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{{Use Australian English|date=November 2016}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Infobox
| image =
▲| name = Humphrey McQueen
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| birth_date
| birth_place = [[Brisbane]], [[Qld]], [[Australia]]
| death_date =
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| era =
|alma_mater = [[University of Queensland]] ([[Bachelor of Arts#Australia.2C Canada.2C New Zealand.2C South Africa|B.A (Hons.)]])▼
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| workplaces = [[Australian National University]]<br/>
▲| alma_mater
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| doctoral_students =
| notable_students =
| school_tradition =
| main_interests = Australian history, capitalism, slavery
| principal_ideas =
| major_works = ''A New Britannia'' (1970), ''Social Sketches of Australia'' (1978)
| awards = Literature Board, [[Australia Council]] (1975, 1979–1980, 1998)<br/><ref name="surplusvalue.org.au">{{cite web|url=http://surplusvalue.org.au/McQueen/abiog.htm|title=abiography|access-date=1 May 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170217083008/http://surplusvalue.org.au/McQueen/abiog.htm|archive-date=17 February 2017}}</ref>
| influences = [[Karl Marx]], [[Antonio Gramsci]], [[Manning Clark]], [[Georg Lukacs]]
| influenced = [[Elizabeth Humphrys]]
| website = https://www.surplusvalue.org.au/index.html
| footnotes =
}}
'''Humphrey Dennis McQueen''' (born 26 June 1942) is an Australian
==Early life==
McQueen was born in [[Brisbane]] to a
==Early career==
McQueen's first job was as a clerk, third division, at the [[Department of Social Services (1939–1972)|Department of Social Services]] in 1960.<ref>Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 10 March, 1960, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/241002458?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> He left the Commonwealth Public Service soon afterwards to undertake a Bachelor of Arts degree at the [[University of Queensland]] where he graduated with[[Honours degree|Honours]] in 1965.<ref name="surplusvalue.org.au"/> The 'burly, goatee bearded...freethinker' was suspended from the University in 1962 when he reproduced the opinions of Peter Kenny, an [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]] researcher, in 1962.<ref>The Canberra Times, 26 July, 1962, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131728399?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> Kenny had argued that the existence of a god was debatable and that homosexuality should be celebrated as much as heterosexuality.<ref>Thurunka, 29 March, 1962, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230410260?searchTerm=peter%20kenny%20morals%20abc</ref> The panel appointed to judge the 'bearded' McQueen found him guilty but declined to punish him.<ref>The Canberra Times, 02 August, 1962, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131729240?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref>▼
===Before academia===
▲McQueen's first job was as a clerk, third division, at the [[Department of Social Services (1939–1972)|Department of Social Services]] in 1960.<ref>Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 10 March
McQueen was an active participant in the anti-
==
McQueen's political activism in the 1960s led him to join academia in 1970. His first Marxist critique was a paper in 1967, ''Which Party for Socialists?'', arguing against the ALP. His first academic article came in 1968 when the political economist Bruce McFarlane invited McQueen to write an article in Labour History.<ref>McQueen, Humphrey 1984, Gallipoli to Petrov, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney</ref> The article, ''Convicts and Rebels'', contested the Australian [[Whig history]] associated with the Old Left.<ref name="auto2">McQueen, H 1968, "Convicts and Rebels", Labour History, Vol. 15, pp. 3–30.</ref><ref>Martin, A W 1962/2007, The Whig View of Australian History: And Other Essays, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne.</ref><ref>Connell, R W 1974, "Images of Australia", in D E Edgar (ed.) Social Change in Australia: Readings in Sociology, Cheshire Books, Sydney.</ref><ref name="auto3">Williams-Brooks, Llewellyn (2016). "Radical Theories of Capitalism in Australia", Honours Thesis, University of Sydney, viewed 20 April 2017, [http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16655]</ref> In the article, McQueen doubted the authenticity of a [[democracy|democratic]] and [[egalitarian]] tradition emanating from Australia's [[convict]] history. He challenged the egalitarian aspect of the tradition, highlighting the prominence of racism in convict society.<ref name="auto"/>
In 1970, he moved to [[Canberra]], where he taught [[Australian history]] as a senior tutor at the [[Australian National University]] from 1970 to 1974.<ref name="surplusvalue.org.au"/> He met and befriended the historian, [[Manning Clark]].<ref name="auto1"/> Soon after starting at the university, McQueen registered his disapproval of the History Department's decision to allow the Faculty of Military Studies at [[Royal Military College, Duntroon]] to join ANU (it was affiliated already with UNSW).<ref>Woroni, 23 June 1970, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140092088?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> Although many agreed with McQueen's argument that Duntroon did not allow the right to free thought, fundamental to the liberal conception of a university, the department approved the request.
Receptions of the book were mixed. Terry Irving in reviewing A New Britannia, highlighted the work's theoretical legacy, but also the need to produce a more developed theoretical engagement. He stated that A New Britannia "Will provoke angry discussion, but I hope it will also provoke the new left to develop the methodology necessary to write a new history".<ref>Irving, T 1970, "Head-Standing", Bulletin, 12 Dec, pp. 55–57</ref> This observation would influence the development of another hallmark of the Australian New Left, [[Class Structure in Australian History]].<ref>Irving, T & Connell, R 1979, Class Structure in Australian History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne.</ref><ref>Williams-Brooks, Llewellyn (2016). "Radical Theories of Capitalism in Australia", Honours Thesis, University of Sydney, viewed 20 April 2017</ref> The [[Papua New Guinea Post-Courier]] said, 'Mr Humphrey McQueen is a very angry young man, and there is plenty of justification for this in Australia.'<ref>Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 18 December 1970, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/250250200?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> The [[Canberra Times]] said, 'In order to encompass such a wide range McQueen has obviously left gaps in his argument, but this matters little... He is concerned to show that the projection of radicalism and nationalism into socialism and anti-imperialism is mythical. This he does, as others have done, but will such attacks ever kill the myth?'<ref>The Canberra Times, 12 December 1970, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110443365?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> [[Rowan Cahill]] in [[Tribune (Australian newspaper)|Tribune]] said, 'The trouble is when you dash around frantically from one battlefield to another, like as not you'll end up shooting the wrong people. I believe this is what he has done... McQueen notes that revolutionaries in power have sometimes distorted history in order to stay there; I add the note that in attempting to search out a strategy for coming to power we have to be careful that something similar is not also done.'<ref>Tribune, 16 December 1970, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/237507574?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> The journalist W.A. Wood in Tribune attacked the book calling McQueen 'Mr Justice McQueen'.<ref>Tribune, 19 May 1971, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/237868128?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref>
In 1971, McQueen wrote a review against [[Christopher Hitchens]] calling his work on Marx 'acceptable as a fourth year honours
essay but it would not be remarkable even as that' and 'it would be useful for a student with no more than an hour to prepare for a tutorial on the subject.'<ref>Woroni, 06 September, 1971, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140092995?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> McQueen said of his teaching style, 'History is a study of the development of
society — the society as a whole ... the bourgeoisie have isolated and categorized scholarship in such a way as to eliminate the study of the interaction of all social factors, environment, politics and economics... my course is designed to restore histor-y to a study of society as a whole.'<ref>Woroni, 09 March, 1972, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140093515?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref>
McQueen called for a boycott of the 1972 election because the ALP under [[Gough Whitlam]] would be 'even more imperialist
in its policy towards South East Asia.'<ref>Woroni, 11 October 1972, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140093417?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> [[Mungo Wentworth MacCallum|Mungo McCallum]] said McQueen was 'a middle-class academic putting forward views, on the ideal society but without suggesting realistic proposals to attain it.' McQueen was charged along with 8 undergraduates for encouraging people to defy the draft, but charges was later dropped.<ref>Canberra Times, 16 December 1972, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110625865?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref> Along with his long-time friend, Bruce McFarlane and others, he contributed to a five-part series on Marx aired by ABC Radio Two in 1973 which became a book.<ref>Tribune, 16 January 1973, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/236856243?searchTerm=humphrey%20mcqueen</ref>
==Independent career==
By 1978, McQueen had left ANU and had shifted away from his earlier work as he became increasingly influenced by Maoism.<ref>Bongiorno, "Two Radicals"</ref> This led McQueen to depart from ''A New Britannia'' and the Gramscian New Left, a process he described in the 2004 edition. McQueen believed in a fusion between the philosophical and economic Marx, which was a midway between the two competing interpretations of Marxism that had preoccupied radicals since the 1920s.<ref>Long, Malcolm 1973, Marx and Beyond, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Sydney.</ref> McQueen's fourth book was ''Social Sketches of Australia'' (1978), a social history of Australia since the late nineteenth century. Continuing on from early work, Social Sketches was a correction to the secondary source focus of ''A New Britannia'', focusing instead on primary sources and the perspectives of minorities.<ref>Piccini, Jon 2011, “Reading Humphrey McQueen’s A New Britannia in De-colonial Times,” Overland 224, pp. 12-20.</ref>
McQueen's work since the 1970s has been varied, ranging from historiographical works to art history and the importance of British slavery to the development of capitalism.
==
McQueen was married to Judy McQueen.
==Bibliography==
{{Australian socialism}}
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