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mutiny
This page considers military and police mutinies.
It covers -
 introduction
One focus of sedition law is prohibition of efforts to
subvert the loyalty or discipline of military and police
forces, ie turn those forces against authority, induce
them to stand aside during civil disorder or simply render
them incapable of action. Direct disobedience by military
or police personnel, on an individual or collective basis,
has often been characterised as the offence of mutiny.
That offence has been seen as threatening the existence
of the state and society, with for example -
- overthrow
of a system of government or individual ruler
- removal
of a nation's capacity to wage war
- removal
of essential constraints on theft and destruction by
the lower orders (aka the criminal classes).
It
has accordingly inspired severe sanctions, including -
- summary
execution, with or without trial, of participants
- practices
such as decimation (punishment of every tenth man)
- use
of informers and covert surveillance to monitor the
loyalty of troops/police.
It
is important that note that martial organisations usually
accommodate some degree of grumbling, malingering, obstruction
and disobedience - whether by senior officers or by the
people whom they command. Some leaders have turned a blind
eye to misbehaviour on occasion; some leaders, such as
Nelson, have indeed gained their positions through a judicious
interpretation or non-recognition of particular orders.
Others have gained attention because they mismanaged situations
so that things got out of hand and a grievance turned
into an overt revolt against authority.
Commentators have thus argued that some mutinies, particularly
those in the past century, are more appropriately regarded
as industrial action and were in fact defused by officers
on that basis rather than being treated as offences of
the utmost gravity that must be addressed through immediate
severe punishment.
It is clear that mutiny has been a fact of life since
before the Romans and that inept responses by leaders
to people under stress have on occasion converted minor
incidents into direct challenges to authority. Military
disobedience in Tsarist Russia and Wilhelmine Germany
reflect underlying discontent and institutional failures
across those states, precipitating the collapse of the
old order. Successive mutinies by troops in India threatened
the Raj but arguably strengthened Britain's hold on the
'jewel in the crown'.
In Australia episodes such as the Rum Rebellion - action
against the fidgety Governor Bligh of Mutiny on the
Bounty fame - have been mythologised as legitimate,
while the 'Morotai Mutiny' and the 'HMAS Pirie Mutiny'
have been overblown. There has been less attention to
events such as the 1923 Victorian Police Strike and the
1629 Batavia Mutiny.
studies
For Australia see Mutiny! Naval Insurrections in Australia
and New Zealand (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 2000)
by Tom Frame & Kevin Baker, and Baker's Mutiny,
Terrorism, Riots & Murder: A History of Sedition in
Australia and New Zealand (Dural: Rosenberg 2006).
Naval mutinies at the Nore and Spithead feature in NAM
Rodger's The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian
Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1986) and
Jonathan Neale's The Cutlass and the Lash: Mutiny
and Discipline in Nelson's Navy (London: Pluto Press
1985).
For the US see Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection
(Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press 2006) by Leonard
Guttridge and Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century:
An International Perspective (London: Frank Cass
2003) edited by Christopher Bell & Bruce Elleman.
The latter features Richard Gimblett's 'The Post-war 'Incidents'
in the Royal Canadian Navy, 1949' and Philippe Masson's
'The HMAS Australia mutiny, 1919'. Invergordon is discussed
in Alan Ereira's The Invergordon Mutiny (London:
Routledge 1981). The collapse of the Wilhelmine empire
is discussed in Daniel Horn's The German Naval Mutinies
of World War I (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press
1969)
The Bounty has garnered a large literature, much
of it distinctly romantic. Recent work includes Greg Dening's
subtle Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and
Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge: Cambridge 1992)
and Richard Hough's Captain Bligh and Mr Christian
(New York: Dutton 1973). A perspective is provided by
works on the 'Somers Affair', including A Hanging
Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers
(New York: Free Press 2003) by Buckner Melton. For the
Batavia an exemplary account is The wreck
of the Batavia & Prosper (Melbourne: Black Inc
2005) by sinologist Simon Leys.
For a later incident see Days Of Violence: The 1923
Police strike in Melbourne (Ormond: Hybid 1998) by
Gavin Brown & Robert Haldane. A perspective is offered
by Francis Russell in A City in Terror: The 1919 Boston
Police Strike (New York: Viking 1975).
Among the literature on army mutinies see Rebellion,
Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in comparative Perspective
(Westport: Praeger 2001) edited by Jane Hathaway, When
Soldiers Quit: Studies in Military Disintegration
(Westport: Praeger 1997) by Bruce Watson and Mutiny
in the British and Commonwealth forces, 1797-1956
(London: Buchan & Enright 1987) by Lawrence James.
Incidents during the 1914-18 War are considered in Between
Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry
Division During World War I (Princeton: Princeton
Uni Press 1994) by Leonard Smith, Dare Call It Treason
(New York: Simon & Schuster 1963) by Richard Watt,
The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in
World War I (London: Verso 1985) by Gloden Dallas
& Douglas Gill.
For unhappiness about Home Rule and its aftermath see
Ian Beckett's The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914
(London: Bodley Head 1986), James Fergusson's The
Curragh Incident (London: Faber 1964), Anthony Babington's
The Devil to Pay: The Mutiny of the Connaught Rangers,
India, July 1920 (London: Leo Cooper 1991), Maryann
Valiulis' Almost a Rebellion: The Irish Army Mutiny
of 1924 (Cork: Tower 1985).
Serial mutinies in developing economies - instrumental
in inhibiting development - are explored in The 1964
Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa
(Westport: Praeger 2003) by by Timothy Parsons.
For Russia see Red Mutiny: Revolution and Mutiny on
the Battleship Potemkin (New York: Houghton Mifflin
2007) by Neal Bascomb, Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate
of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
2002) by Israel Getzler
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