The publication in 1956 of the first issue of Quadrant marked a new stage in the conservative struggle to control the agenda of ideas in Australia. The radical nationalists, associated particularly with Meanjin, had attempted to change this agenda by emphasizing the democratic element of the Australian tradition. Overland and the Realist Writers Groups had tried to extend the tradition itself by building a new community of writers and readers. Quadrant was both intended to combat Meanjin in the field of ideas, and more generally to deny legitimacy to literature as a part of politics. The conservative campaign, which refused to acknowledge that every piece of literature, by shaping its readers' perceptions, helps to shape their ideology, had begun as early as 1947 with parliamentary attacks on the Commonwealth Literary Fund and its support for some radical writers. Quadrant maintained this restrictive view of literature as a supplement to politics rather than as a part of the contest. Yet the poetry and fiction it published, as conservative in form as in content, were as much as its polemic a part of its politics.

The Cold War, in which Quadrant saw its role as a combatant, extended to the struggles with and within the Commonwealth Literary Fund.