The Great Pessimist. "The Pope’s Battalions: Santamaria, Catholicism and the Labor Split" by Ross Fitzgerald (with Adam Carr and William J. Dealey). [review]

Abstract

Ross Fitzgerald's book is timely, for two reasons. Five years having passed since the death of B.A. Santamaria, an appropriate distance stands between the immediate obituaries and a better perspective on his impact on Australian politics. As Fitzgerald's highly readable work unfolds, he sets Santamaria's career against an Australian society that changed irreversibly in the 1960s and 1970s, meaning that any rapprochement between the ALP and what became the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) became impossible as the profiles of both parties' supporters changed from those that had underpinned The Split.