"The time seems opportune for an effort to secure unity of action and organisation among those political groups which stand for a liberal, progressive policy and are opposed to socialism with its bureaucratic administration and restriction of personal freedom," Mr Menzies wrote. In September 1944, when Mr Menzies wrote to the leaders of the various non-Labor organisations then in existence and proposed holding a national conference to consider forming a new and unified political party, he was clear about his intentions. To answer that question, it can help to remember the context in which Mr Menzies chose the name "Liberal" for his political party. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with then prime minister Robert Menzies in 1963. "Menzies in full evening dress, greeting Queen Elizabeth in 1963 with the lines 'I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die,' was a ludicrous anachronism, holding Australia back from the bright new decade of youth, damming her energy and creativity behind a wall of cautious conservatism," she wrote.ĭid that perception of Mr Menzies as a conservative clash with the "liberalism" he said he stood for?
Judith Brett, in her book Robert Menzies' Forgotten People, said people of her generation and political persuasion "who were young in the 1950s and 1960s," felt cultural life in Australia in the Menzies era was frozen by smugness, fear and indifference, and dominated by values and assumptions of a bygone age.
If you don't like the way voters see you, you have to convince them that you're something else. But the perception that it was sympathetic to the communist cause helped to remove Labor from government in 1949, and keep it out of power through the 1950s and 1960s. You may see yourself as liberal, but if some voters think you're an unreconstructed reactionary they'll treat you as such at the ballot box.įor example, one of the founders of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, was great at convincing voters that a vote for Labor was a vote for communism.ĭid it matter that Labor wasn't a communist party? No.
0 kommentar(er)
