Adventures among the trendies and uglies: the Liberal wars: a cautionary memoir.(The Liberals: The NSW Division 1945--2000)(Book review)

The Liberals: The NSW Division 1945--2000, by Ian Hancock; Federation Press, 2007, $49.95.

Not the least merit of Ian Hancock s timely examination of the Liberal Party in New South Wales is his balanced treatment of the Liberal Wars--the factional battles between the party's left and fight wings--the one faction dubbed Trendies or Moderates or The Group, the other "extreme Right-wingers" or Uglies or The I" Taliban.

He tracks the Wars from the 1960s to today--despite the book's subtitle, it brings the story to 2007--and he notes more than once the lost opportunities for compromise. Both factions are legitimate, he says, and there should be some sort of reconciliation, however messy. It will not come from structural reforms or even ideology. It requires a revival of civility and trust. But there is little sign of it in either camp. The party organisation continues to haemorrhage.

I first stumbled onto these bloody crossroads forty years ago during the federal election of 1966 when a bitter skirmish in the northern Sydney seat of Warringah became a dress rehearsal for later confrontations. I was editor of the Bulletin at the time and, according to the now abandoned journalistic convention, not a member of the Liberal or any party. But the Liberal candidate, Edward St John QC, had my editorial support. He combined small-l liberalism, anti-censorship and opposition to South African apartheid with anticommunism and commitment to the war in Vietnam.

But he also aroused the contempt of those Right-wingers who gave a high priority to supporting the South African and Rhodesian regimes as bulwarks of Western civilisation against communism. They did not trust St John's anticommunism. ("Some anticommunists," one said, "are anti-anticommunists.")

The Trendies labelled the Right-wingers racists, homophobes and strident anticommunists. The Right in turn despised the Trendies as soft on drugs, homosexuality, abortion, pornography and national security. (Both factions considered it revealing that the barrister St John had represented the publisher of the satirical magazine Oz in the obscenity trial in 1964. I had supported Oz in the Bulletin.)

I had not met any of the Right-wingers but I knew St John and his family, including his daughter Madeleine, later a brilliant novelist. I did my best to help his election campaign by running sympathetic articles in the Bulletin. Sam Lipski wrote most of them, notably a late summing-up, "The Campaign in Warringah". St John letter-boxed off-prints throughout the electorate. He won the seat easily (without needing his DLP preferences). I wrote an ingenuous editorial urging his rapid elevation to the ministry. St John took it to heart. (He did not last long in the Liberal Party or the parliament and was defeated in the 1969 election.)