History

The Regalia of a Papal Knight is part of a collection of objects that belonged to Arthur Calwell, Australia’s first Minister for Immigration (1945-49) that were donated to the museum by his daughter, Dr Mary Elizabeth Calwell.

In 1964 Calwell unexpectedly received this award as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great and the Grand Silver Star of the order, actually bestowed in 1963. The order, one of five pontifical orders of knighthood and the highest that can be given to a member of the laity, is usually presented at the behest of the local papal nuncio in recognition of particular service to the Church. The time in which he accepted this knighthood was highly significant as it occurred in the decade following the Labor Party Split and as it demonstrates a change in the sectarian nature of Australian life in previous decades.

The citation for the award reads in part: ‘With glad heart We respond to the recommendations made to Us, from which We learn of the signal service you have rendered to the well-being of the church and the advancement of Catholic affairs…’. The citation, dated 31 August 1963 and signed by Cardinal Cicognani, is also held by the museum.

The Labor Party Split occurred in 1955 as a result of a series of events , including the Petrov Affair. On the 13th of April, 1954, Russian spy Vladimir Petrov defected and Prime Minister Robert Menzies (Liberal Party) established a Royal Commission to investigate Soviet espionage in Australia. Although sparked by the Petrov defection, it was also hoped that the Royal Commission would flush other agents out into the open, following secret briefings by British security personnel which demonstrated that Australia had been severely compromised by Soviet espionage activity. The Leader of the Opposition, Dr H.V. Evatt (Australian Labor Party), believed the Petrov Affair was part of a conspiracy against him that had been conceived by Menzies, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Roman Catholic anti-communist elements inside the Labor Party to secure a Coalition victory at the 1954 election. These events inflamed existing divisions in the Labor Party, as some members opposed Evatt’s accusations, arguing his conspiracy theory actually defended communism.

On 5 October 1954, Evatt issued a dramatic press statement alleging that some ALP members, controlled from outside the party by ‘the Movement’, an anti-communist and largely Roman Catholic Group active in the trade unions and increasingly powerful in the Labor Party, with having sabotaged Labor’s election campaign in the 1954 federal election. The subsequent struggle between supporters of ‘the Movement’ and Evatt’s supporters within the Labor Party to dominate the Party was won by Evatt and the left, especially in Victoria. The subsequent split in the party was particularly severe in that state, Calwell’s home, and much less evident in New South Wales where the Roman Catholic hierarchy were less supportive of the Movement. Members of the Movement were expelled from the Party and eventually regrouped as the Democratic Labor Party. DLP preferences strongly favoured coalition candidates in subsequent elections, maintaining the bitterness of the internecine warfare within the ALP of the 1950s well into the 1970s.

Arthur Calwell, Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party during the Split, was a deeply religious man. Calwell’s loyalty to the Australian Labor Party meant that he was accused by some of his fellow Catholics of putting his politics before his Church. His acceptance of a papal knighthood sent a signal to his critics that he could be both a loyal Roman Catholic and a loyal member of his party, and that the Vatican accepted him as such. In the often sectarian Australia of the 1950s it was sometimes difficult for politicians closely associated with the Catholic Church to convince non-Catholics that they did not put their religion before their Party or country. Calwell’s acceptance of the knighthood thus signalled ‘a broadening of Australian attitudes, itself a product of Calwell’s immigration programme’ (Kiernan, 1978, p. 238).