Historian ROSS FITZGERALD traces the beginning of the Great Labor Party split 70 years ago.

It is 70 years this month since the beginning of the Great Labor Split of the mid-1950s.

Dr HV Evatt, MHR for the Sydney seat of Barton, who briefly had been president of the United Nations General Assembly after World War II, became federal ALP leader in 1951.

From 1951 to 1954, Evatt was in a factional marriage of convenience with the anti-Communist wing of the Australian labour movement. He even enlisted the help of Melbourne-based BA (Bob) Santamaria, unofficial leader of “The Movement”, an increasingly influential anti-Communist organisation.

In my book, The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split, I explain that The Movement was founded in Melbourne by group of Catholics professionals, including lawyers like Santamaria. The political and religious ideas of The Movement were published in The Catholic Worker, which was available outside all Catholic churches in Victoria. The Catholic Worker was edited by Santamaria, who in 1946 had become director of the National Secretariat for Catholic Action.

An energetic lay activist, Santamaria was instrumental in establishing “industrial groups” to combat Communism in the trade unions, thereby indirectly influencing many Victorian ALP MPs. By the early 1950s, The Movement either controlled or strongly influenced a number of key unions and a cadre of Victorian Labor politicians, most of whom were Catholic.

A close friend of the influential Irish-born Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, Santamaria had huge ambitions.

As I reveal in The Pope’s Battalions, a letter Santamaria wrote to Archbishop Mannix contains these remarkable words: “The… Movement should within a period of five or six years be able to completely transform the leadership of the labour movement. They should be able to implement a Christian social program in both the state and the federal spheres.”

The brief marriage of convenience between Evatt and Santamaria ended on October 5 1954 when Dr Evatt – distressed by his narrow loss in the 1954 federal election – issued a press statement directed against the Victorian branch of the ALP.

When Evatt announced that the ALP in Victoria was controlled by “subversive” forces, all politically aware people knew that he was referring to Santamaria and his followers.

On April 20 1955 a bloc of anti-Evatt Labor members in the Victorian Legislative Assembly crossed the floor to ensure passage of a vote of no confidence in the Cain Labor government. In the ensuing state election of May 28 1955, the leading Liberal Party politician, Henry Bolte, was swept into power.

It is important to understand that the ALP split of 1955 was confined to Victoria. This politically damaging schism did not reach NSW until 1956 and Queensland until 1957.

The greatest beneficiaries of the 1955 split – Liberal Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies and Premier Bolte – were both Victorians. Mr Menzies shrewdly capitalised on the Victorian split by calling an early federal election for December 10 1955, in which he substantially increased his majority.

As a direct result of the split, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was formed.

As distinguished Canberra-based historian Stephen Holt writes: “At first, the anti-Evatt MPs denied that they were splitters. They presented themselves as the true ALP: The Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist).” They had their own traditional structure: annual conference, local branches, party officials.

Two years later, The Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) changed its name to The Democratic Labor Party.

Although DLP influence varied from state to state, its most important impact was at the federal level where, by directing preferences to the Liberal-Country Party, it guaranteed that the ALP would be out of power, for decades

Dr Holt, with whom I wrote the biography of that extraordinary pressman Alan Reid of “Labor’s faceless men” fame explains: “The DLP in Victoria was chuffed when a court decision ruled that its executive was the legal heir of the pre-split Labor Party in Victoria. It got to keep the party records.”

The DLP electorally institutionalised the split by directing its preferences to the conservative coalition. This meant that, when the Whitlam government was elected in 1972, Labor had spent 23 years in opposition.

At the state level, DLP preferences, which were strongly controlled, meant that in Victoria and Queensland the ALP remained in the electoral wilderness for well over 20 years.

Despite his intellectual brilliance, Dr Evatt was a disastrous politician. After being replaced as federal ALP leader in 1960, he was controversially appointed Chief Justice of NSW. Sadly, he became more and more mentally unhinged and had to resign in 1962.

The catastrophic political events of the 1950s and 1960s, split previous Labor-voting families, and often irreparably sundered personal relations with friends and fellow workers.

The ALP split of the mid 1950s still leaves a stain on the collective memory of many Labor voters.

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. His latest publication is The Ascent of Everest – a four pack of Grafton Everest political satires, co-authored with Ian McFadyen of  Comedy Company fame.