The Big Fella, page 42
Without Garden’s support Voigt would not have been able to found 2KY for the Council in 1925. Garden had organized the board of management, and in times of financial stringency he raised money for the station to carry on, going so far once, he claimed, to mortgage his house. He found a job as an announcer for his son there. Garden was attached to 2KY. Both he and the Labor Council regarded it as a jewel in their collective crown. They were not going to allow it to become the centre-piece of a Lang-McCauley wireless diadem. They were not deceived by affirmations that the Council’s control would be safe when the station became revitalized as a magnet for renewal of the Labor Party.
Garden had begun to drift away from the ‘Big Fella’ when he went to Canberra in 1934; somewhat erratically he backed unity between the Lang Party and the ALP. In Sydney Lang discovered that King, the new Labor Council secretary, was cooling in his support. But the ‘Big Fella’ retained many faithful followers there; led by A. W. McNamara, a 1931 MLC and secretary of the United Labourers’ Union, they captured the Council’s executive on 27 February 1936.937 But on 5 March Garden made his declaration of war in an extraordinary speech on the Council: it contained allegations that Norman McCauley and ‘Plugger’ Martin had lobbied the Lang MHRs on 18 October 1935 to persuade them to ‘move an amendment that the Labor Party will ship munitions to Italy’: this pressure was resisted, said Garden; he then claimed that Norman McCauley had gone to Melbourne to sabotage the unity negotiations in February 1936; Garden also opposed the plans to reorganize the management of 2KY.938 The effusion was an adventurist concoction, planned to arouse passionate religious and ideological emotions in an attempt to rally the majority of Labor Council delegates against Lang and his inner group, and to help Garden to repulse threats to his continued pre-selection for Cook.939 Garden confused several issues but at least he brought into the open the threat to 2KY, thus beginning the definite moves on the Labor Council that were accumulatively decisive in the ultimate downfall of the ‘Big Fella’.
On 12 March 1936, with Keller and ‘Plugger’ Martin waiting outside, the Labour Council rejected by 67 to 52 a proposal that 2KY should be transferred to a board consisting of four representatives of the Council, two of the Labor Daily, and one of the State branch of the Labor Party. It was perceived that Lang would have no trouble in having at least one of the Council’s men under his influence, and would effectively control the station. King strongly opposed the scheme, and the Council refused to censure Garden.940
Next night the Party executive decided to summon Garden to explain his allegations about policy towards Italy and about interference at the unity conference.941 The tremors, forewarning of further deep Party turmoil, were increasing in intensity and frequency. Garden was especially vulnerable, for there was little truth in his accusations of 5 March. But he maintained his support on the Labor Council, where J. J. Maloney, the secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Boot Trades Employees’ Federation, was emerging as a strong ally of King against Lang.942 On 2 April the Council decided, by sixty-eight to fifty, that provided at least seven unions dissented there could be no change in the management of 2KY.943
But as the annual conference loomed there were signs of a deal between Lang and his new opponents. As usual the inner group controlled the gathering which was held on 10-11 April 1936. Lang went so far as to state that agreement had been reached with the unions for the formation of a company to run 2KY; it would issue 7 000 shares, of which the Labour Council would take up 4 000, the Labor Daily 2 000 and the State Labor Party 1000; each group would have a director for each 1 000 shares. Lang forecast that King and Garden would move on the Labor Council in two weeks’ time for the adoption of the proposal.944
Again Lang had deluded himself. He was now rapidly losing contact with majority opinion among the trade union leaders. Before the Labor Council’s meeting on 23 April a manifesto was issued by sixteen union secretaries expressing forceful hostility to the 2KY takeover. Clearly the dissidents were also making a general protest against Lang and the inner group—one that showed signs of developing into a widespread revolt. The signatories included Maloney, Schreiber and Kilburn; probably a majority could have been described as militants, and they included two Communists, Nelson and Lloyd Ross, the secretary of the Australian Railways Union; but four of them were MLCs, nominated by Lang in 1931. His man, A. W. McNamara, not King or Garden, moved the motion to transfer 2KY from the Labour Council to the company promoted by the inner group: it ‘was decisively defeated’. Some of the delegates voting against the resolutions represented several of the largest unions affiliated to the Labor Party.945 Lang could no longer sway the Labor Council, one of the main props to his power since 1926. But he had not lost all his trade union backing: some Lang unionists formed a loose body called ‘the anti-Communist committee’ which was denounced by Schreiber and King.946
Concurrently the Party executive had been inquiring into Garden’s charges of 5 March, and had kept its work separate from the 2KY imbroglio.947 As suspected, Garden had made his outburst opportunely to try to gain Labor Council and any other available Labor support to keep his hold on his seat of Cook. It was easy for the executive to establish that there was no significant substance in his accusations that Norman McCauley had tried to bring improper pressure on the Lang federal caucus over sanctions on Italy and, later, on delegates at the Melbourne unity conference. These allegations were regarded as subversive and disloyal. Garden was expelled on 18 May 1936.948 While many Laborites were unsympathetic to him, his ejection was also seen as a result of his strong stand against the inner group’s attempted acquisition of 2KY. The aggravation of the existing Party discord was not allayed by the signed categorical denials of Garden’s charges published on 26 May by the Lang unity conference delegates and by seven of the nine Lang MHRs.949 On 28 May the Maroubra Labor branch, in Garden and Heffron’s electorates, refused to endorse Garden’s expulsion, and Heffron supported a demand for a special conference ‘to discuss the administration of the Labour Party’. F. M. Burke and C. C. Lazzarini, MLAs, joined him.950
Various Labor branches became heatedly involved in the agitation. There was no chance that they could change the Party rules, even if they could unite against Lang—and that was most unlikely. But the Labor Council was not a part of the Labor Party, however closely linked through long association and common membership of individuals. Prior to 1927 the Council, under Garden, had organized political conferences. On 25 June 1936, under King, it decided to revive the practice. On Maloney’s motion a special conference of unions was called for 1 August to discuss ‘overhauling the State Labour machine and reorganising the administration of the party’.951 Repercussions were even felt on caucus, and a report mentioned Dunn, McKell and Heffron as possible leaders should Lang go:952 the first two understandably remained discreet, but Heffron had openly displayed his disrespect for the ‘Big Fella’ for several months. The Party executive promptly declared the Labor Council’s conference ‘black’. King’s circular convening the meeting stressed the need to reform the New South Wales ALP branch in order to win the Federal elections due in 1937 and the State elections in 1938;953 emphasis was put on the need for direct representation of unions and branches at conferences.
J. E. Pullen, the president of the Labor Council, chaired the conference held on 1 August 1936 in the Trades Hall. Thirty-one unions and the Barrier District Assembly (Broken Hill), all affiliated to the Labor Party, sent delegates representing 120 thousand unionists.954 Four MLAs risked their future by attending: Heffron, Horsington, Davidson and C. C. Lazzarini. King, Maloney, Schreiber and Kilburn were outspoken about the deplorable state of the Party. Lang and his inner group were angrily criticized by many speakers. The Australian Railways Union delegate condemned the ‘Red Rules’: he said its membership was about seventeen thousand, yet three small unions in the land transport group could combine to prevent the railwaymen from being directly represented on the Party executive and annual conference.955 Several anti-Lang and pro-reform motions were carried, including an attack on the Labor Daily; support for Garden; the need for the Federal executive’s co-operation to restore proper unity; the abolition of group representation; and the alteration of the method of counting selection ballots. A Continuation Committee of seven was established to propagate the decisions of the conference.956
By the latter half of 1936 Lang and his close circle were beyond compromise. The ‘Big Fella’ himself had always considered violent attack as the best means of defence, and intimidation was a normal part of his behaviour. As he approached the age of 60 his style and character were ironclad. He was blind to the implications of the fact that he had needed Trades Hall assistance to obtain power in the 1920s and to retain it in the 1930s. Now he had banished or alienated most of his old trade union stalwarts—probably only Tyrrell and Culbert, MLCs, remained, and they had lost their Trades Hall influence. Lang’s political desperation and grim personality meant that he could not come to terms with the new thrusting men, who, in turn, saw him as an intransigent obstacle to Labor’s revival. The failure of the fanciful takeover schemes underlined his nadir of insensibility. As advisers the McCauleys were poor substitutes for Willis, Magrath, Schreiber and O’Reilly.
But Lang could still strike out against his enemies from his fortified ALP position. The inner group reassembled the Party’s annual conference, calling it a special conference, on 22 August 1936. A new stridency replaced Lang’s previously composed and effective criticism of Communists; now he claimed they were the main cause of the Party’s trouble. To deter the rapidly growing number of dissidents the conference expelled five MPs and sixteen trade union leaders, and told forty-one other Party members that they were under suspicion for attending the Labor Council’s conference. The parliamentarians were Heffron, Davidson, Horsington and C. C. Lazzarini, MLAs, and King, MLC. The unionists included Schreiber, Maloney, Kilburn, Pullen and A. S. McAlpine, assistant secretary of the Labor Council. Among those warned were O’Reilly and J. R. Hughes. The three senior executives of the Labor Council were now outside the ALP. Heffron said, ‘The decision is vindictive, tyrannical and insane’.957
The Labor Council did not flinch at Lang’s terror tactics, and it was joined on 26 August by Schreiber’s Union Secretaries Association in a rally at the Trades Hall attended by representatives of sixty-two unions. The four expelled MLAs were also present. Amid the plethora of denunciations of Lang, O’Reilly’s stood out: ‘Drunk with power and vanity … a political maniac’, which summed up the growing isolation of the ‘Big Fella’, and the irreversible falling of the scales from the eyes of his former venerators, who now included Crofts. The indignation of the MLAs, bitterly expressed, suggested wider caucus opposition.958 But the most important decision reached was the appeal to the Federal executive to intervene to consider the growing New South Wales dispute.959
The Party convulsions were exacerbated by Graves, who claimed on 8 September 1936 that more than seventy branches and electoral councils had endorsed the expulsions; he then blamed the press for trying to wreck the leadership of Lang and Beasley for electoral purposes; and scorned the approach to the Federal branch—he said that those who had been loudest in supporting ‘the principle of local autonomy’ which sustained the Lang Party from 1931 to February 1936 were ‘now squealing for [aid] from some outside authority’. Next day he alleged that the Communist Party was trying again to take over the Labor Party—this time through a ‘dictatorship under cover of the trade unions’.960
In parliament, not only was Lang’s iron grip on caucus beginning to be prised open, he was also fast losing his ability to assail the conservatives. Stevens, in particular, had been his master since at least the opening on 12 June 1935 of the thirty-first New South Wales parliament. Lang’s attack on 21 October 1936, in the customary censure motion at the beginning of the third session, lacked his pristine fire but retained his obsessive abuse and misrepresentations: and he was shaken by Lazzarini’s furious assault on him.961 Lang’s parliamentary performances from 1920 had been one of his undoubted strengths. His faltering from 1935 was a conspicuous symptom of his general deterioration. The point was driven home on 10 November, when despite his best efforts, helped by ‘Plugger’ Martin, Grayndler won a by-election for the Legislative Council. Grayndler had been nominated by Lazzarini and King. There were touches of irony as well as Tammany in the nomination by Martin of A. W. Yager as the official ALP candidate.962
By the beginning of 1937 Lang had irreparably antagonized the Labor Council and a substantial majority of trade union leaders in New South Wales. Many of the rank and file Party members had also been estranged from him, as branches were disfranchised, especially those in the electorates of the expelled MPs.963 He had lost the approval of the Federal, Queensland and Victorian branches of the ALP, and of the ACTU and the Federal branch of the AWU. An important factor in the resentment of the Federal and the interstate groups was the ruthless way in which the Lang executive had treated some of the individual members of the Federal loyalists in New South Wales when they had applied for readmission after the unity achieved in February 1936.964
Nevertheless, Lang was the leader of the official ALP in his State. There was a Federal general election to be held in 1937. John Curtin had already shown great skill and forbearance when he overcame his personal distaste for Lang and provided essential encouragement for the unity achieved in 1936. Curtin again had to face up to the chronic upheavals in New South Wales. To buttress his position as Federal leader he had toured parts of the State in July 1936. On his visit to Sydney he had to confront the ‘Big Fella’—a daunting experience, even for a man who had proved the strength of his character by overcoming alcoholism. Lang saw Curtin as yet another superior rival. Indeed, he was the embodiment of Lang’s failure to become Federal leader; and apparently was certain to be the next Labor prime minister, a position coveted by the ‘Big Fella’ in his eerie post-1932 dreamworld of frustrated States-rightism.
Curtin received the full rough Lang treatment. No official welcome was arranged. He had to attend on Lang at Parliament House, and meet individual Labor MPs in the lobbies—some of them had never seen him before.965 It was one of Curtin’s great achievements to swallow this personal snub in the interests of Party unity. When, soon after, the revolt against Lang burst into the open, he still played a patient and discerning hand in the face of extreme provocation, and misunderstandings on the part of ALP members throughout the nation, who thought that Lang should be proscribed. Curtin realized, with rare statesmanship, that Lang would destroy himself eventually, and that any precipitate move on his part would provoke the re-emergence of another Lang Party, strong enough to jeopardize the ALP indefinitely.
Curtin’s diplomacy was put to the test at the 1937 State annual conference which began on 26 March. Curtin walked in with Lang. F. M. Forde, the deputy Federal leader, and Beasley followed. All were received with loud cheering which lasted several minutes. The chairman, Keller, remarked that it had been a long time since a Federal leader had been present at an annual conference. Curtin’s speech was a model of tact and firmness: State and Federal conferences, he said, ‘must be supreme’ in their respective spheres, but added, ‘I say definitely and decisively that no one executive anywhere in Australia must presume that they are a Commonwealth Labour party’. As for leadership, he stated that any change must be brought about ‘by ordinary process’. He then ranged on to the large issues that faced a Party that sought the government of a nation: international developments, he said, meant that Australia had to develop its defence potential and not rely on Great Britain and the League of Nations. Lang said that ‘it was one of the finest orations he had ever heard at a Labour conference’.966
But the executive’s report brought conference back to New South Wales Labor basics: it attacked the ‘bogus conference’ of 1 August 1936; stated that prominent Communist Party officials were involved with some Laborites in an attempt ‘to disrupt the Movement’; severely criticized the twenty-one expellees; and listed Thomas Sheehan as the preselected candidate for Garden’s seat of Cook.967 On Graves’s motion the report was adopted. Willis’s application for readmission was ruled invalid; the appeals of Heffron and Garden against their expulsions were rejected; subject to good behaviour in the interim, Horsington and Davidson were to be allowed back on 1 August 1937; the general appeal by King on behalf of himself and the other expellees was ruled out of order; only Pullen was readmitted unconditionally—a strange decision, for he was a key leader of the anti-Lang forces.968
The Langites were exultant at Curtin’s co-operation and concluded that they had triumphed over the rebels. But they had overlooked his reaffirmation that the New South Wales branch was subject to Federal constitutional authority. The Continuation Committee, established by the August 1936 Labor Council conference, had kept up its work and on 9 March 1937 decided to place ‘the facts before the Federal executive’ in the interests of unity.969 Heffron disclosed that he had sought readmission ‘at the request of the majority of the Federal A.L.P. executive’. National Labor opinion had hardened further against the Lang machine, and it was reported that the Federal branch would be asked to overrule the State conference’s rejection of the appeals of the expellees.970
