1949
Lord Warden of Cinque Ports uniform as worn by Robert Menzies
Ming the Magnificent
Sir Robert Menzies was appointed Lord Warden of Cinque Ports in 1966, a post that came with this uniform. He succeeded Winston Churchill to the illustrious post, which dates back to the 13th century, and was followed by the Queen Mother. This arch-monarchist was the last Australian prime minister or politician to retire to the House of Lords.
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, who was known as Ming (from Mingis, the Scottish pronunciation of Menzies), shaped modern Australia more than any other individual. He was the longest-serving prime minister to date, at 18 years in office, and created the Liberal Party, but more than anything else he personified a view that Australians had of themselves. He was for the British Empire and the British way of life, but also had great faith in Australia.
Menzies was born the son of a shopkeeper in rural Victoria. He was well read and a natural scholar who took easily to the law and had strong success early on with industrial cases. He was drawn into Victorian state politics through the 1920s and in 1934 stood for the seat of Kooyong for the United Australia Party in the federal parliament.
His obvious intellect and the sense of superiority that he radiated made him a polarising figure. He was attorney-general to Prime Minister Joe Lyons but aspired to the leadership. Both Country Party leader Earle Page and Lyons’ wife, Dame Enid, blamed Menzies for plotting against Lyons and hastening his illness and death. In any case, he succeeded Lyons. The outbreak of war in September 1939 set the agenda for his administration. Then, in 1941, Menzies was forced to the sidelines and Australian Labor Party’s John Curtin became prime minister. Menzies put these years of the war and his political wilderness to good use, rebuilding the UAP and rebranding it as the Liberal Party. The new organisation was ‘liberal’ and very much in the image of Menzies. He won the 1949 election.
One of Menzies’ great crusades was against socialism and communism. The ALP’s decision to nationalise the banks gave him an issue about which he was passionate. The Cold War was another. He spearheaded a campaign to have the Communist Party outlawed, taking the proposal twice to the people – once at a referendum – but his bill was struck down by the High Court. Fortunately for him the ALP was split by unions on the left and right on the issue of communism, the ALP leader, H V ‘Doc’ Evatt, went publicly insane and Catholic Labor members split from the party.
Although Menzies was anti-communist, he was by no means convinced of the virtues of an unfettered free market. In a speech in 1942 he stated:
The country has great and imperative obligations to the weak, the sick, the unfortunate. It must give them all the sustenance and support it can. We look forward to social and unemployment insurances, to improved health services, to a wiser control of our economy to avert if possible all booms and slumps which tend to convert labour into a commodity, to a better distribution of wealth, and to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility.
Menzies was not universally liked and a couple of times came close to losing power, but essentially he was able to control the nation’s destiny through the 1950s and early 1960s. He was fortunate that he came to power at the beginning of the long boom: commodity prices, especially for wool, were high, and great government initiatives – large-scale immigration, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the establishment of a manufacturing sector – pushed Australian prosperity to unknown levels.
In a speech relatively early in his career Menzies identified his constituency as ‘the Forgotten People’ – ‘salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on’ as the ‘ordinary’ middle class, ‘the backbone of the nation’. He understood middle-class values, especially in terms of fairness, social responsibility and respectability, and to a large extent delivered the government that middle-class people wanted. Menzies’ longevity as prime minister became a symbol of national stability. He was a man who had considerable wit and a great love of life and communicated these qualities as part of his persona.
Menzies’ proudest achievement was federal government involvement in education, and especially his expansion of the university sector. For all of that, he was not geared to innovation. He was happy to stay within the Empire and didn’t promote innovation in the economy or in the social and cultural spheres. He was known for his passion for cricket and the monarchy.
After 16 continuous years as PM, Menzies retired in January 1966. He was the last prime minister to set the date of his own departure. Appropriately, he succeeded Winston Churchill as Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of Cinque Ports. He was the last prime minister to retire into a peerage – and that too was entirely appropriate.