Author(s): Blanche D'Alpuget

Australian History / Politics/Current Affairs

Robert James Lee Hawke is one of the great men of Australian public life and his story makes compelling reading. Blanche d'Alpuget's sensitivity and psychological insight into Hawke's early years reveal how the son of devout Christian parents was reared to public duty and to the ambition of political leadership. Known throughout his life as a tireless campaigner for workers' rights and a man of wild personal habits, Hawke was a Rhodes Scholar, educated in three universities, before rejecting an academic career to commit himself to the trade union movement. As President of the ACTU from 1970 to 1980 he was a master negotiator and peacemaker in industrial life. He agitated for social and economic reforms, becoming a folk hero and the most popular Australian of his time. While he was President of the Australian Labor Party he sought to heal its wounds after the sacking of the Whitlam government; as the leader of Australia's unions he held back potentially violent industrial action over this most divisive issue. To unionists he was a giant killer; to some employers, a crypto-Communist bent upon their destruction. Hawke: The Early Years is an intimate portrait of a man of extraordinary achievements who struggles to overcome his drinking and philandering in order to rise to the highest office in Australia.