SIR ROBERT GORDON MENZIES

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Many Australians saw Menzies as a dominant father-figure and protector of the traditional values of the nation. Many others saw him as the archconservative enemy of the working class. He inspired awe and respect rather than affection and even his colleagues feared his razor tongue and rapier wit. He never pretended to be 'a man of the people' but governed with monolithic self-confidence and, in an Australia rapidly breaking away from the old British Empire, described himself as "British to my boot heels" His fine voice, impressive stature and strong features - with the bushy eyebrows which delighted cartoonists - all contributed to the image of an elder statesman who knew exactly what he was doing.

Politics entered his blood early in life. His father, a first-generation Scottish Australian, and an uncle, had both held seats in the Victorian Parliament. As Menzies grew up in the country town of Jeparit, where his father ran a general store, he heard political names and issues bandied about in table talk.

At 26, when he was already a noted barrister, he married the daughter of a Victorian parliamentarian. By 1932, as a 38-year-old member of the Young Nationalists, he could have been Premier of Victoria but preferred to be Deputy Premier and Attorney-General.

His progress was due solely to his powerful intellect and ambition. A series of scholarships and prizes propelled him from Jeparit State School through Melbourne colleges and the University of Melbourne, to admission as a barrister in 1918. Enemies later sneered at his failure to serve in the First World War, but a family conference had ordained that he should continue his studies while two of his brothers enlisted.

The law could have made him a very wealthy man. At 29 he was Australia's youngest-ever King's Counsel and one of the nation's best-known and best-paid barristers. But the siren song of politics lured him first into State Parliament and then to Canberra, where he received instant promotion to Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in Lyons' first government. By 1935 he was deputy leader of the United Australia Party.

The late 1930s brought him the unaffectionate nicknames of ‘Ming the Merciless' and 'Pig-iron Bob' which were to stick for the rest of his life. The first, after a comic-strip character and the Scottish pronunciation of Menzies as 'Mingles', referred to his attempt to deport an anti-fascist, anti-war Czech -Author as an illegal immigrant. The second came from his battle with waterside workers who refused to load ships with scrap iron for Japan, claiming that it would be used for armaments. Both incidents helped to consolidate Menzies’ growing reputation as a hard-core conservative.

After Lyons died Menzies succeeded Earle Page as Prime Minister and, a few months later, it was his 'melancholy duty' to lead Australia into war. He tried to persuade Labor to join an all-party wartime coalition. But Labor men - like many of his own followers - disliked what they felt to be Menzies' aloof arrogance. In the 1941 elections his own party fell apart, Labor won power and many thought he was finished.

But he created a new party, the Liberals, from anti-Labor elements and bided his time. It came after the war, when Labor launched a great nationalisation program combined with strict austerity to conserve foreign currency. Many people felt they were denied the fruits of wartime victory, others feared that Labor was 'the road to Communism’ and the unions made life harder by continuous industrial turbulence. Menzies played on these fears and resentments and won the elections of December 1949.

His success almost coincided with the start of the great post-war boom, which helped the Liberal-Country Party coalition to govern during continuous socioeconomic development. Menzies was able to implement policies of massive immigration, medical and hospital benefits, great advances in education, the development of Canberra and expansion of the CSIRO and many other government authorities. In foreign affairs, Menzies linked Australia more closely to South-East Asia and the USA to counter what was seen as the spread of Communism and the possible isolation of Australia. In support of the United Nations offensive against Communism, he sent Australian servicemen to fight in the Korean War.

During the Menzies regime Australians enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and development, even if these benefits derived largely from the worldwide economic boom. But many people saw Menzies, with his authoritarian image and ‘unflappable’ personality, as the architect of Australian post-war progress and there were no serious challenges to his leadership.

After 16 years in office, far longer than any other Prime Minister, he retired in January 1966. He died, heaped with honours, in 1978. Many Liberal voters now look back wistfully to the Menzies era as the golden years of their party.

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