Port Moresby, 16 May 1969
3535. Confidential
1. My 3532. 1 District Commissioner2 reported last night that council under intense pressure from Tammur, Titimur and Tomot lasting whole day, finally passed resolution asking that proclamation setting up multi-racial council be withdrawn and elections deferred.
2. This morning as notified to Besley on phone, demonstration is taking place in Rabaul organised by Tammur who had previously consulted District Commissioner and gained permission on grounds that march would be orderly and peaceful. Object of demonstration was said to be to seek postponement of council elections (due next Tuesday 20th May).3 Early reports indicate some 5,000 marchers including women and children with some placards of anti-Administration and anti-European nature. General tenor of Tammur’s influence in recently weeks has been strongly anti-European. He has also made use of impending Evidence Land Titles legislation4 to strengthen his claim that a multi-racial council will be dominated by Europeans and used to prevent Tolais getting just treatment in respect of land. Evidently the issue is channeling all the Tolai feelings relating to land into strong pressure to retain existing uni-racial council.
3. In the light of what appears to be sectional pressure I have not agreed to request for withdrawal of proclamation or postponement of elections.5
4. Police are on alert. Toliman has agreed to issue statement through A.B.C. generally supporting the Administration’s position and emphasising that elections to be held are the means by which Tolais can freely express their opinion.
5. Will keep you informed.6
[NAA: A452, 1969/2889]
1 16 May, to Besley. It called for Barnes to be informed of a campaign by Oscar Tammur to secure postponement of elections for the Gazelle multi-racial council (for background, see Documents 241 and 245). Hay noted that the formation of the council was decided by the AEC ‘on virtually unanimous recommendation’ of the existing council and he added that Tammur and Titimur had recently ‘come out in strong opposition’. (NAA: A452, 1969/2889). For Hay, the ‘first intimation’ of ‘serious trouble’ came during a visit to Rabaul over the Anzac day weekend; a ‘very agitated’ Oscar Tammur asked for a private meeting in which he requested cancellation of the council proclamation and the elections (Hay interview, 1973–4, NLA: TRC 121/65, 4:2/26-7).
2 H.W. West.
3 In a submission to Barnes informing him of the impending march, Ballard had commented: ‘The change in the status of the Council was announced on 12th February … Several villages included in the new Council area had expressed opposition to council government in the past. There was no expression of hostility to the proposal when it was first announced however … and no overt opposition was expected … Agitators are apparently attempting to rouse opposition on an anti-Administration – anti-European basis. Mr. Titimur … is regarded as having an unstable personality by both the Administration and some indigenous members of the House … The extent of the opposition to this change is not known and cannot be accurately gauged until the march, and probably elections, have been held. It does give an indication, however, that Bougainville is not alone in harbouring dissident feelings or possessing M.H.A.s who express and encourage such feelings’ (16 May, NAA: A452, 1969/2889).
4 See Document 263.
5 In his conversation with Besley, Hay said that the council had reversed its resolution ‘under obvious pressure from Tammur and Titimur’. Responding to Hay’s suggestion that the elections should proceed, Besley commented that ‘this was the right decision’. Besley thereafter informed Barnes of the discussion (minute, Besely to Warwick Smith, 16 May 1969, NAA: A452, 1969/2889). Hay’s decision was made in consultation with senior Administration officers, including Johnson, Ellis, Pearsall and Whitrod. Hay’s view ‘was that we should not give way, that to give. way under pressure like this would look very bad indeed and would submit the Administration to similar pressures from other groups later on. We were under the difficulty that there was a resolution of the Council, but … all the information … indicated that the resolution was passed under duress and in very peculiar circumstances; and I wasn’t really prepared to accept that resolution as a recommendation, bearing in mind that I’d had a contrary recommendation before’. This view was supported by the group after ‘careful consideration’. Johnson was ‘the one who was most uneasy … who possibly saw the consequences … But … he didn’t press his point unduly’ (Hay interview, 1973–4, NLA: TRC 121/65, 4:2/31 ).
6 Hay reported to Besley later in the day that further estimates had put the crowd at 8–10,000. Speakers included Damien Kereku, a local school teacher, Tomot, Titimur, Tammur and Robin Kumaina, a Reserve Bank clerk. Tammur ‘concentrated on [the] thesis that [the] council had not informed people before passing [its] resolution’ and asked ‘whether this [was] a democratic country or a totalitarian one’. Tammur also handed a resolution to West (telex 3536, NAA: A452, 1969/2889). On 19 May, Hay cabled Warwick Smith that the situation in Rabaul had been quiet over the weekend, though Tammur and Titimur had continued to hold meetings in villages opposing the inauguration of the MRC and were ‘probably urging people not to vote in the elections’ (telex 3568, ibid.).