Herbert Vere Evatt

Australian politician and legal scholar

• Born: April 30, 1894
• Birthplace: East Maitland, New South Wales, Australia
• Died: November 2, 1965
• Place of death: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Evatt contributed an intellectual idealism to Australian legal and historical scholarship and to its domestic politics. As minister for external affairs, he directed Australia’s first independent foreign policy and was instrumental in drafting the Charter of the United Nations.

Early Life

Born at East Maitland in the Hunter River Valley of New South Wales, Herbert Vere Evatt (vir EHV-aht) had comfortable if ordinary beginnings. His father, John Ashmore Evatt, had been born in Cawnpore, Ireland, in 1851 and emigrated to Australia at the age of sixteen, and his mother, Jeanie, was also of Irish background. His parents were married in 1882 and moved first to the Hunger River Hotel and later the Bank Hotel, East Maitland, of which John Evatt was the proprietor.

Herbert, called “Bert,” was their third son and, like the other Evatt children, spent much of his time in the family hotel, where he learned the ways of the men who plied the Hunter River. He also developed a concern for the problems of workingmen, poor farmers, and coal miners. John Evatt died when Bert was seven, and the two eldest boys, George and Jack, went to Sydney to look for work. Jeanie Evatt struggled to manage the hotel and in July, 1904, sold it and moved the family to the North Shore of Sydney Harbor. There, she was assisted with her family’s education and care by relatives in return for helping with housework. She made all of their clothes herself, though she hated sewing. Evatt was to learn an indifference to clothes that became a trademark later in life.

Although lean and handsome as a young man, Evatt had scant regard for external appearances. His five foot ten inch frame became stout later in life, and he was disheveled to the point of eccentricity. A famous photograph shows his tie being straightened by Clement Attlee, British prime minister. His disdain for the superficial was reflected in his literary and oratorical styles. He eschewed flowery embellishments in his speech, which was delivered in a nasal monotone, and would characteristically ask “what are the facts?”

His sense of inquiry and his mother’s determination that all of her sons would do well drove him to high academic achievement. He was graduated from Fort Street High School in 1911 as captain and senior prefect, with several scholarships to the University of Sydney. At the university, he took prizes in mathematics, philosophy, and English literature. Adding law to his degree in 1914, he was awarded a university medal and, later, first-class honors in his M.A. After volunteering for service in World War I, in which his brothers Ray and Frank were killed, he was rejected because of his astigmatism. In 1920, Evatt married Mary Alice Sheffer, whom he had met at university, and in 1924, he became one of the few students ever to complete a doctorate of laws from the University of Sydney, thereby earning his later nickname Doc.

Not merely a successful scholar but also an accomplished sportsman, Evatt was heavily involved in cricket; he later became vice president of the New South Wales Cricket Association and Rubgy League Football, for which he was made a life member of the University Sports Union. His involvement in student affairs, as the first undergraduate president of the Student Union, soon gave way to an active interest in labor politics.

Life’s Work

Evatt’s historical scholarship was recognized early. His honors thesis was published as a book titled Liberalism in Australia: An Historical Sketch of Australian Politics Down to the Year 1915 (1918). He was called to the bar in October of 1918 and lectured in law at St. Andrew’s College within the University of Sydney. In March of 1923, he joined the Faculty of Law as lecturer in legal interpretation. His legal scholarship was established by the publication in 1923 of Conveyancing Precedents and Forms, which remains a standard text on land law in New South Wales.

Evatt had written for labor journals since 1917, and his legal career included early entry into the highest levels of industrial law. His reputation grew as his practice came to include appearances before the High Court of Australia on constitutional matters and questions of tort, equity, and defamation. His political career began in earnest when the Labor Party selected him to run for the Sydney seat of Balmain in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1925. He held this seat for the next five years, during which he not only was an active member of the New South Wales Parliamentary Labor Party in its stormiest times but also maintained a busy practice at the bar. He became a King’s Counsel in 1929 and appeared before the Privy Council in London.

In 1930, the Federal Labor government appointed Evatt to be a justice of the High Court of Australia. The next ten years saw Evatt write numerous significant judgments for the High Court bench. When in dissent on vital constitutional matters, Evatt was, on several occasions, supported on appeal by the Law Lords sitting in the Privy Council. The 1930’s was also the period of his greatest scholastic output. He published The King and His Dominion Governors (1936), a classic text on the royal prerogative, as well as Injustice Within the Law: A Study of the Case of the Dorsetshire Laborers (1937), Rum Rebellion: A Study of the Overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps (1938), and Australian Labor Leader: The Story of W. A. Holman and the Labor Movement (1940).

In 1939, Australia entered World War II . By 1940, it had become apparent to Evatt that Robert Gordon Menzies’ government, which seemed oblivious to the threat from the Japanese, could not effectively lead Australia’s war effort. On August 27, 1940, the executive of the Australian Labor Party invited Evatt to stand for the seat of Barton, in Sydney. He became the first High Court justice to resign to reenter politics and won the seat, which had been held by the United Australia Party for eight years. Once in federal Parliament, Evatt worked hard for the forming of a Labor government in the face of a fragmented Parliament. When unity was achieved in October of 1941, Evatt was made attorney general and minister for external affairs.

After the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin, Evatt traveled frequently to Washington and London at great personal risk. He persuaded the Allies to modify their policy of “beat Hitler first” and to see the defense of Australia as central to the war effort. He was the first Australian minister for external affairs to represent Australia’s interests to the United States independently of Great Britain.

As the war drew to a close, Evatt led the Australian delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. There, he worked tirelessly for the cause of the small to middle powers, especially to define the right of veto by the permanent members of the Security Council, thereby preventing the domination of the General Assembly by the great powers. He also was successful in drafting significant sections of the statute of the International Court of Justice. A special resolution was passed at the last meeting of the steering committee that praised Evatt as “the greatest champion of the small Powers.” After the war, Evatt represented Australia at the Paris Peace Conference and the British Commonwealth Conference on the Japanese Peace Treaty.

At the United Nations, Evatt led the Australian delegation from 1946 to 1948 and in the latter year was president of the United Nations Assembly. He was instrumental in the drafting and passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During that time, he also published Australia in World Affairs (1946) and The United Nations: An Account of the Formation and Development of the United Nations Organization (1948).

On the defeat of the Labor government in 1949 and the subsequent death of its leader, Joseph Benedict Chifley, in 1951, Evatt, deputy prime minister from 1946 to 1949, became leader of the parliamentary Labor Party and leader of the opposition. He led the successful fight against the Menzies government’s attempts to outlaw the Communist Party in 1951. Despite the accusations of his critics, his object was to prevent the erosion of civil liberties, rather than promoting communism, to which he was opposed.

The Labor Party was unsuccessful, by narrow margins, in the elections contested with Evatt as its leader in 1954 and 1957. The first was marked by the so-called Petrov affair, which involved the defection of an alleged Soviet spy and the release of documents accusing certain Australians, some of Evatt’s staff among them, of spying for the communists. Evatt defended the rights of those accused before the subsequent Royal Commission, which found that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone. Still, the Labor Party’s image was damaged. The second election occurred as Menzies’ Liberal government took advantage of the splitting of Roman Catholics from the Labor Party to form the Democratic Labor Party. Evatt was unable to avoid the split and indeed has been accused by some critics of precipitating the break by not accommodating the interests of the powerful Catholic Industrial Groups.

Although he was still active, Evatt’s health, which had periodically failed him, was preventing him from pursuing the tireless schedule to which he was accustomed. In February of 1960, he resigned as leader of the Labor Party and took an appointment as chief justice of New South Wales, a position that he held until his death, at the age of seventy-one. The only honor written on his tombstone is the one he valued most, “President of the United Nations Assembly.”

Significance

Despite his numerous defenses of the civil rights of communists and other radicals, Evatt himself was dedicated to the parliamentary system as the means to redress the social imbalances that he saw in Australia. He viewed international law as the means to peace and prosperity on the world scale. An enigmatic combination of realism and idealism, he did not see the United Nations as the immediate means to world government but rather a step toward a peaceful world society.

For Australians, Evatt established an independent place in world affairs and gave his country a prominence far greater then its small population seemingly warranted. His staunch defense of human rights, both civil and economic, was often brave in the face of national temerity, and he was frequently ahead of his time. Many question the political astuteness of some of his later decisions, particularly in connection with the Petrov affair and the Labor Party split. Few question the ethical correctness and legal validity of his actions. Even his opponents recognized his brilliance and scholarship. Evatt was an Australian nationalist when many Australians still saw themselves as part of the British Empire. The first intellectual to lead the Australian Labor Party, Evatt left a legacy of practical idealism, both in the domestic and international spheres.

Bibliography

Crockett, Peter. Evatt: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A 388-page biography of Evatt the statesman and politician.

Dalziel, Alan. Evatt the Enigma. Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1967. A personal account by a member of Evatt’s staff. Attempts to come to terms with the seeming contradictions in Evatt’s personality. Highly readable but very favorable to its subject.

Day, David, ed. Brave New World: Dr. H. V. Evatt and Australian Foreign Policy, 1941-1949. Portland, Oreg.: International Specialized Book Services, for University of Queensland Press, 1996. A brief historical work that examines Evatt’s influence on Australian foreign policy during and immediately after World War II.

Harper, N., and D. C. Sissons. Australia and the United Nations. New York: Manhattan Publishing, 1959. A historical account of Australia’s role in the formation and early operation of the United Nations organization. Much information about Evatt’s pivotal role.

Mandel, Daniel. H. V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2004. Chronicles Evatt’s involvement in the United Nation’s decision to partition Palestine, which led to the establishment of Israel.

Santamaria, B. A. Against the Tide. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1981. The autobiography of the leader of the Catholic Industrial Groups, a large portion of which is devoted to the Labor split and Evatt’s role. Highly critical of Evatt and should be read to give balance.

Tennant, Kylie. Evatt: Politics and Justice. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1970. An extraordinarily detailed and heavily researched work that sometimes loses readers in its nonchronological digressions. Adjudged by some to be the best work on Evatt, it treats him most kindly.

Whitlam, N., and J. Stubbs. Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1985. A detailed examination of the Petrov affair that supports Evatt’s position. Makes interesting comparisons between the lives of Evatt and Menzies.