Arthur Calwell
Arthur Augustus Calwell was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party through three federal elections, losing each one in turn. He was a well-esteemed politician at the time.
Calwell grew up in Melbourne and attended St Joseph's College. After leaving school, he began working as a clerk for the Victorian state government. He became involved in the labour movement as an officeholder in the public-sector trade union. Before entering parliament, Calwell held various positions in the Labor Party's organisation wing, serving terms as state president and as a member of the federal executive. He was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1940 federal election, standing in the Division of Melbourne.
After the 1943 election, Calwell was elevated to cabinet as Minister for Information, overseeing government censorship and propaganda during World War II. When Ben Chifley became prime minister in 1945, Calwell was also made Minister for Immigration. He oversaw the creation of Australia's expanded post-war immigration scheme, at the same time strictly enforcing the White Australia policy. In 1951, he was elected deputy leader of the Labor Party in place of H. V. Evatt, who had succeeded to the leadership upon Chifley's death. The two clashed on a number of occasions over the following decade, which encompassed the 1955 party split. In 1960, Evatt retired and Calwell was chosen as his successor, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition.
Calwell and the Labor Party came close to victory at the 1961 election, gaining 15 seats and finishing only two seats shy of a majority. However, those gains were wiped out at the 1963 election. Calwell was one of the most prominent opponents of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, a stance that was not electorally popular at the time, voting age being then 21. In 1966, Calwell survived a leadership challenge from his deputy Gough Whitlam, survived an assassination attempt with minor injuries, and finally led his party to a landslide defeat at the 1966 election, winning less than one-third of the total seats. He was 70 years old by that point, and resigned the leadership a few months later. He remained in parliament until the 1972 election, which saw Whitlam become prime minister, and died the following year.
Early life and education
Arthur Augustus Calwell was born on 28 August 1896, in West Melbourne. He was the oldest of seven children born to Margaret Annie and Arthur Albert Calwell. His father worked as a police officer and retired as a superintendent of police. Calwell's parents were both born in Australia. His maternal grandfather was Michael McLoughlin, who was born in County Laois, Ireland, and arrived in Melbourne in 1847 after jumping ship. He married Mary Murphy, who was born in County Clare. Calwell's paternal grandfather Davis Calwell was an Irish American born in Union County, Pennsylvania, who arrived in Australia in 1853 during the Victorian gold rush. He married Elizabeth Lewis, a Welshwoman, and settled near Ballarat, eventually becoming president of the Bungaree Shire Council. Davis Calwell's father, Daniel Calwell, had immigrated to the United States from northern Ireland, and served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the 1820s.Calwell grew up in West Melbourne. As a young boy he contracted diphtheria, which permanently scarred his vocal chords and gave him a lifelong "raspish, nasal voice".
Although his father was an Anglican, Calwell was raised in his mother's Catholic faith. He began his education at St Mary's College, the local Mercedarian school. In 1909, he won a scholarship to St Joseph's College, Melbourne, a Christian Brothers school. One of his closest friends at school was Matthew Beovich, a future Archbishop of Adelaide. In later life Calwell said "I owe everything I have in life, under Almighty God and next to my parents, to the Christian Brothers."
Calwell's mother died in 1913, aged 40, when her oldest son was 16 and her youngest child was only three months old. His father remarried, eventually dying in 1938 at the age of 69.
World War I
Calwell was an officer in the Australian Army Cadets at the outbreak of World War I, and made two unsuccessful applications for a commission in the Australian Imperial Force. After his second rejection in 1916 he made no further attempts to seek active service, being unwilling to join as an enlisted man; however, he was placed in the Army Reserve and remained there until receiving an honourable discharge in 1926. Calwell joined the Young Ireland Society in 1914, and served as the organisation's secretary until 1916. His reputation as an Irish republican brought him to the attention of the military police, which suspected him of involvement in the more radical Irish National Association. His residence was searched on one occasion, and his correspondence was routinely examined by censors. On two occasions there were moves to have him dismissed from the military for disloyalty, but Calwell denied the accusations and there was little proof that he had been actively disloyal.Public service career
Calwell entered the Victorian Public Service in 1913, as a junior clerk in the Department of Agriculture. He transferred to the Department of the Treasury in 1923, where he remained until winning election to parliament in 1940. As with most of his colleagues, Calwell joined the Victorian State Service Clerical Association. He served as secretary and vice-president of that organisation, which in 1925 was reorganised into the state branch of Australian Public Service Association. He was elected as the new organisation's inaugural president, serving until 1931.Early political involvement
Calwell joined the Labor Party at about the age of 18. He was elected secretary of the Melbourne branch in 1916, and from 1917 served as one of the Clerical Association's delegates to the state conference. He was elected to the state executive in the same year, and was state president of the party from 1930 to 1931 – at the time, the youngest person to have held the position. Calwell unsuccessfully sought Labor preselection for the Victorian Legislative Assembly and the Senate on a number of occasions, and was elected to the party's federal executive in 1926. He was an assistant secretary to state MP Tom Tunnecliffe for a period, and from 1926 served as secretary to William Maloney, the long-serving Labor member for the federal Division of Melbourne. Maloney would remain in parliament until his death at the age of 85, and Calwell made no effort to force an early retirement, despite being widely seen as the heir apparent to the seat.Curtin and Chifley governments (1941–1949)
Maloney announced he would not run for another term at the 1940 federal election. He died a month before polling day; as a result, no by-election was held in the Division of Melbourne. At the general election, Calwell easily retained the seat for the Labor Party. Due to his tenure as Victorian state president of the party and his long service as Maloney's secretary, he was already well known in federal parliament.During World War II, Calwell was appointed as Minister for Information in the Second Curtin Ministry following the 1943 election, and became well known for his tough attitude towards the Australian press and his strict enforcement of wartime censorship. This earned him the enmity of large sections of the Australian press, and he was dubbed "Cocky" Calwell by his political foes, cartoonists of the period depicting him as an obstinate Australian cockatoo.
In economic policy, Calwell was not a great advocate of nationalisation. Gough Whitlam attributed this to Calwell's brand of socialism which was "an emotion rather than an ideology, a memory of the social deprivation he observed in Melbourne during the Depression years."