The Black Feather is a 1944 Australian radio play by Edmund Barclay. It was a propaganda play for World War Two.

It originally aired in 1944 and was produced again in 1945, directed by Frank Harvey.^[2]

Premise

According to ABC Weekly "The black feather is a symbol that has arisen during the present war. The white feather came to mean cowardice in the days of the cockpit, because a white feather in a game-cock was the sign of a cross-breed in birds, and suggested that the cock was no good for fighting. To learn what the black feather stands for listeners must tune in."^[3]

Another account in the same magazine described it as such: "the story of an event long overdue In Australia—the housewives’ rebellion against black marketing. "You remember the affair of the Black Feather, and how it swept Australia like a cleansing me. Some say it first leapt up in Perth, others trace the origin to Goulburn, but as a matter of cold, hard fact, it all began in New Guinea.” ^[4]

References