New Guard - Membership and Activities

Membership and Activities

While the New Guard began as a relatively peaceful outfit that used lawful means to advance its objectives, its platform was immediately popular with many First World War officers and veterans as well as others with traditionalist beliefs and attitudes. The organisation's activities quickly descended into thuggery and street violence in a reaction to the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party of Australia.

The New Guard was reputed to have over 50,000 members within Sydney alone (which had a population of 1.2 million at the time), and its membership was organised along strict military lines with ranks, divisions, drill parades and a large private arsenal. It achieved its greatest fame when a member, Captain Francis de Groot, an Irish-born veteran of the First World War and furniture maker, sneaked into the official ceremonial parade on horseback at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in his old 15th Hussars uniform and slashed the opening ribbon with a cavalry sword before Premier Jack Lang had the chance. De Groot declared the bridge open "in the name of the loyal and decent people of New South Wales" and was promptly arrested by a New South Wales State Police officer and taken to a mental asylum for examination. The ribbon was hastily retied and duly cut by Jack Lang.