Labor’s pledge is a bulwark against identity politics
Some say Labor’s caucus discipline is somehow outdated in modern, multicultural Australia. In reality, it is more vital when the individualism of modern progressivism has infected the party of late.
“Glassey’s Apostasy: This Political Rat”. So declared the headline of the Labor-aligned Brisbane Worker newspaper editorial of July 14, 1900, after the Queensland colonial MP Thomas Glassey quit the fledgling Labor Party.
It quoted the great union journalist, Henry Boote, then editing the Gympie Truth. We “should not revile Glassey as a traitor” but regard him as a “benefactor”: “He was a source of weakness [and] the Party is really strengthened by his secession.”
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Nick Dyrenfurth is the executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre.
