The People's Party - Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition 1875-1914.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Cain, John
• Date: 01 January 1997

Frank Bongiorno, The People's Party - Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition 1875-1914, (Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1996)

Early this year the Labor Party suffered two heavy electoral defeats in the Victorian State and Federal polls. Just 20 years ago, the same thing happened to the party.

Today, as in 1976, the party is being told by those within its own ranks as well as those from outside, that it must learn again the meaning of life.

What Frank Bongiorno's recent publication, The People's Party - Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition 1875-1914, shows us is that the struggle for identity and defining what it means in society was going on during those years he wrote about, just as it has been going ever since. Labor is always seeking to identify those "things that are worth fighting for", of which Ben Chifley spoke so passionately. It is easy for a party concerned about reform, a fairer society, decency, and a more equitable distribution of wealth, to state its political credo in a way that is both understood and accepted by the electorate.

Frank Bongiorno's work takes us through the early years of the Labour Movement as it tries to find some identity from a range of interests that were swirling around society in those years.

It was a...