Despite the increasing awareness of voluntary action in both countries in recent times, there has been little interest in exploring the historical relationship of voluntary action and labour. It is argued in this paper that the overall silence of the relationship between voluntary action and the labour movement has its origins in the emergence of a 'myth' of Labour hostility towards voluntary action. This 'myth' explains to some degree the invisibility of voluntary action in labour historiography, and misrepresents the labour movement's relationship with voluntary action in the UK and Australia. Rather than being implacably hostile to voluntary action, there has always been a strand within labour thinking in the two countries that has seen voluntary action as an essential complement to the state, and as integral to the building of the modern welfare state.

The Australian Soldier Settlement Scheme was part of state and Commonwealth governments' repatriation plans to assist returned men become farmers after the Great War. In New South Wales about 9,000 men including a small number of women became soldier settlers under this scheme. One of the tenures promoted by the New South Wales government was group settlement. In the County of Cumberland, the greater Sydney area, six group soldier settlements were established between 1917 and 1920. All were small acreage, largely planned as poultry farms, with some viticulture and market garden blocks. Group settlement was promoted as suitable for men with no capital, little farming experience or those with war-related injuries. Seen as a fitting reward for service to their country, a small soldier settlement farm was an opportunity for many men to become a landowner. This thesis provides a re-evaluation of the significance of group soldier settlement, linking it to earlier utopian ideals of communal living. It argues Labor politicians, notably Chris Watson and William Holman, promoted these ideals believing they would improve working men's lives. Planned to benefit both the state's economy and the ex-serviceman, this thesis argues group soldier settlement was a realistic way to settle large numbers of inexperienced men under supervision in a state that had little available Crown lands. It recognises government planners had little concept of the impact war-related injuries would have when ex-servicemen returned to civilian life, but argues plans for partially disabled men were inadequate post-war. However, this thesis argues group soldier settlement was a chimera. More than 350 tried on these settlements, but few lasted. Soldier settlers on these group settlements were destined to fail largely due to their war-related physical and psychological disabilities. Pre-war most had relied on their physical strength and fitness working as unskilled labourers for a living. The war robbed them of their health, and gave the men few options. Following discharge they needed to find permanent work to support themselves with dignity. Group soldier settlement therefore seemed a practical option, close to the on-going medical treatment many required. A war pension was never a living wage to support a man and his family. Governments were confident group settlement would work - it did not. Forced to leave because of their health, many of these soldier settlers never worked again. For returned men on the group soldier settlements in the County of Cumberland, the shadows of the Great War lasted a lifetime.

Raymond Spencer Goward (1891-1979), chartered accountant and Australian Comforts Fund commissioner, was born on 15 February 1891 at Ashfield, Sydney, youngest of three sons of George Goward, an English-born stationer, later a dispenser, and his Australian-born wife Mary, née Mason. By 1914 Raymond was chief clerk in the Sydney accounting firm Smith, Johnson & Co. Claiming to have 'volunteered for active service' in World War I, instead Goward became in September 1915 an honorary commissioner with the War Chests Fund (Australian Comforts Fund), a national federated philanthropic organization that provided a range of comforts including refreshments, recreational equipment and budget accommodation for soldiers both in the front line and on leave in Egypt, London and later France. His youth and financial skills were both beneficial to the A.C.F. After working from October 1915 in London, in September 1916 he took charge in Egypt, including Gaza and Beersheba, with the honorary rank of major from July 1918. In hospital with malaria for two months from September that year, which effectively ended his war service, he returned to Sydney in March 1919. Next year he was appointed M.B.E. for his voluntary war work. After the war he set up his own accountancy firm with fellow A.C.F. commissioner W. F. A. Larcombe, also a public accountant. Goward married Ruby Violette Connochie at St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Phillip Street, on 26 April 1923. Their infant son died in 1926, and Ruby died in 1932. On 12 April 1935, at the new St Stephen's Church, Macquarie Street, Goward married Daisy Louise Scott, née Methven, a divorcee. On the outbreak of World War II, in September 1939 Goward resigned from his directorships and volunteered once more to work in an unpaid capacity for the A.C.F. His experience and expertise in the previous war was invaluable. Appointed the first A.C.F. commissioner and promoted honorary lieutenant-colonel, he sailed with the Australian Imperial Force to the Middle East in January 1940. Following eighteen months co-ordinating the efforts of the organization, he came back to Australia in July 1941, when he retired briefly from the A.C.F. He was then co-opted onto the executive in an advisory capacity, working closely with (Sir) Roy McKerihan. Goward was appointed chief commissioner of the A.C.F. in Australia and the Pacific in March 1942, and spent the remainder of the war co-ordinating supplies and personnel in northern Australia, New Guinea and the south-west Pacific. Recommending him for an honour in 1942, General Sir Thomas Blamey described him as a person of 'unremitting energy, even temperament and cheerful disposition'. Goward was mentioned in dispatches in October 1942 and appointed C.B.E. on 7 June 1951.

At the centre of almost every Australian city and town stands a war memorial. Obelisk and arch, broken pillar and stern upright soldier, these gestures of remembrance mark Australia's physical and cultural landscape. Most of them bear the name of Anzac, the acronym for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Now a popular byword for all Australian servicemen and women, 'Anzac' commemorated Australia's first costly military engagement as a nation on the beaches and gullies of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in 1915. Sydney's Anzac Memorial lies in Hyde Park; a quiet place in the midst of a busy city; solid, sombre but somehow reassuring. It is difficult to imagine the memorial as a site of much controversy. But it was. A memorial had been mooted from the early days of Australia's involvement in the Great War, but few could agree on its position or its purpose. Many in the New South Wales government favoured some form of edifice at the southerly approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge; the style would be grand, triumphant and certain to match any shrine they might build down in Melbourne (Sydney's long-time rival). Grieving parents were not so provincial. For them the wharves at Woolloomooloo in eastern Sydney had long been a site of pilgrimage; there they had said goodbye to sons lost in a war a world away. Then there were those deeply troubled by the politics of remembrance. By the 1920s, as most of Australia's war memorials were built, conservatives warned of a corrosive 'disloyal element'; pacifists who opposed the 'militarisation' of parks and playgrounds with captured artillery; feminists, anti-conscriptionists and Bolsheviks whose internationalism was at once 'unBritish', 'unAustralian', and 'unAnzac'.

Australians have always volunteered to help in emergencies, especially when the nation has been at war. During the Boer War and the First and Second World Wars, volunteers from all walks of life raised money, assisted with nursing and rehabilitation, and provided food and clothing. Servicemen and women were helped both at home and in the field. The main wartime volunteer organisations were the Australian Red Cross, the Australian Comforts Funds, the Salvation Army, and the YMCA with the YWCA. Their story and the stories of countless wartime civilian volunteers is told here, revealing important aspects of Australian social and political life.

This thesis is the first major study to explore Australia's military nursing contribution to the Korean War. Detailing the work and experiences of Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS) and Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps (RAANC) nurses, including their service in Japan and the post-armistice period, the thesis highlights the full extent of the Australian military nursing contribution to the war. The study traces the work and experiences of these nurses in Japan and Korea, ending with the diversity and complexity of their return to, and recognition, in Australia. In examining the Korean War from the military nursing perspective, the thesis broadens the boundaries of the conflict revealing new insights into the history of Australian military nursing and the involvement of Australian forces in the Korean War. The significance of Japan as a site of war work and the contributions of Australian forces following the armistice are highlighted as major themes. The opportunities for cultural interaction are also explored through the relationships between Australian nurses and their British Commonwealth medical colleagues, United States and United Nations personnel, and the Japanese and Korean civilians with whom they had contact. Finally, the thesis reveals the Korean War era as a period of continuity and transition in the culture of military nursing. The RAAFNS and RAANC both developed as more career-orientated organisations during this period. Yet despite these changes strong connections with past military nursing traditions remained. These transitions and continuities are explored throughout the thesis.

"Uncontrolled and undirected people, in their patriotic exuberance, started to create a host of patriotic organizations. They all needed money and proceeded to try and get it from the public in a variety of ways. The public soon began to exhibit impatience and the Government realised that it had a problem which had to be solved." In a speech broadcast on Australian radio in January 1943, the Canadian High Commissioner to Australia, Tommy Davis, articulated a general concern for wartime governments. As the above extract suggests, controlling the patriotic civilian volunteer effort on the home front was a vexing question for national governments during the Second World War. After the outbreak of war in September 1939 the Australian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Robert Menzies, decided to regulate the patriotic funds. There was some concern over what had happened in the previous war in terms of accountability and duplication; and, as defence activities were a Commonwealth responsibility, legislation was considered necessary. The major patriotic funds of the First World War - the Australian Red Cross Society, the Salvation Army, the Australian Comforts Fund (ACF), and the YMCA - had become, from 1938, the designated war charities to work with the armed forces in the event of war. It was argued within government circles that these nationwide organisations should come under the control of the Commonwealth government.

William Beveridge's report 'Voluntary action: a report on methods of social advance' was published in October 1948. When his earlier and more well-known report 'Social insurance and allied services' appeared in December 1942, the winter cold failed to put off long queues of purchasers. A second report on tackling unemployment had a similarly warm reception. Beveridge became a household name across the world as the 'father of the welfare state'. Yet in sharp contrast 'Voluntary action', his third report, provoked very little interest and rapidly disappeared from view. Beveridge himself continued to attract considerable attention for his contribution to the creation of the British social security system and the impact across the world of his ideas on a social service state. Yet even his biographer, Jose Harris, who contributes a chapter to this book, barely mentioned 'Voluntary action' in the first edition of her book. However, the profound shift in attitudes in Britain and elsewhere during the last two decades about the respective roles of governments and the voluntary sector and their relationship was reflected in Harris's second edition, which now included a full critical account of 'Voluntary action.' For the promotion of voluntary action has become a very popular concept across and beyond politics, and voluntary organisations are now significant players in public policy across the political spectrum and in many different countries. As a result, many people are now looking at Beveridge's 'Voluntary action' in a new light while exploring possible answers to many twenty-first-century dilemmas. In order to reflect upon the significance of Voluntary action and explore its contemporary relevance, a group of historians from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand gathered together in November 2008 at a symposium to mark the sixtieth anniversary of its publication. Convened by the United Kingdom Voluntary Action History Society and hosted by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies in London, the symposium sought to explain and evaluate the legacy of Beveridge's 'Voluntary action' in Britain and the 'wider British world'.

Australian women who served overseas as nurses were entitled to apply for land under the Returned Soldiers Settlement Scheme after World War One. Land settlement as a method of repatriation was to become central to the rehabilitation process in Australia, and nurses were included in the Repatriation Act (1917-1918) under the broad category of 'soldier'. Central to the soldier settlement scheme was the philosophy of providing for returning soldiers, 'land for heroes'. This philosophy focused solely on the soldiers who fought, rather than the women who served as nurses. Only a very small percentage of the 37,500 people who took up the offer of land were indeed women. This thesis seeks to highlight the neglected and little known history of Australian nurse soldier settlers focusing on a small sample from New South Wales and Victoria. It will examine their stories, their applications for land, their struggles as farmers and the difficulties they had obtaining pensions and repatriation benefits. This thesis will show that many nurse soldier settlers were discharged as medically unfit after the war which had a significant impact on their ability, not only to work their farms profitably but also to lead peaceful happy lives in the aftermath of war. The thesis will reveal that although a score of women did take up the challenge and did attempt to make a go of it on the land, they were never actively encouraged and acknowledged.

In 1900, in her long skirts and stays, Matron Nellie Gould volunteered for the Boer War as a superintendent of a contingent of nurses from New South Wales. In 2004, dressed in regulation army camouflage and wearing trousers, Wing Commander Angela Rhodes was deployed to Iraq as the senior air traffic control officer at Baghdad International Airport. This book on Australian women and war explores this remarkable transformation. In the Boer War (1899-1902), Australian women's roles were limited. They participated as patriotic war fund workers, school teachers and nurses - all traditional activities. During World War I (1914-18), the only official military roles available to Australian women were as professional nurses in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) or British nursing services such as Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), or in associated wartime organisations such as the British and French Red Cross. Some Australian women, such as the novelist Miles Franklin and Red Cross worker Vera Deakin, did make it to the war as attendants, canteen directors, doctors or administrators.