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Running the Show

B.A. Santamaria Selected Documents: 1939-1996

Patrick Morgan (ed.)

Running the Show reveals new material on matters which are still the subject of controversy today.

Opinion

'Running The Show is an exhaustive, if not exhausting, tour de force.'
Martin Stevenson, Launceston Examiner, 19/7/08

'Victorian academic Patrick Morgan has added much to what is known about this tumultuous era'
Alexander McRobbie, Courier Mail, 16/8/08

About this Title

B.A. (Bob) Santamaria was perhaps the most controversial figure in recent Australian politics. An anti-Communist and devout Catholic, he was also one of the most prolific writers in Australia’s history and a strong campaigner for social justice, and his impact on this country’s social conscience
was profound.

In the 1940s he founded the Movement in Australia, an anti-Communist organisation. He was known to earlier generations as a key figure in the tumultuous Split in the Australian Labour Party in the 1950s, and to later ones as a public commentator on his TV program Point of View and in his weekly column in the Australian.

Fiercely independent, he maintained his traditionalist stance, combatting Communism in Asia and permissive and nihilistic trends in Western society, particularly in the field of bio-ethics.

Writing was a key part of his political activity—on every matter of importance to him he turned out exhaustive analyses and rejoinders. Running the Show features some of the many unpublished documents Santamaria produced during his six decades of continuous public activity. It includes speeches, strategic papers, reports to his superiors, memos to politicians, positions papers, personal statements, aides-mémoire and political analyses.

Running the Show brings together a selection of documents written by B.A. Santamaria, and throws new light on a number of crucial episodes in his career. In the poet James
McAuley’s words, he ‘set a match against the age’s mind’.

About the Author

B.A. (Bob) Santamaria (1915–1998) was employed for his whole working life of six decades by four organisations: Catholic Action, the ‘Movement’ to oppose Communist union influence, the National Catholic Rural Movement, and the National Civic Council. He was educated at St Joseph’s and St Kevin’s Christian Brothers Colleges, and at the University of Melbourne. In 1939 he married Helen Power; they had eight children (five daughters and three sons) and lived their married life in the Melbourne suburbs of North Balwyn and Kew, with a holiday house at Mornington. His wife Helen died in 1980, and he married Mrs Dorothy Jensen, his long-time secretary, in 1983. He died on 25 February 1998 at the age of eighty-two and was given a State Funeral.

Patrick Morgan, the editor of this volume, is a Victorian writer and academic who has published an award-winning regional history, edited texts on Australian literature, and
written regularly in magazines such as Quadrant on current affairs, including on the connections between religion and politics. He is also the editor of the bestselling book Your Most Obedient Servant: B.A. Santamaria Selected Letters, 1938–1996.

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978-0-522-85497-8