On 22 September 1951, a nation-wide referendum asked Australians to vote Yes or No to the following question: ‘Do you approve of the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled “Constitution Alteration (Powers to Deal with Communists and Communism) 1951”?’ The law to which the referendum question referred would enable the Commonwealth government to ban the Communist Party of Australia.
Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies had called the referendum in response to the High Court's ruling that his government's Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950, which had passed both houses of Parliament with Opposition support, was unconstitutional. Contrary to general expectation on all sides of politics, referendum voters narrowly rejected the government's proposed change to the Constitution. The government made no further attempts to ban the Communist Party, and instead pursued other avenues in its fight against communism, most notably in using the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, created two years earlier by the Chifley Labor government, to monitor closely the party's activities.
The referendum has been of interest to historians mainly in the context of post-war Australian political and Cold War history. Historical analysis began, perhaps, with L. C. Webb's Communism and Democracy in Australia (1954), a book considered in some detail by Murray Goot and Sean Scalmer in this present collection. Subsequent work has appeared in the context of studies of two of the principal players, Menzies and H. V. Evatt, and in a range of other Australian Cold War histories discussed in these essays. Anniversaries have tended to prompt further reflection: there was a conference to mark the fortieth anniversary in 1991, interestingly the year the Soviet Union and the Australian Communist Party both finally dissolved, while this present group of essays arises from a successful and enjoyable two-day symposium held in Melbourne on the occasion of the referendum's sixtieth anniversary.
In bringing these essays together in this issue of Australian Historical Studies, we aim to extend historical understanding of the nature and significance of the 1951 referendum in a number of directions. We seek to move discussion beyond a paradigm hitherto defined by the internal dynamics of Cold War politics to one informed by recent developments in cultural, social, legal and political history and also by the transnational turn, which has encouraged historians to connect their local and national histories with events and processes elsewhere.Footnote1
The first three essays conceptualise the referendum as a legal event, considering in some detail the drafting of Menzies’ legislation and the role of the High Court. As Ann Genovese argues, investigating the legal history of the events leading up to the referendum reminds us that any historical discussion of rights, justice, tyranny or subversion demands attention to the way law shapes language and discourse. Lachlan Clohesy shows how the Liberal Party came to decide in 1948 against the American model of an anti-communist state apparatus, involving public show trials and denunciations, and to prefer in its place an outright banning of the Communist Party. Laurence Maher provides a much-needed analysis of the members of the legal profession who drafted the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, telling us much in the process about a layer of the conservative establishment at work during the 1950s. The most significant legal figure in these events was, perhaps, H. V. Evatt himself, and as Frank Bongiorno here shows, the use of the notion of British justice became the basis for Evatt's campaign for a No vote in the subsequent referendum.
The next three essays throw new light on particular dimensions of the campaign. Murray Goot and Sean Scalmer conduct a close analysis of the nature of political campaigning during the 1950s through a study of the uses by both sides of political oratory, press and radio. Joy Damousi explores both women's activism and the specific appeals to the woman voter by both sides of the campaign, suggesting that these highlight the rise of women as a distinct political category, a change representing an historical shift in Australian political culture. James Waghorne provides the first detailed study of the way the Australian Council for Civil Liberties engaged with the referendum, offering an interpretation of its role challenging earlier work.
To conclude the collection, bringing many of its themes together, Alice Garner and Diane Kirkby consider the early stages of the Australian-American Fulbright Program which were coterminous with the conflicts over communism and anti-communism. Their essay suggests we need to develop a more complex understanding of the interaction of political and intellectual histories.
The 1951 referendum was a significant event in Australian history. Had the government succeeded in having the Constitution changed in the way it wished, and in banning the Communist Party, modern Australian history may have turned out very differently. Former High Court Judge, Michael Kirby, has insisted on its significance for Australia's democracy and history. In a speech on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary, he referred to:
the wisdom of the Australian people, half-way through the first century of their federal Constitution, in defeating a referendum that would have left a permanent blot on our freedoms. Truly the referendum vote of 22 September 1951 was a critical moment for freedom in Australia. It should not be forgotten.Footnote2
While some of the authors in this collection might dispute Kirby's interpretation of the meaning of the referendum, all would agree with the spirit of his final sentence. This referendum, in its many dimensions, thoroughly deserves to be remembered by scholars and citizens alike.
Ann Curthoys & Joy Damousi
Notes
1Phillip Deery, ‘Writing about the Left in Australia and the USA: A Short Overview’, American Communist History 10, no. 2 (2011): 115–18.
2Michael Kirby, ‘A Forgotten Constitutional Jubilee: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Defeat of the Referendum on Communists and Communism in September 1951’, speech to the University of Adelaide Law School, 13 August 2001, http://www.michaelkirby.com.au/images/stories/speeches/2000s/vol48/2001/1736-FORGOTTEN_CONSTITUTION_JUBILEE.doc