Class, Religion and the Australian Party System

The great majority of Australian Liberals were Protestants, and, even when they were not, the virtues on which they based their claims to govern were Protestant virtues. Australian Liberals were independent, they were loyal, and they did not pursue group-based sectional claims. Roman Catholics were welcome in their parties, but only if they displayed and adhered to these virtues. But even when Catholics tried their hardest it was difficult for them ever to be entirely free of the suspicions which dogged their religion. When John Cramer won preselection for a winnable Liberal party seat at the 1949 election, he was aware that he ‘was something of a freak, as it had seemed in the whole of Australia almost impossible for a Catholic to win preselection for a safe seat in the Liberal Party’, as indeed had been the case in the United Australia Party (UAP) and the Nationalists before that. In a preselection marred by terrible sectarian bitterness, he had been asked by one member of the selection committee whether he owed allegiance to the Pope or the King. And after winning the seat he still felt branded. Whenever he entered the room Menzies would remark ‘be careful boys, here comes the Papist’: ‘For some reason I cannot understand it always seemed uppermost in his mind that I was Catholic and therefore in some way different from the others’.