The Movement
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few episodes in Australian political history carry the same explosive charge as the story of The Movement — the shadowy Catholic-backed organisation that tore the Australian Labor Party apart at the seams. Paul Ormonde's landmark account chronicles the rise and fall of B.A. Santamaria's secretive anti-communist crusade, tracing how a well-organised faction operating within the labour movement managed to reshape the entire landscape of mid-twentieth-century Australian politics. Set against the paranoid backdrop of the Cold War, the narrative uncovers the ideological battles, the backroom manoeuvres, and the bitter personal rivalries that culminated in the catastrophic Labor Split of 1955 — a fracture whose consequences would keep the party out of federal power for nearly two decades. Ormonde writes with the clarity and conviction of an insider observer, drawing on firsthand research to present a portrait of institutional power wielded in the name of faith and anti-communism. The Movement stands as an essential document of postwar Australian society, illuminating the uneasy intersection of religion, politics, and organised labour at a pivotal moment in the nation's history. The book raises unsettling questions about democratic transparency and the limits of factional loyalty that remain as relevant today as they were when the drama first unfolded — leaving the reader to wonder just how many other movements operate, unseen, in the machinery of modern democracy.
Author: Paul Ormonde
Format: Hardback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few episodes in Australian political history carry the same explosive charge as the story of The Movement — the shadowy Catholic-backed organisation that tore the Australian Labor Party apart at the seams. Paul Ormonde's landmark account chronicles the rise and fall of B.A. Santamaria's secretive anti-communist crusade, tracing how a well-organised faction operating within the labour movement managed to reshape the entire landscape of mid-twentieth-century Australian politics. Set against the paranoid backdrop of the Cold War, the narrative uncovers the ideological battles, the backroom manoeuvres, and the bitter personal rivalries that culminated in the catastrophic Labor Split of 1955 — a fracture whose consequences would keep the party out of federal power for nearly two decades. Ormonde writes with the clarity and conviction of an insider observer, drawing on firsthand research to present a portrait of institutional power wielded in the name of faith and anti-communism. The Movement stands as an essential document of postwar Australian society, illuminating the uneasy intersection of religion, politics, and organised labour at a pivotal moment in the nation's history. The book raises unsettling questions about democratic transparency and the limits of factional loyalty that remain as relevant today as they were when the drama first unfolded — leaving the reader to wonder just how many other movements operate, unseen, in the machinery of modern democracy.