Extract from oral history of Tom Fitzgerald by Ken Inglis
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John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. Records
of the National Library of Australia. Interview of Tom Fitzgerald, 01/02/1988
- 3/09/1988. JCPML00658/1. Original held by National Library of Australia
TRC 2247
Tom Fitzgerald: Let me say in passing that, if it’s of
any personal interest, I think I had my first vote in a federal election
straight after the War in 1946. And because of my background, my father
who was a cagey, occasionally abstaining or even opposition voter, he
voted Labor if he could. And that’s how I’ve been all my life
too. My first election, ’46, I voted Labor. But I had the extraordinary
experience in ’49 of finally deciding I would have to vote not only...well
not only abstain but vote positively against Labor in ’49. That’s
a story in itself. That was why when Macmahon Ball asked me what I stood
for I couldn’t give him any simple cut and dried answer.
Professor Ken Inglis: Can I ask why? In 1949.
Tom Fitzgerald: This is very personal, very personal. I’ve
never heard anyone even mention these things. The question of bank...it
all hinged around the question of bank nationalisation. Now on bank nationalisation,
since I had studied economics and in the course of it had had mixed feelings
about our Australian banks, about their behaviour, about their character,
I... I wasn’t so much opposed to nationalisation in itself. It existed
in France in banking. Though I would have said that those who wish to
do it have to show cause in a very clear way as to why they’re doing
it and not do it on impulse. I could see that some of the awful characteristics
of our banking leaders, their reactionary characteristics had a kind of
a... a saving benefit in that they were a countervailing force of enormous
wealth and influence in the media against the opposite extreme, the...
the totally... totally careless or reckless desire to make drastic change.
But that was not the real...I had become, during the War, in England,
a very great admirer of George Orwell. I used to wonder whether I was
perhaps one of the very first Australian Orwellians, long before Animal
Farm and 1984 which to me added little if anything to Orwell’s
interest. But I’d read him in England, I’d read some of his
books, I’d seen him in Tribune and in... in Cyril Connolly’s
Horizon.
And when he died in 1950 I’d just joined the Herald, this
is in parentheses, I said to Angus McLachlan, 'Well it’s as though
I’d lost a second father or an elder brother' and he said, 'Who’s
Orwell?'.
Which was common, it was perfectly... but coming down to tin tacks I
was sitting at home on the Saturday evening when Chifley and his Cabinet
decided to nationalise banking. And I turned on the seven o’clock
radio news. And the item of that decision was number five or number six
in the news. And I read in the next day’s paper... the Sunday paper,
that Chifley had asked that this matter not be given undue prominence.
Then, a little later, Chifley was asked why, now in 1947, he was proposing
such a big drastic measure when he had not mentioned it in his election
policy speeches in 1946 and he said...he was reported to have said, 'Well
anybody can see our... our party’s platform and what we stand for.'
That… those two things disturbed me. Somewhat later it seemed to
me to be...well it was clear: Chifley said that he wanted to go into the
1949 elections with the nationalisation a fait accompli because, he said,
'Once you scramble the eggs you can’t unscramble them.' Now those
three elements seemed to me to take the whole question of [the merits
of] bank nationalisation away from the [real] issues. Remember this is
the time when Jan Masaryk had been defenestrated, the Communists had moved
into Europe in a way we’d not expected in 1945. Of course Chifley
was far from being a Communist, a lovable man in many ways. I and my next-door
neighbour went to see both him and Menzies give their...give policy...give
speeches in different suburbs in the election campaign.
But it’s not Chifley as a person but that kind of mindless group
movement in directions that don’t...aren’t justified and explained
that made me decide: that I don’t want the media unduly influenced
as to what they treat as prominent; that I would like to know in advance
what the government I’m voting for is going to do; that this is
an elementary right we all have; and that the people should not be given
a chance to decide in the ’49 elections whether they want the nationalisation
but should be told, 'It’s all over, mate,' was just too much. So
I voted against them. In the end...I thought I’d have traumas doing
it, I didn’t, it was quite easy. Did it.