Left, Right, Left

Stirring the Possum (a political autobiography)
by James McClelland
Viking.  RRP $29.99

"Diamond Jim" McClelland was a Labor Senator, Minister in the Whitlam Government of the early 1970s, (Manufacturing Industry;  and then Labour and Immigration);  a rich and competent solicitor;  a judge of the New South Wales Industrial Commission, the chief (and first) judge of the New South Wales new Land and Environment Court;  and President of the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia.  He now writes a regular column for the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the early 1970s, while "Diamond Jim" McClelland was a fledgling Labor Senator, I entered a crowded lift in the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Martin Place, Sydney.  He was in the front of the lift's crowd, having got on on the floor above.  As I squeezed into the lift with the Democratic Labor Party Senator, the late Jack Kane, and Terry Tobin, QC, I greeted him:  "Hallo Jim.  And what wing are you flying on today -- the left or the right?" To this rather "smart-arse" remark, Jim coloured slightly and mumbled, not too discourteously.

"Smart-arse" or not, the greeting was an accurate one.  Raised as a devout (right-wing) Catholic, he discovered sex ("the real goad to my rejection of Catholicism was undoubtedly my developing sexuality");  left the Church, became a Trotskyist, joined the Australian Labor Party in Melbourne as part of their tactic of entrism, became active in the Party after the war, working effectively with the right-wing ALP Industrial Groups.  He gained pre-selection and his Senate seat through the right-wing NSW machine.  He then joined the left-wing of the Parliamentary Caucus and gained a Ministerial position, and swung back to the right in order to retain that Ministerial spot.  Now, as he says of himself on page 238 of his delightfully written and interesting book:  "As a man of the left myself I felt embarrassed by his (Tony Benn's) routinist, unthinking banality."

It is this phrase "as a man of the left myself', which has stunned and, in some cases, angered "Diamond Jim's" political acquaintances and friends.

Perhaps the most scathing public attack on Stirring the Possum has been Rodney Cavalier's book review in the Financial Review.  Mr Cavalier, another "man of the left" and former prominent Minister in the previous Labor Governments in New South Wales, wrote:  "Neville Wran knew exactly what man was James McClelland.  We require no better evidence than McClelland himself in a reference to Wran that is as apt as it is unwitting '... in retrospect, I can see that he was careful never to drop his guard in his dealings with me.' "

As outlined in his political autobiography and discussed widely in political circles -- chiefly because of his ceaseless and bitter campaign against his former friend, Sir John Kerr, and his entertaining but mainly self-indulgent column in the Sydney Morning Herald -- Jim McClelland's political views change according to the circumstances in which he finds himself and according to his ambition of the time.  This is not to say that he has always acted as a cynical political opportunist -- far from it.  It is as though he is, possibly unknown to himself, a political chameleon.

One suspects that he has shaded his political autobiography to please his (and his wife's) present peer group and dinner companions.  He has omitted much from his book that would paint him as a man who owes his material success, and most of his career, to the political right-wing.  Take only one omission;  he was the honorary solicitor to the conservative (now) Australian Association for Cultural Freedom:  What other actions has he omitted?

Rodney Cavalier again:  "The scale of errors and omissions in matters where simple checking is available, prepare you for the portrait of a man that is as close to fiction as any memoirs one will ever read.  Of theme there is none.  If there is any pattern, it is the changing fashion of political involvement and the flexibility of ideas and allegiances to match ... but the scale of political somersaults of James Robert McClelland warrant consideration".  And boy, does he give it some!

Thirteen years after the sacking of the Whitlam Government by Jim McClelland's long-time friend Sir John Kerr because of its continued inability to gain Supply, one hoped in Stirring the Possum for an explanation that would attempt to justify "Diamond Jim's" vendetta against the former Governor-General.  There is none.  All there is is a sourness and a tortuous, and unconvincing, argument explaining why it was unnecessary for Kerr to sack Whitlam when he did.

The truth of the matter is that the former Senator can never forgive Sir John Kerr for ending his political career just when it was at its height.  Whatever the position one adopts as to the constitutional propriety of the Kerr action, it is perfectly understandable that those who lost their jobs (and there were many) would be angry.  But thank God they don't all carry on as "Diamond Jim" does.

For all its autobiographical omissioris and its self-indulgence, it is a good book worth buying.