The incident for which retired nurse Stephen Langford is due to face a Sydney court this month involves some scissors, glue and a sheet of A4 paper that Langford stuck onto a monument of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in Sydney’s Hyde Park. On the sheet were the British military officer’s own words: “All Aborigines from Sydney onwards are to be made prisoners of war and if they resist they are to be shot and their bodies to be hung from trees in the most conspicuous places near where they fall so as to strike fear into the hearts of surviving natives.”
The 1816 command from Macquarie resulted in a massacre at Appin the same year. At least 14 Dharawal and Gandangara people were shot or run off a cliff by his regiment, in what is now south-west Sydney and the Blue Mountains.
“Macquarie’s a really big name in Sydney and I thought how come with all this fame about him we don’t know this, and this is not on the statue?” says Langford
“The wording on it is crazy – a ‘perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart’. What the heck is that? Even in Communist countries they didn’t have that kind of bullshit.”
The activist is facing multiple charges. He stuck the same message to the statue on a number of occasions last year. The charge he will next face court for on October 25 involves an alleged offence of destroying or damaging property, otherwise known as malicious damage, for which his defence relies on an implied freedom of political communication in Australia’s constitution. Langford faces up to two years’ jail. Another hearing involving a separate charge that was due to be held last month was adjourned to next year.
Langford’s lawyer, Mark Davis, said that in his client’s view it was not possible to have a Macquarie statue in a prominent position without knowing the truth about him.
“Langford’s not throwing cans of red paint, he’s not throwing a rope around it and trying to pull it down,” Davis tells The Saturday Paper.”
Lawyer Mark Davis of Sydney City Crime
“He uses Blu Tack or a bit of children’s glue to confront us with the truth of these words in a non-damaging way.”
Davis adds “Maybe one day those words that Langford keeps sticking on posters will be on a brass plaque, underneath the statue of Macquarie”.
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