1

Modelled completely on the Communist Party

A senior member of Australia’s Catholic hierarchy made a momentous decision in late 1942. On the recommendation of Bob Santamaria, a 26-year-old scion of an Italian migrant family running a greengrocer’s shop in working-class suburban Melbourne, Archbishop Daniel Mannix took the first steps towards establishing what evolved into an official, secret national organisation, controlled and financed by the Australian bishops — to fight communism in the trade union movement and the Australian Labor Party (ALP).1 By the time the bishops as a whole officially endorsed this initiative three years later, it had adopted an innocuous-sounding name: the Catholic Social Studies Movement. After it finally emerged from the shadows in 1954, it became widely known as simply ‘The Movement’.

It became central to the tumultuous Labor Split of the mid-1950s, in turn causing bitter divisions among Australian Catholics at all levels, from the hierarchy to the local parish. As a consequence, its operations were referred to the Vatican, which ultimately ruled that a church-controlled body could not engage in the kinds of political activities in which it was involved. It soon re-surfaced as a strictly lay operation — still strongly supported by Mannix and, initially, by the majority of the church hierarchy — renaming itself the National Civic Council (NCC).

Its youthful leader only fully emerged from obscurity in the midst of the Labor Split, but then quickly became one of Australia’s best known, most powerful, and influential political voices. In late 1942, Bob Santamaria presented his embryonic plan to Mannix: to build a national movement to match and, over time, better the communists at their extraordinarily effective union organising.2 Secrecy was at the core of Santamaria’s plan: not just keeping his organisation secret from the outside world, but running its far-reaching operations clandestinely.

Appropriately, one of the first outsiders to learn in detail about The Show’s aims and organisation was himself well practised in secrecy. A rising star in the Australian intelligence community, he would, like Santamaria, later become well known, despite both men’s natural proclivity to operate behind the scenes.

The church’s secret was disclosed at a clandestine rendezvous in mid-1944 in faraway, sleepy wartime Perth. By then, all the Victorian-based bishops had given their official endorsement to this work; on Mannix’s initiative, Santamaria presented them with a detailed plan in late 1943 (as recorded a few months later in his first annual report of the Movement’s work, headed ‘Report on Anti-Communist Campaign’). It was still a closely held secret, known only to the chosen faithful. Reporting to his superiors, the security officer described his newly acquired informant as a ‘militant Roman Catholic priest’ who had established contact through a fellow Catholic working in the Commonwealth Security Service’s Perth headquarters. The priest had his own agenda, hoping to obtain information and practical assistance to enable his recently established Movement to more effectively fight the ‘Red Menace’.3

As these two unlikely representatives of church and state discussed their common anti-communist struggle, the anti-Nazi coalition in Europe was beginning the massive military operations that would ultimately destroy Hitler’s war machine. Stalin’s Red Army, then widely admired as our ‘gallant ally’, was slowly but surely fighting its way out of the Soviet Union, moving relentlessly westwards towards Warsaw and Central Europe and, eventually, onwards to Berlin. The Western allies were desperately extending the toe-hold they had grabbed in France after D-Day, and feverishly preparing for the dash to liberate Paris, opening the way for their eastwards thrust into Germany.

At this decisive moment in world history, the church was preparing for another battle — a quiet, subterranean war against communism. On its outcome, Australia’s bishops believed, rested the very future of Christian civilisation.

The man who established contact with Australian intelligence was 32-year-old Father Harold Lalor, a diocesan priest in Perth who, a few years later, was to become a leading Jesuit in Melbourne. Over the following years, Lalor emerged as an indefatigable Movement advocate, preaching that the church’s fight against communism was a life-and-death struggle. Lalor became a principal organiser of the struggle against ‘an existing peril to the things we hold most dear’, personifying The Show to many of the flock.4 His fiery oratory ‘at confidential Church meetings’ on themes such as ‘“Ten Minutes to Midnight” — the threat from communist Asia’ galvanised frightened Catholics into contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars for this ‘eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute’ fight.5

It was Lalor who first drew the Security Service’s attention to the existence of the bishops’ secret Movement, which, he explained, was dedicated to ‘a planned anti-Communist campaign’. With a flair for the melodramatic, Lalor made his mark on the intelligence officer. An experienced radio broadcaster, Lalor had been sent to Rome by the Perth archdiocese in 1933 to study for the priesthood, and, after being ordained in 1939, returned home, where he became well versed in the propaganda techniques used to convey to the faithful the imminent danger that communism posed to their church.

Lalor soon emerged as one of The Show’s public faces, while its increasingly authoritarian leader remained behind the scenes until forced into the glare of publicity in 1954. A central plank of Santamaria’s conception was that Show members had to be carefully screened and handpicked for this clandestine crusade, pledging never to reveal its existence to anyone outside the ranks, let alone to speak publicly of its work.6

Lalor and Santamaria formed a close bond. By 1950, Lalor had been admitted to the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), had relocated to Melbourne, and had been appointed director of the Institute of Social Order (ISO), a newly formed Jesuit social-studies unit. In 1953, the ISO shifted operations to Belloc House in Kew, which became something of a second Show headquarters, supplying the theological basis of the organisation’s mission to the faithful, who were guided by the clerical leadership it provided. This was spread through the institute’s periodical, Social Survey, which, under Lalor’s editorship, ‘was virtually a theoretical journal for The Movement’, as one historian has described it.7 Another historian credits Lalor with developing The Show’s ‘doctrinal basis’, in which he declared that members were ‘instruments in the Hands of Christ’, who ‘should treat a note from headquarters “as if it were signed not by a Movement executive, but by Our Lord Himself”.’8

But in mid-1944 Father Lalor’s mission was to forge what soon became a pervasive relationship between Australian intelligence and The Movement. It is not clear whether Lalor established this contact on his own initiative or at Santamaria’s direction; but, as important initiatives were rarely taken without the leader’s assent, it is possible that the order originated from Show headquarters in Melbourne.

At this top-secret meeting, Lalor wasted little time in revealing his own role in ‘directing the necessary action’ in Western Australia.9 The man to whom he disclosed the bishops’ closely guarded secret was G.R. (Ron) Richards, an experienced intelligence officer who, like Lalor, specialised in communism. Known in local Perth circles as the ‘Black Snake’ or ‘Ron the Con’, Richards had been a tough and canny Western Australian Police Special Branch officer who had made a name for himself in the early years of the war, conducting effective anti-communist operations during the period when the CPA was declared an illegal organisation by the federal government.10 He later rose to one of the most senior positions in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) after it was formed in 1949 in the wake of British and American warnings that a Soviet espionage ring was operating in Australia.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the naturally ultra-secretive Richards found himself in the public spotlight in the mid-1950s during the royal commission on Soviet espionage, as the man who supervised Vladimir Petrov’s defection. By then he was a trusted lieutenant of ASIO’s director-general, Brigadier Charles Spry, who later developed a mysterious and politically controversial relationship with Santamaria.

Declassified Security Service files contain fascinating insights into the genesis of The Show. Richards’ boss, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Moseley, deputy director of security for Western Australia, had little doubt that:

[T]he original approach was made by Father Lalor with the idea of sounding out Mr. Richards as to his and this Service’s knowledge of Communist activities and further to ascertain whether this Service would assist Lalor’s organisation in fighting Communism.11

In his report to Moseley, Richards noted that the priest was ‘well known here for his outspoken attacks on the Communist Party per medium of his radio session “The Catholic Answer” ’, and that Lalor had attempted to obtain information on the following areas:

1. (a) In which specific manner is the Communist Party directing, or likely to direct, its policy towards immediate post-war conditions with relation to:

   (1) Trade Unions

   (2) Youth

   (3) Demobilised service personnel

   (b) What is the real degree of influence possessed by the Communist Party in vital Trade Unions?

   (c) Is the planned control of great industrial unions a political move to secure advantages in the event of the development of a revolutionary situation following on a chaotic post-war state of affairs, through the medium of mass strikes or a general strike?

   (d) Would it be possible to successfully curb the present trend towards Communism by the waging of an intensive offensive against Communism by all anti-Communist forces acting in concert, such offensive to be directed against the Communist Party control of industrial trade unions by vigorously opposing Communist Party members or supporters whenever they attempt to attain executive positions and also by attacking their ideology and political theories by means of oral and printed propaganda?

   (e) In what manner could an anti-Communist campaign be most successfully undertaken?12

Stressing that he had not divulged any official intelligence on such matters, Richards emphatically concluded that the priest’s information was ‘of important security interest’. In Canberra, the director-general of security, Brigadier William Simpson, was excited by Richards’ intelligence coup. A former deputy judge advocate of the Australian army, Simpson ordered an operation to penetrate The Movement because it had ‘possibilities which may become of definite Security interest … Will you please examine the possibility of getting someone into the organisation.’13

There is no evidence in the intelligence files that this was done. However, within a few years Simpson’s order had been stood on its head: ASIO feared that The Movement had effectively penetrated Australian intelligence. But a relationship was underway between what was, in effect, the church’s own secret intelligence service and Australia’s official intelligence community. In one form or another, this relationship persisted for the following thirty years.

Brigadier Simpson’s enthusiastic response to Richards’ report prompted Colonel Moseley to dispatch a further memo to Canberra, reporting that membership of The Movement ‘set up by Father Lalor … is confined to followers of the Roman Catholic faith’; the militant priest ‘would welcome the assistance of non-Catholics in fighting Communism but not as members of his organisation.’14

In this simple sentence, Moseley was prophetic about what later became a bitter sectarian religious feud, culminating in its political sequel — the Labor Split of the mid-1950s.

Attached to the colonel’s memo was a particularly sensitive document that Lalor had provided to Richards. It was a top-secret report on the ‘imminent Communist danger’ that ‘was handed to Mr. Richards by Father Lalor with a statement that it contain[ed] a summary of the proceedings of a [special] conference of Roman Catholic Bishops which was held in Melbourne towards the end of 1943’.15 This was, in fact, a meeting of all the Victorian bishops (from Melbourne, Sale, Ballarat, and Sandhurst) — convened by Mannix — after which The Show assumed the official status of a state-wide operation. The document handed to Richards was Santamaria’s first annual report of this incipient organisation.16 His report noted that ‘an earlier memorandum’ — prepared for Mannix by ‘a small group of Catholic laymen’17 — had outlined ‘the reasons for the special action which has been taken since in this sphere’:

1. At the time there was a landslide in the number of unions which were falling into Communist hands.

2. Thousands of pounds of trade union money were obviously being devoted to revolutionary causes.

3. A definite beginning had been made on the policy of bringing the social and economic pressure which a union can exert on its members, to compel them to support Communist policies in the political, educational and religious spheres.

4. The amalgamation of trade unions had begun. It was pointed out that this was the crux of the development of trade unions, from the stage in which they were industrial weapons to the stage where they were intended to become political weapons in the hands of the Communist Party.

5. The probabilities that this development would facilitate general strike policies, especially dangerous in what the Communists term ‘a revolutionary situation’ were emphasised.18

Noting ‘the urgency of the situation’, Santamaria’s 1944 report stated that the ‘organisation was accordingly brought into being to deal with the whole problem’, just as he had recommended in late 1942. His report noted that 1943 had been a crisis year, ‘vitally important’ in the communists’ plans to amalgamate many key unions under their control. This was to be followed by ‘a series of mass strikes’ in ‘general preparation for the post-war period.’19 The crisis confronting The Show’s leaders in 1943 had forced them:

… to act far more hurriedly than we would have wished … It would clearly have been better for us had we been able to prepare a strong industrial organisation and to weld it together completely before we were compelled to throw it into action. The rapid development of the move towards amalgamation made this impossible. We were compelled to use whatever forces were ready to hand, without using all the precautions which we would have wished as to the reliability of the people we were compelled to use.

As a result of this, some people were brought into the ad hoc organisation which was established who should not have been introduced, but no serious damage has resulted — to date at least.20

Santamaria then spent six pages detailing The Show’s partially successful battles against union amalgamations, outlining their increasingly effective opposition to communist leaders in individual unions, and recounting the ‘barrage of propaganda’ distributed over the recent past. In looking to the future, he promised to rectify past organisational weaknesses in 1944:

In place of the loosely organised federation of active groups (which is all that we had time to develop in the past year owing to the urgency of direct action) we intend to found a disciplined national organisation which will be modelled completely on the Communist Party and which will work on the same principles of organisation. [Emphasis added.]21

It was a truly breathtaking aim, for at that moment the CPA was at its peak of political and industrial influence. Steeled by three years of clandestine existence after having been banned by Robert Menzies’ conservative government in 1940, the CPA’s membership rose from 4,000 to its high point of around 20,000 in late 1944. In keeping with the rigid ideological and organisational orthodoxy then gripping the international communist movement, the CPA was itself modelled on Moscow’s ideal structure for a revolutionary party — dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and the suppression of all opposition through the imposition of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This required a highly disciplined organisation and authoritarian direction by the central leadership, labelled ‘democratic centralism’ in communism’s lexicon. The CPA, like all communist parties, slavishly followed Stalin’s every policy directive, and frequently used ruthless political and organisational tactics.

In short, the CPA was a formidable opponent on which to model the fledgling Movement. It is an intriguing commentary on the outlook of the bishops, priests, and laymen who founded and developed the organisation that they chose the communist model as their own. They believed clandestine operations were the only effective means to beat their highly organised opponents, whose outward face masked secret cells dedicated to the domination of the union movement and, eventually, the country.

They also adopted a ruthless approach modelled on the CPA’s own, and were prepared to demand — and exercise — an equally rigorous discipline on their members. Logically, ruthless tactics had to be adopted, Santamaria maintained, for this was not a fight to be conducted using even the usual ‘rough and tumble’ tactics that characterised union politics. As the CPA was using the full panoply of Stalinist ‘dirty tricks’, The Movement had to follow suit.

Having chosen the enemy’s organisational structure and methods of work, from its inception The Show laid itself open to the charge of adopting the enemy’s essential characteristics. This would come back to haunt the Catholic Church and its Movement, as more and more evidence of its own ruthless and secretive tactics leaked out. But when the Victorian bishops considered Santamaria’s plan in late 1943, they apparently raised no objection to their Movement being ‘modelled completely on the Communist Party’; nor did the other Australian bishops when they endorsed it as an official national organisation in September 1945.

Santamaria’s report explained what this intended:

That is to say we will make our qualifications for admittance very high, admitting only people who are ready to do active work for the movement and to pay a membership fee of 26/- [$89] a year.

The provisional constitution of this organisation has been drawn up. Those two features have been given a great deal of emphasis since we are ready to manage with very small numbers of active members in preference to large numbers of members whose membership would only be nominal.

The organisation will be on a national basis. Its executive will be subject to democratic checks. But while it is in power it will have extensive powers of discipline and direction over its members.

We are not unaware of the fact that the existence of such an organisation makes us open to dangers, especially if unreliable members should be included who at a later date would reveal its existence to others. However, we believe that this danger already exists, that the opposition firmly believes that such an organisation already exists, and that if the existence of such an organisation were later broadcast through sectarian channels it would not even be news. [Emphasis added.]22

Apparently, none among the bishops found this last statement contradictory, even self-defeating. Why adopt a secret approach if public exposure was inevitable? Furthermore, if exposure would have no effect on The Show, why not announce its existence from its inception? The bishops’ acceptance of this approach was an error of judgement that many in the hierarchy later came to regret, although it has been misleadingly claimed that they strongly advocated keeping their organisation secret while Santamaria felt a certain uneasiness with this approach.23 A decade later, it resulted in a very public, sectarian brawl that brought the church little credit in many decidedly anti-communist circles. The Movement’s secrecy also came to be a distinctly important factor in undermining its effectiveness, as it ultimately became for the communists.

Santamaria’s claim that The Show’s executive would be ‘subject to democratic checks’ proved, in practice, illusory. As he rapidly imposed himself upon the organisation, the executive became Santamaria’s personal plaything, and the rank and file had no effective say in who exercised power or how it was wielded. He only shared power with those he selected to run the organisation’s national office, exercising ‘discipline and direction’ with all the authoritarian traits of the communist enemy, and using their ‘democratic centralist’ model to wield unchallenged power.24

The decision to use the CPA’s own methods inexorably assured that the fate of the two organisations became inextricably linked. Perversely, as The Show achieved spectacular successes over the following decade in reducing its enemy’s influence in the union movement, the more it assumed its characteristics; and the weaker the CPA became in the 1950s and 1960s, the more The Show’s propaganda stressed the imminent dangers it posed — in concert with Chinese and Soviet communism — in order to reinforce the commitment of the faithful who provided the grunt work and financial support that underpinned its success. On the other hand, the smaller the CPA grew and the less control it exercised over trade unions, the more its propaganda stressed the evil role of the church’s Movement. The two forces increasingly needed each other to justify their own existence to their followers — and the world in general.

The bishops could hardly say that they were not exposed to the inherent dangers of Santamaria’s approach, for his 1944 report explicitly recommended that Show members make the same sacrifices as the CPA’s:

The membership fee is purposely being fixed on a high scale, since we want our members to make the same financial sacrifices for their movement that members of the Communist Party make for theirs. Even on this fee they will be far short of this objective, but for a beginning it will be a good test for them.25

Just as the communists intended such financial sacrifice to engender a strong — even fanatical — sense of loyalty, commitment, and discipline to their cause, Santamaria wanted to create a similar atmosphere among Show members. The policy also had its practical side:

We are hoping that the organisation will be able to pay for itself on this basis. Our budget for the first year is £1665 [$114,000]. When this is compared with the annual income of £25,000 [$1.7 million] which the Communist Party obtains from membership fees alone, it will be seen that our resources in the financial sphere are pitifully small compared with the task which we face.26

Santamaria’s assessment of The Movement’s annual income proved to be a considerable under-estimate. Before long, special financing drives among ordinary Catholics, businessmen, and other vested interests raised far in excess of these sums and quickly overwhelmed the CPA’s financial capacity, which dramatically declined as its membership plummeted between 1945 and 1955 and it lost many unions to The Show’s anti-communist campaign. In addition, Archbishop Mannix — the Melbourne church leader with the closest ties to Santamaria — had already given generously, making ‘a personal grant of £3000 [$203,000]’ at The Movement’s inception.27 Mannix rapidly became one of its greatest advocates, defenders, and financiers; his initial grant ensured that its early propaganda and organising work met with considerable success. As discussed in the next chapter, in 1945 the bishops budgeted £10,000 [$685,000] a year for the work — which increased over the following years — further strengthening its financial base.28

Santamaria’s 1944 report was firmly rooted in the successful relationship he shared with Mannix. Melbourne was the model to be used nationally, so he recommended that The Show’s work be subject to ‘the Authority of the Ordinary’ (that is, each bishop should exercise control over its work in his diocese):

While there is general agreement among all persons concerned, ecclesiastical and lay, about the desirability of our general objective, there is naturally a wide diversity of views on the methods to be adopted.

Our view, given with respectful submission, is that whatever method is approved by the Ordinary, his authority is essential if that method is to be generally accepted. The success of the movement in Melbourne originates in this fact and this fact alone.

In addition, interstate co-ordination is indispensable. Our fight is with organisations which have a national basis and whose central leadership is able to guide the smallest local branch. If we attempt to fight this with a variety of organisations, without national unity, working without a national plan, unco-ordinated, and acting on a purely diocesan basis, we would be much better occupied in doing nothing.29

From the beginning, Santamaria advocated that the church — through the bishops — should be seen to officially control The Movement’s policies and finances. The bishops’ involvement, however, gave a layman (Santamaria) almost unprecedented power in the world of ordinary Catholics. As one of the leading historians of the Australian church has observed:

[I]t is difficult to recapture the awe in which they [bishops] were once held by Catholics … In the Catholic imaginative world the authority of bishops was underpinned by Christ; to deny one was to deny the other; to disobey one was to disobey the other. Thus obedience to the authority of the bishops was not a mere notional assent, but bit deep into the emotions. Those who spoke with the authority of the bishops could count on a flow-on from this psychology of obedience. Catholic critics of the organisation were told that their criticism made them disloyal to the Church, at odds with ‘the mind of the hierarchy’ — almost like traitors in wartime.30

There was, however, an inherent contradiction in the notion of the local bishop approving the method of work to be used in his diocese while the national executive co-ordinated the work from its headquarters in Melbourne. In practice, what Santamaria wanted was the imprimatur of the local bishop to ensure the faithful supported the cause, which, imitating the communists, he personally directed throughout the farthest reaches of the land, effectively usurping ‘the Authority of the Ordinary’.

Santamaria’s 1944 report to the bishops conceded that a healthy plurality of opinion existed about the methods to be employed in the anti-communist fight. Such notions were soon abandoned in favour of a single, centrally controlled ‘master plan’, devised by Santamaria and directed by the selected few in The Show’s national leadership. In this manner it reflected the CPA, as inevitably it would, having modelled itself so thoroughly on the enemy. In true Stalinist style, The Show’s national executive — supposedly ‘subject to democratic checks’ — virtually came to possess the wisdom of the church itself, issuing instructions from on high to loyal members pledged to carry out their directions without demur. Indeed, by 1956 this had become such a poisonous issue that, in the midst of the bitter divisions inside the hierarchy caused by the Labor Split, one bishop contended that ‘a National Executive meeting resembles a Soviet Parliament in which the dictator’s measures receive more or less unanimous approval’.31

Furthermore, there was a not inconsiderable problem with Santamaria’s policy of the bishops officially controlling his Movement: it involved strictly political activity in unions and, more particularly as members gained control of major unions, in the ALP. The layman who recommended this approach — and the bishops who approved it — believed that such involvement by the church in the secular world was compatible with official Vatican teachings. Unfortunately, in this they were ultimately disappointed; in 1957, the Vatican ruled that The Show’s work could not be done either by the church or even in its name. This edict followed bitter recriminations among the bishops about the consequences of the Labor Split that created hostile factions within both the hierarchy and the laity.32

These divisions within the church highlighted another aspect of Santamaria’s decision to base The Show upon the CPA: like the Stalinists, he regularly found that events forced him to twist the facts to suit the particular circumstances in which he found himself. The communists regularly had to alter their domestic policies at Moscow’s dictate — for example, reversing their early support for the war effort in 1939 (which they had initially declared to be an ‘anti-fascist war’) when Stalin subsequently decreed it was an ‘imperialist war’. Similarly, when Santamaria disagreed with the policies adopted by many of the bishops in the 1950s after his covert plan to control the ALP was publicly exposed — causing bitter divisions in political and church circles — he falsely maintained that The Movement had always been a strictly lay organisation, not an official church body.33 Such dishonesty became part and parcel of his modus operandi, just as it had long been for the communists.

In the mid-1940s, the immediate problem for Santamaria, however, was that there were ‘traitors’ in his midst. As he had prophesied in his 1944 report, there were, indeed, ‘unreliable members’ prepared to reveal The Movement’s ‘existence to others’. This was the catalyst for his first great deceit.