Doc Evatt: patriot, internationalist, fighter and scholar, by Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale & Wayne Reynolds, with a preface by Sol Encel and a foreword by Jim Hagan.

This book presents new interpretations of an important yet neglected and often denigrated Australian. It explains his pivotal role in government during World War II and in the Australian Labor Party’s subsequent reform program. It also considers his articulation of a national foreign policy which was independent and distinctly Australian, yet uniquely international in approach: quite simply, Evatt put Australia on the map internationally. Then – when the ALP lost office – Evatt Played a decisive part in a campaign to defend civil liberties, successfully thwarting the Menzies’ government’s efforts to entrench McCarthyism in the antipodes. Next, courageously moving to defeat the attempt by the Industrial Groupers and B. A. Santamaria’s Movement to take over the ALP, Evatt was accused by some of having crippled his party. This book argues that such a split was both inevitable and necessary to save Labor for its traditional purpose and function. Finally, as the authors reveal, his brilliant working life ended in tragic illness – a debilitating form of epilepsy causing total memory collapse. By then however, Evatt had well eared the high acclaim accorded by his most insightful peers and successors.

‘Evatt entered the fray to participate in the welter of the people’s struggle for a better life’

– Katherine Susannah Prichard

‘[Evatt] would have been the most intellectual prime minister of the twentieth century, but he remains the great premier Australia never had.’

– The Irish Times

About the authors

Ken Buckley was for many years both Associate Professor of economic history at the University of Sydney and an executive member of the Council for Civil Liberties. he was also editor of Labour History from 1986 to 1989.

Barbara Dale was a tutor in history at both the University of Sydney and Macquarie University, and was associate editor of Labour History from 1986 to 1991.

Wayne Reynolds is a lecturer in history at the University of Newcastle.

Buckley, Ken, Dale, Barbara & Reynolds, Wayne (1994), Doc Evatt: patriot, internationalist, fighter and scholar, Longman Cheshire, pbk, Melbourne, xiv+433, RRP $39.99. Our price $19.99 (minus discount for Evatt members).

ISBN 0-582-87498-X