Submitted for New Politics, April 2003
Late last year the Australian left lost one its most well-known and respected figures, Dr. Jim Cairns. As a leading figure in the social-democratic Australian Labor Party, Cairns was highly involved in opposing the right-wing Catholic 'Groupers' who were destabilizing the Australian union movement in the 1950s, campaigned against the racist 'White Australia' immigration policy in the 1960s, became chairperson of the Vietnam moratorium movement, reached the position of Deputy Prime Minister under the reformist Whitlam government in 1974, and founded the Down to Earth 'alternative lifestyles' organization in 1976. Active until the very end of his life, Cairns was a popular figure at Melbourne market places selling his books during the 1980s and 1990s. Even in his final years, he opened the Labor Left Activists and Supporters Conference of 2002 and was part of the Valentine's Day march against the invasion of Iraq; wheelchair-bound, the 89 year-old activist bore a simple sign, a testament to his life: "Make Love, Not War".
Published just months beforehand, Dr. Paul Strangio's biography of Cairns 'Keeper of the Faith' was timely. An academic of politics and history himself, Strangio has a particular interest in 'grassroots democracy' and the conflict between systematic imperatives and those of just and popular opinion. Staring with a sympathetic introduction to Cairns' highly impoverished early life - his father died when he was an infant in WWI and he was raised during the depression - Strangio maps the intellectual development of Jim Cairns, as an undercover detective, his time in service, as a student and PhD in economic history, as a tutor and lecturer in the same as the University of Melbourne, and eventually as a national member of parliament.
Not surprisingly the latter makes up the bulk of the text - some six of the ten chapters. It begins with Cairns' election as the member for the inner urban seat of Yarra in the 1950s. This area was renowned for the sort of thuggery that only right-wing members of the working class and when the infamous split between the left social-democratic and Catholic right wings of the Australian Labor Party occurred, Yarra was the place where it was strongest in the entire nation with the election for the seat being described as "the most violent in Australian history".
Following his election, Strangio maps out Cairns' rapid rise to power and influence. In the midst of the Cold War, the Marxist-influence Cairns was disliked by many within the Labor Party, and the not the least for his cool and distant demeanour. Nevertheless it was the conservative Liberal-National coalition government that were the main subject of his sharp intellect and knowledge of economic matters. During this time Cairns' greatest achievement was overturning the bipartisan 'White Australia' policy, recognizing not only the racist content but also the economic foolishness of Australia not engaging with South-East Asia.
At the same time however, a greater issue came to the fore: Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. Cairns' railed against the military intervention and advocated the right of Vietnam to self-determination. In 1966, primarily due to Cairns' activism, the Labor Party engaged in an election campaign opposing conscription that the government had imposed the previous year. However at that time the public were still not fully aware of the horror that was Vietnam and the Party was soundly defeated as Australia went "all the way with LBJ", as the conservative Prime Minister quipped at the time.
Cairns was undaunted. He continued his campaign against conscription and the war and was elected national chairperson of the Vietnam moratorium movement. In 1967 and 1968 he contested the leadership of the Labor Party, failing narrowly on the second occasion. As opposition to the war grew, so did the desperation of those who opposed these "communists and unionists". In 1969 a group of men broke into Cairns' home and severely assaulted him. Contrary to the opinions of some, this seemed to strengthen Cairns. In 1970 he led an estimated 100,000 people through the streets of Melbourne in a march against the war. This move was severely criticized by the mainstream press who saw it as an invitation to violence and anarchy. Instead, Cairns showed not only the strength of the anti-war movement, but also established the street march as a legitimate and now permanent feature of Australian political life.
In late 1972 a reformist Labor government was elected nationally under Gough Whitlam and Cairns became Minister for Overseas Trade and Minister for Manufacturing Industry. With a commitment to both foreign engagement and economic planning, Cairns silenced many of his critics who were flabbergasted that a Marxist could perform these roles so well and win praise from some of the most senior members of said industries. When Labor was re-elected in 1974 having dissolved parliament due to an intransigent Senate, Cairns became the deputy leader of the Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and Treasurer.
In formal political terms, this was undoubtedly Cairns' finest moment. However disaster was looming. On one side, there was the OPEC oil crisis and stagflation, to which Cairns took a Keynesian approach. Not only did the budget blow out, Cairns made the grave error of attempting to raise funds through Tirath Khemlani, a Pakistani banker, and from George Harris, businessmen president of the Carlton football club and denying to parliament that he had done so. To add to this, Cairns had appointed the talented, attractive and, to conservative Australia, exotic Eurasian Junie Morosi as his private secretary. Their relationship was subject to significant public innuendo.
The final chapter of Strangio's book is entitled 'Some wacko theory' and covers Cairns' political life following the defeat of the Whitlam government (1975) and his retirement from Parliament (1977). During this time Cairns sought to build the environmental and counter-cultural movement and established the Down to Earth group that manages the annual Confest. Moving away from economic analysis and systematic political action, Cairns instead advocated the virtues of radical psychoanalytic theory and cultural change, taking source material from anthropology, psychobiology, and his newfound interest, feminism and with an interest in the rise of the Greens as a political force.
In many ways Strangio has done Cairns a superb justice. Whilst many have criticized Cairns as being both too distant in his parliamentary years and simply far too leftfield subsequent to that, Strangio tells his story with the sort of seriousness and sincerity that were part of Cairns' own personality. Thoroughly researched - drawing upon his 1998 PhD thesis from Deakin University with the same title - Strangio has clearly has the ability to make a political history readable and to successfully integrate a narrative of how an undercover cop could become a leader of the counter-culture, how a Marxist could become Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer and even how a person could have a public affair and yet remain a devoted husband.
Furthermore, Strangio makes his own contribution by countering mainstream ideas that view Cairns with a sort of nostalgia for the heady days of the left wing in the Labor Party. Strangio argues - and makes a very good case - that the influence of Cairns on Australian public reasoning has been vastly underestimated, even if mention of the name does draw blank faces at undergraduate classes and the Australian Labor Party has largely disowned him. In fact the degree to which Cairns has been disowned was indicative that the Party held a "members only" memorial for Dr. Cairns in 2003 which was attended by less than 150 people - an deep insult to a person who always sought the views of the common person in the public arena.
Within the left-of-Labor political parties there have been mixed reviews. The leading party of the largely Trotskyist Socialist Alliance and fanatically anti-Labor Democratic Socialist Party, describes Jim Cairns' life in tragic terms, complaining that he could not see the need "reject the pro-capitalist straitjacket of the ALP, and build a new party for radical change out of the huge momentum developed during the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and early 1970s". The "new party" being a euphemism for the DSP of course. In the non-Socialist Alliance Trotskyist camp, Nick Beams from the International Committee of the Fourth International claims that Cairns did not understand the laws of the global capitalist economy and that became a prop for the system: "Contained within Cairns' life is the rise and collapse of the program of social reformism and the party that once espoused it". On the non-Trotskyist left, Pauline Mitchell, writing in 'The Guardian', newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, considers Cairns' passing as signifying the passing of the protest era, a comment which is empirically false if there ever was one!
The reality of Cairns is more complex than these people give credit to. In his own unbalance manner, Cairns covered the field of political reformism and cultural radicalism. A critic of both social democratic and old left authoritarianism he quickly grasped the rise of the 'new social movements' based around civil liberties, feminism, and environmentalism. At the same time he never gave up a commitment to democratic planning in economics, social welfare, infrastructure investment and the involvement of the working-class in political and cultural change. As much as many on the left are loathe admitting it, Australians are still living in the shadow of Jim Cairns, flawed as his own solutions may have been; he raised the problematic concerns that still face us.