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'''John Curtin''' (
January 8 1885 -
July 5 1945), Australian politician and 14th
Prime Minister of Australia, led Australia through the darkest period of its history: when the Australian mainland came under direct military threat during the Japanese advance in
World War II. Many Australians regard him as the country's greatest political leader and Prime Minister.
==Militant youth==
Curtin was born '''John Joseph Ambrose Curtin''' (he dropped the two middle names when he left the Catholic church as a young man), in
Creswick in central
Victoria, the son of a police officer of Irish descent. He had some primary education, but by the age of twelve he was working in a factory in
Melbourne. He soon became active in both the
Labor Party and the Victorian Socialist Party, a
Marxist group. He wrote for radical and socialist newspapers as "Jack Curtin."
In
1911 Curtin was employed as secretary of the Timberworkers' Union, and during
World War I he was a militant anti-conscriptionist. He was briefly imprisoned for refusing to attend a compulsory medical examination, even though he knew he would fail the exam due to his very poor eyesight. The strain of this period led him to drink heavily, a vice which blighted his career for many years. In
1917 he married Elsie Needham, sister of a Labor Senator.
==Labor politician==
Curtin moved to
Western Australia in
1918 to become editor of the ''Westralian Worker'', the official trade union newspaper. He enjoyed the less pressured life of the west and his political views gradually moderated. He stood for Parliament several times before winning the federal seat of
Fremantle in
1928. He expected to be elected to the ministry in the
Scullin Labor government in
1929, but disapproval of his drinking kept him on the backbench. He lost his seat in
1931, but won it back in
1934.
When Scullin resigned as Labor leader in
1935, Curtin was unexpectedly elected to succeed him. The left wing and trude union group in the Caucus backed him because his rival,
Frank Forde, had supported the economic policies of the Scullin government. They also made him promise to give up drinking, which he did. He made little progress against the
Lyons government, but after Lyons's death in
1939 Labor's position improved. Curtin fell only a few seats short of winning the
1940 election.
==Wartime leader==
Curtin refused
Robert Menzies's offer to form a wartime "national government," partly because he feared it would split the Labor Party. In October
1941 the two independent MPs who had been keeping the conservatives in power since
1940 switched their support to Labor, and Curtin became Prime Minister. In December the
Pacific War broke out, and in February
1942 Singapore fell to the Japanese, who were soon bombing northern Australian towns. Invasion seemed a real threat.
Curtin took three crucial decisions. The first was to bring all Australia's forces back from the
Middle East to defend the Australian mainland, despite the furious objections of
Winston Churchill. The second was to appeal to the
United States for assistance. Curtin formed a close friendship with General
Douglas MacArthur, and MacArthur took command of the US and Australian forces. By
1943 the threat of invasion had been averted, and in August Curtin led Labor to its greatest ever election victory.
The third step Curtin took was the introduction of conscription, which he judged vital for Australia's survival. This met furious opposition from most of Curtin's old friends on the left, and from many of his colleagues, led by
Arthur Calwell. The stress of this bitter battle inside his own party took a toll on Curtin's health.
Curtin's health had never been robust, and he suffered all his life from stress related illnesses. He also smoked heavily. In
1944, when he travelled to London for meetings with Allied leaders, he already had heart disease, and in
1945 his health deteriorated. He died in
Canberra in July
1945, the second Australian Prime Minister to die in office in six years. MacArthur said that Curtin was "one of the greatest of the wartime statesmen" and that "the preservation of Australia from invasion will be his immemorial monument".
==The Curtin Legend==
His early death and the sentiments it aroused have given Curtin a unique place in Australian political history. Successive Labor leaders, particularly his fellow Western Australians
Bob Hawke and
Kim Beazley, have sought to build on the Curtin tradition of "patriotic Laborism." Even political conservatives pay at least formal homage to the Curtin legend, in a way that Labor supporters certainly not do to the corresponding
Liberal hero, Menzies.
Curtin is commemorated by
Curtin University of Technology in Perth, the
John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra and the
John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library.
==Further Reading==
*David Day, ''Curtin: A Life'', HarperCollins, 1999
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