Ross Fitzgerald

Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'Crusade or Conspiracy?: Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia' by Bruce Duncan

May 2001, no. 230 • 01 May 2001

This lengthy analysis of Catholics and the anti-Communist struggle in Australia during the 1950s uncovers important and previously unreleased primary sources. In line with the author’s background as a Catholic Redemptorist priest, this particularly applies to material from Australian church archives and those of the Vatican, and from the files of B.A. Santamaria’s anti-Communist ‘Movement’ ... (read more)

Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'Initmate Union' by Tom and Audrey McDonald

May 1999, no. 210 • 01 May 1999

Tom and Audrey McDonald have shared a life of commitment together, promoting what they consider to be the political, social and economic interest of the Australian working class. The vehicle for both these true believers was the Communist Party of Australia, especially as it operated through the trade union movement. While Tom laboured tirelessly with the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU), ... (read more)

Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'Billy Snedden: An unlikely Liberal' by Billy Mackie Snedden and M. Bernie Schedvin

April 1990, no. 119 • 01 April 1990

Neither a conventional biography nor an autobiography, Billy Snedden is a story told in two quite distinct and authentic voices. There is that of the late Sir Billy Snedden, Liberal Party leader from 1972 to 1975, and Dr Bernie Schedvin, lecturer in politics at La Trobe University. The pairing of the honest ‘liberal Liberal’ whose working class Scots coal-mining father deserted the Snedden fa ... (read more)

Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'True Believers: The story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party' edited by John Faulkner and Stuart Macintyre

June 2001, no. 231 • 01 June 2001

The intriguing story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party began the day before the first Federal Parliament convened in Melbourne on 9 May 1901. At 11 a.m. on 8 May 1901, Labor’s twenty-two federal parliamentarians met in a stuffy basement room in Victoria’s Parliament House. This historic first Federal Caucus was chaired by Queensland Senator Anderson Dawson who from 1 to7 December 1899, ... (read more)

Ross Fitzgerald reviews ‘The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality’ by Stuart Macintyre

June 1998, no. 201 • 01 June 1998

The fascinating remembrance of the first two decades of the Communist Party of Australia is the first general history of Australian communism since Alastair Davidson’s The Communist Party of Australia: A short history appeared in 1969. Stuart Macintyre’s The Reds is both erudite and, as befits a former CPA member of Presbyterian background, is infused with moral vision. The dreadful realities ... (read more)

Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'To Constitute a Nation' by Helen Irving

November 1997, no. 196 • 01 November 1997

Remarkably to some, this cultural history of the drafting of the Australian constitution is an exciting and triumphant book. Helen Irving manages to fill in adroitly the blank pages of our constitution as a cultural artefact and to celebrate the complicated processes whereby Australia became a nation on the first day of the new century. To actually write the framework for a nation by agreement in ... (read more)