Whitlam

Governor-General Sir John Kerrs dismissal of the elected Whitlam Government in 1975, more or less at the behest of the born-to-rule Liberal-Country Party Coalition led by Malcolm Fraser, was among the most momentous events in Australian political history. Whitlam himself was certainly one of the most momentous figures in that history. Born into a privileged life that should have seen him on side with the born-to-rule gang, he took the other fork, joined the Australian Labor Party, rose to be its Parliamentary leader, took it into power after twenty-three years in the wilderness, then led it right back there. As Malcolm Fraser might have said, all that wasnt meant to be easy, and Whitlam never found it so. Branded as a silver tail by the rough and ready men of Labor, he had to fight them all the way to convince them that Labor was something more than just the political arm of the union movement, and that principle without power was an exercise in futility. He overcame all their resistance and in 1972 led them triumphantly into the Government benches. Perhaps a little too triumphantly. The pace of change scared too many people. And sudden changes in the world economic environment threw down challenges he just could not overcome. Nor could he overcome the local political challenges thrown down by the conservative forces, once they had recovered from the shock of the 1972 election result. He held them at bay when they forced him to the electors eighteen months ahead of time in mid-1974. But he and his colleagues seemed determined to keep providing him with the ammunition they needed to shoot him down, and on 11 November 1975, they did. This book tells it all in highly readable style. It tries to recapture some of the excitement of the times.