Clyde Cameron & The Struggle For Core Values

STRANGE, the timing of things. Noting that Clyde Cameron had died - and following my earlier little essay on militant secularism in Britain - earlier this evening I was sent a link to a David Barnett article at the ABC's Unleashed site on the future of the Liberal Party in New South Wales and the supposedly pernicious and damaging influence within it of the "Religious Right." Barnett says this newish cabal now controls the State Executive and threatens the party's future by maintaining an agenda "in line with Right to Life causes." Their colleague antagonists believe that unless such views are prevented from influencing policy, the party "cannot hope to win an election in contemporary Australia." But it was Barnett's contrived evidentiary argument from history that was really astonishing: "the tensions within the party are reminiscent of the events 50 years ago when Catholic Action under the leadership of Bob Santamaria endeavoured to take over the ALP."

Take over, no. Save from communist whiteants, definitely. "They were stopped by the then leader 'Doc' H.V. Evatt," Barnett continues. "The struggle destroyed his own political career and split the ALP." Where to even start putting this train wreck of a dissertation to rights? The Industrial Groups were only "stopped" by being irregularly expelled by the rigged Trinity Hall conference of 1955. Clyde Cameron helped the clinically wacky Dr Evatt set that process in motion - a "gross and blatant violation of party rules," according to Bill Hayden. Dr Evatt and his supporters were the ones who split the ALP, its fortunes until that juncture having steadily climbed in the period contemporaneous with the role and influence of the Industrial Groups. As Barry Jones has noted, finally, in later life Cameron not only admired Santamaria but lionised him as "the only national Labor figure to stand by Labor's core values." The NSW Liberals ought to stand by some too.