Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:01:15 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Minimalism and Reforms


Good question, Charlie.

My personal experience, as a 'wog' child in Menzies' Australia (1963-1968)
was quite simply one of learning my English by way of my teachers'
unambiguous paens to Menzies's 'vision' for Australia.  This charismatic
tory had become the natural leader of our ersatz England.  Australia was
implicitly defined as (a) against all that was 'red' and (b) as brave a
tribute to old England as our troublesome environment and shameful heritage
(ie. convicts) would allow.  My grade six teacher (whom I adored) even read
>from *The Road to Serfdom* to us - so impressed was I, I even asked to
borrow it!  BTW, I've had cause to take a good look at newspapers/magazines
of the day, and this neat hegemony screams out from every page.

Now, to some formal history:  You are right to compare Australia favourably
to the contemporary US, but some points should be made.

As for the defeat of Menzies' attempt to outlaw the CP; well, it was
largely a one-man show.  In 1949 the socdem ALP government was being
seriously weakened by all manner of internal splits.  On the one side were
the fiercely anti-communist catholic sect (who became the Democratic Labor
Party and ensured Menzies's rule for decades to come) and on the other were
loudly communist union leaders and some quietly communist staffers.  ALP
leader Chifley was presented with a bastard choice, give in to the commies
and alienate the demographic basis of his party (Irish catholics), or beat
down the strikes with the army.  Menzies had already been on the scene for
a decade, framing the ALP as a hotbed of Stalinists, and Chifley made a
choice that Adam would say socdem politics demanded.

This destroyed him, and did not save the ALP at the 1949 polls.  Menzies
had succeeded in presenting the ALP platform as nascent communism - which,
compared to, say, US party platforms, it must have seemed.  Nationalised
banks, monopoly public broadcasting (which enraged the press barons who
stood to benefit from commercial licences), fuel quotas, increases in
top-end income tax scales, support for the apparently communist Sukarno etc
etc.

Evatt took over the new opposition.  He personality might best be described
as insecurity presenting as arrogance.  Anyway, he did not fill the hearts
of lefties as his predecessors had done.  He was out'n'out socdem himself,
but he had communist connections through his staff.  He was a brilliant
lawyer and the sort of advocate who could talk for hours without apparently
breathing in.  He took Menzies on about the outlaw amendment, pushed a
demonstrably liberal democratic line, and (I would argue, but I stand to be
corrected), all by himself, defeated the amendment in court.  Whatever role
the commies played was most definitely not to the fore.  All this in a
media atmosphere only those Americans alive in the fifties could begin to
imagine.

The Australian CP proceeded on its course, splitting about Hungary,
splitting about family differences, splitting about squeezing the
toothpaste tube in the wrong place - and, as we now see, all on ASIO (our
'security agency') film/folios.  The CP was all over the place on the
nascent US civil rights issues, did not have a strong position on 'women's
lib', were split on ethnicity, and beset by mounting feelings of
irrelevance (this latter is my unsubstantiated interpretation).  This
constituted a psychic crash of huge proportions.  The confidence of the
Australian left, the real potential for a socialist Australia, was
something to behold between 1930 and 1949 - and it went to pieces in a
decade!

It took the gradual takeover of the ALP by bourgeois personalities (like
Whitlam) to restore the political fortunes of the ALP, ultimately bringing
the ever less fundamentalist catholics back to the ranks,  and aligning
with what we might call bourgeois social movements.  For all Whitlam's many
and spectacular virtues, he had a front bench of largely frustrated and
impatient old men, an international economy which had lost all its shape
(end of Bretton Woods, OPEC and a disastrous domestic minerals speculation
episode), a hostile senior bureaucracy, and a rather imperial attitude to
his comrades.

Whitlam, tried to side with the SU on the Baltic States and was crucified
>from all sides.  His overtures to China were lambasted in the press.  His
government's clumsy attempts to 'buy back the farm' (a realistic project
that was but half a billion dollars short of fruition) and the inability to
accommodate the new 'globalism' (an inability just as apparent among the
tories, but they were in happy opposition) - left his tragic government
with a reputation for appalling financial management.  A reputation from
which the ALP has been distancing itself with pathetic enthusiasm ever
since.

The ALP's strategic response has been one of forcing the Libs to the right
by pinching what is euphemistically called the 'middle ground' - now
they're in opposition - daily being mocked for having no raison d'etre, and
confining their utterances to occasions of personal impropriety in
indivdual ministers.  They have left behind a large constituency, a culture
much more amenable to subtle socialist agitation than, say, that of the US
(I stand to be corrected), and any reason to be in politics other than to
get government. I took this on the chin for fourteen years (if I had been
thus disappointed by an employer, a friend or a lover, I'd have jumped ship
a decade ago - so Mich Holden will have to excuse my abandoning ship -
there's nowhere else to go - we have a DSP - a bit like Adam's gallant
troop - and we have a Stalinist CP - as small as the British counterpart -
and the ALP has squandered a year without even hinting it's capable of
reasserting a useful identity).

A long post, but a bit of context doesn't hurt.

Regards,
Rob.

>A question on this Rob: just how successful was Menzies' red-baiting? I had
>the impression that the attacks on the left were nowhere near as successful
>in Australia as they were in the the USA (the CP defeating the
>constitutional amendment that outlawed them, for instance), and that the
>CP's decline had much more to do with the international factors that
>operated elsewhere (the fallout from Hungary, and the rise of a new left in
>the 1960s to the left of the CP) Is this right?
>
>Charlie Hore, Bookmarks Bookshop 
>
>
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