New campaign to pardon bush poet Morant

Harry Morant. Photo / Supplied

In April 1902 the Australian magazine The Bulletin published a poignant poem by bush balladeer Harry "Breaker" Morant, also one of its contributors from Britain's war against the Boers in South Africa.

It could read as an epitaph to Morant, still a cause celebre almost a century after he was executed for war crimes following a court martial that is now being reviewed by Australia's most senior legal officer.

By the time the poem Envoi appeared, Morant and Lieutenant Peter Handcock had been dead for more than a month, shot by a British firing squad. A third soldier, Lieutenant George Witton was facing a life sentence.

Now Attorney-General Robert McClelland, after meeting a representative of Morant's descendants and advocate Jim Unkles, a former military lawyer, has agreed to review the facts of the court martial to see if a case for pardons can be made to Britain.

British authorities have previously rejected petitions to reopen the case.

"The case involves complex questions of law and historical evidence about events that took place over a century ago," McClelland said.

"The competing assertions still evoke considerable emotion even to this day."

McClelland said Australia had no jurisdiction to review the legality of decisions made by British courts martial, but a key issue remained the claims that Morant and Handcock were denied procedural fairness in the process leading up to and during the court martial.

"This is of particular interest to me because fair and proper process is at the heart of our justice system," he said. "I will consider the material provided to me during today's discussion and assess the merit of another possible representation to the UK Government."

Unkles and supporters have campaigned for two years to reopen the case, brought to modern Australia's consciousness in the 1980 movie Breaker Morant, in which Morant and Handcock were portrayed as colonial scapegoats for Imperial policies.

The war against Dutch settlers, fought between 1899 and 1902, was a cynical, brutal - and ultimately enormously costly - campaign to force British right and ambitions in the gold- and diamond-rich Boer republics.

Volunteer contingents were sent from imperial outposts, including Canada, New Zealand and the Australian colonies, attracting Morant, a hard-drinking, womanising English-born itinerant bush poet, drover, horsebreaker and polo player.

In 1901 he joined an irregular unit called the Bush Veld Carbineers, eventually being posted to the remote Spelonken region with good friend Captain Percy Hunt. The Spelonken Carbineers had shot six surrendering Boers before Morant arrived, and had a reputation for insubordination and looting.

After Hunt was killed and his body mutilated, Morant sought vengeance: over a number of days one wounded Boer prisoner was shot, eight others on their way to surrender were killed on Morant's orders, and three more were shot by Morant and Handcock.

It was suspected, but never proved, that the pair were responsible for the murder of a missionary of German extraction who had earlier encouraged the first group of eight Boers to surrender.

During their court martial, Morant and Handcock pleaded the existence of orders - still disputed - to take no prisoners, but they were condemned with no right of appeal.

Advocates of pardons for Morant and Handcock argue that the court martial was riddled with procedural errors, including the fact they did not see their lawyer until the night before the case opened, the lawyer had a rural practice with no criminal experience, and no right of appeal was granted.

But other historians say guilt had been clearly proven, and that even if any order had been given to take no prisoners it would have provided no legal excuse for executing Boers who had ceased to resist.