Page 110 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

MULTICULTURALISM IN CRISIS

The term ‘Anglo-Celtic’ was originally used in the 1880s/1890s by Irish
Catholic Australians as an amendation to the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’, in order to
incorporate themselves within the Anglo-Saxon-dominated power structure. While
the term did not gain much currency then, its use has re-emerged and surged since
the advent of multiculturalism to describe the so-called ‘core culture’ of Australia
that is claimed to have existed before the post-war mass European and Levantine
immigration. As Ken Inglis (1991: 21) notes, ‘If non-English-speaking migrants
and their children are to be called “ethnic”, [then Anglo-Celtic is] the name . . .
given to the old host population.’ However, it should be pointed out that the
category ‘Anglo-Celtic’ is a homogenizing, assimilationist one, implicitly natural-
izing the historical domination of the English Protestant elites over Irish Catholics
in the national culture. Furthermore, the term implicitly denies the existence of
diversity within ‘old Australia’ itself (e.g. migrant groups from Wales, Scotland,
Northern Europe and, especially, Germany) and disallows the possibility for
descendants of these pre-War European migrants to claim their ethnic heritages.
Thus, the term ‘Anglo-Celtic’ itself perpetuates culturally the discursive break
between an assimilationist and a multicultural Australia.
As a result, there is a gap between the neat official representation of ‘multicultural
Australia’, on the one hand, and the contradictory everyday experiences and
historical memories of these people, on the other – experiences and memories
which remain unaccounted for, or are even denied and disclaimed, by the official
discourse. It is not surprising therefore that many ordinary, ‘Anglo-Celtic’
Australians are seeking refuge in alternative narratives to account for their
experiences and memories, some of them with deeply nostalgic and reactionary
overtones such as Pauline Hanson’s and, in a more subtle and therefore more
damaging way, John Howard’s. As Peter Cochrane (1996) observes: ‘Hanson is
the voice of old Anglo-Celtic Australia, resentful of its displacement from the centre
of Australian cultural life by the new ethnic Australians and nostalgic for a time when
it imagined its identity was both secure and central.’ Howard, as we will discuss
below, hints at a similar resentment in his championing of what he insistently calls
‘mainstream Australia’ (Brett 1997; Johnson 1997).
The ideological project of multiculturalism has entailed a fundamental re-
description of the nation away from racial and cultural homogeneity in the direction
of ethnic and cultural diversity. Such a redescription, of course, can only be
successful if it manages to win over ‘the hearts and minds of the majority of ordinary
people’ and enter ‘as a material and ideological force into [their] daily lives’ (Hall
1988: 6). Only then can an ideological project become hegemonic (in the
Gramscian sense of the term); that is, win popular consent and, in the words of
Stuart Hall (1988: 7), secure ‘a social authority sufficiently deep to conform
society into a new historic project’. We are not suggesting here that the project
of multiculturalism has entirely failed in Australia. On the contrary, support for it
has remained widespread and almost universal, especially among the educated,
urban middle classes and the business community, for whom cultural diversity is
deemed an economic asset. But we must remember that hegemony is never

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