Looking Back at Ben Chifley
by Peter Brokensha
Following his award winning biography of John Curtin
(reviewed in Australian Options–Issue 21, May 2000)
historian David Day has produced a fascinating 500-page
biography of Curtin’s successor—Ben Chifley.
This is no quick read as Day’s painstaking research leads
the reader through detailed accounts of Chifley’s early
life and the industrial and political environment of the
early 20th Century. The work is not really concerned with
drawing any conclusions about Chifley’s achievements or
the legacies he has left which this reviewer attempts later
in this article.
If ever there was an unlikely candidate to become a most
highly regarded Treasurer and Prime Minister of
Australia it is Joseph Benedict Chifley. The son of a
blacksmith, he was born in 1885 in a working man’s
cottage in Bathurst. When only five years old he was
separated from his parents and sent to live with his aged
Irish emigrant grandfather on his farm at the little village
of Limekilns near Bathurst. He spent the next nine
formative years of his life living in his grandfather’s
primitive slab hut doing farm chores and intermittently
receiving a little education at the local village school.
He was determined to remedy his lack of formal
education and for many years attended evening classes up
to four nights a week at the Workers Educational
Association and Bathurst Technical School. He joined the
railways in 1903 at the age of 17 as a shop boy and by
application and study advanced through the railway
hierarchy to become a fully qualified engine driver at the
age of 27.
Chifley had become heavily involved with the Labor
party at an early age and in 1925 was pre-selected to
contest the Federal seat of MacQuarie. The conservative
Bruce government mounted a vicious Communist scare campaign and was elected, while Chifley missed out.
Standing again in the 1928 election Chifley won with a
record majority. Following the collapse of the Bruce
government in 1929 a new election saw a Labor
government under James Scullin elected. Chifley
increased his majority in MacQuarie and in 1931 Scullin
appointed Chifley as Minister for Defence and
Territories.
However the depression year of 1931 proved disastrous
for the Labor Party and Chifley, as the nation lurched into
a fiscal and political crisis when Scullin and his
government bowed to the demands of the Bank of
England to cut wages and pensions. The Scullin
government was defeated on the floor of the house when
the Lang Labor leader voted with the opposition. In the
ensuing election in late 1931 the conservatives defeated a
bitterly divided Labor party. Chifley lost the seat of
MacQuarie which he did not regain until 1940 when a
Menzies government narrowly came to power. However
in 1941 Menzies was forced to resign and with the help
of independents Coles and Wilson the Labor leader John
Curtin formed a minority Labor government and
appointed Chifley as Treasurer.
...Curtin and Chifley immediately
reorganised and galvanised the nation’s
war effort...
Curtin and Chifley immediately reorganised and
galvanised the nation’s war effort. As Treasurer Chifley
successfully achieved the objective of providing the
money to fund a massive war effort by increasing
taxation on the wealthy and on company profits.
Treasurer for the next four years and then Prime Minister
from 1945 until losing the 1949 election, Chifley set
about achieving his vision of a fair and just society. He
introduced a widows’ pension, sickness and
unemployment benefits, increased invalid and old age
pensions and set the stage for the comprehensive social
welfare policies which still endure
Chifley had very firmly held views—his critics would say
an obsession—that a well ordered and equitable society
could not be achieved with a banking system run for
profit.
Appointed by Prime Minister Lyons on to a Banking
Royal Commission in 1935 he presented a minority
report urging the nationalisation of private banks. Then as
Prime Minister in 1947 he introduced, and had passed by
the parliament, a bill to nationalise the banking system.
In the face of a scare campaign by the banks and the
conservatives his banking bill was extremely unpopular
and was later declared invalid by the High Court and the
Privy Council
...in 1947 he introduced, and had passed
by the parliament, a bill to nationalise the
banking system...
From 1948 the fortunes of Chifley and his government
started a downward slide. His referendum to continue
price controls was soundly defeated, inflation doubled
and in 1949 Chifley alienated his own party and
supporters by stubbornly refusing to negotiate with
striking coal miners and then sent troops into the mines.
As well as all this, in the 1949 election personal character
smears, the ogre of a vote for Labor being a vote for
communism trumpeted by the conservatives and the
press, resulted in Chifley’s government being soundly
defeated.
The Light on the Hill
In the midst of all the difficulties and disappointments of
1949 Chifley made his most memorable ‘Light on the
Hill’ speech to the NSW Branch of the Labor Party which
concludes as follows
"I try to think of the Labour movement, not as putting an
extra sixpence into somebody's pocket, or making
somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement
bringing something better to the people, better standards
of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We
have a great objective—the light on the hill—which we
aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind
not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand.
If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be
worth fighting for.
"If the movement can make someone more comfortable,
give to some father or mother a greater feeling of
security for their children, a feeling that if a depression comes there will be work, that the government is striving
its hardest to do its best, then the Labour movement will
be completely justified.
"It does not matter about persons like me who have our
limitations. I only hope that the generosity, kindliness and
friendliness shown to me by thousands of my colleagues
in the Labour movement will continue to be given to the
movement and add zest to its work." Macquarie
University academic Sean Scalmer1 has suggested several
reasons why the symbols of Chifley’s "light on the
hill"are so powerful and evocative and still speak to the
labour movement today.
"It offers an objective that Labor in politics is not simply
concerned with bread-and-butter aims, but with
something else—a greater more idealistic quest. It evokes
a common quest for members of the labour movement as
champions of the new order and reinforces the guiding
principle of Chifley’s political life that the labour
movement is not about personal advancement or power
for its own sake. It emphasises that the objective of Labor
will only be reached by its concern for the lives and
struggles of individual Australians and working for the
‘betterment of mankind’ not only within our own country,
‘but anywhere we may give a helping hand’."
Has the light on the hill
gone out?
The Labor Party continues to canonise Chifley and call
on the inspiration of his life and his ‘Light on the Hill‘
speech. The question must be asked how well do the
policies of the labor parties and their leaders match with
the vision for labor evoked by the light on the hill?
Chifley’s guiding political philosophies revolved around
maintaining state control of the banking sector and the
pivotal role of unions. He would have ‘turned in his
grave’ at the actions of the Hawke/Keating governments
with financial deregulation and significant privatisations
at its heart, including initiating the selling of the
Commonwealth Bank, as well as the introduction of
enterprise bargaining
The current Labor Party has its own interpretation of
Chifley’s ‘Light on the Hill’ as Mark Latham2 recently
set out.:
‘Chifley believed in reward for effort. He believed in the
virtue of hard work; a society where everyone pulls their
weight. Effort from all, opportunity for all—this was the Chifley way.
...if the light on the hill has not gone out it
has certainly become dimmed...
"For me, those words remain a light on the hill. They
reflect Labor's belief in the importance of reciprocity.
Governments must ensure that people who contribute to
the community are rewarded and those who benefit from
the common wealth are obliged to give something back.
The rights we share as a society need to be matched by
the obligations we owe to each other as individuals.’
If Chifley’s guiding light on the hill was for a party
which placed the common good above the individual it
could be argued that for the Labor Party if the light on
the hill has not gone out it has certainly become dimmed.
1 Sean Scalmer, "The Light on the Hill" Workers on Line,
11 June 1999.
2 Mark Latham, "The Chifley Way". Sydney Morning Herald,
22 September 2003.
