It was in the 1980s that the left-elite were shocked by revelations that George Orwell had maintained a list of suspected British Stalinists. That anyone who’d read Animal Farm could be shocked by Orwell’s antipathy to Stalinism is an object lesson in Doublethink.
Because Orwell, while still a socialist at the time of his premature death, was also a pragmatist and a clear thinker. Unlike so many on the left, he was not blind to the evils of communism – indeed, he had seen them, first-hand, in Spain.
Australian prime minister Bob Hawke was also a pragmatist. Hawke had also seen the disaster of a Labor Party overrun by the hard-left.
Now, it turns out, Hawke may have kept little lists of his own.
Bob Hawke acted as an “informer” to the US government while boss of the Australian trade union movement and president of the ALP, a new study of declassified diplomatic cables claims.
Cameron Coventry, a researcher at Federation University in Ballarat, sheds light on how the man who was to later become a Labor prime minister fed intelligence to the Americans about labour movement figures and Australian government policy, even tip-offs that a secretive US military installation was to be targeted by union militants.
In the 1970s, Labor in Australia had moved about as far left as was possible without being openly Communist. Gough Whitlam even appointed an openly Marxist Treasurer, with predictable results. “Sinophile” Whitlam also led the world in establishing friendly relations with Maoist China – visiting the country even as the mass killings of the Cultural Revolution were still raging.
Naturally, the United States was the “Great Satan” of the Australian left. Equally naturally, Washington deeply distrusted the Whitlam government and the Australian Labor movement.
[Hawke] was considered by Washington to be a “bulwark” against anti-US sentiment in the 1970s.
When the Whitlam government hit the skids, Mr Hawke floated with US diplomats the possibility he would abandon the ALP to pursue a British-style national unity government to face a deepening economic crisis in Australia, according to the documents accessed by Mr Coventry.
In conversation with diplomats from the US embassy in Canberra in late 1974, he recounted receiving “several feelers about political realignment”[…]
After the dismissal of the Labor government in 1975, Mr Hawke briefed US diplomats that he would “move over” from the ACTU to replace Gough Whitlam as leader. NSW Labor powerbroker John Ducker, another alleged informant for the Americans, later told them that the “cabal conspiracy” to install Mr Hawke failed because the plotters made “a bad mistake to tip their hand prematurely”, according to an American cable cited by Mr Coventry.
As it happened, Hawke had to wait nearly a decade for his plans to bear fruit.
When Hawke did seize the reins of power, he presided over exactly the sort of “politically realigned” Labor party he had promised.
The revelations are based on a tranche of diplomatic communications unearthed from the US National Archives and Records Administration. Naturally, the Australian left are angrily denying the characterisation of Hawke as an “informer”. Still, it’s obvious that he was talking to the Americans – a lot.
Mr Coventry alleges he divulged sensitive information about the 1972-75 Whitlam government, Malcolm Fraser’s 1975-83 Coalition government, the Labor Party and trade union movement touching on industrial relations policy, the economy and foreign policy.
In 1974, a cable had him leaking to US ambassador Marshall Green details of a union campaign to target American multinationals, such as carmaker Ford; a year earlier, the US labour attache in Canberra had contacted Mr Hawke about a possible industrial dispute at the North West Cape military base in Western Australia, a highly-classified communications station for the US nuclear submarine fleet.
According to the cable cited by Mr Coventry, Mr Hawke “volunteered to intervene informally” and expressed “concern and surprise” at the militancy of the workers concerned.
While Hawke was publicly talking about cutting Australia loose from its American alliances, he was privately telling the Americans that he was determined to go the other way. Hawke also privately contradicted his public stances as ACTU leader.
The private support went two ways.
The US embassy in Canberra reasoned this “duality” was to garner left-wing support for his preselection for a seat in federal parliament.
The cables show the US was a “discreet advocate” encouraging Mr Hawke as early as August 1974 to pursue “tripartism” between unions, employers and the government, laying the groundwork for his Labor government’s signature accord on wages with the union movement.
The Australian
If the revelations are true – and there seems little reason for doubt – they paint a complex picture. They show a Machiavellian politician, publicly saying one thing to mollify the militant left and privately saying quite different things to foreign governments. They also show a politician who skillfully manoeuvred his way to high office while simultaneously dragging a militant leftist party to the centre.
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