Preface

I began work on this book in 1991. The original idea was that it would be a parallel history of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the Catholic Social Studies Movement, known most commonly as The Movement and, after 1957, as the National Civic Council (NCC). An officially endorsed body of the Australian Catholic bishops from 1945 to 1957, its inner-sanctum members among the clergy and laity affectionately called it ‘The Show’ — a term that I use interchangeably with ‘The Movement’ in this account.

The titanic struggle between the CPA and The Show for control of the trade union movement and influence in the Australian Labor Party is well documented. So, too, is the biography of Bartholomew Augustine (Bob) Santamaria, the driving force behind The Movement’s formation, and its outstanding intellectual and organising director from its humble beginnings in 1942 until his death in 1998.

Although now swept away by modernity and the end of the Cold War, in the middle decades of the 20th century the CPA and The Show were two of the most powerful and influential organisations in Australian politics. They were opposed in a relentless pursuit of their ideals, which, in many ways, mirrored each other. Their members were passionate — even fanatical — in propounding their causes, and were prepared to make considerable personal sacrifices to achieve their political and social goals. While mutually antagonistic, there were many common threads in the ideologies of the two organisations — especially a shared, trenchant critique of modern capitalism and an optimism for the future of humanity springing from their deeply held beliefs.1

The differences between the two organisations were, however, also profound. At the time they joined battle in the midst of World War II, the CPA was an integral part of the international communist movement, tightly tied to Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union in ideology, practice, and organisational methods. Despite abundant evidence of Stalin’s crimes — perpetrated against all ‘opponents’, real and manufactured — the CPA embraced his Soviet model, lock, stock, and barrel, justifying mass repression as necessary to impose the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, defeat the enemies of the working class, and build socialism.

The Movement was concerned by communism’s atheism and, especially, Stalin’s brutal repression of organised religion. It understandably feared that a victorious CPA revolution would be the end of Christian — and more particularly, Catholic — civilisation in Australia. Yet many of the CPA’s leaders and committed activists were lapsed Catholics who — like their counterparts in The Movement — had first learned social-justice principles from the church’s teachings. This helps to explain many of the common threads in their otherwise diametrically opposed worldviews. But whereas communists looked forward to the dramatic and ‘inevitable’ evolution of human society from ‘monopoly capitalism’ through the transitional stage of ‘scientific socialism’ and finally to the ‘highest stage’ of human development — communism — Show members were more inclined to be backward looking. While rejecting capitalism’s gross exploitation of ordinary people, under Santamaria’s leadership The Movement embraced a kind of feudal Catholicism that nostalgically saw small landholding agrarianism as central to a simple life based around a fundamental, traditional Christian society founded on the family unit, turning its face against the powerful secularising forces that became predominant in the decades after World War II.

Many events intervened in the more than twenty-five years since research for this book began, not least a serious horse-riding accident that befell my close collaborator and advisor, John Grenville, which left me without a compass to guide me through the maze of the Catholic side of the story. I knew the communist part well, having been brought up in a prominent CPA family, and our plan was to use our inside knowledge of the two political movements to track some of the most significant Australian political developments of the 20th century in as close to a ‘real time’ history as could be constructed from hitherto inaccessible historical records.

This book is a more modest but, I hope, still worthwhile enterprise. It is not a history of The Movement, nor a biography of Santamaria. There are comprehensive works covering both of those already available — notably, Bruce Duncan’s forensic account of the organisation, and Gerard Henderson’s life story of Bob Santamaria.2 The latter, in particular, contains important material reflecting the views of rank-and-file Show members who, by and large, remained loyal to their leader throughout his 45-year stewardship until his death in 1998, although a significant number became disillusioned and resigned in the midst of the Labor Split, especially in New South Wales. The attitudes and motivations at the rank-and-file level of the organisation are, however, beyond the scope of this book.

So, too, is a detailed account of the numerous union struggles that occurred between The Movement and their supporters, and the communists and their allies. For almost forty years, these two forces waged an unrelenting battle for control of many unions — large and small, industrial and craft — and implemented very different styles of industrial policy in improving members’ wages and conditions, as well as adopting radically opposed union political-campaigning techniques. There are many histories of individual unions that recount such matters, and therefore they are not included here.

The primary purpose of this work is to provide an analysis of the impact of Santamaria’s decision to model his Movement (for it was his from the beginning) completely on the Communist Party. This book’s major theme, therefore, is the impact that importing the CPA’s chief characteristic of the early 1940s — Stalinism — had upon The Show’s development, operations, and virtual demise upon Santamaria’s passing.

Another central theme explores The Movement’s character as an effective clandestine intelligence agency. While others have skimmed the surface of this aspect of its history, this book deals with the subject in a way no others have attempted before, utilising the only Movement archive disclosing its modus operandi known to be in the public domain. It also delves into its close relationship with official intelligence agencies — especially the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation — at a depth not achieved in other studies, including by the official historians of ASIO.3

It deals with major examples of the protagonists’ clandestine operations against each other, using once top-secret archives, revealing both The Movement and the CPA’s methods in what have hitherto been deeply buried secrets contained in internal organisational files.

To add a sense of financial perspective, wherever I have cited the currency units of pounds and shillings used at the time, I have inserted their roughly equivalent current-day values.