The Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) was formed as a result of a split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) which began in 1954.[4] The split was between the party's national leadership, under the then party leader Dr H. V. Evatt, and the majority of the Victorian branch, which was dominated by a faction composed largely of ideologically-driven anti-Communist Catholics.[5] Many ALP members during the Cold War period, most but not all of them Catholics, became alarmed at what they saw as the growing power of the Communist Party of Australia within the country's trade unions. These members formed units within the unions, called Industrial Groups, to combat this alleged infiltration.[6]
The intellectual leader of the Victorian Catholic wing of the ALP was B. A. Santamaria,[7] a Roman Catholic Italian-Australian Melbourne lawyer and lay anti-Communist activist, who acquired the patronage of Dr Mannix.[8] Santamaria headed The Catholic Social Studies Movement (often known as The Movement),[9] modeled on Catholic Action groups in Europe[10] and, ironically, in organizational terms, on some of the methods employed by its principal target, the Communist Party of Australia.[11] That group later became the National Civic Council (NCC).[12] Evatt denounced the "Movement" and the Industrial Groups in 1954, alleging they were disloyal and trying to deflect the Labour Movement from pursuing Labor objectives.[13]
The expelled ALP members formed the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) under the influence of B. A. Santamaria.[14] Ideologically, the ALP (Anti-Communist) followed universalism and kept the NCC anti-communist position. Following the stance of the Roman Catholic Church towards the White Australia policy after 1952, the ALP (Anti-Communist) was also oppositor of said policy.[15]
1950s to 1970s
1955 elections
On the night of 19 April 1955, Liberal and Country Party leader Henry Bolte moved a motion of no-confidence against John Cain's Labor government in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. After twelve hours of debate on the motion, in the early hours of 20 April, 11 of the expelled Labor members crossed the floor to support Bolte's motion.[16] With his government defeated, Cain sought and received a dissolution of parliament later that day, with the election set down for 28 May 1955.[17][18]
At the election, 11 of the 12 expelled MPs in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, as well as other candidates, and the one MP facing re-election in the Victorian Legislative Council lost their seats. The party drew 12.6% of the vote, mainly from the ALP, which was directed to the non-Labor parties. Labor won 37.6% of the vote and 20 seats to the Liberals' 34 and the Country Party's ten. The Cain Labor Government lost government at the 1955 election. Only one of the expelled Labor members, Frank Scully, was re-elected for the seat of Richmond.[citation needed] Scully had been a Minister in the Cain Government and a member of the Movement, and was expelled from the ministry and the ALP as part of the 1955 split.[19][20] Five other MPs whose terms had not expired remained in the Legislative Council until the expiry of their terms at the 1958 Victorian election, and all who recontested their seats were defeated.
At the 1955 federal election held in December, all the 7 expelled federal MPs were defeated. However, Frank McManus was elected as a senator for Victoria at the 1955 election, and successful ALP candidate George Cole had chosen before the election to become part of this party.
Membership
The parliamentary membership of the ALP (Anti-Communist) was almost entirely Roman Catholic of Irish descent.[21][22] The only two non-Catholics were its federal leader, Bob Joshua, who represented Ballarat in the Australian House of Representatives, and Jack Little, who led the party in the Victoria Legislative Council between 1955 and 1958. It has been suggested that the party was substantially a party of Irish-ethnics, a result of the ALP split of 1955 being a 'de-ethnicisation', a forcible removal of the Irish-Catholic element within the ALP.[23] However, many ALP (Anti-Communist) members were not of Irish descent. The party attracted many voters among migrants from Catholic countries in southern Europe, and among anti-Communist Eastern European refugees.
A significant [clarification needed] minority of its voters were also non-Catholics.[24] Journalist Don Whitington argued in 1964 that the DLP, as a basically sectarian party, was a most dangerous and distasteful force in Australian politics.[25] Whitington observed that the party was backed by influential sections of the Roman Catholic Church, and that although the party professed to exist primarily to combat communism, it had less commendable reasons behind its coming into being.[25]Daniel Mannix, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, was a DLP supporter, as were other influential clerics.[citation needed]
Democratic Labor Party
In 1957, the party changed its name to the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). In the same year, the Labor Party split in Queensland following the expulsion of Vince Gair, a conservative Catholic, from the party. He and his followers formed the Queensland Labor Party, which, in 1962, became the Queensland branch of the DLP.[3]
Between 1955 and 1974 the DLP was able to command a significant vote, particularly in Victoria and Queensland, with their large numbers of Catholics. During the period the party held between one and five seats in the Senate (which is elected by proportional representation). The DLP Senate leaders were George Cole (from Tasmania; 1955–1965),[26]Vince Gair (from Queensland; 1965–1973),[27] and Frank McManus (from Victoria; 1973–1974).[28] Other DLP Senators were Condon Byrne (from Queensland), Jack Kane[29] (from New South Wales), and Jack Little, a Protestant (from Victoria).
No DLP Senators or state politicians were ever elected in South Australia or Western Australia. Owing largely to demographic reasons, the ALP did not split in these states, although some lay branch members switched to the new party once it had been established. As the ALP and the conservative parties traditionally held approximately equal numbers of seats in the Senate, the DLP was able to use the balance of power in the Senate to extract concessions from Liberal governments, particularly larger government grants to Catholic schools, greater spending on defence, and non-recognition of the People's Republic of China.[citation needed]
During this period the DLP exercised influence by directing its preferences to Liberal candidates in federal and state elections (see Australian electoral system), thus helping to keep the ALP out of office at the federal level and in Victoria. The DLP vote for the House of Representatives gradually declined during the 1960s, but remained strong enough for the Liberals to continue to need DLP preferences to win close elections.
After Evatt's retirement in 1960, his successor Arthur Calwell, a Catholic, tried to bring about a reconciliation between the ALP and the DLP. Negotiations were conducted through intermediaries, and in 1965 a deal was almost done. Three out of four of the ALP's parliamentary leaders agreed to a deal. However, Calwell refused to share power within the party with the DLP leadership on a membership number basis, so the deal failed. Santamaria later claimed that had he accepted, Calwell could have become prime minister.[30] Indeed, at the 1961 federal election Labor came up just two seats short of toppling the Coalition. One of those seats was Bruce, in the DLP's heartland of Melbourne. DLP preferences allowed Liberal Billy Snedden to win a paper-thin victory. Although the Coalition was only assured of a sixth term in government later in the night with an even narrower win in the Brisbane-area seat of Moreton, any realistic chance of a Labor win ended with the Liberals retaining Bruce. Without Bruce, the best Labor could have done was a hung parliament.
At the 1969 federal election, DLP preferences kept Calwell's successor Gough Whitlam from toppling the Coalition, despite winning an 18-seat swing and a majority of the two-party vote. DLP preferences in four Melbourne-area seats allowed the Liberals to narrowly retain them; had those preferences gone the other way, Labor would have garnered the swing it needed to make Whitlam Prime Minister.[31]
The DLP's policies were traditional Labor policies such as more spending on health, education and pensions, combined with strident opposition to communism, and a greater emphasis on defence spending.[32] The DLP strongly supported Australia's participation in the Vietnam War.[citation needed]
From the early 1960s onward the DLP became increasingly socially conservative, opposing homosexuality, abortion, pornography and drug use. This stand against "permissiveness" appealed to many conservative voters as well as the party's base among Catholics. Some members of the DLP disagreed with this, believing the party should stay focused on anti-communism.[33]
The highest DLP vote was 11.11 per cent, which occurred at the 1970 half-senate election. Whitlam and the ALP won government in the 1972 election, defeating the DLP's strategy of keeping the ALP out of power.[citation needed]
In 1973, it was reported that the Country Party and the DLP were considering a merger. In response, Gough Whitlam said he was delighted to see "the old harlot churched".[34]
By this point, the party's emphasis on Senate results had led to a steady decline in their primary vote for the House of Representatives, and according to Tom King of Australian National University a large amount of the support for the DLP by this point came as a result of protest votes against the two major parties, rather than any definitive ideological base.[35] A softening of attitudes towards Communism both in Australia and within the Catholic Church meant that the party increasingly sounded old-fashioned and ideologically adrift, a perception that was not helped by the advanced age of the DLP's parliamentarians.[35]
In April 1976, the Queensland and South Australian branches of the DLP were dissolved. The party only stood candidates in Victoria at the 1977 federal election, without success. In April 1978 it was reported in The Bulletin that the New South Wales state council would meet in June 1978 to determine the future of the party.[36]
In March 1978, the Victorian branch voted to dissolve[37] The vote to dissolve was carried by 110 votes to 100.[38] Some members of the party refused to accept the vote and formed a continuity DLP, which they claimed was a continuation of the original DLP. However, that claim was disputed by almost all the officers of the original DLP.[37]
Vincent Clair Gair was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of Queensland from 1952 until 1957, when his stormy relations with the trade union movement saw him expelled from the Labor Party. He was elected to the Australian Senate and led the Democratic Labor Party from 1965 to 1973. In 1974 he was appointed Australian Ambassador to Ireland by the Whitlam government, which caused his expulsion from the DLP.
Arthur Augustus Calwell KC was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party through three federal elections, losing each one in turn.
Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria, usually known as B. A. Santamaria or Bob Santamaria and sometimes writing under the pseudonym John Williams, was an Australian Roman Catholic anti-communist political activist and journalist. He was a guiding influence in the founding of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), the party that split from the Labor Party (ALP) in the 1950s.
Daniel Patrick Mannix was an Irish-born Australian Catholic bishop. Mannix was the Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years and one of the most influential public figures in 20th-century Australia.
John Cain was an Australian politician, who became the 34th premier of Victoria, and was the first Labor Party leader to win a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He is the only premier of Victoria to date whose son has also served as premier.
John William Austin was an Australian rules football player for the South Melbourne Swans from 1930 to 1938, playing 140 games in the back-pocket and at full-back. Austin was judged one of the best players in South Melbourne's 1933 premiership win over the Richmond Football Club.
Francis Patrick Vincent McManus, Australian politician, was the last leader of the parliamentary Democratic Labor Party and a prominent figure in Australian politics for 30 years.
The Industrial Groups were groups formed by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the late 1940s, by Catholic ALP members aligned with B. A. Santamaria's "Movement" within the ALP from 1944, to combat alleged Communist Party infiltration in the trade unions.
Standish Michael Keon was an Australian politician who represented the Australian Labor Party in the Federal Parliament from 1949 to 1955, having served previously in the State Parliament of Victoria.
Robert Joshua, MC was an Australian politician, and a key figure in the 1955 split in the Australian Labor Party which led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) and, subsequently, the Democratic Labor Party.
John Albert Little was an Australian politician. Born in Maryborough, Victoria, he was educated at East Brunswick and Thornbury state primary Schools, before becoming a clicker in a shoe factory in Collingwood, and later an official with the Victorian Boot Employees' Union, of which he was Federal President in 1944 and 1945. In 1952, was awarded a Commonwealth Bank Scholarship for six months, to study unionism and working conditions in the UK, Europe and the US. In 1954, he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council for Melbourne North, representing the Labor Party.
George Ronald Cole was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Tasmania from 1950 to 1965. He was initially elected to parliament as a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He joined the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) after the party split of 1955, which became the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). He served as the DLP's parliamentary leader until losing his seat at the 1964 election.
Patrick Leslie Coleman CBE, Australian politician, was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council for Melbourne West Province representing the Labor Party from October 1943 until March 1955. He was a member of the Catholic Social Studies Movement in Victoria, and was expelled from the ministry and the ALP as part of the Australian Labor Party split of 1955. After his expulsion from the ALP in March 1955, he became, with Bill Barry in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, the parliamentary leader of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), which was briefly referred to in the media as the Coleman-Barry Labor Party. He was a member of that party only until June 1955.
William Peter Barry was a Member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the Electoral district of Carlton from July 1932 until April 1955. Barry was a member of the Labor Party until March 1955, when he was expelled from the party as part of the Australian Labor Party split of 1955. He became, with Les Coleman in the Victorian Legislative Council, joint leader of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), a party that in 1957 became the Democratic Labor Party.
Francis Raymond Scully, Australian politician, from 1949 was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the electoral district of Richmond representing the Labor Party to March 1955. He was Assistant Minister of Lands, Assistant Minister of Electrical Undertakings in the third Cain government from 1952 to 1955. He was a member of the Catholic Social Studies Movement in Victoria, and was expelled from the ministry and the ALP as part of the Australian Labor Party split of 1955. He then was a member of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) from 1955 to 1958. Scully was the only member of the DLP in the lower house of the Victorian parliament during these three years.
The Australian Labor Party split of 1955 was a split within the Australian Labor Party along ethnocultural lines and about the position towards communism. Key players in the split were the federal opposition leader H. V. "Doc" Evatt and B. A. Santamaria, the dominant force behind the "Catholic Social Studies Movement" or "the Movement".
Thomas William Brennan was an Australian politician.
The 1955 Victorian state election was held in the Australian State of Victoria on Saturday, 28 May 1955 to elect 65 members of the state's Legislative Assembly.
The history of the Australian Labor Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies.
The Democratic Labour Party (DLP), formerly known as the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), is an Australian political party which broke off from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) as a result of the 1955 ALP split. Following the partial dissolution of the party as a result of many members re-joining the ALP after the departure of Gough Whitlam in 1977, the DLP was re-formed by members of the original Democratic Labor Party
References
↑ Mathews, Race. Of labour and liberty: distributism in Victoria, 1891-1966. Notre Dame. ISBN0268103445.
↑ B. A. Santamaria. The Price of Freedom. The Movement - After Ten Years, Melbourne, Victoria, Campion Press (1964).
↑ Paul Ormonde. "The Movement - Politics by Remote Control" in Paul Ormonde (ed.) Santamaria. The Politics of Fear, Richmond, Victoria, Spectrum Publications (2000); ISBN0-86786-294-7
↑ Paul Strangio and Brian Costar (2005), "B. A. Santamaria: Religion as Politics", in Brian Costar, Peter Love and Paul Strangio (eds.), The Great Labor Schism. A Retrospective, Scribe Publications, Melbourne.
↑ Bob Corcoran. "The Manifold Causes of the Labor Split", in Peter Love and Paul Strangio (eds.), Arguing the Cold War, Carlton North, Victoria, Red Rag Publications (2001); ISBN0-9577352-6-X
↑ Ainsley Symons (2012), 'Democratic Labor Party members in the Victorian Parliament of 1955-1958,' in Recorder (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne Branch) No. 275, November, Pages 4-5.
↑ Ainsley Symons (2012), 'Democratic Labor Party members in the Victorian Parliament of 1955–1958,' in Recorder (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Melbourne Branch) No. 275, November, Pages 4–5.
↑ Lyle Allan (1988), "Irish Ethnicity and the Democratic Labor Party", Politics, Vol. 23 No. 2, Pages 28-34.
↑ Michael Lyons. 'Defence, the Family and the Battler: The Democratic Labor Party and its Legacy,' Australian Journal of Political Science, September 2008, vol 43-3, pp. 425-442
Bob Corcoran (2001), "The Manifold Causes of the Labor Split", in Peter Love and Paul Strangio (eds.), Arguing the Cold War, Carlton North, Victoria, Red Rag Publications. ISBN0-9577352-6-X
Brian Costar, Peter Love and Paul Strangio (eds.) The Great Labor Schism. A Retrospective, Melbourne, Victoria, Scribe Publications, 2005; ISBN1-920769-42-0
James Franklin, "Catholic Thought and Catholic Action: Dr Paddy Ryan Msc.," Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society (1996) 17:44-55 online.
Michael Lyons (2008), "Defence, the Family and the Battler: The Democratic Labor Party and its Legacy," Australian Journal of Political Science, September, 43-3, Pages 425-442.
Patrick Morgan (ed.) B. A. Santamaria. Your Most Obedient Servant. Selected Letters: 1918 - 1996, Carlton, Victoria, Miegunyah Press (2007); ISBN0-522-85274-2
Patrick Morgan (ed.) Running the Show. Selected Documents: 1939-1996, Carlton, Victoria, Miegunyah Press (2008); ISBN978-0-522-85497-8
Robert Murray (1970), The Split. Australian Labor in the fifties, Melbourne, Victoria, F.W. Cheshire. ISBN0-7015-0504-4
Paul Ormonde (1972), The Movement, Melbourne, Victoria, Thomas Nelson. ISBN0-17-001968-3
Paul Ormonde (2000), "The Movement - Politics by Remote Control," in Paul Ormonde (ed.) Santamaria. The Politics of Fear, Richmond, Victoria, Spectrum Publications. ISBN0-86786-294-7
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