Labour and the Catholic Social Studies Movement

Abstract

The emergence of the Australian Democratic Labor Party (D.L.P.) and the National Civic Council (N.C.C.) during the 1950s was a not insignificant addendum to a gradual development of Roman Catholic social conscience during the preceding two decades. The world-wide economic depression in the early 1930s resulted in a period of widespread unrest which wras destined particularly to affect Australia. To many people, the depression seemed to illustrate serious shortcomings in existing economic and political systems. Economic capitalism and democracy based on political parties had not only failed to prevent depression, but had been powerless to alleviate its rigours once it had arrived. The logical next step was to undertake a search for a substitute form of government, and this theoretical quest was part of a mental and political process of international proportions. The incredible poverty and extreme social tensions engendered by depression encouraged both J. T. Lang's agitation in New South Wales for repudiation of Australia's interest payments to overseas bondholders, and Western Australia's secession movement. Lang received adulation and considerable support from the lower classes which were predom inantly Roman Catholic in New South Wales,1 thereby provoking a frightened reaction from the middle-classes and Protestants. These latter groups provided the bulk of the membership and supporters of the New Guard, a quasi-fascist movement organised on military lines, which at its peak around 1932 had almost 100,000 members. Marxists were also active in advocating Communism as an alternative to capitalism and party democracy, and the Communist stimulus caused a counter attack from a few highly educated Roman Catholics who claimed that if viable replacements for capitalism and party democracy were being canvassed, there was no need to look further than the various theories and practical suggestions found in the social encyclicals of the Popes. The Communist-Roman Catholic dialogue carried over into dis agreement concerning Australia's posture during the sundry international crises of the 1930s. In 1934 Soviet Russia had been admitted to