Dr H.V. Evatt--part one: a question of sanity.

• Author: Campbell, Andrew
• Position: Herbert Vere Evatt
• Pages: 25(15)

Nemo Repente Fuit Turpissimus.

In his memoirs, Bill Hayden, Treasurer in the Whitlam Government and Foreign Minister in the Hawke Government, noted of Dr H.V. Evatt (1894-1965), High Court judge (1930-40), Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin and Chifley Governments (1941-49), Deputy Prime Minister (1946-49), first Australian President of the General Assembly of the United Nations (1948-49), leader of the Labor Party and Opposition (1951-60), and Chief Justice of New South Wales (1960-62):(1)

"The remarkable thing is that for having left a legacy of political ruin and desolation, where he was supposed to have created a government, he became canonised as an other martyred hero of Labor, an enduring party icon."

This article is a two-part examination of the public career of Dr Evatt. The first part, entitled "A Question of Sanity", analyses the synergy between Evatt's personal and political pathology from the perspectives of forensic psychology and historical-political analysis.(2) The second part, "A Question of Loyalty" (to be published in the next issue of National Observer), assesses whether Evatt's aberrant destructive behaviour was caused solely by his unstable mental state or hether there was a more sinister explanation of his motives. In answering this latter question, supportive information has been derived from Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) personal and subject files, and the Australian collection of approximately 2,900 deciphered Soviet KGB/GRU encrypted messages known as Operation Venona (1943-80), which identified Soviet agents by revealing their true and cover-names, tradecraft and running of espionage nets. Department of External Affairs declassified correspondence and studies of Soviet intelligence operations in Australia by Australian scholars also facilitate a more historically accurate narrative.(3)

THE PARADIGM LABOR ICON

Evatt is the paradigm Labor icon. The first vice-president of the H.V. Evatt Memorial Society, Professor Manning Clark, described Evatt, a committed atheist, as a "man with the image of Christ in his heart".(4)

Evatt casts a long inter-generational shadow. He was an icon to Senator Gareth Evans during his period as Foreign Minister.(5) Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court remarked: "As a young schoolboy I admired Evatt for the struggle against the Communist Party Dissolution Act", but added tellingly:(6)

"I knew nothing of his titanic temper, his outrageous suspicions, the flaws in his personality and the flaws in his judgement that are so well documented as to be incontestable. ... His temper would often lead to extreme unforgivable rudeness to those about him."

H.C. (Nugget) Coombs expressed the conventional progressive wisdom on Evatt: "[His] major contribution to Australian history" was "his resistance the McCarthyist hysteria about the threat of Communism". Evatt allegedly "saved Australia from McCarthyism hysteria" by winning the Communist Party Dissolution referendum on 22 September 1951.(7) Kylie Tennant claims he was the founder of an "independent" (i.e., anti--US, anti-British) "pro-Australia policy".(8)

In fact, Evatt's opposition to the 1951 Communist Party Dissolution Referendum was opportunistic, as Bill Hayden noted: "His first instinct ... was to pass the Bill uncontested as he feared a forthcoming national election".(9) The Labor Party parliamentary executive, however, forced him to oppose the Bill. Although the former Labor Prime Minister (then Opposition leader) Ben Chifley was opposed to him representing the Communist-led Waterside Workers, Evatt did not see any impropriety and claimed he had Chifley's approval. He lied.(10)

Since Evatt's death in 1965, only a single scholarly biography of Evatt has been published.(11) Evatt-inspired conspiratorial accounts of historical events--such as the Petrov Defection, ASIO, the timing of the 1954 federal elections, the Labor Party split and--have gained the status of historical truth. However, the "progressive" account of Evatt's career overlooks Evatt's psychopathology as the prime factor in these political crises. Most writers on Evatt can fairly be described as "progressive" and depict him as a victim of political conspiracies, an ardent nationalist and fighter for human rights against McCarthyism. They accept as history his grandiose, narcissistic self-image and paranoid interpretations of events.

Dr John Wear Burton, Jnr, Evatt's one-time private secretary and foreign policy adviser and Secretary of the Department of External Affairs (March 1947 to June 1950), even refers to a conspiracy of "the gnomes of Melbourne", a reference which would be humorous if not taken seriously by many commentators. Unwittingly, many historians have undergone a transferential effect, accepting Evatt's conduct as "normal" in the context of his supposedly being the subject of Cold War "victimisation".(12)

Evatt lived in a period in which the nosologies of mental illness were ill-defined and many complex disorders had not been identified. Evatt's polymorbidity was dismissed by his supporters as a function of the "Doc's genius" or "his legendary scholarship". His complex symptoms were dismissed as "eccentricities" and his academic achievements taken as proof of his "genius". Since the release of documents concerning the Petrov affair and the publication of books basing the study of Evatt on archival research, a new picture is emerging in which he was not the victim of his circumstances so much as of his mental states.

Burton referred to Evatt's "almost split personality" and specifically to Evatt's rapid mood changes. As Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, Burton experienced Evatt's mood change on a daily basis: "He [Evatt] was the beaming idealist or the hatchet man".(13) He said that Evatt could be:(14)

"... the most charming person and he was a delight to be with on occasions. Yet he was about the rudest person you could come across. ... [T]here would be quick switch: one never knew what to expect. ... This duality, these extremes, and the quick switch from one to another, is ... the secret to understanding his whole personality, and indeed his political career."

Even Evatt's wife "saw this kind of duality. ... In later days this duality became accentuated. It was almost a split personality; you had to remember which Evatt you spoke to last time..."(15)

Justice Kirby of the High Court admits "it would not have been easy to live with a man ... rude to others yet infatuated with human rights. There is more than a hint of a bi-polar disorder in Evatt's make up".(16) Evatt's confidante, Sam Atyeo, noted: "He could ... for the most trivial things, be thrust into the blackest moods with constant aggressive manner".(17)

EVATT'S TREACHERY TO CHIFLEY

Evatt's fundamental pathology was a phenomenon defined in psychoanalytical terms as the "compulsion to betray". To Evatt, betrayal offered the best chances of "winning". Evatt plotted against every Labor Prime Minister. Hasluck recalled, "Evatt did not always tell his Prime Minister what he was doing and sometimes he gave a version of his activities that was either incomplete or incorrect in detail".(18) Curtin's biographer notes, "Evatt's conspiracies could have been a danger to Curtin had Evatt been more politically astute ... his thirst for power with his erratic character did not help his campaign."(19) Chifley's biographer has noted Chifley's skilful management and exploitation of Evatt's vanity, his "small-boy reverence" for him and references to him as "my learned friend".(20)

EVATT'S POLYMORBID PROFILE

Evatt was polymorbid. His narcissism demanded he be the centre of attention. He demonstrated a schizoid indifference to others and lack of empathy. His paranoid defensiveness saw any criticism as a form of narcissistic injury emanating from a suspicious or conspiratorial source. His morbid suspicion of others, combined with his Machiavellianism, impulsivity, ruthlessness and mood disorders made his actions unpredictable. He had bizarre beliefs, including seeing days of the week in colours.(21)

The "great jurist" had a psychopathic contempt for procedural rules, which he...