
   A Decade of Dissent tells the story of the anti-war movement in this country through the voices of mothers, draft resisters, students, politicians, priests and soldiers who took part in it.
   Among those who discuss the Vietnam decade in Australia are: Bruce Petty, Michael Leunig, Patricia 'Little Patti' Thompson, Don Chipp, Jim Cairns, Ann Curthoys, Jean McLean, Michael Hamel-Green, Terry Lane, Val Noone and J.D.B. Millar.

Greg Langley is a journalist who lives in Melbourne with his wife and son.