Slow sale
Cartoon by John Frith
The Sydney Morning Herald, November 1949
Courtesy of the National Library of Australia
Still reeling from the backlash over both the bank nationalisation issue and the coal miner’s strike, the Chifley Labor Government had to fight an election in 1949. Chifley’s opponent was former Prime Minister and leader of the recently formed Liberal Party of Australia, Robert Menzies.
When John Frith met a young Menzies in the 1930s he had observed:
“Any face less caricaturable would have been no face at all…there was simply no feature which lent itself to any form of exaggeration. Even the eyebrows gave no clue that they would eventually become the hallmark of the man…The resultant caricature was one of my early failures. Time, and his matured eyebrows, would compensate for this.”
John Frith, c.1975
Menzies argued for the principle of free enterprise, whereas Chifley maintained an emphasis upon socialism. On December 10, voters cast their opinion resoundingly in favour of the Liberal Party. For the next 17 years the face of Robert Menzies would regularly feature on John Frith’s drawing board.
