B. A. Santamaria: a true believer?

By revisiting the existing scholarship deeding with Santamaria's career and legacy, as well as his own writings, this article explores the apparent tension between the standard historical view that Santamaria attempted to impose an essentially 'alien philosophy' on the Labor Party, and the proposition articulated upon his death that he moved in a similar ideological orbit to the traditions of the Australian labour movement. It concludes that, while there were occasional points of ideological intersection between Santamaria and Australian laborism, his inability to transcend the particular religious imperatives which underpinned his thought and action rendered'him incompatible with that movement. It is equally misleading to locate him in the Catholic tradition. Instead, the key to unlocking his motives and behaviour was that he was a Catholic anti-Modernist opposed not only to materialist atheism but also to religious and political liberalism. It is in this sense that he was 'alien'both to labor ism, the majorityofthe Australian Catholic laity and much of the clergy.