The split mattered.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Robert Murray's "Looking Back on Evatt and the Split" (October 2004) covers most of the issues involved but not without some distortion or omission.

The claim of those in the Victorian ALP (AC) was recognised by the Victorian courts and they still hold all the party records up to the Split.

There is need for some evidence to show that "Bob Santamaria really did set out to use the Movement to control Labor and if possible national politics in the name of the Catholic Church". How could such a small group of people even consider a plan on this scale? A more balanced view, espoused by Labor people such as Lloyd Ross, was that the threat of communism was so real that many Australians were willing to endorse Santamaria's efforts including his organisation of the Industrial Group.

Santamaria's own motives were the defence of his church, which was everywhere under attack from a vicious enemy. He saw the persecution in Spain, the near takeover of Europe in the early 1940s and the communist-led insurgency in Asia culminating with the communist victory in China in 1949, as a clear and present danger to Christianity.

Clyde Cameron did more than pronounce Santamaria "anticapitalist". He accepted that Santamaria was a part of true Labor.

Incidentally it was not Melbourne which "accorded Santamaria one of its biggest public funerals". Prime Minister Howard approved the rare honour of a state funeral, and bishops, priests and ordinary people, including yours truly, came from all over Australia.

One of Jack Kane's greatest contributions to the struggle was his victory in the courts over Wilfred Burchett, whose work for world communism was well known.