Tuesday, March 10, 2015

PRIME MINISTERS IN BAWDY BOOK


Prime  Minister of  Australia  for “ forty days and  forty nights”  from  August to October 1941, Country Party leader,  Arthur “Artie” Fadden (1894-1973), is  the subject of  this August 11,1994   first day of  issue  stamp and  postcard  in a  series covering  PMs, see earlier post about Ben  Chifley  in  this  blog  . His  short period as  PM  followed the turmoil within the  United Australia Party during  the war which resulted in  Robert  Menzies  forced  to  resign as  PM .

 Fadden , born  in  Ingham , North Queensland , an accountant , became  town clerk in  Mackay  and  moved to  Townsville  where he was  involved in local government , helped  form the North Queensland  Rugby League   and opened accountancy offices in Townsville and Brisbane. A founder member of  the Country Party,he held various portfolios including Minister for  Supply , Air  and Treasury. In  the   second  Menzies  government  Fadden was  responsible  for "horror budgets".   

Blunt  and  direct , Fadden  backed  Menzies in opposition to Communists . He   and   Menzies  were   mentioned  in  a slim  collection  of  unattributable  scurrilous  poems by such  poets as  A.D.Hope, James McAuley , Harry Hooten, Oliver M. Somerville  and  Harold Stewart  in  a 1944  Sydney  libertarian publication  with  the  title The First  Boke  of  Fowle  Ayrers , followed  by  two  more similar volumes  printed on  a  small  press owned  by Oliver  Somerville. McAuley and Stewart  were later responsible for pulling  the  Ern Malley  stunt on Max  Harris which was  dubbed  the  greatest  literary  hoax  of  the  20th century.
 

The reference  to the tryst  between  Hamilton and (faint) Hess relates to Hitler's Deputy Leader, Rudolf Hess , who bailed out of a plane he flew to Scotland in May 1941, intent  on  having " peace talks "  with  the  Duke  of  Hamilton . Taken prisoner, he was sentenced to life imprisonment  at the  Nuremberg  war trials in 1946  and  lodged in Spandau Prison , where, aged 93, he died of apparent suicide  in 1987. Spandau was  then demolished to prevent it  becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.. Just this week on the splendiferous  Antiques  Roadshow  a brick salvaged  from Spandau  was brought along  to  be  valued,100 pound.
Rare  Spandau  brick  as  seen  on  BBC  television . 
Others  mentioned  were  former NSW ALP Premier  Jack  Lang ,removed by  governor Sir Philip Game, and his  newspaper, Century ; controversial   publisher   "Inky " Stephensen , of  Australia First ,closely involved with author Xavier Herbert ,  beaten  up by  Communists  at  a  public  meeting during the  war . Provocative items were headed  Ecclesiastical   Limericks  and  The  Virgin Mary Blues ; neo-wowsers  were  also  targeted . An annotated copy of the publication is in the Witting Papers at  Sydney's  Mitchell LibraryML MS5303, which identifies  the  poets and  targets  of  some of  the  poems . (From Little Darwin  Political Ephemera Collection.)