Tag / Nazis

by Eddie

The Nazi plan to destroy Bayswater Subway

bayswater-subway

Once, crossing the railway at Bayswater was difficult, with vehicles forced to travel some distance away, and school children having to dash across the track in a dangerous manner. So the local council decided the best course of action was to go underneath it.

The first plan for a subway at Bayswater was as early as 1903 when the council asked for one to link King William Street to Coode Street. Nothing happened as a result, so they asked again in 1908. By now the problems associated with draining such a subway had been raised, and the council offered its engineer to sort these out.

Despite having promised a subway, the Government now claimed it was short of money but said they would do what they could. Some people, though, questioned if it could be done at all. After all, to get the road low enough it would have to be underneath the water table, and so drainage was impossible, and it would become a small lake with any amount of rain.

These misgivings were ignored though, and on 14 February 1910 the Chairman of the Board, Mr I. C. Granville, drove his horse and sulky through a ribbon held up by two young women and on into the new Bayswater Subway. It doesn’t seem to have flooded, at least not to any noticeable extent. However, the open drains from the subway flowing down King William Street did keep making that road subside.

Terrifyingly, in 1942 a group of Perth’s Nazi sympathisers planned to blow up Bayswater Subway to paralyse both rail and road networks. The plotters included a Post Office employee, an insurance agent, and a dairy farmer. While their intention was to establish a National Socialist government in Australia, they were infiltrated by the police and arrested before any of their schemes came to fruition.

Today, of course, the subway is best known for being repeatedly struck by trucks. We don’t mean to suggest the drivers are just trying to finish off what the Nazis couldn’t, but so far they have failed to destroy a 108-year-old underpass and bridge. And let’s hope it stays that way.

by Eddie

The Inglewood Nazis

blue_shirts

Looking so, so sexy in their fascist outfits

Some people have mixed emotions about Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front who are protesting the ‘Islamification’ of WA. But Dodgy Perth salutes them. It takes a special kind of bravery to stand up in public and let everyone see what kind of knob end you really are.

So to celebrate the rise of Neo Nazis in Perth, we present a time when there was no ‘Neo’: the 1930s. Welcome to the Nazi Party of Western Australia. Yep. Actual, honest-to-god Nazis.

80x105mm

Busselton was not as nice to Uncle Adolph as Inglewood

Being a stylish bunch of fascists they did not want the brown or black shirts associated with tasteless European evil, so they went for an attractive shade of blue. When matched with a peaked cap it made them both quite fascistic and, to be perfectly honest, a little like a 1970s gay clone.

The local branch of Nazis was headed by W. G. Tracey, a man so awful The Racial Purity Guild of Australia was embarrassed to be connected with him.

And Tracey must have been humiliated when his main opponents, the Communist Party, decided they couldn’t be bothered protesting his miniature Nuremberg Rally at Riley’s Hall in Inglewood, on Beaufort Street.

“After careful investigation of the so-called National Socialist Party,” said a Commie spokesman, “we have come to the conclusion that the organisation and its leader can be ignored.”

Ouch.

If you want to make a pilgrimage to the site of WA’s first Nazi rally, the building is now an excellent Himalayan-Nepalese restaurant, which Dodgy Perth can recommend from personal experience.

nepal

by Eddie

Racist tables and bigoted Boans

Nice to know, isn't it?

Nice to know, isn’t it?

There was a time when every piece of furniture in Western Australia had a racist stamp on it. Every. Single. Piece. From 1900 to the 1960s all furniture had to declare whether it had been made purely by good honest white workers, or had been sullied by being touched by people from South East Asia.

Seriously. It was either stamped ‘European labour only’ or ‘Asiatic labour’.

Chinese craftsmen were well-known for producing quality pieces at lower prices than the white-only factories could. So the unions objected and—thank you, White Australia policy—the government passed laws to make sure buyers knew which race had produced them.

Some union leaders went further and demanded furniture factories should have glass fronts so customers could check the place wasn’t secretly employing people from South East Asia.

Looking just like Gestapo headquarters

Looking just like Gestapo headquarters

One of the worst local retailers who cashed in on the racism of their customers was Boans. They regularly advertised that they would only make and sell furniture without Asian employees. Which, in Boans’ opinion, meant their chairs and tables were superior.

It has always been the policy of Boans to employ European labour only in their factory, which means that the highest possible workmanship is put into every piece of furniture produced.

Unfortunately for bigoted retailers and manufacturers, some members of the public weirdly preferred the same items but at less cost. There’s no accounting for some people’s lack of racial pride.

If you want to see a piece of racist furniture in action, visit Belmont Museum and ask to have a look under their kitchen table. It’s shocking, but definitely worth a look.