Democratic Labor Party (historical)

The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was an Australian political party. The party came into existence following the 1955 Labor split as the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), was renamed the Democratic Labor Party in 1957 and continued to exist until 1978.

The Democratic Labor Party (Anti-Communist) was formed as a result of a split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) which began in 1954. The split was between the party's national leadership, under the then party leader Dr Evatt, and the majority of the Victorian branch, which was dominated by a faction composed largely of ideologically driven anti-Communist Catholics. Many ALP members during the Cold War period, most but not all Catholics, became alarmed at what they saw as the growing power of the Communist Party within Australia's trade unions. These members formed units within the unions called Industrial Groups to combat this alleged infiltration.

The DLP was mostly, although not exclusively, a party of Catholics of Irish descent.Some of its parliamentarians and a significant minority of its voters were non-Catholics. Journalist Don Whitington argued in 1964 that the DLP, as a basically sectarian party, was a most dangerous and distasteful force in Australian politics. Whitington observed that the party was backed by influential sections of the Roman Catholic Church, and that although the party professed to exist primarily to combat communism, it had less commendable reasons behind its coming into being. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, was a DLP supporter, as were other influential clerics.

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