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Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, KT, AK, CH, FRS, QC (20
December 1894 – 15 May 1978),
Australian politician, was the twelfth and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia, serving eighteen and a half years. He had a rapid rise to
power, but his first term as Prime Minister was unsuccessful. He spent eight years in opposition, during which he founded the
Liberal Party. He was re-elected Prime Minister at the 1949 elections, and he then dominated Australian politics until his retirement in
1966. Menzies was renowned as a brilliant speaker, both on the floor of Parliament and on the hustings, but one example being the forgotten people.
Early life
Robert Gordon Menzies was born to James Menzies and Kate Menzies (nee Sampson) in Jeparit, a small town in the Wimmera region of western
Victoria, on 20 December 1894. His father James was a storekeeper, the son of Scottish
crofters who had Immigrated to Australia in the mid-1850s in the wake of the
Victorian gold rush. His maternal grandfather, John Sampson, was a miner from
Penzance who also came to seek his fortune on the gold-fields, in Ballarat, Victoria.[1] Both his
father and one of his uncles had been members of the Victorian parliament, while another uncle had represented Wimmera in the
House of Representatives.[2] He was proud of his
Highland ancestry - his enduring nick-name, Ming, came from "Mingus," the
Scots — and his own preferred — pronunciation of "Menzies".
Menzies was first educated at a one-room school, then later at private schools in Ballarat and Melbourne, and read law at the University of Melbourne.
When World War I began Menzies was 19 and held a commission in the university's militia
unit. Menzies resigned his commission at the very time others of his age and class clamoured to be allowed to enlist. It was
later stated that since the family has made enough of a sacrifice to the war with the enlistment of these brothers, Menzies
should stay to finish his studies. [citation needed] However, Menzies himself never explained the reason why he chose not to
enlist. Subsequently he was prominent in undergraduate activities and won academic prizes and declared himself to be a patriotic
supporter of the war and conscription. [1] He graduated in law in 1918. He soon became one
of Melbourne's leading lawyers and began to acquire a considerable fortune. In 1920 he married
Pattie Leckie, the daughter of a federal Nationalist Party MP, who was reputedly a moderating influence on him.
Rise to power
In 1928, Menzies gave up his lucrative law practice to enter state parliament as a member of the
Victorian Legislative Council representing the Nationalist Party of Australia. His candidacy was nearly defeated when a group of
ex-servicemen attacked him in the press for not having enlisted, but he survived this crisis. The following year he shifted to
the Legislative Assembly, and was a minister in the conservative
Victorian government from 1932 to 1934, and became Deputy Premier of Victoria in 1932.
Menzies entered federal politics in 1934, representing the United Australia
Party (UAP) in the upper-class Melbourne electorate of Kooyong. He was
immediately appointed Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in the Joseph Lyons
government, and soon became deputy leader of the UAP. He was seen as Lyons's natural successor and was accused of wanting to push
Lyons out, a charge he denied. In 1938 he was given the pejorative nickname "Pig Iron Bob", the result of his industrial battle
with waterside workers who refused to load scrap iron being sold to Imperial Japan. In
1939, however, he resigned from the Cabinet in protest at what he saw as the government's inaction. Shortly afterwards, on
7 April 1939, Lyons died.
First term as Prime Minister
Robert Menzies broadcasting to the nation the news of the outbreak of war, 1939
On 26 April 1939, following a period during which the Country
Party leader, Sir Earle Page, was caretaker Prime Minister, Menzies was elected Leader of the
UAP and was sworn in as Prime Minister. But a crisis arose when Page refused to serve under him. In an extraordinary personal
attack in the House, Page accused Menzies of cowardice for not having enlisted in the War, and of treachery to Lyons. Menzies
then formed a minority government. When Page was deposed as Country Party leader a few months later, Menzies reformed the
Coalition with Page's successor, Archie Cameron. (Menzies later forgave Page, but Pattie
Menzies never spoke to him again.)
In September 1939, with Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany, Menzies found himself a wartime Prime Minister. He did his best to rally the country, but the
bitter memories of the disillusionment which followed the First World War made this difficult, and the fact that Menzies had not
served in that war and that as Attorney General and Deputy Prime Minister, Menzies had made an official visit to Germany in 1938
and had expressed his admiration for the regime undermined his credibility. At the 1940 election, the UAP was nearly defeated,
and Menzies' government survived only thanks to the support of two independent MPs. The Australian Labor Party, under John Curtin, refused Menzies's
offer to form a war coalition.
In 1941 Menzies spent months in Britain discussing war strategy with Winston
Churchill and other leaders, while his position at home deteriorated. The Australian historian David Day has suggested that Menzies hoped to replace Churchill as British Prime Minister, and
that he had some support in Britain for this. Other Australian writers, such as Gerard
Henderson, have rejected this theory. When Menzies came home, he found he had lost all support, and was forced to resign,
first, on 28 August, as Prime Minister, and then as UAP leader. The Country Party leader, Arthur
Fadden, became Prime Minister. Menzies was very bitter about what he saw as this betrayal by his colleagues, and almost
left politics.
Return to power
Labor came to power later in October 1941 under John Curtin, following the defeat of the Fadden government in Parliament. In
1943 Curtin won a huge election victory. During 1944 Menzies held a series of meetings at 'Ravenscraig' an old homestead in
Aspley to discuss forming a new anti-Labor party to replace the moribund UAP. This was the Liberal Party, which was launched in
early 1945 with Menzies as leader. But Labor was firmly entrenched in power and in 1946 Curtin's successor, Ben Chifley, was comfortably re-elected. Comments that "we can't win with Menzies" began to circulate in the
conservative press.
Over the next few years, however, the anti-communist atmosphere of the early Cold War began
to erode Labor's support. In 1947, Chifley announced that he intended to nationalise Australia's private banks, arousing intense
middle-class opposition which Menzies successfully exploited. In 1949 a bitter coal-strike, engineered by the Communist Party, also played into Menzies's hands. In December 1949 he won the election and
again became Prime Minister.
The ALP retained control of the Senate, however, and made Menzies's life very difficult. In 1951 Menzies introduced
legislation to ban the Communist Party, hoping that the Senate would reject it and give him an excuse for a double dissolution election, but Labor let the bill pass. It was subsequently
ruled unconstitutional by the High Court. But when the Senate rejected his banking bill, he called a double dissolution and
won control of both Houses.
Later in 1951 Menzies decided to hold a referendum to change the Constitution to permit
him to ban the Communist Party. The new Labor leader, Dr H.V. Evatt, campaigned against the
referendum on civil liberties grounds, and it was narrowly defeated. This was one of Menzies's few electoral miscalculations. He
sent Australian troops to the Korean War and maintained a close alliance with the
United States.
Economic conditions, however, deteriorated, and Evatt was confident of winning the 1954 elections. Shortly before the
elections, Menzies announced that a Soviet diplomat in Australia Vladimir Petrov (see Petrov affair), had defected, and that there
was evidence of a Soviet spy ring in Australia, including members of Evatt's staff. This Cold
War scare enabled Menzies to win the election. Labor accused Menzies of arranging Petrov's defection, but this has since
been disproved: he had simply taken advantage of it.
The aftermath of the 1954 election caused a split in the Labor Party, and Menzies was comfortably re-elected over Evatt in
1955 and 1958. By this time the post-war economic boom was in full swing, fuelled by massive immigration and the growth in
housing and manufacturing that this produced. Prices for Australia's agricultural exports were also high, ensuring rising
incomes. Labor's rather old-fashioned socialist rhetoric was no match for Menzies and his promise of stability and prosperity for
all.
Labor's new leader, Arthur Calwell, gave Menzies a scare after an ill-judged squeeze
on credit - an effort to restrain inflation - caused a rise in unemployment. At the 1961 election Menzies was returned with a majority of only two seats. But Menzies was
able to exploit Labor's divisions over the Cold War and the American alliance, and win an increased majority in the
1963 elections. An incident in which Calwell was photographed standing
outside a South Canberra hotel while the ALP Federal Executive
(dubbed by Menzies the "36 faceless men") was determining policy also contributed to the 1963 victory. This was the first
"television election," and Menzies, although nearly 70, proved a master of the new medium. He was created a Knight of the Thistle in the same year.
In 1965 Menzies made the fateful decision to commit Australian troops to the Vietnam War,
and also to reintroduce conscription. These moves were initially popular, but later became
a problem for his successors. Despite his pragmatic acceptance of the new power balance in the Pacific after World War II and his
strong support for the American alliance, he publicly professed continued admiration for links with Britain, exemplified by his
admiration for Queen Elizabeth II, and famously described himself as
"British to the bootstraps". Over the decade, Australia's ardour for Britain and the monarchy faded somewhat, but Menzies' had
not. At a function attended by Queen Elizabeth II at Parliament House, Canberra, in 1963, Menzies quoted the Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford, "I did but see
her passing by, and yet I love her till I die". (This poem has often since been misattributed to Barnabe Googe.)
Retirement and posterity
Menzies retired in January 1966, and was succeeded as Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister by his former Treasurer,
Harold Holt. After his retirement the Queen,in 1966, appointed him to the ancient office of
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He toured the United States giving lectures, and published two volumes of memoirs. His retirement was spoiled, however,
when he suffered strokes in 1968 and 1971. Thereafter he faded from public view, and in old age became very embittered towards
his former colleagues. He died from a heart attack in Melbourne in 1978 and was
accorded a state funeral.
Menzies was Prime Minister for a total of 18 years, five months and 12 days, by far the longest term of any Australian Prime
Minister, and during his second term he dominated Australian politics as no-one else has ever done. He managed to live down the
failures of his first term in office, and to rebuild the conservative side of politics from the depths of 1943. These were great
political achievements. He also did much to develop higher education in Australia, and made the development of Canberra one of his pet projects.
Critics say that Menzies's success was mainly due to the good luck of the long post-war boom and his manipulation of the
anti-communist fears of the Cold War years, both of which he exploited with great skill. He was also crucially aided by the
crippling dissent within the Labor Party in the 1950s and especially by the ALP split of
1954. But his reputation among conservatives is untarnished, and he remains the Liberal Party's greatest hero.
Several books have been filled with anecdotes about him and with his many witty remarks. While he was speaking in
Williamstown, Victoria in 1954, a heckler shouted, "I wouldn’t vote for you if
you were the Archangel Gabriel" – to which Menzies coolly replied "If I were the Archangel
Gabriel, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be in my constituency."
Planning for an official biography of Menzies began soon after his death, but were long delayed by Dame Pattie Menzies's
protection of her husband's reputation and her refusal to co-operate with the appointed biographer, Frances McNicoll. In 1991, the Menzies family appointed Professor A.W. Martin
to write a biography, which appeared in two volumes, in 1993 and 1999.
Criticism
In 1950, Britain, hoping to proceed with its atomic weapon testing program, was denied use of the Nevada testing facilities in
the United States. As a result, Labor prime minister Clement Atlee sent a top secret
personal message to Australian prime minister Robert Menzies, a staunch anglophile, asking
if the Australian government might agree to the testing of British nuclear weapons at the Montebello Islands, off western Australia. In effect Atlee asked Menzies if he could lend him his
country for atomic tests. Menzies agreed immediately, with no record of him having consulted any of his cabinet colleagues on the
matter. Menzies is known to have ruled his cabinet with an iron fist and is unlikely to have received much resistance anyway. The
agreement was the start of a program of testing and involvement of the Australian people that was to last years, with little
proper safeguards for the land or the people involved, even to the use of over 15,000 Australian servicemen to be involved in
"safety testing," not to mention the Aboriginal population of the area.
Whether ill-informed, simply naive, or prompted by a misguided loyalty to british interests, the Australian government of the
time, had embarked on a program that would do lasting damage to the Australian landscape and its people. The cancer and radiation
remain to this day.[3]
See also
Actors who have played Menzies
- In the 1984 mini series The Last Bastion, Menzies was portrayed by John Wood.
- In the 1987 mini series Vietnam, he was portrayed by Noel
Ferrier.
- In the 1988 mini series True Believers, he was portrayed by John Bonney.
- In the 2007 film Curtin, he was portrayed by Bille Brown.
- Max Gillies has caricatured Menzies on stage and in the comedy satire series
The Gillies Report.
Notes and references
Further reading
- Alan Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life, two volumes, Melbourne University Press, 1993 and 1999 (this competent but
uninspiring official biography was delayed for many years by the un-cooperative attitude of Dame Pattie Menzies.)
- Judith Brett, Robert Menzies' Forgotten People, Macmillan, 1992 (a sharply critical psychological study)
- Michelle Grattan, "Australian Prime Ministers", New Holland Publishers , 2000 (very good summary of his life and career)
External links
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