Kevin Mccauley

Curtin's Call 5 Kevin Mccauley

John Curtin began his political life as a radical socialist. He was a member of both the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP)and the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He was influenced by two men: Frank Anstey, a Labor Member of the Federal Parliament; and, Tom Mann, who lived and agitated in Australia before the Great War and who would later (out of despair at the socialist project?) become a founding member of the British Communist Party. For Curtin, socialism did not mean the Marxist class war but meant the uplift of the ordinary man in a social-economic order that did in fact, value personal initiative and the right to personal private property.