Among the many things which made the 1959 State Election memorable was that the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) ran candidates to split the Labor vote. This week we’ll look at the rise of the DLP and the campaign in Armidale run by Jack Stanley, the DLP candidate whose party was denounced not only by Labor, but also by the local Presbyterian minister, who in turn was charitably howled down by DLP supporters.
Key events in Australia’s political history in the 1950s included what is known as the Split. Let’s start the story back in the 1930s when Communists increased their influence in the Australian union movement and Industrial Groups (the Groupers) were formed after World War II to block Communists from winning positions in union elections. The Groupers united with the Catholic Social Studies Movement (the Movement), which had been formed by BA Santamaria in 1942. Together they operated in all States a reasonably secret and largely successful campaign against communist-controlled unions in the strike-ridden second half of the 1940s. The Groupers’ main success was after 1949. At the peak of their control of the unions, the Groupers were also influential in Labor Party politics, dominating the Executives in NSW and Victoria. By 1953 the Groupers’ influence in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) opened up long-standing tensions within the labour movement.
Meanwhile, in December 1949, Bob Menzies led the Liberal Coalition into Government and quickly introduced the Communist Party Dissolution Bill which was passed in October 1950, but the Act was declared invalid by the High Court in March 1951. In September 1951 a Federal Referendum to amend Section 51 of the Commonwealth Constitution to give the Government power to outlaw Communism was narrowly defeated, and the ALP and the unions remained divided on the issue. There had been considerable friction from 1945.
Enter “Doc” (Herbert Vere) Evatt (1894-1965), who served as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin and Chifley Federal Labor Governments from 1941 to 1949. Deputy Leader from 1946, Evatt succeeded Chifley in June 1951 and led the battle against Menzies’ efforts to ban the Communist Party. In October 1954, unable to conciliate the right wing of the ALP, Evatt denounced the Movement, and then the Federal Executive of the ALP dismissed the Victorian branch’s leadership team. This action was affirmed by a ALP Federal Conference in Hobart in March 1955, when the Groupers were disbanded, and members who did not comply were expelled. The ALP then formally split, with anti-Communists forming their own Anti-Communist Labor Party, renamed the Democratic Labor Party from 1957. The Armidale branch of the DLP was launched on November 8, 1956.
The Split divided families, workmates and neighbours, and poisoned the labour movement. The 10 per cent of DLP voters used their preferences to support the Liberal and Country Party coalitions, and destroyed Labor Governments in Victoria and Queensland, and kept Menzies in Government in Canberra. The Split would ensure conservative dominance in national politics for a decade. Three State by-elections in NSW saw the DLP poll 20.8 per cent in Burwood, 15.1 per cent in Kahibah (near Newcastle) and 12.8 per cent in Wagga, where Labor lost the seat. These results warned the ALP in NSW that the DLP vote would be very influential in the 1959 General Election.
When nominations closed at midday on Friday, February 20, 1959 the three candidates contesting the Armidale seat were Davis Hughes (Country Party), Percy Love (Labor) and Jack Stanley (DLP).
Born on February 18, 1918, Jack (Richard John) Stanley was a son of two school teachers, whose children were denied the opportunity to become teachers through a lack of finance. Because of prevailing economic considerations, Jack’s schooling was discontinued a few months after he completed the Intermediate. He joined the NSW Railway Department in 1935 as a junior station assistant at Branxton, and later did relief work at Newcastle stations, then worked in Singleton (where he started a free weekly newspaper). He also did National Service in the Army for six months and married Thyra Hayes. He later worked in Junee and Mudgee before moving to Armidale in 1953, where he was Deputy Station Master at Armidale Railway Station for six years.
Jack Stanley had a long association with the ALP and unions. He was President of the Armidale sub-branch of the Australian Railways’ Union for the previous five years and, before that, was Vice-President at Junee and Secretary at Singleton. He had been a member of the ALP for 20 years until he was expelled in 1956. He was not informed about his expulsion, but read about it in a newspaper. He then became a foundation member of the Armidale branch of the DLP and had been the serving President for two years.
A suggestion was made that Jack Stanley should take as his slogan “Vote Stanley for the betterment of the family”. He and his wife Thyra had nine children (five girls and four boys): Angela, Robyn, Gay, Helen, Peter, Michael, Tim, Cathy and Richard.
A newspaper report in the first week of March 1959 stated that, on the previous Sunday, the local Presbyterian minister (Rev Neil MacLeod), had said in his sermon: “I cannot imagine the DLP getting the support of any sane Presbyterian. I wish it an early grave with no resurrection.” His words were poorly reported in the context of his instruction to his congregation about the forthcoming election. He was charitably howled down by DLP supporters in three Letters to the Editor.
John de Bavay (who is still living) was the Secretary of the Armidale DLP branch, and wrote he “felt obliged to point out some inconsistencies of the churchman’s attack”, including that MacLeod’s views were shared by Lance Sharkey, the leader of the Communist Party, who recognised the DLP as the most effective opponent of the Communists. Phil May, the local DLP Organiser, took umbrage that Macleod suggested “we should vote not for policies, but the personalities”.
Mick Moran, the Vice-President of the Armidale DLP branch, wrote that MacLeod’s views were “intemperate and illogical”, and “bear the mark of an emotional and unbalanced attitude”. Moran also criticised MacLeod’s methodology, wrongly advising people “not to vote for a particular party, without presenting clear and unmistakable evidence that there is some particular aspect of that party’s policy or of its particular candidate, which is so repugnant to Christian principles as to justify a Christian clergyman using his church and clerical position to advise members of his flock to refrain from voting for it”.
Next week we’ll look at the campaign run by Percy Love, the Labor candidate, who was accused by Jack Stanley of using “the worst kind of political blackmail”.
