HERBERT VERE EVATT was the most academically honoured politician Australia has produced. He was also one of the most controversial. He was a genius who made outstanding contributions to Australian legal and historical writing and a statesman whose name was respected throughout the world. Yet many people saw his life as being a tragic failure, the story of a man who came within an ace of being Prime Minister but who ended his days depicted by the media as disloyal and a communist sympathizer. Those who knew him, however, saw that the many fine achievements of his life more than outweighed the lost Prime Ministership. They see him, not as a tragic figure, but as one of the greatest Australians.
He always said, "If you have enemies, forget their names. Don't remember them at all."
Evatt was born on 30 April 1894, on the coalfields of East Maitland in the New South Wales Hunter River Valley. His father died when he was six years old. He was the third of six brothers who were brought up by their mother. He attended the East Maitland State School until the family moved to Sydney. In 1905 he entered Fort Street Boys' High School where he began what was perhaps the most remarkable academic career that has ever been recorded in Australia. He was either first or second in every class until 1911 when he passed the Senior Public Examination with nine first class passes and three first class honours. He won four special prizes plus a bursary to the University of Sydney. In 1912 he entered the University's Faculty of Arts and at the end of first year won high distinctions in all his subjects plus five academic prizes. In second and third
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years he repeated the performance. He graduated from Arts in 1914 with first class honours and medals in English, Mathematics and Philosophy. He then started a law degree and by 1918 had graduated with first class honours and the University Medal. At the same time he had completed a Master of Arts degree which, characteristically, he took with first class honours. All together he was awarded an unprecedented number of four medals by Sydney University.
By 1940 Evatt had become a barrister. One of his first important cases was when he appeared as counsel for the Australian Railways Union in a Royal Commission. This followed the great railway strike of 1917 when many men had been demoted and victimised. Two of these men were J. B. Chifley (later Prime Minister of Australia) and J. J.
Cahill (later Premier of New South Wales). This was one of many cases which built for Evatt the reputation as a great defender of the rights of the individual before the law.
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Evatt became a lecturer at the Sydney University Law School and in 1925 was awarded the Doctor of Laws degree for a thesis on constitutional government. Four years later he was appointed King's Counsel and then, in 1930, he was appointed to the High Court of Australia at the age of thirty-six, the youngest man ever to be given this appointment. He remained on the High Court Bench for the next ten years but his scholarly activities continued and he wrote four important books
on legal matters and Australian history. For this work he was awarded the Doctorate of Literature. Then, in 1940, came the turning point in Evatt's career. World War
II faced Australia with a national emergency and Evatt felt himself called by his country. He resigned as justice of the High Court and stood as Labour candidate in the Sydney electorate of Barton for the Commonwealth House of Representatives. He was elected by a large majority and immediately became one
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of the most important members of the Labour Opposition.
A year later the Menzies-Fadden Government collapsed and the Labour Party was elected to govern Australia. Evatt became Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the John Curtin Ministry. He was fourth in cabinet seniority. He immediately set to work on the war effort. He successfully advocated the establishment of a War Council between the allies who were fighting in the Pacific. He sat in the British War Cabinet under Winston Churchill.
Evatt's interests in External Affairs made him the leader of the Australian delegation to the 1945 conference in San Francisco which drafted the plans for the United Nations
Organization's formation. Here, Evatt became a leading figure. He proposed many amendments which were accepted and he earned himself the title of 'champion of the small nations.' A
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year later his astuteness in international affairs was again demonstrated when he persuaded the United States to accept his proposals for the government of the defeated
Japan. This was the first time that an Australian had ever had a voice in international affairs. The international reputation that Evatt had won was enhanced even further by his work in the United Nations. In 1947 he was elected chairman of its Atomic Energy Commission and later became chairman of the commission on Palestine. Evatt worked for the establishment of the promised national home for 'the Jews and the creation of the State of Israel. Over
this issue he clashed violently with the British Government and with the Menzies Liberal Party in Australia. Evatt won and in May 1948
Israel became an independent nation.
In 1948 the United Nations met for the first time in New York City and here Evatt was elected President of the General Assembly. No Australian, before or since, has been awarded such international recognition. As President he played two vital roles. The first was in the dispute between Holland and Indonesia. The Dutch wanted to retain their colonial powers over Indonesia but Evatt stood for the self-determination of the Indonesian people. He brought about a peaceful solution to the matter. His second role was in the crisis over Russia's blockade of Berlin which threatened to bring about war between the communists and the Western powers. Evatt and the United Nations secretary-general, Trygve Lie, of Norway, played important behind-the-scenes-roles to ease the mounting tension which could have had disastrous results.
Evatt was now Deputy Prime Minister in the Labour Government but when he faced the electors again in 1949, Labour's stocks were low. To achieve full employment and prevent inflation, Prime Minister Chifley had been forced to retain wartime rationing and
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economic controls. He also attempted to nationalize the banks. Evatt drafted the nationalization legislation and was chief counsel when the legislation was challenged in the High Court and in the appeal to the Privy Council. Conservative judges ruled the nationalization plans unconstitutional, however. Labour also lost the 1949 election and Menzies returned to power.
Menzies immediately announced he would pass legislation to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia. Several trade unions decided to challenge this Act and Evatt accepted a brief as senior counsel for the Waterside Workers' Federation. By a majority of six to one the High Court decided that Menzies' attempt was unconstitutional. The Liberal Government was incensed at Evatt's defence of the communists and in the 1951 election used the
slogan, 'Don't vote for a communist or anyone who defends communists'. Evatt held his
scant by a small majority but his party lost. Two months later Chifley died from a heart attack and Evatt
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was elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party.
Menzies wanted to change the constitution to allow his Communist Party Dissolution Act to go through and he held a referendum to do so. Evatt opposed the proposals largely because, once a person was 'declared' a communist by any informer, the onus of proof was on the individual charged to produce evidence that the allegation was untrue. Evatt said that the proposals were unnecessary, unjust and totalitarian'. Evatt did not spare himself in his campaign against the referendum proposal. He toured Australia with his main point based on an argument that he had used several times in his lawyer days and which he still felt strongly for: that political issues that led to criminal proceedings must be dealt with by 'the rule of law as opposed to the arbitrary rule of Parliament.' Evatt saw the defeat of the Menzies' proposals, although he was later smeared as the Labour leader who defended communism.
Then, on 13 April 1954, on the eve of the election campaign that was widely believed would see Evatt elected Prime Minister, Menzies announced the start of the Petrov Affair. Vladmir Petrov, third secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra and chief agent of the Russian secret service in Australia, had defected and been granted political asylum in Australia. The communist 'scare' was on again. After a vigorous electoral -campaign the Labour Party was narrowly defeated, despite the fact that it won a clear majority of the votes. A Royal Commission was appointed to enquire into the Petrov Affair.
On 15 June, the chairman of the Royal Commission, Mr justice Owen, without warning, named from the Bench members of Dr Evatt's secretarial staff who were mentioned in some of the documents handed in by Petrov. Evatt protested against this distinct breach of procedure. Fully aware of what would happen to his
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public image, he sought and was granted leave to appear as senior counsel for two members of his staff Allan Dalziel and Albert Grundeman. Later, he was barred from appearing for his staff. In the Commissioners' final report Daiziel and Grundeman were completely exonerated. However, the damage had been done. Evatt had again been smeared in the public's mind. With the Cold War in its darkest days, plus the McCarthyite communist witch hunts in America, the Australian anti-communist movement reached the point of hysteria. An anti-communist group appeared within the Labour Party itself. Evatt claimed that this group or the 'Movement' as it was called, was attempting to take over the Labour Party. Evatt later came to refer to the 'Movement' as a group of 'clerical fascists'. There were open signs of dissension within the party as it contested the election held late in 1955. Labour lost again and Evatt only narrowly retained his scat of Barton. As the split widened, the Federal Executive of the
Labour Party ordered a special conference to be held, but the
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'Movement' supporters boycotted it and formed their own party, then known as the 'Anti-Communist Labour Party', later becoming the Democratic Labour Party. This was virtually the end of Evatt as Labour leader. The remainder of his years in Parliament is a story of gradual decline. He fought off several challenges to his leadership from within the party. One of his last gestures was to offer to resign the leadership if this would cause the D.L.P. to give its second preference votes to Labour in the 1958 elections. The offer was rejected and Labour again fared badly at the polls.
Early in 1960 Evatt accepted the New South Wales Government's appointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. On 2 November 1965, he died in Canberra aged sixty-nine.
When Evatt left Parliament for the last time he walked down the steps alone. There was scant word of
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his twenty hard and glorious years of service. They waited until he was dead.
Eulogies arrived from overseas. The United Nations Assembly stood in silence in his honour. The Queen and those members of the Royal Family who had been personal friends, wrote sympathetically.
The yellow broom was in flower by the church when the pallbearers came in the door where Evatt had often attended, the old Church of St john's, Canberra. At his daughter Rosalind's wedding years before 'he had noticed the naked light at the entrance and had replaced it with an iron lantern wrought in the shape of a dolphin, an old ecclesiastical device. It was alight.
He was laid under green turf in the Canberra Cemetery, for there is in Australia no place where a man's body lies in honour. Once he is dead he is dead and that is the end of him. On either side of Evatt lie migrants, one of them Greek, become now part of Australian earth and democratically sharing what there is to share, equal enough. On Evatt's modest stone is only the honour he valued most: "President of the United Nations Assembly."
Sir John Crawford said that Evatt's greatest contribution to Australia was that he gave Australians a sense of identity. He did it mainly by embodying Characteristics that have been attributed to Australian men. He was direct, courageous, swift. He was a fighter. He was full of vitality. He is, perhaps, a precedent, something valuable to he claimed in the future, a reinforcement for a good case, the crowning argument for some as yet unknown battle for freedom.
"Curtin and Chifley were liked and admired as working-class leaders; Menzies gained all the power and honours to which he could aspire; but Evatt was an heroic and epic person who undertook more than the others dared: he attempted to change not only his own country's way of life but that of the world."
Copies of this biography, in illustrated booklet form, are on sale at the
museum.
Authors: Keith Edward, Kylie Tennant, Clive A Evatt.
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