John Webster

Who was John Webster?

John Webster, aka Mohammed Jon Webster, or more simply just Webster, was a soap box orator and public speaker who principally plied his trade at Speakers' Corner near Marble Arch at Hyde Park, London and beneath the Moreton Bay Fig trees of The Domain, Sydney from the early 1950s till the late 1980s. He also made sorties into the then wilds of Arabia, Tasmania, Melbourne's Yarra Bank and various other outposts of the erstwhile British Empire. Webster, who almost always referred to himself in the third person, cultivated a provocative oratorical style of delivering a wide-reaching and eclectic philosophy in a hybrid carny barking cockney/Australian accent. He was the most prominent and listened-to of all long term speakers at the Sydney Domain. Journalist John Edwards wrote in 1971 "The only force is the inimitible Webster who, lately returned from England, is responsible for most of the popularity of the Domain." Nene King observed of a day spent at the Sydney Domain "Webster commanded the largest audience as he waved a a verbal flag for the British Empire - 'We Englishmen are God's gift to the whole world.'"