The Rt Hon Sir Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Political party	United Australia; Liberal
Religion	Presbyterian

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, KT, AK, CH, FRS, QC (20 December 1894 – 15 May 1978), Australian politician, was the twelfth and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia, serving eighteen and a half years. He had a rapid rise to power, but his first term as Prime Minister was unsuccessful. He spent eight years in opposition, during which he founded the Liberal Party. He was re-elected Prime Minister at the 1949 elections, and he then dominated Australian politics until his retirement in 1966. Menzies was renowned as a brilliant speaker, both on the floor of Parliament and on the hustings, but one example being the forgotten people.

Early life

Robert Gordon Menzies was born to James Menzies and Kate Menzies (nee Sampson) in Jeparit, a small town in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, on 20 December 1894. His father James was a storekeeper, the son of Scottish crofters who had Immigrated to Australia in the mid-1850s in the wake of the Victorian gold rush. His maternal grandfather, John Sampson, was a miner from Penzance who also came to seek his fortune on the gold-fields, in Ballarat, Victoria.^[1] Both his father and one of his uncles had been members of the Victorian parliament, while another uncle had represented Wimmera in the House of Representatives.^[2] He was proud of his Highland ancestry - his enduring nick-name, Ming, came from "Mingus," the Scots — and his own preferred — pronunciation of "Menzies".

Menzies was first educated at a one-room school, then later at private schools in Ballarat and Melbourne, and read law at the University of Melbourne.

When World War I began Menzies was 19 and held a commission in the university's militia unit. Menzies resigned his commission at the very time others of his age and class clamoured to be allowed to enlist. It was later stated that since the family has made enough of a sacrifice to the war with the enlistment of these brothers, Menzies should stay to finish his studies. However, Menzies himself never explained the reason why he chose not to enlist. Subsequently he was prominent in undergraduate activities and won academic prizes and declared himself to be a patriotic supporter of the war and conscription. [1] He graduated in law in 1918. He soon became one of Melbourne's leading lawyers and began to acquire a considerable fortune. In 1920 he married Pattie Leckie, the daughter of a federal Nationalist Party MP, who was reputedly a moderating influence on him.

Rise to power

In 1928, Menzies gave up his lucrative law practice to enter state parliament as a member of the Victorian Legislative Council representing the Nationalist Party of Australia. His candidacy was nearly defeated when a group of ex-servicemen attacked him in the press for not having enlisted, but he survived this crisis. The following year he shifted to the Legislative Assembly, and was a minister in the conservative Victorian government from 1932 to 1934, and became Deputy Premier of Victoria in 1932.

Menzies entered federal politics in 1934, representing the United Australia Party (UAP) in the upper-class Melbourne electorate of Kooyong. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in the Joseph Lyons government, and soon became deputy leader of the UAP. He was seen as Lyons's natural successor and was accused of wanting to push Lyons out, a charge he denied. In 1938 he was given the pejorative nickname "Pig Iron Bob", the result of his industrial battle with waterside workers who refused to load scrap iron being sold to Imperial Japan. In 1939, however, he resigned from the Cabinet in protest at what he saw as the government's inaction. Shortly afterwards, on 7 April 1939, Lyons died.

First term as Prime Minister

On 26 April 1939, following a period during which the Country Party leader, Sir Earle Page, was caretaker Prime Minister, Menzies was elected Leader of the UAP and was sworn in as Prime Minister. But a crisis arose when Page refused to serve under him. In an extraordinary personal attack in the House, Page accused Menzies of cowardice for not having enlisted in the War, and of treachery to Lyons. Menzies then formed a minority government. When Page was deposed as Country Party leader a few months later, Menzies reformed the Coalition with Page's successor, Archie Cameron. (Menzies later forgave Page, but Pattie Menzies never spoke to him again.)

In September 1939, with Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany, Menzies found himself a wartime Prime Minister. He did his best to rally the country, but the bitter memories of the disillusionment which followed the First World War made this difficult, and the fact that Menzies had not served in that war and that as Attorney General and Deputy Prime Minister, Menzies had made an official visit to Germany in 1938 and had expressed his admiration for the regime undermined his credibility. At the 1940 election, the UAP was nearly defeated, and Menzies' government survived only thanks to the support of two independent MPs. The Australian Labor Party, under John Curtin, refused Menzies's offer to form a war coalition.

In 1941 Menzies spent months in Britain discussing war strategy with Winston Churchill and other leaders, while his position at home deteriorated. The Australian historian David Day has suggested that Menzies hoped to replace Churchill as British Prime Minister, and that he had some support in Britain for this. Other Australian writers, such as Gerard Henderson, have rejected this theory. When Menzies came home, he found he had lost all support, and was forced to resign, first, on 28 August, as Prime Minister, and then as UAP leader. The Country Party leader, Arthur Fadden, became Prime Minister. Menzies was very bitter about what he saw as this betrayal by his colleagues, and almost left politics.

Return to power

Labor came to power later in October 1941 under John Curtin, following the defeat of the Fadden government in Parliament. In 1943 Curtin won a huge election victory. During 1944 Menzies held a series of meetings at 'Ravenscraig' an old homestead in Aspley to discuss forming a new anti-Labor party to replace the moribund UAP. This was the Liberal Party, which was launched in early 1945 with Menzies as leader. But Labor was firmly entrenched in power and in 1946 Curtin's successor, Ben Chifley, was comfortably re-elected. Comments that "we can't win with Menzies" began to circulate in the conservative press.

Over the next few years, however, the anti-communist atmosphere of the early Cold War began to erode Labor's support. In 1947, Chifley announced that he intended to nationalise Australia's private banks, arousing intense middle-class opposition which Menzies successfully exploited. In 1949 a bitter coal-strike, engineered by the Communist Party, also played into Menzies's hands. In December 1949 he won the election and again became Prime Minister.

The ALP retained control of the Senate, however, and made Menzies's life very difficult. In 1951 Menzies introduced legislation to ban the Communist Party, hoping that the Senate would reject it and give him an excuse for a double dissolution election, but Labor let the bill pass. It was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the High Court. But when the Senate rejected his banking bill, he called a double dissolution and won control of both Houses.

Later in 1951 Menzies decided to hold a referendum to change the Constitution to permit him to ban the Communist Party. The new Labor leader, Dr H.V. Evatt, campaigned against the referendum on civil liberties grounds, and it was narrowly defeated. This was one of Menzies's few electoral miscalculations. He sent Australian troops to the Korean War and maintained a close alliance with the United States.



Economic conditions, however, deteriorated, and Evatt was confident of winning the 1954 elections. Shortly before the elections, Menzies announced that a Soviet diplomat in Australia Vladimir Petrov (see Petrov affair), had defected, and that there was evidence of a Soviet spy ring in Australia, including members of Evatt's staff. This Cold War scare enabled Menzies to win the election. Labor accused Menzies of arranging Petrov's defection, but this has since been disproved: he had simply taken advantage of it.

The aftermath of the 1954 election caused a split in the Labor Party, and Menzies was comfortably re-elected over Evatt in 1955 and 1958. By this time the post-war economic boom was in full swing, fuelled by massive immigration and the growth in housing and manufacturing that this produced. Prices for Australia's agricultural exports were also high, ensuring rising incomes. Labor's rather old-fashioned socialist rhetoric was no match for Menzies and his promise of stability and prosperity for all.

Labor's new leader, Arthur Calwell, gave Menzies a scare after an ill-judged squeeze on credit - an effort to restrain inflation - caused a rise in unemployment. At the 1961 election Menzies was returned with a majority of only two seats. But Menzies was able to exploit Labor's divisions over the Cold War and the American alliance, and win an increased majority in the 1963 elections. An incident in which Calwell was photographed standing outside a South Canberra hotel while the ALP Federal Executive (dubbed by Menzies the "36 faceless men") was determining policy also contributed to the 1963 victory. This was the first "television election," and Menzies, although nearly 70, proved a master of the new medium. He was created a Knight of the Thistle in the same year.

In 1965 Menzies made the fateful decision to commit Australian troops to the Vietnam War, and also to reintroduce conscription. These moves were initially popular, but later became a problem for his successors. Despite his pragmatic acceptance of the new power balance in the Pacific after World War II and his strong support for the American alliance, he publicly professed continued admiration for links with Britain, exemplified by his admiration for Queen Elizabeth II, and famously described himself as "British to the bootstraps". Over the decade, Australia's ardour for Britain and the monarchy faded somewhat, but Menzies' had not. At a function attended by Queen Elizabeth II at Parliament House, Canberra, in 1963, Menzies quoted the Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford, "I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die". (This poem has often since been misattributed to Barnabe Googe.)

Retirement and posterity

Menzies retired in January 1966, and was succeeded as Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister by his former Treasurer, Harold Holt. After his retirement the Queen,in 1966, appointed him to the ancient office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He toured the United States giving lectures, and published two volumes of memoirs. His retirement was spoiled, however, when he suffered strokes in 1968 and 1971. Thereafter he faded from public view, and in old age became very embittered towards his former colleagues. He died from a heart attack in Melbourne in 1978 and was accorded a state funeral.

Menzies was Prime Minister for a total of 18 years, five months and 12 days, by far the longest term of any Australian Prime Minister, and during his second term he dominated Australian politics as no-one else has ever done. He managed to live down the failures of his first term in office, and to rebuild the conservative side of politics from the depths of 1943. These were great political achievements. He also did much to develop higher education in Australia, and made the development of Canberra one of his pet projects.

Critics say that Menzies's success was mainly due to the good luck of the long post-war boom and his manipulation of the anti-communist fears of the Cold War years, both of which he exploited with great skill. He was also crucially aided by the crippling dissent within the Labor Party in the 1950s and especially by the ALP split of 1954. But his reputation among conservatives is untarnished, and he remains the Liberal Party's greatest hero.

Several books have been filled with anecdotes about him and with his many witty remarks. While he was speaking in Williamstown, Victoria in 1954, a heckler shouted, "I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel" – to which Menzies coolly replied "If I were the Archangel Gabriel, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be in my constituency."

Planning for an official biography of Menzies began soon after his death, but were long delayed by Dame Pattie Menzies's protection of her husband's reputation and her refusal to co-operate with the appointed biographer, Frances McNicoll. In 1991, the Menzies family appointed Professor A.W. Martin to write a biography, which appeared in two volumes, in 1993 and 1999.

Criticism

In 1950, Britain, hoping to proceed with its atomic weapon testing program, was denied use of the Nevada testing facilities in the United States. As a result, Labor prime minister Clement Atlee sent a top secret personal message to Australian prime minister Robert Menzies, a staunch anglophile, asking if the Australian government might agree to the testing of British nuclear weapons at the Montebello Islands, off western Australia. In effect Atlee asked Menzies if he could lend him his country for atomic tests. Menzies agreed immediately, with no record of him having consulted any of his cabinet colleagues on the matter. Menzies is known to have ruled his cabinet with an iron fist and is unlikely to have received much resistance anyway. The agreement was the start of a program of testing and involvement of the Australian people that was to last years, with little proper safeguards for the land or the people involved, even to the use of over 15,000 Australian servicemen to be involved in "safety testing," not to mention the Aboriginal population of the area.

Whether ill-informed, simply naive, or prompted by a misguided loyalty to british interests, the Australian government of the time, had embarked on a program that would do lasting damage to the Australian landscape and its people. The cancer and radiation remain to this day.^[3]

See also

• First Menzies Ministry
• Second Menzies Ministry
• Third Menzies Ministry
• Fourth Menzies Ministry
• Fifth Menzies Ministry
• Sixth Menzies Ministry
• Seventh Menzies Ministry
• Eighth Menzies Ministry
• Ninth Menzies Ministry
• Tenth Menzies Ministry

Actors who have played Menzies

• In the 1984 mini series The Last Bastion, Menzies was portrayed by John Wood.
• In the 1987 mini series Vietnam, he was portrayed by Noel Ferrier.
• In the 1988 mini series True Believers, he was portrayed by John Bonney.
• In the 2007 film Curtin, he was portrayed by Bille Brown.
• Max Gillies has caricatured Menzies on stage and in the comedy satire series The Gillies Report.

Notes and references

Further reading

• Alan Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life, two volumes, Melbourne University Press, 1993 and 1999 (this competent but uninspiring official biography was delayed for many years by the un-cooperative attitude of Dame Pattie Menzies.)
• Judith Brett, Robert Menzies' Forgotten People, Macmillan, 1992 (a sharply critical psychological study)
• Michelle Grattan, "Australian Prime Ministers", New Holland Publishers , 2000 (very good summary of his life and career)

External links

• Robert Menzies - Australia's Prime Ministers / National Archives of Australia
• The Menzies Foundation
• Robert Menzies College
• The Menzies Virtual Museum
• The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London
• The Liberal Party's Robert Menzies website
• The Legacy of Sir Robert Menzies National Library of Australia
• Australia's Prime Ministers - Meet A PM: Robert Menzies
• Sir Robert Menzies at the National Film and Sound Archive

Political offices
Preceded by John Latham	Minister for Industry 1934 – 1939	Succeeded by Billy Hughes
Preceded by Earle Page	Prime Minister of Australia 1939 – 1941	Succeeded by Arthur Fadden
Preceded by Richard Casey	Treasurer of Australia 1940 – 1941	Succeeded by Percy Spender
Preceded by Arthur Fadden	Leader of the Opposition 1943 – 1949	Succeeded by Ben Chifley
Preceded by Ben Chifley	Prime Minister of Australia 1949 – 1966	Succeeded by Harold Holt
Preceded by Richard Casey	Minister for Foreign Affairs 1960 – 1961	Succeeded by Garfield Barwick
Legal offices
Preceded by John Latham	Attorney General of Australia 1934 – 1938	Succeeded by Billy Hughes
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by John Latham	Member for Kooyong 1934 – 1966	Succeeded by Andrew Peacock
Party political offices
Preceded by Joseph Lyons	Leader of the United Australia Party 1939 – 1941	Succeeded by Billy Hughes
Preceded by Billy Hughes	Leader of the United Australia Party 1943 – 1945	Succeeded by Party dissolved
New title	Leader of the Liberal Party 1945 – 1966	Succeeded by Harold Holt
Honorary titles
Preceded by Sir Winston Churchill	Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports 1966 – 1978	Succeeded by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Prime Ministers of Australia
Barton | Deakin | Watson | Reid | Fisher | Cook | Hughes | Bruce | Scullin | Lyons | Page | Menzies | Fadden | Curtin | Forde | Chifley | Holt | McEwen | Gorton | McMahon | Whitlam | Fraser | Hawke | Keating | Howard

Leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia
Menzies | Holt | Gorton | McMahon | Snedden | Fraser | Peacock | Howard | Peacock | Hewson | Downer | Howard

Persondata
NAME	Menzies, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Australian politican
DATE OF BIRTH	December 20, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH	Jeparit, Victoria
DATE OF DEATH	May 15, 1978
PLACE OF DEATH	Melbourne, Australia

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