Within two years of Clark’s death, a succession of controversies engulfed his name. His work was defended vigorously by the Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating; attacked for rejecting British heritage by the Liberal parliamentarian David Kemp; and identified by his erstwhile student, the historian Geoffrey Blainey, as being the chief exemplar of ‘black armband history’ a charge taken up and expanded by John Howard.
His former publisher at Melbourne University Press, Peter Ryan, publicly disowned his work, claiming that he was ashamed to have published history of such poor quality. Ryan accused him of being a fraud. Three years later, in 1996, based on claims that quickly evaporated under scrutiny, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail alleged that Clark had acted as a covert ‘agent of influence’ on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Sydney Morning Herald (5 March 2007, repeats Ryan’s allegation. Despite the criticism that his writings and behaviour attracted, Clark made a significant and lasting contribution to Australia’s intellectual life and much of his work will stand the test of time. Paul Keating said of him, ‘More than any other Australian writer, he elevated Australian history to the point where all of us could say that the story of Australia was part of the universal story–uniquely Australian, but at every stage connected to the world beyond’
Clark’s life was framed by the ideological struggle that began with the Russian revolution in 1917 and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He also witnessed the gradual waning of the British connection in post-war Australia. Yet for all the controversies that have surrounded discussion of his legacy, his political allegiances have been largely misremembered. At various times throughout his life, he was embraced and reviled by both the left and right, and he frequently felt disillusioned with political systems of all kinds.
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