HV ‘Doc’ Evatt: his humanitarianism and flawed genius put Australia on world stage
It was a rare honour for an Australian to be elected president of the UN General Assembly 75 years ago, and the brilliant Labor politician used it to help shape the emerging post-war world.
Evatt, who served on the High Court in the 1930s, was minister for external affairs and attorney-general in the 1940s, and would later serve as Labor leader in the 1950s, was in his element at the UN. He would play an important role in the creation of Israel and preside over the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In a rare interview, his daughter, Rosalind Carrodus, remembers the moment with immense pride and recalls her mother, Mary Alice, being overcome with emotion that her husband had achieved such an honour.
“I was 16 at the time and I was there with my mother,” Carrodus, 91, recalls. “When he was appointed president, he was very quiet and gentle about it. But we couldn’t believe it. My mother was just about in tears, and she didn’t do that often. I felt absolutely overwhelmed. Everybody stood up and clapped and cheered.”
It is hard to overstate Evatt’s stellar career in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. He was a brilliant lawyer and advocate; a scholar who authored books on history, politics, law and biography; served in the NSW parliament (1925-30); was appointed to the High Court in December 1930 at age 36; resigned to take up a career in federal politics in September 1940 and held two ministerial portfolios during the Curtin-Chifley government (1941-49).
Born in April 1894, Herbert Vere Evatt was gifted and talented, a dazzling student who impressed at the Bar and on the Bench. He was always busy and energetic, loving the arts as much as sport, with a liberal and progressive outlook. But he could be difficult and inflexible, and later illness exacerbated his sometimes erratic, eccentric and paranoid behaviour.
His leadership of Labor (1951-60) was a time of deep division within the party, a split over communist influence and electoral failure. Evatt led Labor to three election defeats in a row – May 1954, December 1955 and November 1958 – but almost dislodged Robert Menzies’ government on his first attempt. Born in the same year, they were rivals in law and politics, and shared a mutual contempt. Evatt was a better lawyer, but Menzies was a better politician.
For Evatt’s daughter, there is another side that is easy to overlook when you only consider him through the prism of political success and failure. She recalls the square-shouldered, thickset Evatt with tangled hair often sitting and talking, reading avidly through thick glasses and playing the piano (badly), and cherishing walks, art and music and sport, especially cricket and rugby league.
“He was very protective and loving, and had a great sense of humour,” Carrodus reminisces. “He wanted me to enjoy lots of things in life that he could not when he was younger. He came from a working-class background and his father died when he was young, leaving his mother to bring up eight boys.” Two of his brothers died during World War I and two died during infancy.
A kaleidoscope of interests and restless energy was grounded in a deep concern for human rights, justice and equality of opportunity, and the dignity of the individual. These virtues were evident to his daughter from the earliest age. After Evatt won the presidency, he walked with his daughter through the Bois de Boulogne on the western edge of Paris. “It was very important to him,” Carrodus explains. “He believed in people’s lives and their comfort, and he was always for the underdog. We were walking and talking, and he was giving me his ideas and plans about life and people. We just floated through there. And he was nearly in tears himself.”
It is these qualities that expressed themselves through the work of the UN. The third session of the General Assembly ran from September to December 1948, in Paris, and then from April to May 1949, in New York.
Evatt had played a role in negotiating the UN Charter and signed it on behalf of Australia in San Francisco in June 1945. He had been a member of the Preparatory Commission for the UN and sat on the Security Council, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission for Conventional Armaments.
He came close to winning the presidency prior to the second session of the General Assembly in New York in September 1947, losing to Brazilian Oswaldo Aranha in a second ballot by 29 votes to 22. It was no surprise given two years earlier, at San Francisco, he marshaled the smaller powers against the great powers to expand the authority and functions of the General Assembly.
Evatt presided over the General Assembly in October 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and in December 1948 when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was passed.
He had chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine which led to the Partition Plan from September to November 1947 and was president when Resolution 273 was adopted, admitting Israel as a UN member, in May 1949. “He was a great follower and supporter of the Jewish people,” Carrodus remembers. “He was very determined and wanted it to happen for their livelihoods and happiness.”
The same applied at home. Carrodus remembers if she was sick or hurt, her father would do everything to make sure she got the medical attention needed. He told her riveting bedtime stories. She recalls his enthusiasm for, well, everything. At a music concert, Evatt would routinely stand up and clap and cheer, alone, leaving his daughter to sink into her chair in embarrassment.
Bert Evatt and Mary Alice Sheffer met as students at Sydney University and married in November 1920. Their relationship was devoted and affectionate but sometimes stormy. They penned love letters to each other and composed poetry. “He so loved my mother and they enjoyed each other’s company,” their daughter recalls.
Rosalind married Peter Carrodus, then working for radio station 2CA, at St John’s Church in Canberra in November 1953. Her father, then Labor leader, brought along his own mother’s wedding ring in case Peter’s ring went missing. He also filled his pockets with headache pills, angina tablets and glucose remedies, and they jangled as he walked down the aisle.
“In the back of the car on the way to the church, he reminisced about when he was younger, about his parents and life and love,” his daughter remembers. “He said, ‘If you have any problems, always come to me and I’ll help sort them out.’ He hoped I would have children and that my husband, Peter, was caring with me and caring for me. He also said you have to have a sense of humour about things.”
After almost 10 years as a justice of the High Court (1930-40), Evatt had made the switch to federal politics. He won Labor preselection and then the seat of Barton in NSW. Not since Menzies in September 1934 had anybody come into the parliament with so much promise. He schemed and plotted from the moment he got there, eyeing a chance to become prime minister with United Australia Party support.
When governments led by Menzies and Arthur Fadden fell, Curtin secured the support of independent MPs Arthur Coles and Alexander Wilson to form a minority Labor government in October 1941. Evatt took the portfolios of external affairs and attorney-general. Curtin led Labor to its greatest election victory in August 1943.
Following Curtin’s death in July 1945, Evatt stood in a leadership ballot against Ben Chifley, Frank Forde and Norman Makin. Chifley secured an absolute majority and became leader. When parliament was sitting, Evatt and Chifley would share a weekly meal cooked by Mary Alice. Mother and daughter would often watch question time and attend functions, including for Queen Elizabeth II in February 1954.
Following Chifley’s death in opposition in June 1951, Evatt was elected unopposed as Labor leader. (He had been deputy leader and deputy prime minister since October 1946.) It was a difficult time. The pressures of leadership, a fierce parliamentary contest with Menzies, a number of poor judgments, not least over the Petrov defections and a subsequent royal commission into Soviet espionage, and declining health, made him increasingly unpredictable and volatile, which made matters worse.
He faced leadership challenges from Tom Burke, Allan Fraser and Eddie Ward through the 1950s. In October 1954, he launched a bitter attack on BA Santamaria’s movement and the party’s industrial groups, branding them “disloyal”, effectively precipitating the Labor split and the creation of the Democratic Labor Party which kept Labor out of office for decades.
After defeating a motion to spill the leadership a fortnight later, Evatt wanted revenge. Fired up and red-faced, he grabbed a pen and paper and leapt onto a table in the caucus room and demanded those who had voted for the spill to be recorded. “Get their names!” he shouted. “Get their names.”
His daughter acknowledges the pressures in this period.
“He got intolerant of people if they were doing silly things or going totally against what he was hoping they would do,” Carrodus says. “Sometimes it was embarrassing because he could go over the top. He liked to charge in and take control of situations. He would get upset and uptight about things.”
In what many historians regard as Evatt’s finest moment, he led a spirited campaign against the Menzies government’s referendum to ban the Communist Party in September 1951. It was a battle for civil liberties, and he inflicted a rare defeat on Menzies.
Carrodus met many of the leading politicians of the 1940s and ’50s, and found Menzies to be approachable and friendly. Despite the rivalry between Evatt and Menzies, fuelled by a combustible mix of jealousy, enmity and competitiveness, their daughters have been close friends. Carrodus talks regularly with Heather Henderson, daughter of Sir Robert and Dame Pattie.
Rosalind and Heather, now 95, have known each other since they were teenagers. Rosalind recalls being invited to a dinner party for Heather at The Lodge. Menzies greeted everybody and made a bowl of punch.
“Politics did not matter in our relationship,” Carrodus says. “I’ve known her for such a long time. We are very close. We are very good friends.”
Evatt was appointed NSW chief justice in February 1960. Many in Labor were keen for him to be edged out of the federal leadership. Evatt’s mental faculties weakened significantly in his final years and he died, at age 71 in November 1965. It has been suggested by historians that his dementia was caused by arteriosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries.
“He certainly was not well,” Carrodus accepts. “He had a form of dementia but it was always kept quiet, and my mother kept a lot of that from me. He was slowing down. He was totally exhausted. Towards the end, mum got a full-time nurse to look after him.”
Remembering those brighter and happier days, Carrodus is thrilled that there is still interest in her father, and his life and legacy.
“So many people have forgotten what he did and what he achieved,” she says. “He did achieve an awful lot.”
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When the UN General Assembly met for its third session in Paris on September 21, 1948 – 75 years ago this week – HV ‘‘Doc’’ Evatt was in the chair. It was a unique honour for an Australian to be elected president and he was determined to be a champion for civil liberties, the disadvantaged and on behalf of smaller nations in the emerging post-war era.