The Pope’s Battalion’s: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split by Ross Fitzgerald. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I’m more sympathetic to Santamaria now than I was twenty-five years ago, which was about the end of his period as a politically influential figure. Still, reading this book reminds me how much there was to disagree with as well as to agree with in his thought and actions.
On the movie front, I’ve on a thematic kick and am looking at movies set in Brisbane or, more generally, in Queensland. So far in the last month or so, I’ve seen Swimming Upstream an autobiopic by Tony Fingleton, He Died with a Falafel in his Hand (claimed as) autobiopic by John Birmingham and Praise, a quirky but enjoyable film about an odd couple. When I lived in NQ I watched and enjoyed All Men are Liars, filmed in South Johnstone. Any further recommendations much appreciated.
I’m also thinking about trying to watch all the Oz movies with one-word titles, Praise, Proof, Innocence and Lantana come to mind from recent years, but there must be many more.
John Quiggin 
Is there any particular reason for the one-word title films? I endorse Lantana and Proof out of that group you mention, and Praise too though I have reservations about it. Further suggestions, from IMDB:
27A
Angst
Anzacs (miniseries)
Babe *
Backroads *
Bedevil
Blackrock
Bliss
Cactus
Cosi *
Cunnamulla
Cut
Dalkeith
Deadly
Dingo
Epsilon
Eternity *
Exile
Fantasm
Flirting
Gallipoli *
Greenkeeping
Homesdale
Island
Jedda
Life
Loaded
Malcolm *
Mallboy
Mary
Mullet
Ned
Passion
Patrick
Petersen
Preservation
Radiance
Redball
Risk *
Shame *
Shine *
Sirens
South *
Stir
Stone
Sweetie
Talk
Traps
Tulip *
Vincent
Wind
I’ve asterisked the ones I’ve seen and recommend. No promises about the quality or otherwise of the others (though avoid Passion, which is s**t). That’s not an exhaustive list but it’ll get you started 🙂
Anyone who wonders ‘what’s so good about blogging’ should read this post and James’ response – pure instant gratification! Great stuff.
You are sympathetic to Santamaria? The man wanted to turn Australia into a nation of Catholic peasants, each of us with our two acres, vegetable garden and a cow, having our lives dictated to us by our parish priests (on personal matters) or the Pope (on big matters).
So he was a critic of economic rationalism. Big deal. It was for all the wrong reasons. Santamaria was anti-modernity, anti-Enlightenment, anti everything that a true social democrat should stand for.
…not bad, James! out of your list i agree with your picks and i also think Blackrock, Cunnamulla, Flirting (though The Year My Voice Broke was much better), Mullet and Sweetie were pretty good films.
interesting, Cunnamulla was/is a good example of a film that really does exploit its child stars, compared to Ken Park. I think the two girls involved are still in the process of suing the filmmaker, last i read, and with good reason if you ask me
I agree with Gianna on Mullet and Cunnamulla – haven’t seen the others she mentioned.
On James’ list I’m surprised at the low overlap between his asterisked items and the films I’ve seen and enjoyed, notably including Bliss and Radiance. Not that I’ve seen and disliked films he recommended, rather that I’ve obviously missed a heap of good ones.
Jeez, John, you’re sympathetic to a leader of an anti-secularist, anti-Enlightenment movement? I have more time for Trotskyites and Stalinists than I do for Santamaria
Jason, your youthful exuberance has got the better of you. Santamaria was bad, but not as bad as Stalinists (especially) or Trotskyists, who in their own way are/were just as anti-Enlightenment (Lysenko etc).
Another black mark against Santamaria, BTW, was that he was numero uno supporter of General Franco in Australia during the Spanish Civil War.
David Ricardo might benefit from an insight into Belloc and Chesterton. Their philosophy was less a matter of “turn into” than “allow to become” for those for whom self sufficiency gave – for want of a better word – a spiritual framework. This was far more general in an age when we had not yet gone through the “turn into” in this other direction (which GKC and HB were then deploring).
Even for those who didn’t seek it themselves, the small lifestyle concept provided the same spiritual nourishment that the knowledge that wilderness areas exist gives city dwellers; it doesn’t force everyone into wildernesses.
Well, P.M., I’ve seen the peasants in southern Italy (Santamaria’s Heaven on Earth), and while I can’t comment on their spiritual nourishment, they didn’t seem all that well nourished in any other sense. They were actually dispairingly, gridingly poor — because the economy is hopeless (apart from the juicy bits appropriated by the mafia, and the church), and also because they had a lot of kids, because Il Papa told them they couldn’t use any contraception.
What a glorious country we would live in (not) if Santamaria had had his way
Thought you might be interested to read Senator John Faulkner’s speech at the book launch:
The Pope’s Battalions
Senator John Faulkner’s speech at the Sydney book launch
The Pope’s Battalions documents one of the bloodiest, and one of the saddest, episodes in the history of the Australian Labor Party. It’s a history familiar to all of us in the Party – a history so scarring that its lessons have become part of the bedrock of the ALP’s collective unconscious. Disunity is death. United we stand; divided we fall. Of course, anyone who has been reading the newspapers over the past week can see how well the Labor Party has learned this lesson!
This book is the story of Labor’s great Split from a perspective less familiar to the ALP: the perspective of those who sought to take over the ALP, to infiltrate it, to dominate it from the inside and when that failed, to bring it down from the outside.
B A Santamaria, never a member of the Australian Labor Party, tried to change the Party to make it a more amenable tool in his doomed struggle against the modern world. When the ALP resisted, Santamaria’s followers split from the Party, formed the DLP, and delivered power to Menzies’ conservatives for a generation.
The departure of the Groupers and the formation of the DLP was not the only split the ALP suffered: Billy Hughes and the pro-Conscription forces, then Lyons and the Langites had, in their time, done terrible damage to the ALP. In each of those cases, as in the case of the Groupers, the splitters believed their cause to be greater than Labor’s cause, their interests to transcend the Party’s broader interests.
Well, was the 1950s Split necessary? Was it the only way to resolve a massive internal conflict? Some see the Split as a purging of the Party of the toxic elements of the Movement – a necessary suffering to keep the Party pure rather than continuing with a devastating internal conflict.
But the departure of the Groupers did not end internal tensions. Almost immediately, new sources of conflict emerged such as the issue of cooperation with Communists in union elections, and State Aid to Catholic schools.
The damage done to the ALP on a structural level made these issues more difficult to mediate: the new ‘pure’ anti-Grouper Victorian branch was electorally disastrous. Many long years in opposition bred a mentality where victory was seen as unlikely and even undesirable.
Once some of Labor’s Parliamentarians had betrayed the Party, many rank-and-file members and many trade unionists found it harder to trust those who were left. A heightened centralism and a vast increase in the power and role of the Federal Executive was one result of the Split – public statements by the Executive became more common, and the Executive took a dominant role in drafting Labor’s policies.
After the Split, the Federal Executive supervised Federal members – and the precious Parliamentary seats they possessed. And they did it with increasingly close scrutiny and an increasingly firm hand. In a way, the “36 Faceless Men” headline was one outcome of the Split. Gough Whitlam’s modernisation and professionalisation of the Party, necessary to make the ALP electable once more, was as much to overcome the legacy of the Split as to lay a foundation for avoiding such Splits in the future.
Given the personalities of those leading the Movement, given their obsessive, narrow view of the world, given their inability to compromise, I do think the Split was inevitable. Personalities like Santamaria cannot long remain within a democratic and a broad-based organisation. The Labor theory of democracy finds its expression in internal structures – like Conference and Caucus – that enable collective decision-making and depend on solidarity. Fanatics never find the ALP amenable to their personal agendas.
The formation of the DLP and its relentless pursuit of electoral revenge upon Labor reinforced the view that it was better to contain political enemies inside the Party.
Some have argued that Labor did not split after the mid-1950s because the Labor Party no longer had the same attachment to principle. I would say that Labor had learned the lessons of the past. The consequences of terminal division have been embedded in the Labor psyche.
The Pope’s Battalions has provoked a debate about the place of principle in politics. At a time when many believe that politicians don’t have any principles at all, it’s tempting to view the 1950s through a mist of nostalgia, to re-imagine it as a tragic but noble era when principle and ideas overruled pragmatism and polling. It is a common belief – that the ALP split over the politics of passion and commitment, and that there’s something virtuous in indifference to electoral success.
I don’t think the Labor Party has lost its passion, but certainly members are concerned we have lost our way.
From the 1950s we learnt that untempered righteousness and inflexibility can do immense harm.
Today we must remember that untempered pragmatism and poll-driven politics are equally dangerous.
Labor paid a heavy price for every split. We lost solid supporters, many forever. Ross Fitzgerald’s book reminds us not only of the impact on the Labor Party but also the impact on the Splitters themselves.
Labor struggled to regain relevance through the 1960s, and only succeeded after Gough Whitlam drove through significant Party reforms. B A Santamaria was never relevant, and admitted at the end of his life that all his political efforts had led to nothing but failure. While the ALP endured years in the electoral wilderness, the DLP made a home there.
Walking away from the ALP, forming the DLP, directing preferences to the conservative parties: this was a successful strategy to ensure the ALP’s electoral defeat. However, it delivered next to nothing to the DLP’s core constituency.
It was the resurgence of Labor under Whitlam that brought forward the social justice policies that Santamaria claimed to hold as a priority. It was Whitlam (in what he himself described as one of the great ironies of his career) who delivered on Mannix’s life-long goal to see State Aid provided to Catholic schools on the basis of need.
To anyone who believes that they can pursue an agenda opposed to the Tories by attacking the ALP, read The Pope’s Battalions. It has a valuable message to anyone who thinks, like Santamaria did, that the best way to bring about change in the Australian Labor Party and in Australian society is to stand on the sidelines trying to bring Labor down.
PM, alright, maybe not Stalinists but certainly I’d have mroe time for Trotskyites. Put it this way – Santamaria was on Franco’s side in the civil war. If I had to choose sides, it wouldn’t be Franco’s
Just making the point that I said “reading this book reminds me how much there was to disagree with as well as to agree with in his thought and actions.” The things mentioned by Jason and Dave are in the former category.
In the latter category is the fact that, unlike the religious Right in the US (with whom I would have classed Santamaria in 1975) his commitment to social justice was genuine rather than tactical. Admittedly, his distributivist ideas on how to achieve it were, to be as charitable as possible, totally irrelevant to Australia, but this wasn’t obvious in the 30s and 40s – some quite sensible people thought soldier settlement was a good idea.
Try “Crackerjack” John. Oz movie, 1 word name, light entertainment.
Ah, yes, I forgot Crackerjack which I also saw. Harmless if you like that sort of thing.
oh yeah, John – I forgot to plug Bliss. Great film. And Radiance is up on my list of films to catch up on video (once I can figure out how the &%$# thing works!)