There’s something of a debate in today’s Crikey email, where Christian Kerr and I have published opposing views on whether Santamaria’s legacy in terms of political thought had any lasting influence. Articles reproduced over the fold, with permission.
I’ve specifically looked at the claim that Santamaria was a leading political thinker. Christian wrote about that too and also his political legacy.
However, Christian is wrong to think that I’m arguing that Santamaria had no political influence, and that legacy doesn’t continue. I might have confused matters by excerpting a quote from Dennis Shanahan which referred to both his political involvement and his political thought. It’s the latter I consider to be of passing concern. Obviously the Labor split continues to create waves in electoral politics. But, much as Cardinal Pell might wish it otherwise, Catholic political thinking hasn’t made an enormous mark. Contrast the principle of subsidiarity with today’s Coalition centralism. And Santamaria selectively interpreted Papal social teaching, which is my point regarding the influence of early 20th century French Catholic philosophers and writers.
Santamaria had long passed his use-by date
Mark Bahnisch writes:
Although the collection and publication of BA Santamariaâs voluminous correspondence under the auspices of the Victorian State Library is an event to be welcomed for the insights it will bring both to Australian biography and political history, itâs also worth pausing to evaluate some of the claims made about his status as a political thinker.
Writing in The Australian, Dennis Shanahan echoes conventional wisdom: “…he was also hugely admired by his supporters and is still considered one of the most influential Australian political thinkers of the 20th century.”
Thereâs very little evidence to support such a view, and none on show in the material published on the weekend.
Santamariaâs political thought remained frozen in the 30s. Drawing inspiration from French Catholic intellectuals, some of whom flirted with fascism, his vision of Australiaâs future was deeply reactionary, characterised by protectionism, moral authoritarianism and fantasies of an ordered largely agrarian society derived largely from 19th century Romanticism. Such political thinking was influential in practice only in the construction of regimes such as De Valeraâs Irish Republic, Salazarâs Portugal and Francoâs Spain.
Of interest is the revelation that Santamaria sought to capitalise on what he saw as the disorder of Whitlamâs government by founding a “non-political movement” which might respond to an “emergency” by taking power. These corporatist and semi-fascist fantasies appear to have had little impact, despite Santamariaâs liaison with Malcolm Fraser in the lead-up to the Dismissal.
Santamaria, even after the threat of Communism had passed, never gave up on his dream of founding a morally conservative and economically reactionary party. In reality, the best chance for his “new party” was the attempted amalgamation of the DLP and the National Party in the mid-70s. The attempts he made subsequently to interest right wing Labor groups in coalescing with Tories never had any basis in political reality.
Santamariaâs vision of Australia was always driven by a suspicion of democracy and an alarmist apocalypticism. It has little to teach now in terms of contemporary thought. His enduring legacy is almost entirely destructive. The shift into right wing politics of some Catholics would have happened anyway through sociological and political change. Another political figure whose legacy is ripe for re-evaluation, Dr Evatt, may have done Australia a great service by belatedly ensuring that Santamariaâs political thought was cast onto the margins of Australian politics.
Wrong. Santamaria is a considerable figure in our history
Christian Kerr writes:
Mark Bahnisch is wrong. Bob Santamaria remains a considerable figure in our history.
Santamariaâs political thought may seem alien to Australian ears, but it was firmly founded on Catholic teaching. It stems from Pope Leo XIIIâs 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (“On New Things”) that discussed the relationships between government, business, workers and the church, opposed laissez-faire capitalism and socialism but supported the formation of unions.
It got a fresh lick of paint in 1931, when Pius XI issued Quadragesimo Anno (“In the 40th Year”), to mark the anniversary of Rerum Novarum and recast its message in light of the great depression.
Quadragesimo Anno restated the Churchâs support for subsidiarity â the principle that matters that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organisation which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organisation.
Catholic thought still considers subsidiary to be a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom against the centralisation and bureaucracy of the welfare state. Pope John Paul II tackled the subject again in his 1991 encyclical to mark Rerum Novarumâs centenary, Centesimus Annus. The pontiff warned against âa loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.â?
As for the impact of that political thought, well, wasnât Bahnisch reading the newspapers last month? How could he have missed the fury from Laborâs old guard and unions on the left when Santamariaâs heirs in the DLP won a place in the Legislative Council in Victoria, in the very heartland of the split?
Premier Steve Bracks was forced to defend Laborâs preference policy against fierce criticism from two predecessors, John Cain and Joan Kirner and Electrical Trades Union boss Dean Mighell.
“Bartholomew Augustine âBobâ Santamaria was one of the most reviled people on the Australian political scene at the time of the 1950s split in the Australian Labor Party,” Denis Shanahan wrote in The Australian on Saturday. He clearly still is.
It is pointless to revile anyone who is not influential. Santamariaâs opponents have confirmed his status as a considerable figure in Australian political history.
Update: From today’s Crikey
Bob Santamariaâs legacy
Christian Kerr writes:
After disagreeing in yesterdayâs Crikey (Items 8 & 9), Mark Bahnisch and I whiled away a most amiable 90 minutes discussing Bob Santamariaâs legacy over the email.
We both agree that Santamaria represented an illiberal, Catholic, Continental school of thought alien to the political language Australia inherited from liberal, Anglican England. Probably much of the gap can be traced back to the political and ecclesiastical implications of the earliest translations of the Bible into English.
And we discussed another angle. Tory MP turned columnist Matthew Parris published some fascinating thoughts on Augusto Pinochetâs death in The Spectator at the end of last year. He wrote of being in Chile on the holiday that marked Pinochetâs ascension to power, long after the coup, years after the General had departed the presidency:
You could feel the tension in the air⦠the unease was palpable. It was not fear: the Generalâs capacity to terrorise has passed. Nor was it active political anger of sympathy⦠Chilean politics had moved on.
It was personal: it was about him, about his past⦠about the way he still polarised opinion, still caused some to shudder, others to revere, still unsettled any room where his name was mentionedâ¦
In a sense the effect was to unite rather than divide the company, there being one truth acknowledged by admirers and detractors alike. All they knew is that they could not agree among themselves; that the subject was painfulâ¦
Such leaders remain controversial not for lack of more scrutiny or further assessment. They can be researched and discussed until the cows come home, but this will not settled the case. They are inherently controversial, even if the facts can be agreedâ¦
Perhaps something similar comes over us when we attempt to discuss BA Santamaria.
I’ve never fully grasped Santamaria socialism as you guys call it. However, assuming its possible to take Santamaria out of the equation and choosing between a communist ALP and a non-communist ALP that is the DLP or the beliefs of the two alternatives I would choose the DLP every time.
That said, you’ve had Currency Lad purport to be a Santamaria socialist which I originally thought was a joke but I no longer believe it to be so. I could not support the things that CL supports.
The only reason it seems people don’t like the DLP is because they put a dint in the ALP for a long while. So to those that don’t like the DLP, they’re offended because DLP stood up for something they believed in? If that’s the case, I don’t get it. It suggests the want of power for power’s sake.
A cursory glance of their Principles, I can support all bar one. The traditional family one. OK two. Not sure I like the bit about Almighty God either. It suggests a lack of freedom of people making up their own minds.
And finally the disclaimer that I’m merely a lay person, that hadn’t really heard of the DLP until the Victorian uproar and I did a cursory study shortly after that to make up my own mind. I am also happily open to being swayed otherwise.
The DLP’s aim, Vee, was always the negative one of keeping Labor out of power by directing preferences to the Coalition. In fact in the late 60s, a large number of people left the party because they decided that no one was really interested in its policy position or the aim of becoming a “centre party”.
Mark, I’d say there would be a good argument that the Vichy collaborationist regime in France during WWII was also significantly influenced by such political thinking. The conservative historian Michael Burleigh’s account of that regime, its policies and its priorities in his History of the Third Reich support this argument.
Yes, I’d agree, Paul. Note that I did say “such as”. When you’re looking at a Crikey word limit of 350w which you can only stretch a little, it’s hard to get as much nuance as you’d sometimes like.
Significant Australian political thinkers of the past century (other than actual Prime Ministers and other at-the-coalface practitioners): hmm, let’s see. You’ve got CD Kemp and Peter Coleman, and Santamaria, plenty of daylight, probably Jim Cairns, Hugh Emy and Donald Horne, and plenty more daylight again before we come to people like Peter Botsman. People used to defend Latham by claiming he was a Significant Political Thinker (stop giggling, they did), and there are about half a dozen Federal Opposition frontbenchers who’ve gained membership through squeezing out a tome. Nowadays even someone like Grahame Morris is regarded as a SPT.
If you insist on excluding Santamaria, you have to tie yourself up in knots trying to claim that any Australian deserves this mantle. Jim Cairns’ thinking was also pretty much stuck in the 1930s, with intellectual antecedents not far distinguished from Soviet apologists.
Come off it! Evatt’s legacy has been re-evaluated more than that of Menzies, or almost any other Australian politician. If there’s anything more to be written about this man, other than his inside leg measurement or how he liked his tea, it’s hard to imagine what it might be.
The advent of the Australian Democrats a decade later is inexplicable without reference to those ex-DLPers.
Andrew E, let’s not forget Lenin’s dismissal of the ALP as believing in “socialism without doctrines”.
I think we’ve largely had a very anti-intellectual political tradition founded on ideas which are both statist and laud pragmatism as the only political virtue.
The counter hypothesis to yours is that we haven’t had any significant political thinkers.
Santamaria is unusual in the context of our history because he sought deliberately and strategically to make an intellectual position a political reality. However, he largely failed.
I agree about the ADs via the Australia Party which shared some of the same personnel with the disillusioned DLPers.
Christian Kerr is saying that Catholic teaching supports Fascism, and therefore Fascism is good. Anyone who promotes Fascism is an evil fruitcake.
Kerr also argues that Santamaria’s political thought stems from Pope Leo XIII’s thought, which “supported the formation of unions”. But Santamaria was anti-union. Kerr’s reasoning is insidious and trick-laden, just like Santamaria’s.
Actually, it is Catholic thought that is split down the middle. One side is pro-Fascist and anti-union, while the other is socialist and pro-union. It’s the difference between a message of hate and a message of love.
Well, I’ll rejoin this interesting one tomorrow when Ive got more time, but it depends whether you want to get stuck on classical (and probably rather tired) notions of what consitutes an SPT. I dont want to – and it does Australian political thinkers a disservice to expect some Antipodean Aristotle.
But take the architects of bold social experiements like arbitration and concilation – and you’ve got first rate SPTs right there. Higgins, Coombs etc.
Think ‘ideas embedded in practice’ and Australian political thought starts too look at lot more interesting and startlingly innovative. There’s long tradition going back to Hancock which imposes a rather useless /ananchronistic set of criteria for ‘acceptable’ political thought in Au.
Etc. TBC!
No that’s wrong, silkworm. Santamaria was pro-union if unions were not Communist. It fits much more into the tradition of Catholic or Christian Democratic trade unionism in Europe than anything that developed indigenously here, but your dichotomies fail to capture it. His last living disciples are in part union leaders (eg SDA). His support for unionism is tied up with Catholic corporatist thought, though. But his lack of influence shows in the lack of any confessional trade union tradition in Australia, as opposed to in some European and Latin American countries.
My point to Christian with regard to Papal social teaching is that Santamaria’s interpretation of it was quite eccentric.
Mark…bit off topic but who cares.
I am amazed as always at your forbearance and good humor.
Are you naturally that way? Or how do you manage it?
I admire you tremendously.
Aw shucks, AK, thanks.
Very true. What Bahnisch should do start a group blog, and blog about the results of the Victorian election, and open the thread to ormerly anonymous bloggers who get very angry indeed about people being elected under the ‘DLP’ banner. Only then would he be informed.
Oh, he did.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/12/12/worst-electoral-system-evah/#comment-234618
Mark is largely right, I think. Santamaria’s vision for Australia has passed by long ago. Kerr correctly says that
But that is not the same as saying that Santamaria’s vision of a country of Catholic small-farmers in and around the Riverina is alive today.
If the pontiff wants to repeat what our governors are saying today about the welfare state, that is his business, but just because he says that does not mean that the Catholic Church is the driving spirit behind welfare spending cuts. Good old fashioned monetarists are still the leader of that particular pack.
Sneaky. To ‘oppose’ – which you could argue Mark has done – is not the same as to ‘revile‘.
Just because the revilers like Cain and Kirner choose to do something pointless, does not change the fact that reactionary visions like Santamaria’s are very unlikely under current conditions. The church dictates very little in Australia these days.
I imagine other parts of the world are different though.
Re the SDA, does anyone know if some large supermarkets and chain fast food stores still force people to join the SDA? I understand that is where a lot of their money comes from.
They haven’t been able to have closed shop deals since the first Workplace Relations Act in 1996. The sort of informal closed shop they had afterwards would now be illegal under WorkChoices, but I haven’t heard what the state of play actually is.
Going back up to Andrew’s point about Evatt, I think that Evatt’s (eventual) judgement about Santamaria was accurate even if he came to it belatedly and then went over the top. But it’s hard to tell because Robert Murray’s book on The Split is pretty one sided. It would be worthwhile if someone without an axe to wield went back over all the materials, and I think Santamaria’s papers would probably shed some interesting light on Evatt as well.
Incidentally, I was surprised Hendo didn’t weigh in today.
Usually now a new employee is handed a union membership form and salary deduction authorisation along with all their other forms to be signed. Not forced at all, and usually the managers care little one way or the other, but at least it’s better than those who work in small retail businesses who are discouraged – often let go – for joining the union in the first place. Say what you will about the SDA (and I’ve said plenty) but people who work for Coles usually earn more than people who work in the local deli.
/ off-topic
On-topic, I’d suggest. If that stays the same, it could be regarded as a pocket of relatively successful right-wing unionism whose leadership includes, but is not limited to, morally conservative orthodox Catholics.
Yes, and I suspect a strict interpretation of WorkChoices might find that was illegal.
Well, I wouldn’t want to stray too far into a “merits of the SDA” discussion.
Mark, would you predict that such a wage advantage (if it exists) is likely to be nibbled away by Workchoices over time?
which I agree it probably does.
David, I suspect Coles as part of its resistance to a private equity buyout is going to start going after wages and using WorkChoices aggressively, but I fear we really are off topic now!
Sorry, posts crossed. Forget it.
No probs, future comments from all of us (including me!) back on topic, please!
To stray slightly more on topic:
This is true if you’re comparing it to no union at all, but not true of you compare it to the wages and conditions successes enjoyed by more militant blue collar unions. Perhaps further proving Mark’s point…
Mark,
I agree with you that Santamaria’s creative and ethical socio-political theories were insignificant in the Australian context. But I dont think this is all that important or interesting.
This is because very few Australian political actors have had novel significant political theories. Australian people do not take kindly to overly intellectual political movements. Socialism and capitalism without doctrine.
Australian poltical theory, such as it is, is entirely derivative from Anglo-American and European politica theory. There never has been an entirely original and significant Australian political theorist.
Most significant Australian political actors have been practical, rather than theoretical, cast of mind. They have been more original and significant in their application of North Atlantic socio-political theory.
This is evident in the many sucessful Australian political institutions that have incarnated grand ideological ideas: universal suffrage, White Australia [ed: ? alter ed: popular at the time and for a long time!], Harvester decision, HECS etc
Santamaria was a brilliant political tactician and organiser in this tradition. He certainly got some effective institutions and policies up and running.
He was also a very astute and able social commentator. Have you read his “The price of freedom” or “The defence of Australia”? It is here, rather than in grand theory, that his best intellectual work can be found. (Marx was a better political journalist than normative political theorist.)
Moreover, most of Santamaria’s political theories were espoused “behind closed doors”? No doubt his Machiavellian legacy is apparent here.
Virtually none of his significant intellectual contributions depended on his somewhat mystical ideological assumptions. The creative and ethical doctrines were just bed-time stories.
His greatest intellectual work was critical and empirical – the critique of communist influence in Australia’s unions, academy and polity. If you seek his monument, look at the Bob Hawke government – anti-communist and pro-US and the most sucessful ALP government of all time.
So far as this goes this was exactly as Santamaria would have had it. In this he has been mostly vindicated since his ideological enemies have been consigned to the Dustbin of History.
I’m not sure his practical influence was as wide as you suggest, Jack. Perhaps measuring it might be one fruitful outcome of this publication project.
I think you have a point about the Hawke government.
Santamaria’s political theory though essentially came across in Australia as an exceedingly odd Continental European Catholic project.
Andrew E on 9 January 2007 at 3:25 pm
Witty and spot on.
Santamaria was an intellectual giant compared to the likes of most Australian political operators – Horne, Cairns et al.
Doc Evatt was driven part-mad by his political intrigues. He pretty much made Santamaria’s career by confirming suspicion of the anti-communists that the Labor movement was led by a preponderance of “No enemies to the Left” actors.
Let’s get a few things straight given this attempt by an ex-Communist(i.e. Paul Norton) to smear Santamaria with the Nazi tag indirectly via link with the French collaborationists. Santamaria is closer to the Christian Democrat tradition than the fascist tradition. In any case, the Fascist tradition is distinct from the Nazi tradition with its genocidal tendencies which has in common with the Communist. It is absolute chutzpah for an ex Communist like Paul Norton to attempt to smear Santamaria this way.
The Fascists were non-racist – there were initially even Jews in the Italian fascist party. The Italians adopted anti-Jewish laws later to get on side with Hitler but until the republic of Salo enforced them reluctantly and lackadaiscally in the typical Italian manner.
Even within the Fascist tradition we can distinguish between the more totalitarian utopian version of Mussolini who wanted to recreate the Roman empire in sync with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and the more conservative Catholic militarist Franco who had no such major utopian aims.
Also it goes without saying Santamaria was not only non-racist but anti-racist – compare and contrast his attitude to the Vietnamese boatpeople with that of Whitlam.
The ideology of the Vichy regime, Jason, was clearly distinct from that of the Nazis and drew heavily on French right wing Catholic thought. As I’m sure Paul knows.
And I don’t know that the McCarthyist language of “ex Communist” and “smear” does anything to aid your case.
And you might like to look up what Santamaria was saying about Franco and Mussolini in the 30s.
The significant political challenge of the twentieth century was to steer people away from the siren calls of both communism and fascism. A political intellectual of that time is someone who took these two evils seriously and developed substantial responses to them. In that sense Santamaria was a political intellectual whose influence helps explain not only the rump DLP that got an MLC up in Victoria, but also people like Gerard Henderson and Joe de Bruyn – not SPTs on par with Vic Lenin or Macka Oakeshott I grant you, but people who help shape political debate nonetheless.
Santamaria did Labor and Australia a favour in heading off an Evatt government, not only in terms of organising but in building a doctrine around which to organise, a factor whose importance is often overlooked. Grudgingly acknowledging Santamaria’s skill as an organiser while dismissing his core principles doesn’t help explain the man and his legacy.
Mark, let’s have no reverse-McCarthyist bullshit trying to claim Santamaria as a fascist. Finding the idea of access to high-level power without undergoing the messy business of electoral politics appealling does not make anyone a fascist. The 1930s was a time of great and widespread silliness in political rhetoric from which many did not escape with their lives, let alone their credibility.
Jason, the blood-and-soil nature of fascism made it inherently racist and any Jews caught up in the early stages were always going to be human figleaves or (gotta end withh a Lenin quote!) useful idiots.
What are you talking about Mark.
For starters what do you have against McCarthy. Are you saying that when he was being smeared by communists that he couldn’t SAY SO?
And on top of the Norton is a current and practising Marxist.
There can be no doubt about this. Jason was playing Nortons Marxism down. And are you saying that no opprobrium falls to practising Marxists even after 100-200 million murders?
I’m not trying to claim Santamaria as a fascist, Andrew, just rebutting Jason’s claim. He wouldn’t have been alone in his views of Mussolini in the 30s.
My point is that if you look at the sources of inspiration for the ideology of the Vichy regime, much of it was from the corporatist and integrist French Catholic thought that has much in common with both Santamaria’s position and the ideology underpinning the regimes I mentioned in my article. For the obvious reason that all derive from the same ideological tradition, which sometimes shaded from corporatism to fascism.
I’m not using the latter as a swear word.
Not quite true, Jason, as even a cursory look at pre-war French politics would reveal.
I don’t understand why ex-Communists should feel themselves entitled to hide behind the ‘McCarthyist’ tag when described that way. As an ideology in practice it was pretty vile. On this site, I have read the odd post waxing nostalgic for the old Commie drinking songs dreaming of the day when the bodies of class enemies swing from lampposts.
It tugs on the heartstrings as much as ex-fascists describing their critics as Nurembergists.
Santamaria has had no lasting influence. When his influence was at its peak, in the 50s and 60s, Australia was a land where market forces where stomped on even by conservative governments, censorship was widespread, small farmers were everywhere, homosexuality and abortion were illegal and lots of people went to church. Santamaria didn’t create these policies, but he certainly approved of them.
Today, even Labor governments genuflect to the market, small farmers have all gone, there is no censorship to speak of, homosexuality is legal, in fact gay culture is popular even among (young) straight people (the only remaining question is when, not if, gay marriage will be allowed) any woman who wants an abortion can get one, and church attendance is way down, except in certain pentecostal churches, which any good Catholic woiuld disapprove of mightily.
George Pell gets a lot of media exposure but compared to influence wielded by the the great Catholic Cardinals of the past (Moran, Mannix, Gilroy) he is a non-entity.
Santamaria would hate today’s Australia. Apart from the fact that communists have disappeared, it has become everything he fought against, and more.
The point being, Bismarck, that the witch hunts scooped up a fair proportion of decent people in the net who could not in any way be described as ‘Communist’, and they broadened the definition of Communist itself to just about anyone who had a wider concern with social justice issues, like the civil rights movement.
Leaving aside people in the entertainment industry who had their careers ruined because they were named in Red Channels, I hardly think that people like J Robert Oppenheimer (who had his AEC security clearance removed because he was deemed a ‘threat’) or George C Marshall (accused by McCarthy of treason) deserved the smears.
Christine Keeler, I suggest you read ‘All or nothing’ on how officials in the Italian Fascist regime tried to protect the Jews until the Nazi putsch that led to the republic of Salo.
http://www.amazon.com/All-Nothing-Axis-Holocaust-1941-1943/dp/0415047579
Citing French fascist politics doesn’t prove anything – the French have had a nasty streak of anti-Jewish feeling (on both sides of politics) for a long time, hence their current rabid pro-Arabist and anti-Israeli foreign policy is hardly surprising.
Mark has already more than adequately answered the substantive point raised in Jason Soon’s response to my post. All I could really add is that Jason would be well advised to study Michael Burleigh’s account of the policies of the Vichy regime, or a feminist study of the gender policies of the Vichy regime (such as Miranda Pollard’s Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France). He will find that the Vichy regime had a raft of stances (anti-feminism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, hostilty to women in the workforce, anti-urbanism, anti-secular modernity, anti- supposedly “decadent” trends in popular culture) which are familiar to anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the stances of the Catholic Social Movement, the National Civic Council and related organisations and individuals over the decade.
To point to such similarities does not entail implying that because some holders of these positions (e.g. the Vichy regime) were Nazi collaborators or sympathisers, all holders of these positions were as well. If Jason thinks I was implying this, he must have been reading my comment symptomatically (a la the French Communist(!) Louis Althusser) rather than properly.
Regarding Santamaria’s position on fascism this is from Robert Murray’s The Split, refering to the Catholic Worker during the 1930s when Santamaria was editor:
He also says, however, that “the paper was strongly against Hitler.” I also believe that Santamaria criticised Franco in his memoirs.
Andrew, this is where fascism and nazism get mixed up. There can be a genocidal’blood and soil’ element to fascism but it is not a necessary condition. Franco’s fascism does not fit in the blood and soil category, being more about Catholic restorationism. Italian fascism did not initially have a blood and soil element, it can be better characterised as corporatist socialism without the class struggle element.
Jason’s right about the sheer intellectual poverty about using the Vichy regime as proof of anything, given its heavy reliance on externalities and time-specific contingencies. That’s why I assumed you were just using it as a stick to beat Santamaria with, Mark.
That said, am I mistaken in my dim memories that there were Jews in the SA? I understand the anti-Israeli bit but what is a “rabid pro-Arabist … foreign policy”?
And for the edification of those whose minds are small enough to regard my past political affiliations as a matter of some significance, I was a member of the eurocommunist Communist Party of Australia from 1985 to 1991, when its program and structure had ceased to be recognisably communist in anything but name and when it was committed to a process which would lead to its own dissolution in favour of a new party of the left (in fact I joined it in order to assist this process), and after the Administrative Appeals Tribunal had ruled that the party was not a subversive organisation.
To suggest that anyone with this history is somehow implicated in the genocidal tendencies of the regimes of Stalin (well before I was born), Mao (who died when I was a teenager) and Pol Pot (who was deposed during my first year at university) is not even McCarthyist. It is an example of the kind of mentality which in 1995 could overlook the numerous shortcomings of The Hand That Signed the Paper and give it multiple literary awards because it gave the commos a good kicking, and which in 1996 could seriously contend that Manning Clark had been awarded the Order of Lenin on the basis of someone’s claim to have seen Clark wearing the medal in broad daylight at about 8 p.m. on an evening in May in Canberra.
Regarding Robert Murray’s extract, I’ve just been re-reading the superb biography of Popper by Hacohen and it says that many Austrian Jews and liberals reluctantly saw Dollfus as the last bulwark against the Nazis.
Jason, Mussolini’s scornful attitude towards Hitler’s obsession with the Jews is well documented, and Spain under Franco does not seem to have had a strong anti-semitic strain.
But I’ll respectfully beg to differ about the French incarnation. You might also look at the track-record of Moseley’s blackshirts in Britain. The Japanese militarist state, although not specifically anti-semitic, was so racist against non-Japanese it wasn’t funny, while the less said about Croatia under the Ustashi the better.
Your blanket statement about fascists being non-racist was just plain silly.
Back on topic, one aspect of Santamaria’s influence which hasn’t been mentioned is his (and the NCC’s) enthusiastic support for the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, basically on anti-communist grounds.
This makes for an interesting comparison with his stance on the Spanish Civil War. A Quadrant article in the early 1990s contained the text of speeches by Santamaria, Robert Manne and John Carroll honouring Frank Knopfelmacher. During the course of his speech Santamaria justified his support for Franco in the Spanish Civil War on the basis that forces on the Republican side had killed Catholics and he (Santamaria) had a “rooted objection to the killing of Catholics”. Yet this “rooted objection” did not lead him to waver in his support for the Indonesian occupation of East Timor even when it became clear that this entailed perhaps the worst killing of a Catholic population (both absolutely and per capita) of the 20th century.
Just quickly, I knew quite a few people in the CPA in the mid to late 80s and a lot (unlike Paul) ended up in the right of the ALP. If you do a bit of reading about labour politics and in particular the politics of the Accord, you’ll find that many ALP lefties at the time saw the CPA as being to their right. It was a fairly complex party, though, with substantially different factions in each state, with different postures towards the ALP, and there was a significant fissure between the CPA union officials and those more focussed on other arenas of politics.
There was also a significant fissure within the CPA union officials, basically between those in blue collar unions covering private sector workers who were able to do well out of IR changes under later variations of the Accord, and those in public sector and/or white collar unions who didn’t think they would be advantaged by these changes.
Going back a bit further, when the CPA split between its eurocommunist majority and pro-Soviet minority in 1970, the pro-Soviet side took a lot of trade union officials with it because they thought the party’s industrial policies (e.g. support for the Green Bans and the workers’ control movement) were too radical, and because they weren’t happy with the party being “taken over” by feminists, queers, “trotskyites” and the “drug sub-culture”.
Well one thing Santamaria certainly wasn’t is racist. In fact he denounced the use of “direct appeal to racial prejudice” as early as 1953. It must be said, however, that the he was the target of the direct appeal.
There is a fella in today’s SMH letters page who says he is one of the few people in the country with a decent grasp of the whole Western intellectual tradition.
http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html
You boys could just settle all this right now by asking him.
Yes, Paul, Santamaria’s East Timor position is worth recalling. By the second half of 1990s there were probably only three prominent Australians left who were unrepentant and unstinting apologists for the Indonesian invasion: Samta, Heinz Arndt and Gough Whitlam
Update: From today’s Crikey
Bob Santamaria’s legacy
Christian Kerr writes:
After disagreeing in yesterday’s Crikey (Items 8 & 9), Mark Bahnisch and I whiled away a most amiable 90 minutes discussing Bob Santamaria’s legacy over the email.
We both agree that Santamaria represented an illiberal, Catholic, Continental school of thought alien to the political language Australia inherited from liberal, Anglican England. Probably much of the gap can be traced back to the political and ecclesiastical implications of the earliest translations of the Bible into English.
And we discussed another angle. Tory MP turned columnist Matthew Parris published some fascinating thoughts on Augusto Pinochet’s death in The Spectator at the end of last year. He wrote of being in Chile on the holiday that marked Pinochet’s ascension to power, long after the coup, years after the General had departed the presidency:
I will not be blackguarded!
Who’s Heinz Arndt? I must have missed his prominence.
Heinz Arndt was a distinguished economist at ANU who was probably most distinguished in the 1950s and 1960s. He is also the father of Bettina Arndt, who needs no introduction but will give herself one anyway.
Anthony, you seem to have overlooked P. P. McGuinness who was particularly rabid on the issue at the time of the 1999 independence referendum and its aftermath.
Thanks, Paul.
Err, why is this east Timor business an article of faith among you lot? what would you have Australia do? bring in troops to repel the invasion? alienate a potentially important ally and a populous moderate Muslim nation? Thank god you lot aren’t in charge of foreign policy – you’re as bad as the neocons.
Or even a quick peek at Ethiopia, a mild appreciation of Catalonia etc.
Article of faith? Settle down Jason, settle down. The thread had been discussing Santa’s position regarding Spain &c. And so, logically, it moved on to discussing his position re ‘this east Timor business’. Why does this, in particular, suddenly become a rod for you to beat the Left (aka ‘you lot’)?
Actually by ‘you lot’ I just mean LP. Presumably Laurie Brereton, Paul Keating, Gareth Evans and Gough Whitlam are still members of the left despite the fact that I find their views on how to deal with East Timor perfectly sensible and believe they acted in the national interest. We are not in the business of helping other countries unless we help ourselves in the process. There was a Cold War on and then other strategic reasons for keeping Indonesia on side.
The overall point that emerges is that Santa never ever departed from rhetorical support for the substance of US foreign policy throughout the postwar period. Having thrown in his lot with the policy of a superpower, he then had the temerity to call his autobiography ‘Against the Tide’. Err, against exactly which geopolitical tide was that again Bob?
He also went on the record as saying he voted informally, from either the late 1970s or early 1980s (presumably when the DLP ceased to be a political force in federal politics). Having publcily expressed this disdain for the democratic process (I’ll take my bat and ball and go home), he was rewarded by Howard with a State Funeral. Well, I mean to say, really.
” All I could really add is that Jason would be well advised to study Michael Burleighâs account of the policies of the Vichy regime, or a feminist study of the gender policies of the Vichy regime (such as Miranda Pollardâs Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France). He will find that the Vichy regime had a raft of stances (anti-feminism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, hostilty to women in the workforce, anti-urbanism, anti-secular modernity, anti- supposedly âdecadentâ? trends in popular culture) which are familiar to anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the stances of the Catholic Social Movement, the National Civic Council and related organisations and individuals over the decade.”
Well once a communist always a communist.
Mussolini was always going to push people around if it suited his goals. But I think Jason is right to draw a bit of a line between the Marxist Mussolini and those hateful German Socialists… those Nazis.
I mean Mussolini was a really bad guy and he was after-all a socialist-dictatorship.
But socialist that he was I wouldn’t say he was totally given over to evil-doing like his German and Russian socialist cousins.
It’s good to see Bird has turned against Mussolini.
I agree with Jason Soon on the subject of East Timor, but none the less Paul Norton is right to point to the inconsistancy in the positions Santamaria took on East Timor and the Spanish Civil War.
Incidentally at the time of the war Santamaria seemed more concern about Republican attacks on the Church than the killing of Catholics. This makes rather more sense, since the Nationalists killed plenty of Catholics themselves.
You have to think of it in terms of the battle of ideas. In the Spanish Civil War, as Chris points out, the other side was making political attacks to undermine the dominance of the Church as well as killing individual Catholics. In the case of Indonesia, Indonesian troops were killing individual Catholics but they were doing so to gain control of East Timor, not as part of some concerted attack on Catholicism. In addition in the East Timor case, Santamaria obviously thought stopping Communism was the main objective and there were Marxist elements in the East Timorese resistance, just as there were individual Catholics in the Spanish Civil War who were on the left.
This line of thought would be fine, and acceptably “realist” etc, Jason, if Australia’s role in giving the green light to Suharto (under Whitlam, then Fraser) was all that happened. But the worst of it was the East Timor became, literally, a killing field (particulraly between 1975 and 1980), and Australia did nothing. Not an official murmur.
We didnt have to challenge Indonesian sovereignty to stand up for the human rights of Indonesian subjects (let alone an oocupied people) subject to the grossest absues which our governments were well aware of.
Instead, we became the only country in the world to recognise sovereignty. There was zero “realist” pressure on Au to do so – it was a giveaway in return for Timor shelf gas.
The Indonesian records are pretty clear on this. Adam Malik didnt support the invasion, Suharto was crapping his pants about Western reactions, and very timid at first- and was reassured only when his TNI generals established to him that the US and AU wouldnt complain.
So lets not pretend Ford and Whitlam were merely acquiescing to some inevitable development.
Anyway, to correct my original comment from yesterday in the light of subsequent helpful contributions:
“By the second half of 1990s there were probably only five prominent Australians left who were unrepentant and unstinting apologists for the Indonesian invasion: Santa, Heinz Arndt, Gough Whitlam, Paddy McGuinness and Jason Soon”
Jase, Santa’s defence of the invasion of ET on anti-communist grounds was a pretty weak argument.
While Suharto was definitely anti-communist, it is doubtful that the pretext he gave for the invasion – that FRETILIN had socialist/communist elements and support – was the true motivation. A (potentially) communist East Timor was never going to be a threat to Indonesia, particularly after Suharto crushed his communist opponents in Indonesia a decade previously.
More likely the anti-communist pretext was a flimsy casus belli acceptable to Suharto’s US ally, enabling the Javanese to scoop up another colonial outpost in “their” archipelago before it could gain independence.
The bottom-line for Australia at the time was that, during the 1970s, Indonesia was a key regional ally of the USA in its struggle against communism, and we were hardly going to oppose the Indons if the US gave them the green light. Moreover, the Konfrontasi in Borneo in the 1960s was a nasty experience that suggested to Australian policy-makers that opposing the Indons militarily without good cause was probably not a good idea. This is before considering the morale shock we sustained as a result of failure in Vietnam – why get involved if Suharto was on the “right” (read: anti-communist) side?
I liked your earlier point better: this obsession with attaching retrospective blame for the invasion of ET to Australian politicians and pundits is a little nuts. As you say, it would have been totally unrealistic to oppose it at the time – there was nothing in it for Australia. LE has a point about silence on subsequent human rights abuses etc., but ET isn’t the only example of Australian complaisance (under BOTH stripes of government) on that score.
Back to Santa himself (and with apologies to Churchill): He had all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.