How can an author frame the life of a paradoxical historical character, particularly one who has almost slipped out of Australian public consciousness? Author Gideon Haigh noted the issue in the first chapter of his book The Brilliant Boy: Doc Evatt and the Great Australian Experiment.
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United Nations photograph.
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L] HV Evatt, C] Ben Chifley and R] Clement Attlee
Dominion and British Leaders Conference, London, 1946
Wiki
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Gideon Haigh's book (2021)
Min of External Affairs and Attorney General Dr Evatt, with P.M Winston Churchill
10 Downing St May 1942.
Nat Library Australia
In this clever narrative, Haigh resurrected his hero by focusing first on a private tragedy in a Jewish migrant family in Sydney 1937. In 2019 Haigh was reading the transcript of a 1938 hearing in the NSW Supreme Court, the accidental death of a child which precipitated one of the most divisive, historically significant cases in Australia’s High Court.
Herbert Vere Evatt (1894–1965) was a brilliant barrister and Justice of the High Court of Australia who breathed life into the Interwar migrant experience, Jewish extended family life and Council responsibilities. Note the terrible psychological trauma on the dead child’s mother Golda Chester, from a market town Lowicz in the Polish Pale of Settlement. A 7-year-old Max Chester (his mother’s brilliant boy, see book title) drowned in a waterfilled trench near the house, which had been left unfenced by council workers. The family sued the Waverley Council and when the matter wound its way to the High Court, Evatt was one of the judges who ruled on the complex case. Evatt’s lengthy judgment became a watershed in Australian legal history, although it was a dissenting judgment. Mother Golda Chester suicided.
Herbert was also born in a family who knew trauma and grief. His dad died of rheumatic fever in 1901, and 4 of HV’s 7 brothers died of typhoid or in WWI trenches. Herbert tried to enlist in WW1 but was rejected because of poor vision. His brothers filled the men-of-action role, while Herbert was his mother’s precocious boy, driven by his own ambition AND his mother’s. Note he got his Doctor of Laws in 1924.
It was quickly clear that Haigh’s book was no saintly biography. In 1930s-Australia, Evatt was an intellectual powerhouse; the youngest judge on the High Court bench, broadly cultured, a writer and patron of the arts. But he had also a endless hunger for praise and laurels. Flawed, of course, but was that so unusual?
Later in the book Haigh adjusted his lens to capture the extraordinary life, political experience and legal legacy of Dr Evatt. Evatt’s tumultuous political career was outside the scope of this book, although it offered much about the political and intellectual influences that informed Evatt’s jurisprudence, and his social attitudes.
Haigh’s task was to allow a judge/politician, in all his prodigious ability and frailty, to emerge from the political propaganda and public amnesia, and to critique Australian complacency and deficiency of human empathy, again!
Read the brutal Australian response to Jewish refugees in 1938 at the Evian Conference. The Conservatives were in power then, but you will see the relevance to Labour’s Evatt shortly. The legal basis for Australia’s wartime internment policy was the National Security Act 1939, which allowed the government to issue regulations empowering authorities to control nationals of countries at war with Australia. The internment of enemy aliens went ahead, under the new PM Robert Menzies. The prisoners included Jewish refugees directly from Eastern Europe or those escaping Nazism via internment camps in UK on the Dunera etc.
In this clever narrative, Haigh resurrected his hero by focusing first on a private tragedy in a Jewish migrant family in Sydney 1937. In 2019 Haigh was reading the transcript of a 1938 hearing in the NSW Supreme Court, the accidental death of a child which precipitated one of the most divisive, historically significant cases in Australia’s High Court.
Herbert Vere Evatt (1894–1965) was a brilliant barrister and Justice of the High Court of Australia who breathed life into the Interwar migrant experience, Jewish extended family life and Council responsibilities. Note the terrible psychological trauma on the dead child’s mother Golda Chester, from a market town Lowicz in the Polish Pale of Settlement. A 7-year-old Max Chester (his mother’s brilliant boy, see book title) drowned in a waterfilled trench near the house, which had been left unfenced by council workers. The family sued the Waverley Council and when the matter wound its way to the High Court, Evatt was one of the judges who ruled on the complex case. Evatt’s lengthy judgment became a watershed in Australian legal history, although it was a dissenting judgment. Mother Golda Chester suicided.
Herbert was also born in a family who knew trauma and grief. His dad died of rheumatic fever in 1901, and 4 of HV’s 7 brothers died of typhoid or in WWI trenches. Herbert tried to enlist in WW1 but was rejected because of poor vision. His brothers filled the men-of-action role, while Herbert was his mother’s precocious boy, driven by his own ambition AND his mother’s. Note he got his Doctor of Laws in 1924.
It was quickly clear that Haigh’s book was no saintly biography. In 1930s-Australia, Evatt was an intellectual powerhouse; the youngest judge on the High Court bench, broadly cultured, a writer and patron of the arts. But he had also a endless hunger for praise and laurels. Flawed, of course, but was that so unusual?
Later in the book Haigh adjusted his lens to capture the extraordinary life, political experience and legal legacy of Dr Evatt. Evatt’s tumultuous political career was outside the scope of this book, although it offered much about the political and intellectual influences that informed Evatt’s jurisprudence, and his social attitudes.
Haigh’s task was to allow a judge/politician, in all his prodigious ability and frailty, to emerge from the political propaganda and public amnesia, and to critique Australian complacency and deficiency of human empathy, again!
Read the brutal Australian response to Jewish refugees in 1938 at the Evian Conference. The Conservatives were in power then, but you will see the relevance to Labour’s Evatt shortly. The legal basis for Australia’s wartime internment policy was the National Security Act 1939, which allowed the government to issue regulations empowering authorities to control nationals of countries at war with Australia. The internment of enemy aliens went ahead, under the new PM Robert Menzies. The prisoners included Jewish refugees directly from Eastern Europe or those escaping Nazism via internment camps in UK on the Dunera etc.
L] Dr Evatt and R] Anthony Eden the UK Foreign Secretary,
examining documents in San Francisco, 1945. United Nations photograph.
From my perspective, Doc Evatt’s later decades were even more influential. When Labour came to power under P.M John Curtin in 1941, Evatt became Attorney-General and later Foreign Minister. He was Labour’s Deputy Leader/Deputy PM after the 1946 election, under the leadership of Ben Chifley. And from 1951–1960 he was Leader of the Labour Opposition during the long ascendancy of his great rival Robert Menzies, Australia’s most famous prime minister. Yet Evatt was already a public intellectual, confident advocate and outspoken opinion-maker. It helped to explain Evatt's valiant defence of liberty and democracy in fighting off the 1950 vote to ban Communism in Australia. Where in Australia are commitments to democracy now?
Dr Evatt’s humanitarian and internationalist values helped in the creation of the United Nations from 1945 on. Then he served brilliantly on the Preparatory Commission of the U.N, Security Council, Atomic Energy Commission and Commission for Conventional Armaments. From Nov 1946, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister represented his country in the Pacific Council, British War Cabinet, Council of Foreign Ministers in the Paris Peace Conference, British Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, Far-Eastern Commission and he was President of the South Pacific Regional Conference.
Dr Evatt’s humanitarian and internationalist values helped in the creation of the United Nations from 1945 on. Then he served brilliantly on the Preparatory Commission of the U.N, Security Council, Atomic Energy Commission and Commission for Conventional Armaments. From Nov 1946, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister represented his country in the Pacific Council, British War Cabinet, Council of Foreign Ministers in the Paris Peace Conference, British Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, Far-Eastern Commission and he was President of the South Pacific Regional Conference.
Dominion and British Leaders Conference, London, 1946
Wiki
Evatt was famously the only Australian President of the UN General Assembly, presiding over the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation of human rights across the modern world. Thankfully for the Jews who survived the Holocaust, Evatt was instrumental in the foundation of Israel in 1947-8. Despite Australia’s anti-Semitism at the 1938 Evian Conference and the internment camps for Jewish refugees in Australia in 1940, Australian Jews are still beholden to Dr Evatt’s memory today.
HV’s family were also famous. Brother Clive Evatt (1900-84) was a very successful barrister and Labour politician. In 1976 niece Elizabeth Evatt became the first Chief Judge of the Family Court of Australia & then President of the Australian Law Reform Commission. Niece architect Penelope Evatt Seidler was a member of National Gallery of Australia Council & wife of Australia’s best known architect, Austrian born and trained Harry Seidler.
HV’s family were also famous. Brother Clive Evatt (1900-84) was a very successful barrister and Labour politician. In 1976 niece Elizabeth Evatt became the first Chief Judge of the Family Court of Australia & then President of the Australian Law Reform Commission. Niece architect Penelope Evatt Seidler was a member of National Gallery of Australia Council & wife of Australia’s best known architect, Austrian born and trained Harry Seidler.
The review of the book came from Morag Fraser while the review of the man came from my late grandfather.