WHAT'S NEW.

NEW:  May 2026: The independent Australian publisher Kembla Books has published Rowan's account of the period 1945-72, in which a would-be-poet and beachcomber solo-sailor was conscripted in the first call-up destined for servicing Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, and morphed to become an enemy of the state .... it answers questions historical researchers frequently ask, and scotches romanticised accounts of the era. Titled Cold War Kid: Resisting the Vietnam War it is available in selected bookshops and online.  

The Barber Who Read History: Essays in Radical History by Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving (Bull Ant Press, Sydney), 230pp. (9pp colour), Index, paperback is now via the Author websites of Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving as a free downloadable pdf (links below). 

AUTHOR WEBSITES: Terry Irving's website is at Terry Irving: Radical Historian, Author and Educator; Rowan Cahill's website is at Rowan Cahill: Radical Historian, Author, Educator

Rowan Cahill's award winning ('Jim Hagan Memorial Prize', UOW) PhD dissertation (2013) on the journalist, communist, intellectual Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997) is online (open access) via Research Online at the University of Wollongong, NSW.     

LINKS

• Google Preview of Radical Sydney here. If copies are not on display in your bookshop, order with the bookshop, or here with the publisher. Print On Demand copies are being supplied quickly.

What is Radical Sydney about?
Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world as a postcard, an impressive, beautiful city, a desirable tourist destination.

But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a radical Sydney they are intent on ‘disappearing’ beneath concrete and glass. In the arc of working-class suburbs to the south and west, menace and disaffection developed. From the early nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century these suburbs were large and explosive places of marginalised ideas, bohemian neighbourhoods, dissident politics and contentious action.

Through a series of snapshots of people, episodes, and places, Radical Sydney captures aspects of this ‘other’ Sydney, from the days of early settlement through to the late 1970s, from Governor Phillip’s head-hunting expedition to freeing protestors in the anti-conscription movement during the Vietnam War; and in between, resident action movements in Kings Cross, anarchists in Glebe, Gay Rights activism on Oxford Street, Black Power in Redfern.

In the mainstream of white masculine and middle-class history, the voices of Aboriginal fighters, convict poets, feminist journalists, democratic agitators, bohemian dreamers and revolutionaries are rarely heard. This book restores some of that clamour and disturbance to the history of the city.

While the subject of the book is Sydney, authors Irving and Cahill make clear in their ‘Introduction’ that the book has been written as a challenge to the mainstream consensus version of Australian history. The consensus version tends to sanitise the past to present a view of Australian history and society proceeding on the basis of cooperation and consensus, a past in which there is little significant political and/or social turbulence. The authors’ view of the Australian past, on the contrary, is one in which significant political and social ferment, dissent, turbulence are not strangers, nor occasional.

The cover features author Kylie Tennant at a fancy dress party. During the 1930s she was a fiery advocate for the International Labor Defence organisation.

[Published in 2010, the book remains in print and available; if not on shop shelves, then order via your local bookshop or via this link, the publisher filling orders quickly via Print on Demand technology]

Meet the authors of Radical Sydney ...

The authors met at Sydney University in the 1960s and have variously worked together on historical projects since. In various capacities - academic (Irving); freelance journalist (Cahill) - and as independent scholars, the authors have collectively spent decades researching, and writing about, aspects of Australia’s radical and dissident past, at times recording it first-hand, and participating in its making.

Dr. Terry Irving (left): Radical educationist and historian, Terry taught history and politics at the University of Sydney. He was one of the founders of the Free University (Sydney, 1967-1972), and a prominent New Left figure in the labour history movement. Continuing the tradition of radical history in Australia, but extending its scope, he writes about class analysis, youth politics, labour intellectuals, and radical democracy. His books include Class Structure in Australian History (with R. W. Connell, 1980, 1992), Childe and Australia: Archaeology, Politics and Ideas (edited with Peter Gathercole and Gregory Melleuish, 1995), Youth in Australia: Policy, Administration and Politics: A History Since World War 11, (with David Maunders and Geoffrey Sherington with assistance from Janet Sorby, 1995), The Southern Tree of Liberty (2006), The Barber Who Read History (with Rowan Cahill, 2021). He is currently an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong. Terry's website is at https://www.terryirving.net

Rowan Cahill (right) was prominent in the anti-war, student, and New Left movements during the 1960s and early 1970s. He was also one of the founders of the Free University. Rowan has worked as a teacher, freelance writer, agricultural labourer, and for the trade union movement as a journalist, historian, and rank and file activist. Currently an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wollongong's  School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, he has published extensively in labour movement, radical, and academic publications. His books include The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872-1972: A History (with Brian Fitzpatrick, 1981), Twentieth Century Australia: Conflict and Consensus (with David Stewart, 1987), A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975 (edited with Beverley Symons, 2005), The Barber Who Read History (with Terry Irving, 2021). Rowan's website is at rowancahill.net

...& what are the authors doing post-Radical Sydney?

 Rowan [left, addressing a National Conference of the Maritime Union of Australia] is currently working on a memoir about growing up in Australia and becoming a prominent leftist warranting ASIO surveillance during the period 1945-1972, titled Crucible Years: Reflections of a Cold War Kid.   

Terry [right] is writing a book about Australian radical journalist and activist Edward Hawksley (1807-1875). This book will elaborate on moments of radical democracy whose earlier history he explored in The Southern Tree of Liberty (Federation Press, 2006). Before his local government spot rezoned him out of his house for commercial redevelopment, he tried guerrilla gardening.