Iron Law No More : The Rise and Demise of the Catholic-Labor Alliance in Australia by Jeff Kildea

Paperback, 276 Pages, $39.95

May 2026 release

ISBN 9781923568730

Iron Law No More: The Rise and Demise of the Catholic-Labor Alliance in Australia by Jeff Kildea, Honorary Professor in Irish Studies at the University of New South Wales

It was once an iron law of Australian politics that the only way for a Catholic to participate and succeed in public life was through the Labor Party because the non-Labor side of politics was a closed shop and Catholics need not apply. Today, Catholics are as numerous and well placed in the Coalition parties as they are in the Labor Party, if not more so. Iron Law No More examines how and why the Catholic-Labor alliance emerged in the early twentieth century, how it led in the 1940s to Labor governments in which more than half the caucus and the cabinet were Catholics, and the reasons for its demise in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It also looks at the exceptions who proved the rule, the handful of Catholics, such as John Cramer and Phillip Lynch, who, despite the iron law, succeeded in the non-Labor parties, when so many others could not.