CALWELL: MAN OF PRINCIPLE

Press, 19 August 1978, Page 17

CALWELL: MAN OF PRINCIPLE

Calwell, a Personal and Political Biography. By Colm Kiernan. Nelson. 301 pp. Ulus., notes, bibliog., index. $12.95. (Reviewed by Stuart Perry) This balanced and moving biography is a minor masterpiece. If published lives of New Zealand politicians approached this standard of organisation and direct and clear statement, together with such understanding, they would make a major contribution towards later histories. Professor Kiernan, son of the first Irish Ambassador to Australia, must have been about sixteen when he first met Arthur Calwell. Twenty-seven years later, in 1973, he embarked on the work which confirmed his early admiration, and which provided authoritative background and often correction for much that had appeared only in contemporary news accounts, sometimes biased. Calwell’s mistakes are not glossed over, but the picture that emerges is one of remarkable political consistency and adherence to principle. Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee, Corruption wins not more than honesty: Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace w To silence envious tongues: be just and fear not . . . The last phrase, “Be just and fear not,” furnished the title for one of Calwell’s major books, his autobiography, but the whole passage (from Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII”) helps to explain his career. Often misrepresented, as men can be in the tough world of Victorian and Australian Federal politics, Calwell was a deeply religious Irish Catholic, loyal to Curtin, Chifley and even Evatt, who scarcely deserved it; generous to Whitlam when Whitlam became Prime Minister, though he had reason to feel that Whitlam had stabbed him in the back. He could well have claimed to have lived up to the first line of the passage. For the rest, corruption was far from him, and though injustice angered him, he was very much a peacemaker. Had the issue lain in his hands Australia would never have entered the Viet Nam war. Though he recognised Viet Nam’s threat from the North and the communist menace, and in fact foretold in 1966 the whole history of that unhappy operation, he felt Australia’s role should be to foster revolt against the corrupt South Vietnam regime and support the Viet Cong, of whom, he thought well. A lifelong tenet, incidentally was never to commit conscripts to active service anywhere overseas. The famous split in the Labour Party occurred . when B. A. Santamaria’s Democratic LabourParty (the “Group” or “Movement") set out to destroy communism in Australian trades unions in order to stop communist-engineered strikes. It organised the Victorian Branch of the Labour Party to support the Menzies Government’s promotion of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, 1950. Calwell, a Catholic and very much anti-Communist, wanted to fight both communism and capitalism, but not by that kind of confrontation. His moderation cost him his seat on the Federal Executive of the Australian Labour Party. A referendum showed that the country felt as he did, but Evatt capitalised on the situation. Popularly, Evatt was seen as having saved the party from a take-over by Santamaria’s Roman Catholics. This

kept Calwell from the leadership for six more years.

Professor Kiernan comments: “As leader of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Labour Party, Dr H. V. Evatt so badly misjudged both the Petrov affair and the attitude to communism within the Australian Labour Party that, notwithstanding Calw’ell’s best efforts, he triggered off the split and set it on its disastrous course. In the process, he ruined not only his own and Calwell’s chances of becoming prime minister of Australia, but condemned the Labour Party to a generation in opposition.” Because of his restraint Calwell was sometimes regarded as a communist: he was, in fact, a lifelong antagonist of communism. While Evatt spent his time on Petrov his Deputy Calwell wrote the election policy: an attack on Menzies’ economic failures. But the writing was on the wall. The Petrov case ensured Menzies’ victory in 1954. Labour stayed out of office until Whitlam, an intellectual in the Evatt mould, shouldered Calwell aside and gained power. Calwell was of the other type, a grassroots Labour man, a prodigious worker, a tremendously loyal second. Different in that he never attained the ultimate goal, the prime ministership, he is, in some ways, reminiscent of our own Walter Nash.

A factor in Calwell’s inability to reach the position from which he might have exerted so much influence for good was his early quarrel with Sir Keith Murdoch and the press, generally. Because he feared reprisals," Calwell wanted to repress news of the escape of Japanese prisoners: the press defied him and broke the law. This was ironic: Calwell had always stood for free expression; office imposed on him an obligation in the public interest. He was denigrated and it was many years before he found both the “Sydney Morning Herald” and “Daily Telegraph” come out in his support on other issues. It was too late: the deep feeling over the Japanese prisoners had helped to irreparably damage his career.

When in 1960 Evatt, whose leadership had been disastrous, left politics to become Chief Justice of New South Wales, and Calwell succeeded him as leader, the sands were running out for Calwell. With the ambitious Whitlam as deputy Calwell’s chance to win an election came too late. After what amounted to a spectacular one-man campaign he lost by the narrowest of margins. Calwell’s principal contribution to Australia was probably his immigration policy, which his friend

Chifley, Treasurer turned Prime Minister, welcomed at the outset of the 1948 boom development. New Australians were to come in great numbers; more from Europe than from Britain, and not excluding Germans or Jews. Come in they did. The author notes: “Years later, when Calwell visited New Zealand, he was able to see what Australia would have been life if it had continued to rely on British migrants. He said: ‘Had we had an anti-immigration man as Prime Minister, or a lukewarm one, we would still be a dull, inbred country of predominantly British stock’.” Like most ministers in charge of immigration Calwell fell foul of the difficulty of being humanitarian and at the same time fair and consistent about overstayers, and like most Australians, he’ wanted no Japanese immigrants. He was a champion of the Aborigines, and so _ recognised the Chinese as good citizens that he learned to Speak Mandarin. Yet, over all, he supported the White Australia policy; he felt racial homogeneity was something all races wanted and had the right to preserve. Today, he would probably be called a racist. Throughout the book, as so often in reading about Australia, one is conscious of similarities and differences at the same time. Australia from 1957 to 1960 was in very much the same economic situation as we are at present. The same issues were to the fore, but the . party groupings in confronting them were not always the same. As perhaps our present Government is doing, Mr Menzies tried to limit inflation by limiting growth. Calwell opposed this. The problems were remarkably similar. Australians are always more aware of military vulnerability than we are — they are big enough to be able to do a great deal more about it — and at this stage they were very much afraid of Asian expansion. Calwell, in his context, was a great man, a man who grew up with his country and did much to give it maturity and responsibility. He failed to reach his personal objective, but it is notable that at several points in his career, if he had been less honest, had compromised more with expediency, he must certainly have escaped some of those handicaps which finally told against him. A politician of a kind the modern world does not produce, he must have been a man who had little difficulty in living with himself. Professor Kiernan has so carefully unravelled the threads that there can be little doubt but that this is a true and fair account of the period and the man.