It has long been claimed that women were the backbone of the pre-World War II Australian Liberal Parties and a crucial strengthening agent for the new Liberal Party that Robert Menzies formed in 1945. Labor supporters said this was because women were conservative, easily led by their husbands, and didn’t understand much of the world outside the home. Liberals argued that it was just because they did understand the importance of domestic life that they supported the party best able to protect it. Margaret Fitzherbert has written the story of these Liberal women and, in so doing, has added to our knowledge both of the history of the Liberal party and of Australian women’s political activism.

The story starts with Federation, and women’s gaining the federal franchise. These new voters needed educating and canvassing, and there were politically experienced women on hand to do it. Some had gained political experience in the Federation movement, and others in the campaigns for and against the suffrage. Women’s electoral leagues were formed in all states except South Australia. Electoral leagues were different from modern parties: their prime purpose was electoral work to support parliamentary candidates, and. although they might be able to influence preselection, they remained organisationally distinct from the parliamentary parties. The most important and enduring of these was the Australian Women’s National League (AWNL), formed in Victoria in 1904. It inspired Sir John Forrest and his wife, Margaret, to form a similar league in Western Australia, and was still in existence in 1944, when it finally dissolved itself into the new Liberal Party. Some founding members had opposed the women’s vote, and until the 1920s it did not support women parliamentary candidates, seeing itself as an organisation to help put ‘good men’ into parliament. It was, however, fiercely committed to its independence and fought any suggestion that it should become the women’s section of the main party. For a while, Alfred Deakin was its bête noire, as he encouraged the women’s section of the Commonwealth Liberal party under the leadership of his wife, Pattie Deakin, and daughter, Ivy Brookes. By the 1920s the AWNL had come to support the idea of women parliamentary candidates. Translating this into reality, though, proved very hard and the women fought the party men in vain for winnable seats. The Nationalist Party, and after it the United Australia Party, missed out on the talents of outstanding women such as Elizabeth Coachman, and stuck with some very mediocre men.