Banking and bank nationalism, 1941-1952

Component identifier:

Subseries 48-2

Content Summary:

Like most of Chifley's critics, Hughes regarded his Bank Act (1947) as part of a wider trend towards the complete socialisation of Australian life through the maintenance of war-time controls beyond 1945. The papers gathered have reflected this thinking and document some of the opposition to the Act. (Protest letters to Hughes are in Series 30 and 47).

There are leaflets and circulars of the Western Suburbs Voters' Policy Association, the People's Union (Non-Party), the Sound Finance League of Australia, the Sydney Women's Protest Movement, the Institute of Public Affairs (NSW), the Constitutional League, Associated Banks (Victoria) and the United Bank Officers' Association of New South Wales.

Other items include leaflets from the 1947 'Demand for referendum' campaign, Liberal Party notes circulated by its Research Officer R. J. Willoughby, pamphlets by W. C. Wentworth and L. J. McConnan, speech notes and texts of speeches and broadcasts, statistics, reports and newscuttings.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The W. M. Hughes Papers were presented to the National Library of Australia by Dame Mary Hughes in 1953. The collection was received in two consignments. One consisted of papers taken from the Perpetual Trustee Company comprising material from Hughes' Lindfield home and from his office rooms at the Commonwealth Offices, Sydney; the other came directly from Lindfield. Lists of the contents of both consignments are held in the Library's Manuscript Branch. With the agreement of the executors and the Library, much of the collection, was for a time, held at the Australian National University by Fitzhardinge. He was permitted sole access to the collection while writing the biography Hughes commissioned in 1951. Fitzhardinge's own papers documenting the writing of the biography are also held by the Library (MS 5400). The papers transferred to the Library in 1953 are by no means the total collection of Hughes' personal papers, although it is impossible to say what proportion has survived. (see Fitzhardinge, p.936).

Names:

Hughes, W. M. (1862-1952)

Contents

Access and use