Dark Victory: remembering the Tampa

Rescued asylum seekers aboard the Norwegian cargo ship MV Tampa on August 27, 2001 off Christmas Island. Photograph: Wallenius Wilhelmsen

In November 2001, Australian prime minister John Howard won a spectacular third federal election victory. Barely two months after 9/11 Howard had the advantage of incumbency, but it was still a come from behind win. Kim Beazley’s Labor Party comfortably outpolled the Liberal/National coalition for much of 2001. The defining moment in the campaign came three months earlier when the Norwegian vessel Tampa rescued boatpeople from the high seas.

The events are documented in detail in a book by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson. Dark Victory forensically takes the reader on a journey through choppy waters where no one in Australia comes out well. But while the Norwegians picked up boatpeople, Howard picked up electoral traction. His government launched a damage control operation that moved at breathtaking speed leaving the media and the opposition trailing. It closed the hearts and minds of Australians to refugees and led to Howard’s stunning victory with the infamous campaign statement: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.

In 2001 refugees seeking asylum in Australia were mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq and were either fleeing the tyranny of the Taliban or ten years of suffocating sanctions against Saddam’s regime. Those aboard a small Indonesian fishing vessel called the Palapa were mainly Afghan with a few Pakistanis. They paid thousands of US dollars to intermediaries to take a dangerous journey on an over-loaded and leaky boat. They sailed from Pantau, a south-west Java port near the surfing town of Pelabuhan Ratu and headed for the Australian Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island, two days away to the south. But after one day the engine went dead. The boat drifted aimlessly.

The crew reassured nervous passengers they were in Australian waters and would be rescued. Australian Air Force members of Surveillance Australia were aware of the boat. They made several overflies of what was designated as a SIEV – Suspect Illegal Entry Vessel. The crew told Coastwatch that the ship was in difficulties. But instead of issuing a distress signal, Australia attempted to palm the problem off on Indonesia.

The spot where the ship sank was in the high seas. But it was in the zone that was the responsibility of the Indonesia rescue authority BASARNAS. The Australians faxed BASARNAS with details of the SIEV. There was no reply. Canberra had no idea what BASARNAS was doing and took another flyover the following morning. They saw passengers wearing orange rags and holding up flags that read “SOS”. But instead of launching a search and rescue mission, Australia tried again to reach BASARNAS by telephone without success and issued a message to shipping, asking vessels within 10 hours to help.

The 44,000 tonne Tampa, named for the city in Florida, was owned by the Norwegian-Swedish Wilhelmson line which traded with Australia since the 19th century. When the Tampa got the message, it was sailing for home in Norway via Asian ports and was four hours away. Ship’s master Arne Rinnan immediately reset course for the Palapa. The Tampa rescued 438 people from the dilapidated boat. They were 369 men, 26 women (two pregnant) and 43 children, the youngest one year old. Rinnan asked the Coastguard where he should land his new cargo. He told the refugees the boat was bound for Singapore. They pleaded to be taken to Christmas Island.

Finally BASARNAS roused and told Rinnan to take the boat to the nearest Indonesian port of Merak. When the refugees heard this, they became aggravated and threatened Rinnan if he didn’t take them to Christmas Island. Rinnan did not have any firearms. By chance the Australian coastguard rang during this tense exchange. Rinnan told them about the ultimatum. The coastguard said it was the captain’s responsibility to decide the best action. Rinnan set sail for Christmas. The Department of Immigration contacted the boat and told them they could not enter Australian territorial waters. It backed up the command with a threat of their own – Rinnan would be arrested for people smuggling if he tried to take them ashore.

The decision to stop the Tampa came from the top. John Howard’s chief public servant Max Moore-Wilton was the architect of the plan and Howard approved it. Rinnen had no choice. The Tampa turned around and set sail for Merak. But the boatpeople became restless again. Rinnan could not guarantee the continued safety of his ship. He turned for Christmas Island once more.

Australia was not compelled to land these people. Under international law no nation is responsible for rescues on the high seas. Shipping owners, bound by the maritime convention to rescue, were lobbying to change the law. Rinnan arrived outside the harbour at Christmas but was not allowed to land. The refugees could see the lights on the island. They were happy.

But Howard was about to make an issue over the Tampa. Australia was getting uncomfortable reminders how close it was to Asia. Boatpeople had been part of the vocabulary since a Vietnamese boat anchored uninvited off Darwin Harbour in 1976. As former diplomat Bruce Grant said “for Australia, history and geography had merged”. But Australia doesn’t like refugees to arrive this way. It prefers to pick its quota out of overseas camps.

The flow of boats trickled through the 1990s but was increasing. The detention centres of so-called “illegals” in Port Hedland and Baxter were overflowing. Pauline Hanson was making political capital out of the “danger” of Asian immigration. Howard, anxious to win back supporters, gave Moore-Wilton the job of staunching the flow. Australia tightened security and increased intelligence on the ground. ASIS operatives sabotaged boats in ports in Indonesia to prevent them from sailing.

But they were still coming in numbers. Tampa gave Howard an opportunity. To keep the refugees out of Australia Howard had to keep them out of the courts. They could only access the Australian courts if they could make landfall. The Government would eventually excise Christmas Island, Ashmore Reef and other islands from the legal definition of Australia. But that was in future, now, they needed to keep the Tampa out of Australian waters. Christmas Island’s only port, Flying Fish Cove, was closed indefinitely. Where Rinnan would land was now a matter to be resolved between the governments of Norway and Indonesia. Rinnan, and the Norwegian government were appalled. They had answered an Australian distress signal.

The Australian government called on favours to find someone else to take on the responsibility. The Pacific Solution was born. New Zealand took some. The impoverished island of Nauru was persuaded to house others. Canberra engaged its client state Papua New Guinea to build a detention centre on Manus Island. They asked the UN to approve a transfer to newly independent Timor Leste. To Howard’s disgust, Kofi Annan refused.

The passengers on the Tampa went on hunger strike. The army landed an elite SAS team including a doctor to examine them. They reported the people were in good health. It remained Rinnan’s problem. He decided to ignore Australian warnings and make an emergency landing at Flying Fish Cove. Under directions from federal cabinet, Australia ignored his MAYDAY. The boat entered the harbour where it was detained by the SAS.

HMAS Arunta was dispatched to the scene. Ostensibly its job would be to tow the Tampa out to sea. Howard tried to pass an emergency bill to make this a legal activity. Kim Beazley refused to support it. Labor was now trapped. Howard accused Labor of compromising Australian border integrity. Although the bill was defeated in the Senate without bi-partisan support, Howard had struck gold; an opinion poll showed 95 percent support for his “strong action” on border policy. Howard went on talk radio with Alan Jones. Jones fully supported Howard and urged him to take stronger action.

Australia paid Nauru $16.5 million to build a camp. A legal team in Melbourne tried to fight the case onshore. But they needed a client and access to the refugees was prohibited. While they tried in vain to mount a case, SAS soldiers forced the passengers to move to the HMAS Manoora. The Tampa was free to go. Arne Rinnan went home to a hero’s reception and government medals in Oslo. The passengers were eventually unloaded in Nauru; the first of many. Operation Relex had begun and would last until November 2001. By then Howard had won his election. As a 2021 Guardian article on the 20th anniversary noted, some things have not change in two decades. “The Taliban is brutally ascendant across Afghanistan, wreaking violence and terror and sending thousands fleeing from the country. And the offshore processing network Australia set up in the wake of the Tampa is still operational.” The Australian military-style response to a humanitarian crisis has been widely copied by other jurisdictions. But numbers of refugees across the world have doubled in the last decade and there are over 100 million forcible displaced people globally. It is a diabolically wicked problem with no easy solutions. But no matter how electorally popular, “dark victories” like Australia’s Tampa response serve only to sweep it under the carpet.

Torn between tribes: Father Mathew in America

Theobald Mathew (1790-1856). National Library of Ireland.

The Irish “apostle of temperance” Father Theobald Mathew led a mass movement that attracted a remarkable three million members in the early 1840s. His greatest challenge, and possibly his greatest success, came long after his Irish peak. In 1849, Ireland was worn out by four years of famine and Mathew’s temperance movement was in decline. Mathew was about to satisfy a long-held desire to travel to America where he hoped to regenerate the movement. He spent two years in the United States and fell foul of antebellum America’s greatest controversy, the slavery debate.

The American trip was a homecoming of sorts as the temperance movement began in the United States. In 1826 Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher (father of anti-slavery activists Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe) initiated the movement with his six sermons on intemperance. The American Temperance Society began in Boston backed by Protestant clergy and laymen. They included Ulster-born pastor Joseph Penney who returned to Belfast in 1829 and persuaded Presbyterian ministers to establish the Ulster Temperance Society.

In 1835, Quaker William Martin set up a total abstinence society in Cork but was unable to draw Catholics into its ranks. Martin needed a Catholic priest at the helm to gain mass appeal and he contacted his friend Father Mathew, a popular Capuchin friar stationed in Cork for 20 years. Mathew grew up on a wealthy estate in County Tipperary with Anglican cousins and was more willing to collaborate with Protestants than most fellow priests. In 1838 Mathew became the president of the Cork Total Abstinence Society. He was an articulate and appealing spokesman and prospective teetotalers came from far and wide to take the pledge. Within 12 months the Cork group attracted 24,000 members and hosted eight reading rooms.

Mathew took his movement on the road, first around Munster and gradually around all Ireland. Limerick and Waterford reported a big drop in crime after Mathew’s visits. He was feted everywhere, many believing he had miraculous curing powers, which he denied with great embarrassment. Word reached America, the Boston Pilot noting “people flock to him in great multitudes, and the number of those whom he has induced to abandon the horrible vice of drunkenness is beyond calculation.” Watching carefully was Daniel O’Connell who praised Mathew’s movement as a “moral and majestic miracle”. Mathew was equally careful, determined to keep temperance apolitical to avoid offending Protestant supporters, British authorities and his clerical superiors.

Mathew refused to support O’Connell’s Repeal campaign but agreed in 1841 to sign the Irish Address, a letter from Dublin abolitionists urging Irish Americans to stand against slavery and “treat the coloured people as your equals.” Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was delighted but American Catholic bishops preferred to keep the Irish out of the slavery debate. They also worried about the suspiciously Protestant nature of the temperance movement, noting alcohol was a beverage “which the Sacred Scriptures do not prohibit, and of which the most holy persons have occasionally partaken.”

Nevertheless a Catholic temperance movement took off in America. Charles Dickens witnessed a temperance rally in Cincinnatti in 1842 and he was particularly pleased to see Irishmen “with their green scarves; carrying their national Harp and their Portrait of Father Mathew high above the people’s heads.” In June 1843, New York bishop John Hughes joined Whig powerbroker Thurlow Weed (both were close friends of Lincoln’s future Secretary of State William Seward) on a trip to Ireland where they were impressed by Mathew. They invited him to America, but he declined due to demands on his time in Ireland and Britain. A planned visit in 1844 was cancelled due to anti-Irish race riots in Philadelphia and New York.

Mathew was beset by financial issues. He ran up substantial debts having given away medals to those taking the pledge. He was briefly placed under arrest for having failed to pay money he owed to an English medal manufacturer. The press did not publicise the story out of deference though eventually word of his plight got out and Mathew Relief Committees began around Ireland.

As Mathew got his affairs in order, the potato blight struck. When famine worsened, Mathew set up a soup kitchen in Cork, one of the worst affected counties. He testified before parliament and told Treasury secretary Charles Trevelyan that men, women and children were “gradually wasting away”. Trevelyan refused to consider government action that might interfere with all-important market forces. Mathew also corresponded with Thurlow Weed and American bishops. In 1847 he told Americans the worst of the Famine was ending and he was considering a trip across the Atlantic. Mathew obtained an annual pension of £300 from Westminster, which annoyed Irish critics already unhappy at his lack of support for O’Connell. He was overlooked for bishop of Cork because he was “beholden to the British government.”

In 1848 Mathew’s optimism over the Famine proved unfounded with a third potato crop failure in four years. Mathew postponed America once more. Despite his pension, he was still debt-ridden. “I could not resist the cries of my fellow creatures, suffering from extreme want and wrung with tormenting hunger,” he told one correspondent. After Mathew suffered a stroke, many believed he would never make it to America. But his health returned and supporters raised money for the journey. He finally set sail in spring 1849, hoping that American funds would revitalise his organisation.

Though Bishop Hughes had previously invited Mathew over, he now expected the visit to cause problems due to increasing anti-Irish attitudes. He told his archbishop that he would do his best to keep Mathew “out of the hands of the Philistines” meaning Protestant temperance advocates, who were also advocates of abolition. Hughes favoured neither outcome and made sure that Mathew visited mainly Catholic schools and institutions in his diocese. Though Matthew suffered an archbishop’s rebuke for attending a non-denominational meeting, the visit was a success and he administered the pledge to 20,000 New Yorkers.

After Mathew went to Boston and met the city’s whig mayor and Lyman Beecher, Boston’s Catholic bishop lamented Mathew sharing a stage with “sectarian, fanaticks, calvinist preachers and deacons.” Garrison was also keen to see him. His Liberator newspaper said abolitionists would hold a great rally to commemorate West Indian Emancipation and invitations went out to Ralph Waldo Emerson and “FATHER MATHEW, the distinguished philanthropist of Ireland”. Mathew turned down the invite claiming the slavery of liquor was battle enough for one man. Incensed, Garrison savaged Mathew. “In Ireland, you professed to be an uncompromising abolitionist..but now that you are on American soil you have signified your determination to give the slave no token of your sympathy.” Irish Americans papers supported Mathew and then Senator for New York William Seward said Garrison was bullying a great philanthropist.

Mathew ran into more trouble when he went south. He was looking forward to meeting Georgian temperance advocate, Judge Joseph Lumpkin. But when Garrison revealed Mathew had signed the 1841 Irish address which referred to slavery as “that foul blot upon the noble institutions and fair fame of your adopted country”, Lumpkin asked Mathew if he still held those opinions. Mathew did not repudiate the address, although he pledged “not to interfere . . . with the institutions of this mighty republic.” This was unsatisfactory to Lumpkin who widely publicised Mathew’s apparent anti-Southern attitude.

Mathew stopped in Washington where Congress was bitterly divided over whether to admit California as a free state. The Whigs honoured Mathew with a seat on the floor of Congress, a symbolic gesture normally approved unanimously. Even though Mathew had rejected Garrison, Southern senators including future Confederate president Jefferson Davis attacked Mathew as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” trying to unite the Irish with the abolitionists “in their nefarious designs” against the South. Northern senators said Matthew was here to speak on temperance not slavery, and a majority voted to grant Mathew the seat.

Mathew continued south despite the row, hoping warmer weather would be good for his health. He pledged 2300 people in Georgia, though Lumpkin disinvited him to the state’s temperance convention. In two months in the south’s largest city, New Orleans, Mathew pledged 14,000 of its 20,000 Irish residents. He continued a gruelling schedule in Arkansas and then St. Louis. He hoped to visit Indian missions in Texas but in March 1851 suffered a severe stroke in Nashville. He needed to go home and recover.

The abolitionist press was as critical as the southern press and ran articles questioning whether Mathew planned to use temperance funds for his mission or to finish building a church in Cork. But Hughes had put earlier suspicions aside. He invited Mathew to preach in his New York cathedral where he administered the pledge to 4000 people. As Mathew departed for Ireland in November 1851, the impressed New York Herald noted he had visited 25 states, 300 cities and had added half a million people “to the long muster roll of his disciples”. Garrison was unmoved: “It is said that Father Mathew is soon to return to Ireland. Pity he ever left it.”

Mathew was gravely ill and no more financially secure than when he arrived in America. Although he lived for five more years, he never fully resumed temperance work. Yet his mission was a success and many converts would lead the American temperance movement in the following decades. Even the Catholic bishops became firm supporters. One American bishop admitted “we all have reason to rejoice in the fruits of his mission amongst us although we were all prejudiced more or less against him before his arrival.” While he angered abolitionists and pro-slavery partisans alike, Mathew could never have pleased both sides. The 1856 Kansas Nebraska Act led to “popular sovereignty” which enabled states to decide on the issue of slavery for themselves. Radicals like Garrison and Lumpkin would ensure that nothing could stop the inexorable separation and march to war.