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In office 26 April 1939 – 26 August 1941 |
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Constituency | Kooyong (Victoria) |
Preceded by | Earle Page |
Succeeded by | Arthur Fadden |
In office 19 December 1949 – 26 January 1966 |
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Preceded by | Ben Chifley |
Succeeded by | Harold Holt |
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Born | 20 December 1894 Jeparit, Victoria |
Died | 15 May 1978 (aged 83) Melbourne, Victoria |
Political party | United Australia; Liberal |
Spouse | Pattie Leckie |
Religion | Presbyterian |
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, KT, AK, CH, QC (20 December 1894 - 15 May 1978), Australian politician, was the twelfth person to serve as Prime Minister of Australia. His second term saw him become Australia's longest serving Prime Minister, a record which still stands. He had a rapid rise to power as Prime Minister at the 1940 election which his party narrowly won. A year later, his government was brought down by MPs crossing the floor. He spent eight years in opposition, during which he founded the Liberal Party. He was re-elected Prime Minister at the 1949 election, 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; his speech "The forgotten people" is an example of his oratorical skills.
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Robert Gordon Menzies was born to James Menzies and Kate Menzies (née 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.[2] 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. [3] 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 (Wesley College), 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 had made enough of a sacrifice to the war with the enlistment of two of three eligible brothers, Menzies should stay to finish his studies. [4] 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.[5] 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; she was reputedly a moderating influence on him.
In 1928, Menzies gave up his 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.
In late 1934 and early 1935 Menzies unsuccessfully prosecuted the Lyons government's case for the attempted exclusion from Australia of Egon Kisch, a Czech Jewish communist. Because of this, some accused Menzies of being pro-Nazi, whilst others saw it as an early example of his strong opposition to communism.
He later 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.
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, Arthur Coles and Alex Wilson. The Australian Labor Party, under John Curtin, refused Menzies' 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.
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. The 1949 coal strike, engineered by the Communist Party, also played into Menzies' hands. In the December 1949 election, Menzies won power for the second time in a massive landslide, scoring a 48-seat swing--still the largest defeat of a sitting government at the federal level in Australia.
Although Menzies had a comfortable majority in the House, the ALP-controlled Senate made life very difficult for him. 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 at the election won control of both Houses.
Later in 1951 Menzies decided to hold a referendum on the question of changing the Constitution to permit the parliament to make laws in respect of Communists and Communism where he said this was necessary for the security of the Commonwealth. If passed, this would have given a government the power to introduce a bill proposing to ban the Communist Party (although whether it would have passed the Senate is an open question). 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' 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; although Labor won a majority of the two-party vote, it was unable to take enough seats from the Coalition to topple Menzies. Evatt 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, with several anti-Communist members from Victoria defecting to form the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist). The new party directed its preferences to the Liberals, and Menzies was comfortably re-elected over Evatt in 1955. Menzies was reelected almost as easily in 1958, again with the help of preferences from what had become the Democratic Labor Party.
By this time the post-war economic recovery 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.
In 1963, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Thistle (KT),[6] the order being chosen in recognition of his Scottish heritage. He is the only Australian ever appointed to this order, although three British governors-general of Australia (Lord Hopetoun; Ronald Munro-Ferguson, later Lord Novar; and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester) were members. He was the second of only two Australian prime ministers to be knighted during their term of office (the first prime minister Edmund Barton was knighted during his term in 1902).
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 Her Majesty 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 The Queen 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.)
Menzies retired in January 1966, and was succeeded as Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister by his former Treasurer, Harold Holt. The coalition would remain in power for almost another seven years, until the Australian Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam led his party to victory at the December 1972 Federal election.
Menzies was appointed in 1966 by the Queen to the ancient office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He toured the United States of America giving lectures, and he published two volumes of memoirs. Menzies encountered tribulation in retirement, however, when he suffered strokes in 1968 and 1971. Thereafter he faded from public view, and in old age he reportedly became very embittered towards his former colleagues. He died from a heart attack in Melbourne in 1978 and was accorded a state funeral, held in Scots' Church, Melbourne.
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 nadir it hit in 1943. Menzies also did much to develop higher education in Australia, and he also made the increasing development of Canberra one of his big projects.
However, it can also be noted that while gaining a majority of seats, Menzies lost the two party preferred vote in 1940, 1954, and 1961.
He was the only Australian Prime Minister to recommend the appointment of four governors-general (Sir William Slim, and Lords Dunrossil, De L'Isle, and Casey). Only two other Prime Ministers have ever chosen more than one governor-general. (Malcolm Fraser chose Sir Zelman Cowen and Sir Ninian Stephen; and John Howard chose Peter Hollingworth and Michael Jeffery.)
Critics say that Menzies' 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 it was long delayed by Dame Pattie Menzies' 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.
Styles and titles Sir Robert Menzies held held from birth until death, in chronological order:
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by John Latham |
Minister for Industry 1934 – 1939 |
Succeeded by Billy Hughes |
Preceded by Earle Page |
Prime Minister of Australia 1939 – 1941 |
Succeeded by Arthur Fadden |
Preceded by Geoffrey Street |
Minister for Defence Coordination 1939 – 1941 |
Succeeded by John Curtin |
Preceded by Richard Casey |
Treasurer of Australia 1940 – 1941 |
Succeeded by Percy Spender |
Preceded by John Lawson |
Minister for Trade and Customs 1940 |
Succeeded by George McLeay |
New title | Minister for Munitions 1940 |
Succeeded by Philip McBride |
Preceded by Arthur Fadden |
Leader of the Opposition 1943 – 1949 |
Succeeded by Ben Chifley |
Preceded by Ben Chifley |
Prime Minister of Australia 1949 – 1966 |
Succeeded by Harold Holt |
Preceded by Enid Lyons |
Vice-President of the Executive Council 1951 |
Succeeded by Eric Harrison |
Preceded by Richard Casey |
Minister for Foreign Affairs 1960 – 1961 |
Succeeded by Garfield Barwick |
Preceded by Donald Cameron |
Minister in charge of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation 1961 – 1962 |
Succeeded by John Gorton |
Legal offices | ||
Preceded by John Latham |
Attorney General of Australia 1934 – 1938 |
Succeeded by Billy Hughes |
Parliament of Australia | ||
Preceded by John Latham |
Member for Kooyong 1934 – 1966 |
Succeeded by Andrew Peacock |
Party political offices | ||
Preceded by Joseph Lyons |
Leader of the United Australia Party 1939 – 1941 |
Succeeded by Billy Hughes |
Preceded by Billy Hughes |
Leader of the United Australia Party 1943 – 1945 |
Succeeded by Party dissolved |
New political party | Leader of the Liberal Party 1945 – 1966 |
Succeeded by Harold Holt |
Honorary titles | ||
Preceded by Sir Winston Churchill |
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports 1966 – 1978 |
Succeeded by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother |
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Persondata | |
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NAME | Menzies, Robert |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | Australian politican |
DATE OF BIRTH | 20 December 1894 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Jeparit, Victoria |
DATE OF DEATH | 15 May 1978 |
PLACE OF DEATH | Melbourne, Australia |