From Two Camps of Freedom.(Demons and Democrats: 1950s Labor at the Crossroads, Night Train to Granada: From Sydney Bohemia to Franco's Spain--an Offbeat Memoir)

Demons and Democrats: 1950s Labor at the Crossroads, by Gavan Duffy; Freedom Publishing, 2002, $27.95.

Night Train to Granada: From Sydney Bohemia to Franco's Spain--an Offbeat Memoir, by G.B. Harrison; Pluto Press, 2002, $27.95.

AT THE HEIGHT of its mystique, Stalinism's appeal in Australia was resisted by two charismatic individuals. Catholic zealots in Melbourne coalesced around B.A. Santamaria. He inspired "the Movement" which evolved, albeit unwillingly, into the National Civic Council. At the same time up at Sydney University Professor John Anderson, in his prime a dynamic independent socialist, inoculated a never diminishing band of disciples against the virus of orthodox communism.

Anderson and Santamaria offered their followers an all-encompassing vision. In both instances their anticommunism, the doctrine that was most directly applicable to daily political events, sprang from deeper notions of freedom and personal autonomy that fuelled a radical critique of capitalist society as well as of Stalinist sentimentality. Both Anderson and Santamaria dreamt of a community which could resist the growing allure of consumerism without succumbing to deadening socialist regimentation.

A weird Cold War convergence resulted once straitlaced Catholics from Melbourne and de-Christianised freethinkers from Sydney discovered that, surface appearances notwithstanding, they had important things to say to each other. John Kerr, Donald Home (before Gough), Laurie Short and James McAuley are prominent examples of Cold War Australians whose careers unfolded in the combined shadow of Anderson and Santamaria.

Grahame Harrison, a former Sydney academic, and Gavan Duffy, a retired lawyer, are two other, if less widely known, products of this heroic era. They are the authors of two newly published books which, elegantly symbolising the fabled Melbourne-Sydney axis of yore, were recently launched in the two cities within twenty-four hours of each other. Demons and Democrats is bent on rescuing the Movement from years of Labor calumny and Night Train to Granada is an Andersonian memoir. The two works bear testimony to the hardiness of their authors' respective faiths.

Gavan Duffy, who stood against Bill Hayden in the seat of Oxley in 1969, remains inspired by the young Bob Santamaria. He reminds us that Santamaria targeted both capitalism and Marxism in his earliest vision of Catholic Action. Duffy is keen to lament Labor's post-1983 decision to embrace deregulation, globalisation and privatisation and considers that this surrender to market forces would have been less enthusiastic had not the ALP demonised Santamaria back in the 1950s. Excising Santamaria's repudiation of competitive capitalism from Labor's intellectual heritage created a non-collectivist hole which was filled so sacrilegiously by Hawke and Keating.