The Empire Air Training Scheme: Identity, Empire and Memory

expressions of despair and disillusionment, ‘forced to face with sober senses the realcondition of their lives’. 69The principal subject of Chapter 4 is found in the decades immediatelyfollowing the end of World War II examining the reaction of the airmen and the nationto the institution of EATS. The images upon which the Empire Scheme was foundedhad been questioned during the war and in the following years the acceptance of thesevalues became more intermittent and then more blurred. The diminishing image waslinked to the changing of Australian cultural values and political alignments thatwould place Britain and the Empire as ‘increasingly marginal.’ Such change wouldrender the enthusiasm for an ‘Empire Scheme’ untenable, and unmentionable in theAustralian identity. In this aspect it becomes an example of ‘which’ history is chosento be told and identified as relevant to the present. 70 The actuality of thedestructiveness of air technology had also been witnessed compromising the promiseof a new age. Responses to the dislocation included the denial of the image of EATSfrom a place in Australian history exposing the illusions of the past.Chapter 5 covers the reconstruction of the collective image of EATS from the1980s to the present day and this includes recognising the absence of the institutionfrom the public discourse. In the post imperial age, Australia seemed intent to presenta new identity to the world and such self-renewal would carefully select images thatrepresented the ‘interests of the moment.’ This chapter also pursues the theme of theselection of which stories nations choose to tell and why they are chosen at theparticular time. The construction of national identities, which in this case meant theexclusion of EATS from the Australian national narrative, becomes even moreobvious by developing a comparison with representations in other Commonwealthnations who joined the Scheme. I have suggested that different relationships betweenCommonwealth countries and the Empire emerge, highlighting the formation ofnational identities, and collective memories are dependent on the selection of whatbecomes meaningful in the recreation of national identities, reconciling the69 Karl Marx, The Manifesto, cited in Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air 95.70 Questions around these issues have been raised by recent historians see for example Joy Damousi‘History Matters: The Politics of Grief and Injury in Australian History,’ Australian Historical Studies118, 2002, 100.21