Battle of the Banks

A Labor Government’s campaign to nationalise the Australian banking system in the 1950s caused a great political storm, fully examined and well told in this book. After the Second World War, the Australian Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley embarked on a radical plan to replace the banking system with a single national bank, igniting a broad wave of resistance. The banking industry launched media campaigns, legal challenges and coast-to-coast protests to defeat the move. Opposition Leader Robert Menzies and the new Liberal Party opposed the takeover, harnessing the fury over bank nationalisation to win the first in a series of election triumphs that lasted almost a quarter of a century. This book is the story of the politicians, media magnates, ad men, feminists, community activists and bank clerks who contested the planned changes to Australian banking.