Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2011 ISBN 9780521146227
This short book is a timely reminder not to take national legends at face value. John Curtin's famous "look to America" speech of December 1941 has been portrayed as Australia "cutting the apron-strings" of Empire, of forging our own path and developing our own foreign policy, while praising Curtin as a visionary leader of our nation.
Curran is not the first to put Curtin's speech into perspective, but what he has also done in this book is show that Curtin never considered taking Australia out of what he termed the "British Commonwealth of Nations". While Curtin had long frowned on the way Conservative Australia fawned over Royalty, and advocated for Australia to decide its own defence policy, Curran shows that he never once considered Australia as anything other than a member of the Empire. Curran does make the point that many historians and politicians have projected their own beliefs and desires onto Curtin's actions, and have turned them to suit their own theories. What Curran mentions - and I think he could have made more of this - is that Curtin had the idea of Empire ingrained in him. I think it's clear that Curtin was very much a man of his time, so probably couldn't conceive of an Australia that was not tied to Britain, which was the feeling of the overwhelming majority of Australians at the time. Rather than the "look to America" speech being a break from Empire, Curran makes clear it was a call of expedience to save the southern bastion of Britishness.
Far from Curtin cutting ties to Britain, Curran points out that Curtin spent 1943 and 1944 pushing for an Empire secretariat to discuss and agree on foreign policy as a whole. In many ways this idea was a throwback to the days before the Balfour Declaration of 1926, but was driven by a desire of Curtin for more consultation on policy between Britain and the Dominions, and also a recognition that alone, the UK would not be a great power after the War but as part of a united Commonwealth it would be, and Australia could be a strong voice in such a bloc.
Unfortunately for Curtin, his idea was doomed from the start. Both Canada and South Africa valued the freedom the Balfour Declaration gave them to run a foreign policy that differed from Britain's. They did this for very good reasons. Both countries had sizable minorities of population that were not pro-Britain, and electoral necessity dictated at least a semblance of independence. Canada also had to be aware of the US on its doorstep: by far its biggest trading partner, and a partner that would not look kindly on Canada being hooked into an Imperial policy. Australia however, with a much more homogeneous polity, and with a feeling of being all alone in Asia, saw value in a continuing connexion to Britain.
Curran shows us that what did change for Curtin was his thinking on security policy for Australia. From his early socialist days of seeing war as a capitalist enterprise, through a phase where he advocated for a continental defence, by the end of the War Curtin was advocating that Australia police the Pacific, as well as being part of an Empire political and defensive bloc. The one thing he never wavered about was his belief that Australia was a "British" country, and part of the Empire.
A book well worth reading.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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