Race Mathews’s contributions to Australian government and public policy now get the full recognition they have long deserved in Iola Mathews’s splendid biography, Race Mathews: A Life in Politics, writes former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.
“Her book is about much more than Race’s very public achievements, but it really is an extraordinary record of accomplishment here that she records.
“A less public dimension to Race’s life than all of the roles I have described – though it wasn’t for want of trying to convert a private passion into more visible practical outcomes – has been his decades-long intellectual commitment, consistent with his socialist awakening in adolescence, to the principles of distributism.
“As Iola succinctly describes it, this is the theory, based originally on Catholic social justice thinking, that ownership of the means of production should be widely distributed, rather than concentrated in the hands of the state or a wealthy minority.
“Since his retirement from politics he has spent years on this project: researching, writing, and university teaching, aimed at achieving in Australia the retention and expansion of credit unions and mutual societies and, above all, the take-up on a significant scale of workers cooperatives on the Basque country’s Mondragon model.
“A huge amount of effort without, he ruefully acknowledges, a huge amount to show for it – other than not just one but two PhDs, and a book! – but such is the lot of visionaries: some flames are just harder than others to ignite,” Evans concludes.
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Gareth Evans, Celebrating Race Mathews (Pearls and Irritations)
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Iola Mathews, Race Mathews, A life in politics (Monash University Press)