History Wars

As a blogger we have the option of simply not posting when we dont have any material, columnists however are not so lucky, but they get paid and we dont, they're apparently professionals and we're not. So they're going to rise to the occasion right ?

Well perhaps not: Gerard Henderson take a bow

Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley's Battle For Coal is co-written by the leftist Bob Ellis, and the film's historical consultants include left-of-centre historians Phillip Deery and Ross McMullin.

The documentary is favourable to Chifley - even to the extent of exaggerating his opposition to communism. So much so that no one talks about the fact that, in his final speech, Chifley actually warned against anti-communism. Still, it's a harmless product.

Right, life long opposition to the communists is made irrelevant by having a go at the ugly and intrusive tactics of the anti-communists. No mention made that Chifley died during the great debate over the attempt to ban the Communist Party in 1951, one of the most civil liberty destroying and according to the High Court grossly illegal power grabs in Australian history. No mention even of the doco's story (its quite watchable and up on iview for Australian readers/those behind a good proxy) which pits the former train driver, life long union man, and famously declared in 1931 on the side of the strikers and against using troops against them. But a line in a speech is enough to doubt his bona-fides it seems...

Not so Menzies And Churchill At War. Here the script is written by the producer John Moore, and there are no conservative historical consultants. The two main interviewees are the left-wing academics Judith Brett and David Day, who run the standard left-wing line that Menzies wanted to quit Australia in 1941 and hoped to become prime minister of Britain. Of course there is no evidence for this assertion, as Menzies's biographer Allan Martin demonstrated. Moore excluded any dissenting opinion on this issue.
Moore's introduction carries the left-wing line that in 1939 Menzies committed Australian troops "in support of the Mother Country". In fact, Menzies committed the Australian Imperial Force to war in 1939 because he, with most Australians, believed that it was a good idea to fight Nazism. Moore also excluded any contrary opinion on this issue.

Henderson seems distrustful of historians, even in this case two of the most distinguished and respected ones in Australia, Judith Brett who is perhaps the pre-eminent scholar on the Liberals in current times, and David Day who (having written books on Curtin and Chifley, and Churchill's relationship with Australia during WW2 is one of the best historians around for such a topic). So lets go see what Menzies said, as politicians speeches apparently lay bare their soul and true sentiments:

Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.

In fact go to the site above and you can even hear Menzies say these defining words, so though I am a left wing academic, I seem to have stumbled onto the truth.

While Bishop dances on GNW, the Liberals make it possible for their political opponents to frame their history. It all seems pretty stupid to me.

Henderson began the piece with some ABC bashing and a cheap shot at Bishop which I mercifully spared you. But he returns to it here to reiterate a consistent theme: that it is only left wing historians telling this story. Well that's true (though doesnt prove anything about their honesty or capability to do so, and some like Brett are very strongly centrist if not clear conservatives). Yet the reason for this is not some nefarious plot, but the simple fact that there are very few conservative historians in this country. I remember a chat with Wayne Errington (of the excellent Howard Biography fame) who got quite excited at the idea of my proposed PhD on the history of Liberalism in Australia from a Liberal perspective. The history of the Labor movement in this country is very well filled, yet left wing historians like Errington and Van Olsen (along with Brett) are doing their level best to fill in the other side of the scale. Its not some plot that means few conservative historians are working on big projects, it's simply that there are very few conservative historians.

Blainy and Windschuttle are the only two who leap to mind, though both are very well known, often well in advance of their talent.

Instead of calling everyone else stupid, whilst putting out plainly dumb columns like this, perhaps the self proclaimed "executive director of The Sydney Institute" could step out of the punishing once a week 700 word demand as a columnist and contribute to the documentaries or book on Australian political history but from a Conservative party. Sounds like a smart idea to me.