London Launch Of Menzies At War

On Wednesday 10 December 2014, at Australia House in London, Australia’s High Commissioner The Hon Alexander Downer AC gave the London launch of Anne Henderson’s Menzies at War (University of New South Wales Press). Alexander Downer was introduced by Professor Carl Bridge, former Director of the Menzies Centre at Kings College London – which co-hosted the event. Carl Bridge is currently a lecturer and researcher at the College. The paper, which follows, is an edited transcript of Alexander Downer’s address.

LONDON LAUNCH OF MENZIES AT WAR

ALEXANDER DOWNER

I want to thank the Menzies Centre for tonight. We do want to project Australia into the United Kingdom – Australian arts, Australian literature and of course Australian politics and history. So much of our history is tied up with the history of the United Kingdom for very obvious reasons that don’t need to be expounded by me.

I’m delighted that Anne has written this book. It’s one of two books that has come out very recently about Sir Robert Menzies, the other being a magnum opus by John Howard, the former Prime Minister. Anne and Gerard Henderson have done a great job in helping to draw together many threads of Australia political history. Anne’s book on Prime Minister Joe Lyons has brought back to life a prime minister of Australia largely ignored in Australian history in spite of having such a long period in office during the Depression, and through the 1930s, a difficult period for anybody to be the prime minister of any country.

The people who are remembered tend to be the people about whom much is written, and there are reasons for that. A lot has been written about John Curtin, and Ben Chifley who tried to nationalise banks. Imagine if Chifley had remained the prime minister what a different sort of country Australia would be today. As High Commissioner, of course, I soar way above the grubby world of politics so I make no value judgement except to say, that Australia would have been a very different country if all our industries had been nationalised, a very different sort of country from the country it turned out to be.

This book is a fascinating study of Menzies, as I see it, in three ways – three things that come through, to me, from this book. The first is Menzies the person. There have been people who have endeavoured to create a caricature of Menzies. And Australians barrack for their side of politics like they barrack for their football teams or their cricket team so they can’t find it in themselves to be slightly generous to somebody who comes from the other side of politics.

For many of his critics, Menzies wasn’t part of the human race. So, there has been an attempt by some to create an image of Menzies as an austere, remote, almost sort of quasi-aristocratic, aloof figure. He was certainly a big figure in more ways than one, but he wasn’t any of those other things. His pedigree was not aristocratic to say the least, coming from Jeparit as he did. I’ve never been to Jeparit mind you, and am not entirely sure why you would go there except to see the little primary school that Sir Robert Menzies went to in his early years.

Menzies in fact was – and Anne’s book says a lot about this – a very warm, family-oriented person He was devoted to his family and to his parents. He had a very close relationship with his father, his siblings and, as time went on, with his children and for some period of time, as well, his grandchildren, of whom he was very fond. I saw this side of Sir Robert Menzies because my father was in the Menzies Cabinet and in parliament with Robert Menzies for many years. He was very close to Menzies.

Menzies used to come and stay with us in South Australia. Then we moved to London when my father became the Australian High Commissioner. When Menzies retired in January 1966, he became Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He used to come to the UK where he had a lovely apartment in Walmer Castle. Every European summer he would often stay with us.

What impressed me about Sir Robert Menzies, this grand figure, this man who had presided over the Commonwealth of Australia for a longer period than anyone else in history, was how he could be so engaged with people like my sisters and me, as young people. He didn’t just luxuriate in a huge armchair and talk to my parents and the other grandees that they brought around. He would sit there, yes, with a huge cigar, which he would smoke, talking to my sisters and me about our studies at school, and exploring the courses that we would do and showing such an extraordinary interest in our lives. This tells you a lot about Sir Robert Menzies. Indeed, he was an incredibly kind man.

When we used to go to Canberra for our school holidays, Robert Menzies would invite me to the Lodge to play cricket with his nephew – he had a nephew called Alec Menzies. At the time, there was a cricket net in the garden at the Lodge. He would occasionally turn his arm over, which was always good because he was pretty easy to hit around the nets. Alec and I would spend hours and hours during these school holidays playing cricket at the Lodge, all courtesy of Sir Robert Menzies.

Sir Robert Menzies was incredibly kind and generous and charming – although very grand and slightly formidable, slightly frightening for a child and a teenager – but a wonderful man in that way. He had a huge interest in football and cricket, as you all know, and he’d spend a lot of time talking to us about games, asking questions like what we thought about Australia’s left-handed batsman Neil Harvey and so on.

The second thing for me from Menzies At War is that it has a great title. Obviously this refers to the Second World War but, when you read the book, it reminds you that it wasn’t only the Nazis and the Japanese that Menzies was worried about. It was also the Country Party and some elements of the United Australia Party, those huge wars he had with his own side of politics – redolent of that expression you hear so often in politics, that your opponents sit opposite you but your enemies sit behind you. It’s a very a good saying that and one that, having been the leader of the Liberal Party, I can well identify with. I remember their names and addresses so well, and I still see them on TV from time to time.

What strikes me in Menzies at War, are the struggles Menzies had with the Country Party. With, in particular, Earle Page and his famous, incredibly personal, brutal and utterly defamatory attack on Menzies. I once gave the Sir Earl Page Lecture at the University of New England and I chose not to talk about any of these events and not much about Sir Earl Page. Page had a modest war record from the First World War, and to call Menzies a coward for not having enlisted was a terrible thing to have done. Menzies was, for the rest of his life, very hurt by that.

There was the redoubtable Country Party leader Archie Cameron, who came from my own state of South Australia. Archie Cameron’s electorate included part of what subsequently became my electorate. He was another Country Party man who gave Menzies a hard time. It seemed during the early part of the war the person Menzies got on best with was Labor’s leader John Curtin, who seemed to have a better relationship with him, all of which is quite impressive. Of course Menzies eventually fell, to Curtin’s advantage, and was plunged into temporary political obscurity.

Menzies, however, was resilient. And he had good reason to be resilient. He had committed Australia to fight a war sending Australian troops to Europe and the Middle East. Importantly, he travelled to Britain in 1941 and was part of the War Cabinet meetings. Much has been said over the years about Menzies’ relationship with Britain and that he more British than the British. Much has been exaggerated in this. Menzies was a creature of his age, so judgements about him and his attitudes towards Britain based on the modern relationship between Australia and Britain are irrelevant. The relationship today is very different.

This building, Australia’s High Commission in London, was the first major building the Commonwealth of Australia ever built and it cost a million pounds in 1918. That’s a huge amount of money in 1918 and is a symbol of what Australia felt about Britain. This huge building, here in the middle of London. Menzies, as a wartime leader in 1940-41 felt very strongly about Britain. But I’ve always argued, and Anne essentially argues this in her book, that Menzies was also a very deep patriot. He wasn’t somebody who put Britain’s interests before Australia’s interests. But he understood the importance of Britain to Australia and of course the heritage of Britain in Australia. He understood all of that and was very proud of his Scottish ancestry.

What is quite striking about Menzies in Britain, in 1941, is the difficult relationship he had with Winston Churchill. There may have been a perception that Menzies fawned before Churchill when he came over here. In fact, he rowed with Churchill and not very successfully. He didn’t get his way with Churchill. And the relationship was not as close as it was often portrayed.

On his way to London, in January-February 1941, Menzies went via Singapore and was horrified by the lack of proper organisation there to defend British territory. This was nine months before Japan entered the Second World War. At that point, Menzies was very worried about an imminent Japanese entry into the war. While most Western leaders like Menzies, Lyons and Chamberlain had been appeasers during the late 1930s, affected by the sheer horror of the First World War when they thought about the prospects of another war, they changed tack as Hitler invaded neighbouring territory ruthlessly in 1939.

After September 1939, in relation to Japan, Menzies became very tough-minded, and very fearful. Meanwhile, the British government thought it could to keep Japan out of the war and disagreed with the preparations Menzies believed were needed at Singapore. It ended up a tough argument with the British government, which Menzies lost. Then, in February 1942, we all lost Singapore. My father went into a prison of war camp for three and a half years as a result of that, so it wasn’t all drawing rooms and ballrooms.

The point is that our relationship with Britain was tested in a lot of ways. I recall this from my father talking to me about Churchill. There’s a generation of Australians who are not quite as admiring of Churchill as people are today. The reason they’re not is because the British in 1941 thought, as Menzies and my father came to realise, that Australia was a nice place but not the main game – that we were in fact expendable. I do believe Churchill thought Australia was expendable. Any Australian can be excused for thinking that’s not acceptable. Britain was under serious threat but not alone because Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa and others were there with them. Britain was not alone in its hour of need. But Australia did feel terribly alone through that period.

Menzies, indeed, had a lot of wars. And this is the last point I want to make. Menzies is an illustration of what you find in every really successful political career. That is, the capacity to recover from adversity. You can only succeed, probably in any field of life, if you can recover from adversity. In public life especially, as sure as anything, you are going to one day confront adversity. I can think of a politician, who shall remain nameless, of great talent. This person went through rapid promotions and for years did incredibly well and was very well known and much praised around the land. But he finally had to confront adversity and he couldn’t. That person never fulfilled his potential as a result of that.

Menzies was absolutely shattered at losing the UAP leadership in August 1941. He even thought standing for Westminster. Anne has revealed more about that than I knew so I’m quite interested in what she says here. But Menzies not only rebuilt his career in Australian politics, he also rebuilt a shattered party and he rebuilt a country out of the ashes of the Second World War. Menzies recast his personality somewhat also, becoming a bit more generous and tactful with people. It would be true to say the younger Menzies he didn’t suffer fools. Perhaps he was shy, a bit aloof and didn’t consult enough with his colleagues and didn’t build needed relationships. A successful, political leader has to build with his essential immediate support group, which is his backbench. The second time Menzies became leader and ultimately again the prime minister, he had learnt out of adversity – even though he had come close to collapse and was terribly depressed after his fall in 1941.

It’s a great book and I commend it to you, very well written and extremely thoughtful and well researched. Is it biased? All books are biased. You can’t buy an unbiased book. Certainly it’s sympathetic to Menzies. On the other hand, a huge amount has been written about Menzies which is completely unsympathetic. But, I’ve said this of Gough Whitlam and I’ll say it of Menzies – there isn’t any doubt whether you’re Liberal or Labor, or whether you’re hugely partisan, that Menzies was one of the two or three greatest political figures in the history of Australia. Many would say he was the greatest prime minister we ever had.

Paul Keating has said that when Menzies was the prime minister, these were the “Rip Van Winkle” years. Well, roll on “Rip Van Winkle” because Australia did pretty well. It wasn’t a period of great trial for Australia, but it was a period of great recovery from the ashes of the Second World War.

So, Anne, thank you very much for writing the book. I’m glad to be involved in the London launch of it. I hope that it sells hugely well, goes on Amazon, goes on Kindle and all that sort of thing. In any case, it’s great to see you writing. You and your husband are prolific writers and may you continue to be so.