The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins

Author:Patrick Mullins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL039000, POL004000, HIS054000, LAN027000, LAW060000, BUS077000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2020-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

A kick in the ribs

Now the Portnoy trials shifted to Western Australia, where, in the final days of 1970, Joan Broomhall appeared in the Perth Court of Petty Sessions before Magistrate N.J. Malley, charged with selling an obscene publication.

A fifty-eight-year-old English-born woman with wavy grey hair, plump cheeks, and glasses, Broomhall was the manager of the Pioneer Bookshop, in Perth. Owned by the Communist Party of Australia, of which Broomhall was a member, the Pioneer was housed in an ageing cottage on the corner of Bulwer and Stirling streets. Its shabby front room was packed with books: the requisite communist material — magazines and newspapers from the Soviet Union, China, and Soviet-bloc countries; novels and plays by favoured writers; and, of course, the works of the ‘saints’, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin — but also, unusually, mainstream works from local publishers, including Penguin.1

Broomhall had been determined to stock Portnoy’s Complaint.2 She and the party were anti-censorship: ‘I think censorship of books for adults is an insult.’3 Prompted by the quick sale of an initial fifteen copies in September, she ordered more: 200 copies, then 300, then more again. Aware that the police would soon swoop, Broomhall hid the stock in her home and in those of fellow party members, which they retrieved and brought to the store as needed.4 With a 47 cent profit on each sold copy, Broomhall and the party were intent on maximising sales; thus the party allowed members to sell the book individually and take a 20c cut. Soon enough, party members were appearing in hotel gardens, on the streets, in Forrest Place, and at the University of Western Australia with copies in arm, ready for sale.5 This operation, which was stepped up as the controversy spread in the east, was unabashed, even brazen. On 11 September — the day police raided the Pioneer, seized twenty-three copies of Portnoy, and informed Broomhall that she would be charged — party secretary John Rivo Gandini came to the shop, on foot, laden with copies of Portnoy for Broomhall to put on sale. He did so within full sight of the press, which splashed photographs of his arrival in the newspapers.

Police retaliated by serving a summons on Gandini and by raiding the store again, on 15 September.6 This time, they made sure to make hay of the raid. With the press in tow, they turned the shop over, to the point of climbing into the ceiling to ensure they had seized everything illicit. They managed to find 267 copies, and photographs of the raid — police officers in trilbies and suits, clambering up bookshelves and diving through boxes — were splashed about. But it was to limited effect. Party members continued to sell the book, pushing sales to about 2,000 copies, and providing a welcome influx of funds to the party coffers. There was also the benefit of considerable publicity: at a meeting in October, party members crowed that the advertising they had gained from all the fuss had been ‘fabulous’.

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