About ten days ago I bumped this thread by cutting-and-pasting an article from the Australian by Mike Steketee about the late Kim Beazley, Snr's, recently published memoir, 'Father of the House'. Excerpts from that article:
This is as good a prompt as you'll find to ask, "So, what would a federal ALP government in the sixties have looked like?"
Would the issues that concerned the young middle-class reformers (Beazley, Whitlam, Murphy etc*) have been the driving force? Or would this govt. be as orthodox, or indeed as colourless, as the state Labor administrations at the time tended to be?
I'd answer yes to both assertions.
It all depends on the POD (no Evatt split? A victory over the Menzies Liberals in 1961?) but I think we get incrementalism--the government comes into office dominated by the remaining Chifley generation of veteran ministers, is at first very cautious, then after a couple of years there begins a slow build-up to a Whitlamite agenda a lot like OTL's 'the program'.
Maybe avoiding the events of '54/'55 is the only way to get Labor into power for multiple-terms in an era that was otherwise dominated by Menzies and his successors. I get the feeling that Calwell winning the credit squeeze election merely leads to a new party schism, possible over state-aid** or Cold War policy, which leads to electoral defeat by '64.
Yet a more politically successful Labor government of that era will still face some problems with the Keynesian demand-management economy, with a certain amount of inflation to be expected from the welfare state reforms I mentioned above; at which point staying in office into the seventies would only be achieved by the Coalition losing elections.
Thoughts?
*And it's not like these reformers were all on the 'same side' when it came to party infighting.
**Ah, state-aid to papists. The obsession of the pre-Gough Leftwingers. Look what this response to Steketee's article by the Rt. Hon. John Winston Howard (who seems to think Mike is robbing the tories of the credit for state aid) generates with its comments. I've left a comment about Old Protestant Labor sectarians with too much time on their hands--don't know if it'll get through moderation, though.
This is as good a prompt as you'll find to ask, "So, what would a federal ALP government in the sixties have looked like?"
Would the issues that concerned the young middle-class reformers (Beazley, Whitlam, Murphy etc*) have been the driving force? Or would this govt. be as orthodox, or indeed as colourless, as the state Labor administrations at the time tended to be?
I'd answer yes to both assertions.
It all depends on the POD (no Evatt split? A victory over the Menzies Liberals in 1961?) but I think we get incrementalism--the government comes into office dominated by the remaining Chifley generation of veteran ministers, is at first very cautious, then after a couple of years there begins a slow build-up to a Whitlamite agenda a lot like OTL's 'the program'.
Maybe avoiding the events of '54/'55 is the only way to get Labor into power for multiple-terms in an era that was otherwise dominated by Menzies and his successors. I get the feeling that Calwell winning the credit squeeze election merely leads to a new party schism, possible over state-aid** or Cold War policy, which leads to electoral defeat by '64.
Yet a more politically successful Labor government of that era will still face some problems with the Keynesian demand-management economy, with a certain amount of inflation to be expected from the welfare state reforms I mentioned above; at which point staying in office into the seventies would only be achieved by the Coalition losing elections.
Thoughts?
*And it's not like these reformers were all on the 'same side' when it came to party infighting.
**Ah, state-aid to papists. The obsession of the pre-Gough Leftwingers. Look what this response to Steketee's article by the Rt. Hon. John Winston Howard (who seems to think Mike is robbing the tories of the credit for state aid) generates with its comments. I've left a comment about Old Protestant Labor sectarians with too much time on their hands--don't know if it'll get through moderation, though.
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