The Rest Is History - 187. Australian Prime Ministers: Edmund Barton - Robert Menzies

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

In the wake of Anthony Albanese's victory in this weekend's Australian election, Tom and Dominic have recorded a three part Antipodean special on the history of Australian prime ministers. The first episode begins in 1901 with Edmund Barton, covers both World Wars, and drills down into the premierships of Robert Menzies. The second part will be in your podcast feeds tomorrow, with the final instalment dropping on Thursday. To get all episodes right now, join The Rest Is History Club, where you'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Editor: Harry Lineker Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The Duke, his aged grandsire, bore the shame till he could bear no more. He rallied his declining powers, summoned the youth to Brackley Towers, and bitterly addressed him thus. Sir, you have disappointed us. We had intended you to be the next Prime Minister, but three. The stocks were sold, the press was squared, the middle class was quite prepared. But as it is, oh, my language fails. Go out and govern

New South Wales. That was Hilaire Belloc, and that's the fate of Lord Lundy in one of his, Belloc's cautionary tales, his poems published in 1907 and of course governing new south wales which is the fate that awaits lord lundy tom that's a fate worse than death for edwardian britain especially being lined up to become prime minister exactly although by 1907 australia had become federated so prime ministers were being elected to run Australia. Yes, we have been thinking a great deal about Australian prime ministers in the last few hours. Speak for yourself, days. I've spent days on Australian prime ministers, prompted by the fact that by the time you listen to this, the Australian general election will

have been held. Elections to the House of Representatives, which is for British listeners, the equivalent of the House of Commons and the Senate, which is the Australian equivalent of the House of Lords. And you will know who has won by this point. Attention. I know. The excitement on the streets of Britain. Whether it's the liberals who are confusingly for again for british listeners basically that the tories or conservatives under scott morrison or uh labor which is labor under anthony albanese i think i've pronounced that right yeah um and so you'll probably know and and i think labor are mildly the favorites aren't they they're marching ahead as at the time that

we are recording this they're they're just leading opinion polls, aren't they? And the streets are chipping north and Tom. Talking of little else. Little else, exactly. And French presidents prompted by the French presidential elections. And what's interesting is that I would say that to the British and Dominic, we're not apologizing for being British, are we? We are. We're being upfront about that to our many Australian listeners. That Australia seem, you know, Australians seem like kin yeah in so many ways but we're much politically much closer we seem much closer to to france and and germany we have you know merkel and uh schultz and uh macron are political figures in in our consciousness in a way that by and large australian prime ministers have not been that's so interesting interesting, isn't it? Because everybody always thinks that we don't know

enough about Europe, and we're not sufficiently kind of plugged into Europe. And all we care about is the Anglo sphere and Anglo-Saxon carryings on. But actually, that's only truly of America. We don't, I mean, most of these names, I'll be completely honest, until we started thinking about doing this podcast, and speaking as somebody who writes books about 20th century britain i actually this is a terrible confession but i hadn't heard of some of these australian prime ministers and it really reminds me of so some listeners may remember that we had a guy called andrew preston we've had him a couple of times on the show professor at cambridge um a canadian author of books about the vietnam war and so on and i can remember years ago him telling me that a Canadian prime minister had come to London.

The former Canadian prime minister had come to the seminar. And Andrew was very excited. And he'd gone to the seminar. And it was patently obvious to him that nobody knew who this man was, even when he introduced himself. And I said, oh, that's terrible. People are so ignorant. Who was he? And Andrew said, well, he was Joe Clark.

And I'd never heard of Joe Clark I wouldn't have recognized him in a million I still wouldn't recognize him if he walked down the street and I think it's a very interesting lacuna in Britain's sort of political consciousness that the prime ministers or the politics more generally of our sort of commonwealth as you say our commonwealth kin are completely unknown in this country so australians or indeed canadians listening to this may assume that this is kind of pommy snobbery and superiority as as evinced by the heller belloc with which we went exactly down this episode yeah but i i think that there's a much more favorable explanation for it which is that it reflects incredibly well

on the stability and the sanity of Australian politics. Because basically, if your leaders are not intruding themselves on foreign consciousness, it generally implies that they're doing a good job. And I think that when you look at the evolution of Australia from its founding as a penal colony to the process where it becomes federated to now. It's an incredibly uplifting story, actually. I mean, it pains me as a cricket fan to admit this. And I remember the first time I went to Australia, I so so wanted to hate it and it was i loved it so much um and it annoys me to have to admit that australia is a much better run i seem so much happier well australians were saying a country than australian listeners may find this um bizarre because of

course their recent political history they change prime minister about once every 18 months and they're all stabbing each other in the back as we will see when we get to the later stages. But it's true. I think a lot of the – if you look beneath the headlines, the story of Australia, of course it does have dark chapters, but the political story of Australia in the 20th century and early 21st is actually, you know, compared with the stories of, I don't know, France, Germany, Britain, the United States,

it's pretty untroubled, isn't it? I mean, there are scandals, there are things that go wrong, there are problems, but it's not – it's actually, as you say, it's a fairly sort of benevolent story. Of course, not completely benevolent, I know, but by comparison. Yeah, so prime ministers lose their trousers. One of them drowns um so there are various kind of scrapes and escapades but it's absolutely not on the level of the kind of traumas say that your most european countries went through exactly exactly so let's talk a bit

tom about um before we get into because we're really going to focus on the post-war on the wartime and then post-war prime ministers aren aren't we? But we should say something because Australian politics is terra incognita for so many of our British listeners. We should say something, shouldn't we, about the political culture, where it all comes from and so on. Because in some ways it's very British. And in some ways it isn't. Well, so the one prime minister, the early prime minister that I know about is actually the first prime minister. He's a guy called Edmund Barton. Yeah.

And the reason that I know about him is because he was embroiled in a very early cricket scandal. Right. So in 1879, he umpired in a match that was notorious as the Great Sydney Riot. And a match was being played at the ground as the great sydney riot um and uh a match was being played at the ground that will is now the sydney cricket ground um and it was uh new south wales against an english touring team led by an aristocrat which just makes it perfect you know for the whole pommy aussie dynamic so lord harris yes uh and the um the english were you know this was long ago so back in those days the english did well in australia and they were they they were winning the match

and um one of the two umpires gave out the best australian batsman billy murdoch uh and there was a riot and there was a pitch invasion um and people wondered was this because they were trying to disrupt the match because um gambling syndicates were behind it? Or was it an expression of interstate rivalry because the umpire who'd given the New South Wales batsman out was from Victoria? Or what was going on? But Barton, as the other umpire, played a key role in diffusing the whole kind of bust-up.

So what did he do? Well, he essentially said that uh you know the unpassed ruling was final uh he reminded um everybody about that you know the essence of the you know the laws of cricket have to be uphold fair play all that kind of stuff but he did in a very sensitive way um and so it won him friends uh all around uh and i'm not saying that this is what enabled him to become first prime minister and the next thing you knew he was but i i you know i think i think it helped um and so he was he was he was very keen on australia becoming a country so he had this this phrase a nation for a continent a continent for a nation yes so so before that

australia had been a series of colonies hadn't it new south wales victoria and so on um effectively administered by the colonial office yeah and and the the pressure for i mean we'll talk a little bit about some of the attributes of australian political culture but the pressure basically comes because they think they'll be stronger if they're fed if they're if they're united in one federation they say we have the same population now that the united states did when it became a nation um but also they're anxious aren't they about um china and yes that that threat actually was really interesting research in this how that as that perceived threat has run right through australian political history

from the late 19th century to the present this sort of sense of living next door to this giant which one day will awake so one of the one of the um reasons why federation is people in australia vote in favor of the federation is that um british strategists have warned that unless they do australia is likely to be invaded by china so even then there is kind of anxiety about this lurking you know this giant that's kind of i can't help thinking that's that was pretty rich given that that you know the boxer rebellion was happening in china and western powers were piling in well hypocrisy is of course the great british quality um so so that obviously is a theme and obviously the relationship with britain is a theme right yeah because that's so in in the in sort of the victorian era my image of australia was

always you know it's basically there's mr pecksniff it's mr pecksniff no not mr pecksniff who's the fellow who's always running out of money uh mr mccorber mr mccorber there's mr mr mr mccorber there's magwitch. There's assorted other variations on that theme. So basically impecunious people, convicts and so on, people building new lives, sheep farmers. But it's very British. But of course, there is a cleavage right there in Australian political culture that's there

from the beginning to now. And it's between people who see themselves very much as the heirs of Britain and are more British than the British in some ways, and those who resent that. So particularly, originally, Irish. Irish Catholic convicts. So there's a religious dimension there as well,

between Protestants and Catholics, between Anglos and Irish, basically between people who could claim descent from the prison warders and people who could claim descent from the convicts. That is the kind of tension that's always been there. It's fascinating because that, I think, in itself is very British because it mirrors what I think and what some historians, other historians think is one of the great sort of unspoken cleavages in British political life, which is between the people who the Church of England, people whose ancestors might have been in the Church of England, and those who are dissenters or Catholics or whatever, who'd be more likely to be drawn to non-Tory parties. And I think you can definitely see elements of that culturally in Australian politics. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I mean, because I think the liberal and Labour divide in Australia does map quite closely onto the Tory-Labour divide here in Britain.

Yeah. And once you start looking at their biographies and what kind of schools they went to, what kind of household they were raised in, basically, where they went to church of Australian prime ministers, you can often predict what party they'll be in. Not always, though, as we'll find out. No, not always. But the other thing that I know, because I've got your notes in front of me, Tom, because of your extraordinary Australian enthusiasm,

you've produced these colossal notes. Mateship. So the masculinity of Australian politics. That's really interesting, isn't it? So, yes. So in the wake of the ball tampering scandal that afflicted the Australian cricket team a few years ago. Who was the fellow who cried?

Steve Smith. Yes. The Australian captain when he resigned. There was a kind of you know we need new brooms we're going to set things up and the the phrase that um the australian cricket team promoted was elite mateship which that's kind of the rubbish that you'd come out with well we obviously everybody in our cricket team immediately said we've got to have elite mateship but that idea of mateship it's been argued by cultural historians of australia is reflective of the fact that australia to begin with was a very tough environment particularly if you're a convict or you're on the chain gang or if you're going out if you're a gold prospector or whatever it was tough and so you you needed to depend on one another. And so therefore, there is a much more egalitarian strain within Australian societal relationships and working environment than you would get, say, in Britain.

Yeah, I think that's definitely true, isn't it? I mean, there's also that sense of throwing off the hierarchies and the sort of stuffiness of the old world isn't yeah and so australia is um you know even in um even when hillar belloc is writing that kind of sneery poem about yeah the lord go off to go and use south world it's already by even by today's standards strikingly progressive so votes for women um i brought in 1902 and and some states had had that you know even before that um you've got free and compulsory education for all children is an idea that is very very firmly held so that in victoria that dates back to 1872 um you've got old age pensions um invalidity pensions brought in in 1908 minimum wage brought in in 1907 um and so all of this, I think, combines to give Australia

an incredibly high standard of living, which, of course, in turn makes it appealing to people in Britain, perhaps. Yeah. You know, Tom, if there was such a thing as the Australian Historical Tourist Board, they could not find a more enthusiastic advocate. Well, except that there are downsides to this tradition of mateship yeah one of which is that it's quite sexist yeah so there's quite a sexist strain i think you know you know not to say that there wasn't in britain well we should be we will be coming to the the

prime premiership of julia gillard yes later in the in the podcast won't we um and also i think it's led to a pretty overtly racist tradition for much of the 20th century, which where Australian, both on Labour as well as on the right, have been absolutely upfront about saying that Australia should be white. So the white only policy. Well, it's a white Australia policy, wasn't it? Wasn't that what they called it? Yeah. Yeah. And so that's their right pretty much from the beginning. So in 1981, which is the year of federation, you have the Immigration Restriction Act act and then this other one this quarantine act which basically so you come in you're cut you're coming from a country outside europe and you have to if if the if the the immigration official says you've got you know give me 50 words in a european language and the immigration official can choose

the european language that's ridiculous it's laughable so you know you get people from malaya or something being asked to give 50 words in italian or portuguese portuguese or something but any 50 what can they can the officer choose the 50 words i think so i think so i mean maybe australian listeners could clarify if i've got that wrong but i think that's the case and so effectively it serves as a you know way of keeping non-europeans out um and also of course it's expressive of this sense that um that asia in particular is pestiferous that it's a breeding ground for disease and that's quite again quite a strong tradition that runs throughout certainly the first half of the 20th century in australia and into the the post-war years so um so that's that's perhaps an aspect

that is is less noble and then of course um there is the relationship of the the white settlers with the indigenous people of australia yeah the aborigines as many people don't so that also is you know how white australia relates to them um whether they you know policies that are introduced to try and integrate aborigines into white society often attempts to do that generate further injustices how people that how the australian government and society then respond to that so that's another theme so So I think these are all... Yeah. Well, obviously the confiscation of children is the most famous and controversial example, isn't it? So these themes are all running through,

the Irish versus English, egalitarianism, the mateship, the racism, all of this sort of stuff. So, Tom, let's fast forward now. 1901 Federation, the event that many people will immediately think of as one of the building blocks of modern Australian, sort of a distinctive Australian identity, which is World War I and Gallipoli in particular. So where do you think all that fits in? Well, so Gallipoli is, you know, it's enshrined in Australian folklore as lions led by donkeys. And in this case, the don are british and the lions are

australian you know that's very unfair actually because more british and irish died at gallipoli than australians i'm saying that that is the yeah that's the sense that you have in australia so steve war the most fearsome of all uh recent australian cricket captains steve war you're literally well w-a-u-g-a i know his name i know steve war is i just i thought you were going to mention some you know top historian at the university of melbourne steve war when he brought the australian team over would take them to gallipoli before coming to england to to steal them for the fight stick it to the poms um so so that's that's a kind of downside but i think it's important to say that the first world war did also cement Anglo-Australian relations.

There was a feeling that it had been a shared sacrifice. So Billy Hughes, who was the Lloyd George of Australia, prime minister during the First World War, the tendency to regard Britain with suspicion or the tendency to see that we're kind of kin. Yes. So you've got that. And then, of course, the other famous episode is Bodyline. Oh, yeah. We talked about that in a previous podcast, didn't we? But for people who don't remember, that's the cricket tour in, what is it, 1930? You'll know, Tom. Three, isn't it? So Douglas Jardine is the captain.

Larwood is the bowler. They're seen as dreadful British, destroying sporting play and all this kind of thing by bowling too hard at these poor, wilting Australian batsmen. That's about right, isn't it, Tom? That's a very fair description of them. That's a very fair description. But also the other thing about it, of course that when um when the australians complain to

to the english management um about what's going on namely that there's kind of physical intimidation with the cricket ball going on on the cricket pitch um they're doing so in very english terms they're saying you know this isn't cricket this is not this is not how you play the game so again there is that kind of tension and that of course then takes us into the second world war which is really kind of the great dividing line and it is the great dividing line isn't it so let's start with the prime minister who um who is most associated i suppose with the the second world war certainly the beginning of the second world war and that is robert gordon menzies so he's from rural vict, isn't he? He's obsessed with cricket. Surprise, surprise.

Am I right in thinking I see from the notes he's the first prime minister to have two Australian parents? So in other words, native-born Australians rather than immigrants. But he's very British, isn't he? He loves the royal family and British traditions. British to the bootstraps was his famous self-description. And his name, interestingly, so it's obviously a Scottish surname, which Scots will tell you is pronounced Mingus. And he would have told you that himself, I think, wouldn't he? Yes, he did. And so one of his nicknames was Ming, Ming the Merciless.

Right. But everybody, because I watched a newsreel of him arriving in, a Pathé newsreel of him making one of his trips to Britain during the Second World War. And he's very clearly Menzies. Yes, so nobody picked up on that. But it was an affectation that he would have liked to see develop. But there are two things about him that are notable as a young man, Tom. One of them, very disappointing for you, although he liked cricket,

he was very bad at sport himself. Well, a lot of fellow feeling there. So there's that. But then more importantly, his middle name, he is named after very much a friend of the rest of his history, General Gordon. Is he really named after General Gordon or is it just a coincidence? Yeah, he is.

Are we just making that up? No, he really was. Wow, that's splendid. He's a big fan of Aussie rules, which is obviously, because that's in Victoria, isn't it? Aussie rules, that's Melbourne. Yeah. Anyway, so he goes into the,

he becomes a politician in the United Australia party, which is the ancestor of the liberal party. And he, he, he just as well for him. He resigned just before the second world war in protest at the lack of defense spending, which obviously is good for him.

It means he's a bit of Anthony Eden because he can then look like, you know, sort of, although he's, he is hamstrung as a war leader because he had not volunteered for overseas service in the First World War. That's right. And he said, people throw mud at me everywhere I go.

I'm trotting through a trench of mud, he said, or something, words to that effect. A slightly ill-chosen image, you might think. Yeah, not the most diplomatic. But that was because he was one of three brothers and the other two had gone. Yes, that's right. So he got the long straw, I guess, on that.

Yeah, he did. So he becomes prime minister towards the end of 1939. And he's very popular in Britain, isn't he? At one point, people are talking about him as a replacement for Churchill. Well, I think Menzies is himself. Yeah. I think very implausibly, very implausibly.

Yeah. There were always sort of claims that, Oh, some Commonwealth prime minister, because I think people sort of fantasize that Commonwealth prime minister would be untouched by the partisanship of the house of commerce. Smuts was also often mentioned. Smuts,

exactly. But yeah, he throws Australia wholeheartedly into the Second World War, doesn't he? And then for two years, so just before Pearl Harbor, he's kicked out. Well, but I think what's interesting is, and again, this is a theme that runs particularly through the narrative of the Second World War, is that one of the reasons he goes to Britain is not just to maybe become Prime Minister of Britain, but also more germinely to try and ensure that the British High Command don't forget the Pacific Theatre, because they're twitchy about that.

About Japan, obviously. About Japan. Kind of very, very kind of sensitive to it. So I think that, but I think there is also a kind of crucial thing that Menzies is very into the idea of the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth of English-speaking nations and all that kind of crucial thing that uh menzies is very into the idea of the anglosphere and the commonwealth of english-speaking nations and all that kind of stuff and there's a famous account of him going to ottawa um and uh he's he's staying with the um uh with the governor general there and he stays up late showing him his travel snaps oh that's nice the governor general's desperate to go to bed that's nice that's like uh well churchill behave very badly at the at the same time with Roosevelt staying up late drinking his brandy and talking about great battles of history.

So maybe Menzies and Churchill should just cut out the middleman and stay up late together. Yeah, maybe they should have done. Anyway, but he's obviously away for quite a while, I mean, over a year. And by the time he gets back to Australia, essentially, you know, things have been happening there and he gets politically assassinated. He does, doesn't he? He wants to go again. He wants to go on another trip. He wants to go back, I think, and try and become prime. The story is, again, he wants to go back to become prime minister of Britain.

And he needs the permission of Labour to do that. He won't countenance going into coalition with Labour. And so this is what ends up bringing him down. Yeah. As you say, I've been done. I'll lie down and bleed a while. Now, actually, I could have done that in an Australian accent, but it would have been wrong because I've listened to him talking.

And he's not very Australian in his – he's quite British. To the bootstraps. In his speech, as actually interestingly fdr was so if you listen to fdr's addresses he's much less american and more british i mean he was a very patrician figure in his intonation and it's interesting that australians at this point don't sound like they don't sound like paul hogan well so i think men's it's definitely not definitely not so he he he they get rid of him and Arthur Fadden. So Australia specializes in these interim caretaker prime ministers, doesn't it?

Yeah. Who are almost always from the country party. No, I think Arthur Fadden is the only prime minister from the country party. Aren't they? The others are from small parties often, aren't they? No, I think they're all. Anyway, we'll get into them. So Arthur Fadden,

interesting fact about him is he was once part of a blackface minstrel troupe. Yeah. So he's the Justin Trudeau. He's the Justin Trudeau of Australian politics. Oh, it's so simple. I think we should take a break

at this point. And when we come back, we should look at the great Australian war leader. Tom, we've done one. We've done one prime minister in all this time. It's shocking. That's fine. It's fine. Even by our standards. So let's come back. We've done one. We've done one prime minister in all this time. That's fine.

That's fine. It's fine. Even by our standards. So let's come back. We'll look at the great Australian war leader, John Curtin. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A,

we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are talking about Australia's titanic political leaders. And Tom, we're about to get into a man who you just described

as Australia's great war leader, John Curtin. And I'm going to guess that most of our British listeners will never have heard of John Curtin, which is a very good example, actually, of the way that Australian politics is occluded from the British imagination. As you say, John Curtin is a massive figure in australian history um and in civilization six if anyone's played that he's the leader of australia isn't yeah civilization he's the

face of australia yeah against genghis khan or augustus caesar well i mean yeah but that speaks well of australia that they don't have a blood-soaked dictator. It absolutely does. Yes. And that's, yeah, absolutely does. So he's Labour. Yes. And so therefore, almost inevitably, his parents are from Ireland. Yeah, from Cork.

And he's Catholic. Yeah. So. So. Very well my in-laws. Yeah. And he's cross-eyed, which wouldn't. Not that they've got anything against

cross-eyed people but it's just they wouldn't be especially impressed i think because didn't that didn't that sort of play a part in his i don't know self-image or something yeah i think he was very self-conscious about it yes uh but tom i see in your notes you've written the dread words solid batsman and he was absolutely obsessive on uh cricket stats yeah which i think you know if you're kind of having to work out um logistics it's probably good training it's interesting how cricket plays such a massive part in australian life compared within britain doesn't it you must it's the only national sport in australia you must look on this with a real sense of yearning because i do this would not be true of ted heath or margaret thatcher no i mean john major admittedly yes but but not um but but not most of them

but most of these guys are absolutely obsessed with cricket i think well it's not just cricket also i mean all kinds of sport i think sport has a really central role in Australia. Yeah. Right. Let's talk about John Curtin. So he's a trade unionist. And actually, he's very much on the left of the union movement as a young man, isn't he? He's practically a Marxist. Pretty much a Marxist as a young man. Yeah. And he's anti-imperial. He's anti-war. So very much from that kind of tradition um australian marxist tradition that's not one that you often hear about but it is you know so australia before say the um before the russian revolution is probably the most left-wing country well that's what's so interesting australia this is precisely the thing though you don't hear a lot about the Australian Marxist tradition, but Australia, its political culture, which we would perceive, I think,

as outsiders, as being very macho and all about barbecues and stuff, is actually clearly, to my mind, more left-wing than France's political culture, which is perceived in Britain as much more left-wing. But it's a masculine left-wing culture. Yeah, well, it is. It is. As we will explore. So anyway, he voted against conscription in World War I, hadn't he?

He'd moved to Perth in Western Australia, and he'd become more moderate in the interwar years, John Curtin. And he becomes – so he's the prime minister who basically has to deal with Pearl Harbor. Yeah. And with the effects of that. and uh he becomes so he's the prime minister who basically has to deal with pearl harbor yeah and with the and with the effects of that and with the the colossal kind of japanese um onslaught through southeast asia yeah and he makes this absolutely landmark declaration at the end of december 1941 that really probably you could argue is one of the two or three great turning points in australian australia's entire history um without any inhibitions of any kind i make it

quite clear that australia looks to america free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the united kingdom so i mean you know it's right there explicit we're now looking to the americans and yeah and that's partly because he thinks the British have sold them out. Yes. I think he quite correctly recognises that for Britain, the focus is on defending the British Isles, British homeland. And that therefore, say, Singapore is not as strongly defended as it might be uh which is why the fall of singapore which follows in the wake of pearl harbour is is seen as such a you know it's so

calamitous for anglo-australian relations because it's it's a humiliation for britain but it's kind of you know it's it's an existential crisis for australians and so the mud flinging over that is is pretty you know it's pretty bad so the because that's what gallipoli they sort of say the british officers are dead effectless wasters who are yeah they're incompetent and useless gin and tonics yeah with their stupid straggly mustaches and their baggy short yes exactly that they're useless and the british have an absolutely an absolutely splendidly scathing line about the Australians, I have to say. The Australians were known as daffodils, beautiful to look at,

but yellow all through. Yeah, I mean, that's not helpful, is it? No, it's not very helpful for Anglo-Australian. No. No. And also what's not helpful is that in the face of this disaster, Churchill pulls British troops and the Navy back to the two key kind of blocks of the empire, India and Australia.

But again, he makes it perfectly clear that India is more important than Australia. Yeah, Australia is not happy, unsurprisingly, which is why they turned to the United States and why I think you get from this point onwards. I mean, this is the sort of the thread that leads all the way through to Paul Keating in the 1990s because he actually refers to this doesn't he he does yes yeah um yeah so i mean it's still it's still a kind of itch to to scratch in the 1990s um and it's it's you know it becomes all the more kind of sensitive

because australia actually comes under attack so the japanese bombed darwin yeah um in i think it's kind of early 1942 and then notoriously there's a japanese submarine makes its way into sydney harbour and sinks a couple of ships so australians feel really really vulnerable about this yeah um and you can see why they absolutely just go okay wait you think britain's useless let's let's sign up to America. Although, interestingly, John Curtin himself never, I mean, he never sort of disavows the link with Britain because he says at one point about the white Australia policy that, you know, we are the descendants of people who came here

to, quote, to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race. And he's absolutely unapologetic about that. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a contradiction there. sees an outpost of the british race and he's absolutely unapologetic about the yeah i mean i don't think there's a contradiction there i i i think he feels that britain in a way has betrayed a trust or perhaps is simply impotent to uphold that trust whereas whereas america is the face of the future you know vast numbers of course of conscripts so this is also an issue is that curtain is uh youin had originally made his name voting against conscription. And I think he increasingly comes to feel that as Australia

fills up with American conscripts who are defending Australia, it's simply unconscionable for Australia not to have an element of conscription themselves. And so he brings in a law that basically conscription is introduced and that they can be posted outside the limits of Australia if that involves defending Australia. is of Irish Catholic parentage. He has turned his back on the Catholic Church, and not just turned his back, he's stormed out and slammed the door very firmly shut, because they bring him a Catholic priest, don't they, as he's dying, and he doesn't want to know him.

Go away, mate. Is that what he said? Something like that, I imagine. But what's extraordinary is he wouldn't go, he would never set foot in a Catholic church, not even when his friends were getting married he wouldn't go but that's a kind of that's a very catholic form it's very catholic isn't it yeah it is you know yeah yeah i think so anyway he is succeeded by a man who now this is a confession that you know some people will think absolutely damning that he a man who i i learn from online historical rankings

of australian prime ministers of australia from research in the bodleian historians and political scientists i learned by people in the know is regarded as one of australia's absolute greatest prime ministers and until about four hours ago i don't think i'd ever heard of him but don't believe that it's it's so interesting because, of course, he is. I mean, in a way, he's the Clement Attlee. He is. Of Australia. We should tell people who he is because they won't know.

Okay, so this is Ben Chifley. Ben Chifley, a name to conjure with. Who, again, very like Curtin, is of Irish descent. Yeah, he's from New South Wales, isn't he? He's a Labour Party and he is an engine driver. driver and again i just think it reflects tremendously well in australia that you know an engine driver can we had engine drivers in britain jimmy thomas in the 1930s he didn't become prime minister no he didn't you know our prime minister's went to ethan driver um so um so it's on that he gets involved in the unions and unions are very very strong in australia

yeah um and um he kind of entered he's through the 30s he's um early 30s he's minister of defense and he loses his seat has a really bad great depression um at one point you know he's dependent on his wife's earnings um so has it has it really bad 1940 gets back into parliament by the the following year he's become the treasurer so chancellor of the exchequer equivalent finance minister for curtain um and succeeds curtain and as i say is basically the the clement atlee of australia he's very much about sort of fiscal discipline controls um he's a he's a sort of financial wizard isn't he running the australian economy um but he's also got the austerity of an atlee and they're sort of he's got that sort of that that very mid-century sort of labor party tradition but but austere patriotic kind of man yeah i mean

i think the thing that sums him up is this thing about his dinner with the king, George VI. So the king invites him to dinner, doesn't he, Tom? And he can't go because he's got no evening dress. But what happens? The king says that he'll wear a lounge suit. And so Chifley and the king go and nobody else knows this. So the king and Chifley are the only two in lounge suits. I think that's a story that reflects absolutely splendidly on George VI.

Yes. Colin Firth would love that story. I know. Why didn't they put that in? They should have put that in. Geoffrey Rush could have played Chifley as well, being Australian. So he loses, Tom, in 1949, very similar to Atlee's loss, I suppose, in 1951. Well, he wanted to nationalise the banks.

And that was a step too far. Yes. And by this point, Robert Menzies is back at the head of the Conservative, the right. The Liberal Party, yeah. Well, I don't think it is quite the Liberal Party yet. Is it not the Liberal Party yet? No, because it's all rather confusing.

I think it's still the United Australia Party. It's become the Liberal Party. And so he does the kind of anti-communism stuff. He plays that very hard. And so Chifley loses the election. And he's dead within a couple of years. So he dies, Tom, during the dinner that they're having to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Federation of Australia. And Menzies announces, his rival announces his death in very moving terms he says i've printed

it out very exciting i won't do it and i don't have to do an australian accent because menzies didn't have a very australian accent he said uh it's my very sorrowful duty during this celebration tonight tiny bit of one to tell you that mr chifley has died i don't want to try to talk about him now because although we're political opponents, he was a friend of mine and of yours and a fine Australian. A mate. Yeah. So that's sort of mateship, isn't it? Yeah.

You know, we're all kind of great Australians together. And I think that's actually one of the nice things about Australian politics is they love being Australian. Yeah. I mean, everybody's always saying, well, how great it is to be australian deep down we're all australians anyway so um that's the end of chifley he's dead he's gone to top spot he might have had an affair with the secretary she was with him in the hotel and one of his biographers later said that he might have had an affair with her sister as well i know but the but everybody's family everybody's family denied that very

vociferously don't they so so people have listened to our previous podcasts about sort of presidents and so on chancellors so the german one was notable for the behavior of gerhard schroeder and uh the french one for the bad behavior of all of them but the australian one is the such bad behavior is as there is and there will be some bad behaviour to come. It's much more. Yeah. It's small. There's no eating of precious birds or Valerie Giscard d'Estaing.

He wouldn't stand a chance. Well, oddly, I mean, you tend to think of Australia as a particularly religious country. But they all were from church-going, very very keen and when they're not church going they're kind of they're priggishly not church going yeah absolutely i think that must be they're either people of faith or they're people who very very vigorously abjured their faith aren't they yes and so essentially are still people of faith yes so anyway menzies has come back and menzies what i found absolutely fascinating about Menzies is Menzies comes back.

And in 1942, he'd given a speech about the forgotten people. Did you see this, Tom? No. So he said in this speech, I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organized masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children

their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. And this struck a... This was this great speech on the sort of forgotten Australians, And it struck a massive chord with kind of suburban, I guess, middle class voters. And this is, what is it, almost 30 years before Richard Nixon gives his silent majority speech. He coins the phrase, the silent majority. And Menzies is doingen in the post-war years the way in which actually australia kind of blazes trails for both british and american politics yeah and you see this happening again and again and again it's almost like it's a kind of american and british politicians look at it as a kind of laboratory where things are being tested

out i completely and that's a kind of you know things are being tested out. I completely agree. And that's a kind of, you know, intriguing example. I think perhaps because it's a, you know, it's a very suburban society, Australia, isn't it? Becoming a very suburban society in the mid-century and sort of 50s, 60s. And it's sort of anticipating the suburban politics that you'll see, let's say Margaret Thatcher, that she does with her appeal to kind of home ownership

and stuff. Yeah. And I think that rather like uh you know hippies see nixon as the embodiment of everything that they hate um you know oppressive stuffy parochial um people young intellectuals in australia see menzies in similar way so and why, you know, all the kind of the big names who come to England, so Clive James and Jermaine Greer and Barry Humphreys, essentially what they're fleeing is Menzies and everything that he embodies.

The irony being, of course, is that, you know, they're fleeing the Anglophile Menzies to come to London. Yeah, that's right. Well, they're fleeing the sort of the the the australian affluent society to some extent aren't they complacent conservative affluent society yeah and a kind of um censoriousness so there was a kind of famous case where um a a cafe named the moulin rouge um in sydney was fined for having um on the cafe wall a copy of toulouse-latrecq's woman adjusting her stocking and this was condemned as obscene so i mean that's why

jmangria would obviously put up with that um so famously jean shrimpton pioneered was said to a pioneer the mini skirt i think that's actually an exaggeration at melbourne a melbourne race course and the matrons of melbourne were horrified that she had a mini dress, I think it actually was, that went above her, that stopped at the knee, and you could see the bottom of her legs. So there is a sort of conservatism. I mean, as well as it's egalitarian, and it has very strong trade unions and a welfare state, there is a kind of moral conservatism. Yes, and I think the strength of that left-wing tradition is what makes the anti-Marxist tradition correspondingly strong. And that's what Menzies plugs into, and he's always invoking it.

And so there's a famous – so he's up for re-election in 1954. And what crash lands into the course of that election election which it looks like menzies is going to lose is probably australia's most famous spy scandal the petrov affair it's a great affair this if you're going to have a fabulous spy scandal this is this yes so um petrov was he was vladimir petrov he was a kgb officer um and he's hanging out in uh in sydney and he decides that you know australia australia is a lot nicer than uh moscow yeah why didn't the order fact yeah he decides to jump ship so he says i no longer believe in communism since i have seen the australian way of living but he doesn't tell his wife and once he's defected the uh kind of soviet goons bundle her onto a plane in the full

view of australian cameras and and they're all appalled by this and this plane has to refuel darwin and australian secret service agents managed to get her off the plane um and obviously this is you know damsel in distress evil communists it's brilliant and it enables menzies to overcome the odds and to win the election and so there's been this grumbling conspiracy theory that menzies timed the announcement of petrov's defection to sway the election and maybe he did i mean well i i who knows? He'd be a fool if he didn't. Well, I gather from my extensive research into this, the consensus is that it wasn't Menzies who did this,

but it's possible that the Australian Secret Service ensured that the timing would be right. The big question, though, Tom, is what did Vladimir Petrov think? I mean, he might not have told his wife. I know a i know people think he didn't tell his wife because he couldn't afford that she would tell somebody or she would persuade him out of it or didn't want to implicate her but i mean he might have been gutted when the australians pitched up and said we've got your wife mate yeah you might well have been again if there are if there are experts in the petrov affair who can tell us how petrov and his wife got on after the defection, I'd be very interested to know about that.

But basically, this has quite a knock on effect because essentially it bakes in anti-communism as a key part of Menzies appeal to the people who voted for him. And so therefore, he's very, very keen to play the anti-communist card. And with Vietnam starting to kind of bubble up to the north of Australia, this is why Menzies essentially signs Australia up to the Vietnam War. And in fact, he's so keen to do it that he fabricates an invitation from the South Vietnamese government asking for Australian troops. They never did this. Well, I mean, the Australians, if you believe in the domino theory, which so many people did in the 1950s and 60s, which is that one state after another would fall to communism. And as one went, then its neighbor would be the next in line.

I mean, the last dominoes are Australia and New Zealand. And there must have been an awful lot of people in Australia who were extremely anxious that as they as they look as they look to their kind of northwest yeah that the the tide of communism especially if they as you said at the beginning if they're already believing that they're living next door to this sort of this great yeah yeah sort of pestilential yeah you know disease-ridden pit as they see so i'm sure that's a part of it as well and i'm sure also it's itential, you know, disease ridden pit as they see. So I'm sure that's a part of it as well.

And I'm sure also it's, it's about, you know, it's following on from Curtin's declaration that they're now going to look to the United States, that Australia is now playing the role to the United States. It is a previously played to Britain of, of, you know,

mateship. Yes. Geopolitical mateship signing up to help. Well, so, so, so Menzies gets Australia intoralia into the vietnam war he uh but he's i mean he he interesting he is he is the guy who starts the dismantling of the white

australia policy so he starts immigration reform yeah uh and he's um i mean i think he's a he's a pretty principled man um he's very intellectually able he's he's he's not greedy he's a kind of personally you know he's um he's an upstanding australian yeah he's an upstanding upstanding but i mean if you're an australian sort of if you're as you say if you're jermaine greer or whatever he's everything you'd hate you absolutely everything you'd hate and i think he does have a slightly comical strain of anglophile vanity so when he um he steps down in uh in 1966 he he succeeds churchill as warden of the sink ports you know which people who listen to the the episode we did with alex preston on smuggling on smuggling um this is a kind of medieval consortium of ports in the southeast of england he's leading the fight against smugglers is he yes he is and there's a tremendous uniform

you know that involves comical hats and like very very and i think i get the impression you get the impression that menzies is never happier than when he's dressed up as um in his wharton of the sink port well he sort of bows out his. One of his last great sort of public appearances, Tom, could not be more Anglo-Australian relations, could it? So it's 1977, the centenary ashes, the centenary test. The centenary test in the MCG, yeah. And he's knighted by the Queen in the long room of the MCG, which is the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Yeah. I mean, what a way to get a knighthood. You must look on that with absolute envy. I really do. I really do. And he loved old cricket grounds. So he's the guy who described Lourdes as the cathedral of cricket. So, yeah.

So in so many ways. He's the man you wanted to be. Secretly. Yeah. Secretly. I'd love to be warden of the St. Ports and be knighted by the Queen in a cricket pavilion. So, listen, we've fallen quite short of where we were intending to get to with this first podcast, because we've only got to 1966.

But that's fine, because we're... Yeah, we've got a lot of Aussie primaniceness to come. Yeah. And they're all good fun. So, I think we will adjourn now uh for tea as it were and we will and we will return um uh tom will harold holt will be opening the batting yes he gets we don't want a swimming analogy for how yes yes. So yes, Harold Holt will open the innings tomorrow and I have to say it gets dismissed quite quickly and in very, very controversial circumstances and leaves behind,

frankly, quite extraordinary memorial. But if you want to find out more about that, tune in tomorrow. Good day. Good day. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community,

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