Labor Split and The National Civic Council
In 1954 Evatt publicly blamed "the Groupers" for Labor's defeat in that year's federal election, and after a tumultuous National Conference in Hobart in 1955, Santamaria's parliamentary followers were expelled from the Labor Party. The resulting split (now usually called "The Split", although there have been several other "splits" in Labor history) brought down the Labor government of John Cain senior in Victoria.
In Victoria, Mannix strongly supported Santamaria, but in New South Wales, Norman Thomas Gilroy opposed him, favouring the traditional alliance between the Church and Labor. Gilroy's influence in Rome ended official Church support for the Movement as well as, reportedly, Mannix's chances to be elevated to the Cardinalate.
Santamaria founded a new organisation no longer an organ of Catholic Action, the National Civic Council (NCC), and edited its newspaper, News Weekly, for many years. His followers, known as Groupers, continued to control a number of important unions. Those expelled from the Labor Party formed a new party, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), dedicated to opposing both Communism and the Labor Party, which they said was controlled by Communist sympathisers. Santamaria never joined the DLP but was one of its guiding influences.
Read more about this topic: B. A. Santamaria
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