The Forgotten Menzies

Was Menzies a conservative or a progressive? It is a question that only makes sense if we retroject modern meanings of these terms back onto Menzies. By Stephen Chavura.

Sir Robert Menzies (1894-1978) was Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister. He had two periods of office, from 1939 to 1941 and then from 1949 to 1966. There can be no doubt that Menzies as an individual exerted a major influence on the development of twentieth century Australia, overseeing considerable change in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s as the country was transformed in a range of ways, from the implementation of a programme of mass immigration, to the expansion of its secondary industry, to an overhaul of its educational institutions, to dissolution of many of its links to Britain.

His thinking was not particularly original, nor did he attempt to be so. Nevertheless, there is a solidity in Menzies’ ideas which has its roots in common sense and the accepted principles and ideas of his age. It was his style which made so much of what he wrote and said memorable. Menzies could inspire.

At a time of considerable change Menzies appeared to be a rock of stability, a permanent feature of the political landscape, who could assure the Australian people that in a world of flux and change there was something permanent and stable about life in Australia.

In our new book, The Forgotten Menzies: The World Picture of Australia’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister, we present Menzies in his own terms rather than as a pawn in a modern ideological war within the party he started. 

“Was Menzies a conservative or a progressive?” is a question that only makes sense if we retroject modern meanings of these terms back onto Menzies. He was both, as well as a liberal and more, but he, like any great historical figure, is incomprehensible without an understanding of the culture that produced him, and the culture he dedicated his life to rejuvenating.

Menzies’ career to a large extent centered around his attempt to rejuvenate the virtues of independence, civic conscientiousness, family-centredness, and even a kind of godliness. Menzies called all of this “spirit”. For Menzies, like many others of his generation, spirit was threatened by two forces: communism and utilitarianism. Communism demoted humankind to a mere cog in a machine. Utilitarianism demoted humankind to individualistic, pleasure-seeking animals, enslaved to technology and indifferent to civic consciousness, higher culture, and the spiritual dimension of life.

What Menzies called “utilitarianism” could never be the foundation of a civilisation; it was a “Frankenstein monster which may yet destroy us.” How? Because our civilisation has become “preoccupied with means rather than ends”; with speed and efficiency, rather than quality leisure time in which we can pursue learning and culture. But as long as the age is utilitarian then this is to be expected, for that philosophy ignores the “humane and imperishable elements in man”; indeed, “the mere mechanics of life can never be the sole vocation of the human spirit.”

Independence rather than individualism was the central virtue for Menzies, and it occurred frequently in his Forgotten People speeches. Independence almost constituted Menzies’ civic religion, and he frequently invoked it using religious language and allusions. It was a virtue that Menzies had praised earlier in his career, even if he did not always use the word. In the mid-1930s he had said, “the first duty of every man is to do his utmost to stand on his own feet, to form his own judgments, and to accept his own responsibilities.” Duty infused all of Menzies’ political thought, even his discussion of concepts often conceived in terms of being on the flipside of duty, such as freedom and rights.

In “The Forgotten People” (1942) Menzies mentions ‘freedom’ once and ‘independence’ four times. Speaking of “real freedom” Menzies contrasts this with “moral and intellectual refuge in the emotions of a crowd” as opposed to “a brave acceptance of an unclouded individual responsibility” manifest in a commitment to “self-sacrifice”.

This conception of freedom is a far cry from the negative conception of liberty that continues to animate classical liberalism and libertarianism. Even in the speeches discussing the “Four Freedoms” Menzies is uncomfortable dwelling on the freedoms as individual liberties and quickly reminds the audience that these freedoms are for others as well as themselves and that as such our freedoms involve a duty to allow others to enjoy theirs.

Menzies seems to have associated liberalism with good government, not with an ideology. Menzies believed that the government of the day, the public service, and the universities should work together and that, in an ideal world, the public service would be run by people who had received a liberal education at university. Menzies understood this as the English model.  Government and the universities will work together.

There can be little doubt that Menzies sought to create an elite which would be intelligent, with an enlarged moral sense, who would ensure that Australia was well-governed. It would be an elite based on merit, an expression of the ideals of aristocratic liberalism, in which the best had authority. Menzies was undoubtedly a democrat, only he also recognised the need for a democracy to produce educated leaders who possessed a broad vision.

What Menzies did not appreciate was that the intellectual elite on which he pinned so much hope was turning adversarial and rationalist. It increasingly wanted to oppose the government, not to work with it. Marxists were taking over, and their Baby-Boomer students would finish the job of transforming universities from preservers of culture to critics of culture. Like his ideal of a British Australia Menzies’ ideal of the university as a place of cultural enhancement and the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness was becoming untenable not long after he retired in 1966.

Menzies believed in the ideal of English freedom which he saw as the basis of a dignified and civilised life. His understanding of freedom was embedded in his appreciation of a living culture in Australia which while it may not have been English could be encompassed in the more general term “British”.  He was not ideological in a twenty first century sense but supported freedom as it was expressed in the day to day life of ordinary people. This can be seen clearly in the various addresses of his World War II speeches, most memorably in the “Forgotten People”.  Freedom, British freedom, was a lived experience, which needed to be protected in a world threatened by forces which sought to destroy that freedom.

Menzies’ achievements are many, and he made much progress, but at his own pace: opening up trade with Asia, expanding the universities, encouraging an age of women in parliament, starting our ANZUS alliance with America, and responsibly managing our post-WWII prosperity.

Menzies’ critics look to his sadness at the decline of the British Commonwealth and to modern multicultural Australia and declare his mission to have failed. But to say that Menzies’ vision for Australia partially failed is not merely to say that Britishness declined as a formative influence over our culture and sense of national identity. It is also to say that individualistic rights, affluenza, political apathy, the decline of the universities, and cultural philistinism—all the trends Menzies was at pains to ward off—triumphed.

Seen in this light, perhaps even Menzies’ critics might concede that the failure of much of his vision for Australia is far from a triumph of progress.

This is an excerpt and adaptation from Stephen A. Chavura and Greg Melleuish, The Forgotten Menzies: The World Picture of Australia’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister, published this month by Melbourne University Press. Purchase the book here.