William John Miles

William John Miles (born August 27, 1871 in Woolloomooloo , Sydney , † January 10, 1942 in Gordon , Australia ) was a political publisher who financed the fascist Australia First Movement with its publications.

Miles was the only child of Balfour Clement Miles , who was born in Tahiti , and his British wife, Ellen Munton, a widow. Miles was an athletic cricket and rugby player in his youth , played piano and chess, was treasurer of the Shakespeare Society of New South Wales, but also a punter and betting company. He first worked in his father's company. In 1909 he became a director of Sydney Meat Preserving Co. Ltd , British General Electric Co. Ltd and Peapes & Co. Ltd from 1912 to 1942 . He was married to Maria Louisa Binnington. Miles was found unfit for war and still protested against compulsory military service in Australia from 1916 to 1917, the dominant political issue of the time. He entered the Australia League , which under the slogan Australia first (German: First Australia ) opposed the First World War and general conscription in Australia. Until 1920 he was politically engaged in the magazines Ross's Monthly of Protest , Personality and Progress and Socialist . His political ambitions as a publisher ended in 1920 and from 1923 he returned to his business and made several trips abroad, the last around 1929. In July he published the monthly Independent Sydney Secularist magazine and when he met Percy Reginald Stephensen he employed him against Pay to his literary-political advisor.

In July 1936 Miles founded the Publicist , a monarchist , fascist , anti-British, anti-communist and anti-Semitic newspaper, which stood up for the Aborigines , as they were, according to the National Socialists, to the Aryans . He published Stephensen's book The Foundations of Culture in Australia in 1936 and Xavier Herberts Capricornia in 1938. In 1937–1938 he was a supporter of the Aboriginal Progressive Association (APA) founded by William Ferguson of the Australian Labor Party and Aboriginal Jack Patten , a political activist and journalist. The APA was instrumental in the Day of Mourning , which was an Aboriginal protest day on January 26, 1938 to mark the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet's arrival in Australia. With the outbreak of World War II , Miles wrote editorials in his magazines, in which he spoke out in favor of the Axis powers .

He was not a member of the Australia First Movement , which was officially founded in October 1941, but he gave the magazine Publicist to Stephensen and two other people. Publicist magazine ceased to appear when Stephensen and 15 other people from the Australia First Movement were arrested in March 1942 for collaborating with anti-war Japan.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ adb.online.anu.edu.au William John Miles (1871 - 1942) on Dictionary of Biography (Online Edition), accessed 23 March 2011