Salemi v MacKellar: A controversial deportation case revisited

What is it about?

Ignazio Salemi, an Italian-born journalist and communist migrant rights campaigner of the Australian branch of the Italian Federation of Migrant Workers and their Families (FILEF) was at the centre of a contentious dispute over his amnesty application in 1976, which prompted a long, controversial political and legal case that culminated with his deportation in October 1977. Who really was Salemi? Was he a red firebrand who ought to have been deported, as argued by the Right, or was he a sharp community organiser yet persecuted for his political creed and activism as argued by the Left? Analysing and pulling together the several threads of this deportation case is the subject of this paper. Archival material and oral testimonies not previously taken into account by scholars and researchers have shed new light on this controversial story. Salemi’s persona and mission in Australia, the strategy of the conservatives to disgrace him and the grass-roots organisation he was working for, and the clear-cut polarisation that had been forming in the Left collective memory between those against and those in favour of Salemi’s deportation is here revealed.

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Why is it important?

• Past interpretations have canvassed some important aspects of the event, but have failed to take account of others, such as the decisive role played by the conservative press before and throughout the court case. • This deportation case is a telling example of the type of political manoeuvring that existed in the Italian-Australian community of the 1970s.

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