Two WWI anti-conscription songsheets are now on the Australian Folk Songs website with a total of 7 Australian songs plus the wobbly song Solidarity forever

One of the songsheets became notorious in the newspapers because it was discovered carefully placed and bound in a batch of early phonebooks published in the Melbourne Government Printery ... the anti-conscription men and women were a creative lot!

The anti-conscription movement defeated two referendums despite overwhelming support of jingo governments and newspapers.

see Women's Anti-Conscription Songs [1916]


and Anti-Conscription Army Songs [1917]

------

The Melbourne "Age" writes:--
The flagrant and dishonorable abuse of official trust to which certain "anti" types will descend in order to spread their pernicious gospel is in evidence in a copy of our latest "Telephone Guide," dated March.

Between the leaves of the book, and bound into the book as a whole with the other official leaves, is a copy of a pamphlet of "anti conscription army songs," dealing with such topics as a "maiden's sacrifice," the "greedy master class," "incubate the kids," and "bump me into Parliament."

It is not known how many leaflets have been distributed in such a manner, but the binding up of this particular leaflet in the guide under review proves almost conclu- sively that it is the work of an employe or employes in the Government Printing Office, whose low conception of their obligations as public servants makes it highly desirable that their identity should be established and fitting punishment imposed.

--------
This article refers the Anti-Conscription Army Songs mentioned above

There are plenty of other Australian anti-war songs from the period and we would see the same phenomenon from the Menzies Vietnam War and the George Bush Iraq War

At the same time commentators often exclaim "what has happened to the protest songs" when their only source of information comes from Top of the Pops. ! How very convenient