Riots

From 1918, 1919 and into 1920 Australia was rocked by a series of riots involving returned soldiers. From brawls in small regional towns to major riots in capital cities, thousands of men took their grievances to the streets, where in some case police spent days quelling the chaos. Yet this noisy and violent chapter of our history has been conspicuously absent from our contemporary commemorations of Anzac.

In Riots, historian Fiona Skyring uncovers the truth behind these violent events, examining the forces that drove returned soldiers to such extreme actions. Against a backdrop of social upheaval, mass bereavement, and a cost-of-living crisis, these riots reveal a side of Australia's post-war experience that has long been untold. Why did these soldiers, after gruelling years of trench warfare and being welcomed home as heroes, resort to collective violence once they returned? What does this tell us about the making of the Anzac legend in these crucial years when the diggers came home?
Drawing on historical research and compelling storytelling, Riots brings to light these untold stories of angry and lawless returned heroes and the conflicts that shook Australian society at the end of the war.

About the Author

Fiona Skyring is an Australian historian and award-winning writer. Her book, Justice; A history of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, won the WA Premier’s Prize for 2011, along with the WA History Prize and the Margaret Medcalf Award. She wrote the introduction to Five Bells; Being LGBT in Australia, by visual artist Jenny Papalexandris, and published by The New Press, New York, in 2016. Fiona has also authored chapters and articles on the topics of writing history for native title in Australia, and the history of the stolen wages of First Nations peoples. Fiona has worked as an expert witness in the native title sector and in recent years wrote the expert historical reports for stolen wages class actions in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory. These matters in the Federal Court, where the applicants were represented by Shine Lawyers, resulted in government settlements of $180.4 million and $202 million respectively. Since writing expert historical reports for the Rubibi native title claims in the early 2000s, Fiona has worked with Yawuru people in Broome on several award winning museum exhibitions, the most recent being ‘Wanggajarli Burugun/ We are coming home’. Fiona lives in Sydney on lands of the Eora nation.