The Big Fella by Bede Nairn

Author:Bede Nairn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

9

Lang’s Triumph

At the end of 1929 the Labor Party held office in the Commonwealth, in Victoria—under E. J. Hogan who had taken over on 12 December—and in Western Australia, under Phillip Collier. Every government in Australia was experiencing extreme pressure from the deepening Depression. In February 1930 in the New South Wales parliament Lang said that ‘Every day thousands of men are being sacked by the Government … The Premier has not a shilling to jingle on a tombstone’.563 At the April 1930 New South Wales Party conference Theodore forecast a Federal deficit of £3 million.564

But from October 1929 to April 1930 the main issue in the ALP was the role of Theodore. The great Labor vote in New South Wales at the 1929 Federal election had been fundamentally the result of the revival of that State’s traditional support for the Party, helped by the obvious inability of the Bavin government to check economic decline and by the positive and purposeful opposition provided in parliament by Lang and several of his colleagues. But Theodore had been formally the chief organizer of the campaign and much of its success was due to him. He was a skilful politician with an authoritative style, feelings of greatness and a firm belief in his destiny to become prime minister.

To a degree Theodore was similar to Lang, sharing qualities of ambition, durability, deviousness and ruthlessness: and they were both determinedly anti-’red’. On the other hand, he was Lang’s intellectual superior. Theodore had the coldness of self-assurance which, however, complemented his air of excellence and did not prevent him from collecting a circle of friends and admirers; yet he lacked the ability of Lang to project a charismatic image to the people at large. Unlike Lang, Theodore was something of an epicurean and did not scorn the delights of books, conversation and grand occasions; he was neither a boor nor a bore as Lang was. On balance, Theodore’s achievements as premier of Queensland outweighed his failures, but he was not universally popular with the labour movement there.565

He also had the serious handicap, which Lang never had, of being an obsessive speculator, especially in mining ventures. This habit reflected his self-centred optimism and often conditioned precipitate judgements of people and events. And his yearning to try to make money by company promotion and investing in shares earned him a vaguely questionable reputation in the Labor Party and in the business world. From October 1929 he was under the threat of a Queensland royal commission into some of his mining deals. It finally commenced on 30 April 1930.

Theodore was a cogent speaker and, when stirred, could approach eloquence in a way Lang never could. But he lacked Lang’s demagogic gifts: above all, he did not have the long and intimate experience the ‘Big Fella’ had acquired from thirty years activity in the beargarden of New South Wales Labor politics. Indeed, Theodore’s Queensland associations with the AWU had produced grave disadvantages for him in New South Wales and his

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