Author Description

This second volume of the study of Cold War in Australia departs from the emphasis on political history which marked the first volume. It looks more at the institutions and the social and cultural events of the immediate postwar years. The opening of government files in the Australian Archives has helped some authors. Jack Waterford has used the recently released Petrov Royal Commission papers and some of the associated ASIO files to explore the argument that the Petrov affair has been seen as a conspiracy against the Labor Party. Hilary Kent and John Merritt show how the public mood was manipulated by the media during the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne so that the large and powerful teams from East Europe and the Soviet would be warmly welcomed and all Cold War animosity would be suspended. Plans by Melbourne Hungarian migrants to invite the Hungarian team to defect while Budapest was occupied by Soviet tanks were roundly condemned by all papers including the greatest Cold War thunderer, the Argus. After the Games concluded the Cold War rhetoric of the media was resumed in all its fervour. Tom Sheridan's article on how the trade unions were manipulated in the immediate postwar years by the Chifley government into not launching campaigns for greatly improved wages and working conditions is an interesting addition to the still-small body of literature on immediate postwar events. The role of the Communist Party is likewise explored and placed in a wider perspective by Daphne Gollan in her article on the Balmain ironworkers, Pat Ranald on Communism in the women's groups, Barbara Carter on the peace movement and Ralph Summy and Malcolm Saunders on the Melbourne 1959 peace congress. The immediate postwar years call for wider historical analysis and this book of articles, with its select bibliography by George Morgan, is a helpful thrust in that direction.