The 'Annus' Mirabilis of a Subdued Radical: Joseph Lyons in 1931

The thirty-year political career (from 1909 to 1939) of Australia's tenth prime minister, Joseph Lyons, is one of the more underestimated in that catalogue. The Liberals fail to regard him as one of their own, in their cultivated ignorance of conservative political leaders before Menzies, and Labor has its own pantheon - Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, and now, according to Rudd's address to the 2009 ALP national conference, the long-neglected Fisher. This collection necessarily excludes heretics like Lyons, who to many on that side of politics remains the 'Judas' that he was branded in March 1931 when he abandoned Labor.