The Great Labor Schism: a retrospective
edited by Brian Costar, Peter Love & Paul Strangio
Scribe, 2005
384 pages, $35 (pb)
REVIEW BY MATTHEW LAMB
Although the essays collected in The Great Labor Schism are said to be a retrospective of the infamous "split" that occurred within the Labor Party in the mid-1950s, its editors — Brian Costar, Peter Love and Paul Strangio — squarely frame the discussion in terms of the Australian Labor Party's more recent history, especially its defeat in the 2004 Federal election.
The preface, attributed to all three editors, makes the following comparison, "Consider the scenario: the ALP, defeated and demoralised, rudderless and divided, painted as captive of narrow sectional interests, and consistently outwitted by a Liberal prime minister once mocked but now hailed as political genius, whose government has made deep incursions into Labor's traditional constituency under the rubric of being custodian of Australia's national security in dark and threatening times, its domestic prosperity, and commonsense social values. This is, of course, interchangeable as a description of the political climate a half-century ago and today."
In the essay, "Closing the Split?", written by editor Peter Strangio, the answer to the title-question is reached in its final few lines. As this is also the final essay in the collection, sits as the last word to the book. "In the wake of the Howard government's fourth consecutive election victory of October 2004, a senior ALP shadow minister declared that Labor 'had to get out the message that God isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of the Liberal Party', while another feared 'a cynical campaign where the Coalition are pushing themselves as better Catholics than Labor'. Perhaps the Split never quite ended after all, but is still running its fitful course."
The undercurrent of this collection of essays is a "cautionary tale" regarding the relationship between religion and politics. More specifically, it tells the story of how, in the late 1940s to mid-1950s this manifested itself in the person of B.A. Santamaria and "the Movement", which furtively infiltrated the Labor Party, in an attempt to drive out the forces of communism, from both the party and the trade union movement — like an exorcism. But like most exorcisms, the victim of the supposed possession — in this case, the Labor Party — tends to suffer more than the exorcised spectre. Perhaps because the victim is always more real than this spectre, and always has more to lose. Or so the story goes.
Strangio and Costar, in their essay subtitled "religion as politics", argue that Santamaria and "the Movement" adopted "the manipulative tactics of their Leninist opponents" in order to "permeate" the Labor Party. But in all this talk of Christians and communists, which is a constant thread throughout this collection, there is a sense that what is being portrayed is an essentially innocent Labor Party beleaguered by forces either out of its control or external to it; that the split should somehow be considered an aberration.
The closest any of the contributors come to questioning this accepted view is in the conclusion of an essay by Greg Gardiner, where he states that perhaps the actual aberration was the brief period (1941-49) of apparent unity that Labor enjoyed, and that the subsequent split (1954-55) was simply a return to the norm; that the "party has returned to its older, truer self: of 'rats' and accusations of 'ratting'; of endless feuding over turf; and of earlier bifurcations, and Hughes and Lang". But here Gardiner is only summarising one of the ways the print media of the day represented the split.
Other perspectives in this collection include how the Labor Party was represented in the fiction of Frank Hardy, and how the publication of his novel Power Without Glory and subsequent libel trial acted as a prelude to the Split. Another essay looks at how the pollsters came to terms with the split and how they accounted for the resulting Democratic Labor Party in their figures.
All this makes for very interesting reading. It is at times amusing, shocking, tragic, and exciting. But only if it is read in a social vacuum. Cathy Brigden came close to voicing this concern, when she said: "Much of the analysis of the Split has focused on the events within and implications for the ALP, with most (of the still-limited) academic attention focusing on the party or on individuals." She then goes on to examine the effect of the split on the nature of trade unionism.
What is missing from this collection is an analysis of the split, which "is still running its fitful course", from outside the ALP and its implications on Australian society. There is too much inward attention being paid to the party or on individuals in the party, and not enough attention paid to just what role the party is supposed to play in our society. Sure, this collection provides interesting perspectives. And it is worth reading. But in doing so it simply repeats the perspectives that the Labor Party ever since the split has adopted to its ongoing detriment, and to ours: the perspectives of fictional novels instead of reality, of playing with media representations rather than engaging in democracy, and of putting the whims of the polls ahead of working people.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 24, 2006.
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