The issue of conscription was raised again in World War Two. Although the circumstances were different, Maurice Blackburn and many others remained true to their anti-conscription beliefs, and Blackburn became the only member of parliament to vote against the legislation that allowed conscription for overseas service during World War Two.

In this pamphlet, Blackburn reprises many of the arguments that activists, including John Curtin himself, had used during World War One. The pamphlet also calls – unsuccessfully – for a referendum on conscription in World War Two. As a result of opposing the ALP policy in Parliament, Blackburn was disendorsed by the party and subsequently lost his seat.

In contrast John Curtin, anti-conscription activist from Brunswick during World War One changed his views in the different circumstances of an aggressive Nazi Germany and the threat of invasion of Australia by Japan.

Curtin as Prime Minister was able to persuade the majority of the ALP and the Union movement to support his position, and his government included conscripts in the forces fighting against Japan during World War Two. However the area in which these conscripts could be used was limited to the region immediately surrounding Australia — Curtin argued that he was simply redefining what ‘Australian territory’ meant. In the end, Australian conscripts served in only three locations outside mainland Australia, at Merauke in Dutch Western New Guinea and in the British Solomon Islands, and also in eastern New Guinea, which at that time was an Australian Territory.

This photograph shows a march up Sydney Road through Brunswick and Coburg to Pentridge Prison to demand the release of John Zarb.

In 1964 conscription for overseas service was implemented in Australia. The first conscripts were recruited by ballot in March 1965. The primary context for conscription at this time was the Vietnam War. Australian conscripts were first sent there in 1966. By the time conscription ended in 1972, 63,000 men had been conscripted and over 19,000 had been sent to Vietnam. Of those conscripts, 200 were killed.

The Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular through the 1960s and anti-war and anti-conscription campaigns became a major feature of Australian politics. Again, Pentridge Prison in Coburg was an important site for these campaigns.

Up until 1968, conscientious objectors were sent to military prisons. In May of that year the law was changed to send them to civilian gaols.

John Zarb was a Melbourne postman who was the first to be sent to a civilian gaol after refusing to comply with a call up notice. He spent over a year in Pentridge Prison in Coburg. Throughout 1968 and 1969, there were vigorous solidarity campaigns on behalf of gaoled objectors like Zarb. Demonstrations and vigils outside the gaol were almost weekly events and the slogan ‘Free Zarb’ became a common sight on walls and railway sidings around Melbourne.

In January 2018 in Coburg, a hundred years on, the anti-conscription activists and campaigns of Melbourne were remembered through the performance of the street opera Serenading Adela outside the former Pentridge Prison.

The production was based on the protest outside Pentridge Prison in January 1918 to support Adela Pankhurst, and also on the subsequent history of women's activism including reflections on the Vietnam Era and the current period. It included songs that were sung by the first serenaders, an adaptation of Doris Blackburn’s poem “Peace Talk”, and original compositions.

Serenading Adela was produced in conjunction with the Brunswick Coburg Anti-Conscription Commemoration Campaign.