Category: Protest

Australian women have been key organisers of peace activism since the foundation of the Australian Section of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Melbourne in 1920. In Melbourne, the first big protest against nuclear weapons was held at the Assembly Hall on Collins Street in August 1946. This meeting, which focused on opposing the use and manufacture of atomic bombs, was organised by the editorial board of the lifestyle magazine Women's Digest.  Along with communist organisers, women dominated peace activism and would drive the development of anti-nuclear protest in Victoria and Australia over the next decades.   The Nuclear Age The Nuclear Age burst onto the global stage dramatically in August 1945 when the US bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although many initially supported the attacks for ending the World War II in the Pacific, there was also widespread criticism of the cruel impact of the atomic blasts in the days and months after the attack....