By ALEX MITCHELL
BOB CARR'S reputation as a historian with encyclopaedic knowledge of the Labor Party has taken a self-inflicted hit.
The former premier has just discovered that during the Cold War there were Labor Party members who simultaneously held secret membership of the Communist Party.
This is a ''bombshell'', according to Carr in an article in The Australian last Monday.
''The implications are huge,'' he wrote breathlessly. ''The revelation of dual membership is rich in implications. They recast the political history of Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s.''
What is a sensational ''revelation'' to Carr has been common knowledge to most senior ALP members for the past half a century. If he wanted to know the ''comms'' in the ALP, he should have picked up the phone and called his mates - ''Richo'' (Graham Richardson), ''Della'' (John Della Bosca) or any other right-wing headkicker. They all knew.
It is a matter of historical record that the CP planted undercover comrades in the ALP to argue for ''progressive'' policies and for trade unionism and to counter the influence of the ''groupers'', the right-wing Catholic faction and the party's drift to the right.
Their influence was negligible and they failed to stop Labor's rightward lurch in NSW and federally. Carr claimed the dual membership infiltration ''vindicates the decision of a large part of Catholic Australia to veto the election of federal Labor governments by voting for the breakaway Democratic Labor Party after the Labor split of 1955''.
He also said the reputations of the Labor leaders H.V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell had been ''demeaned'' and gratuitously suggested Gough Whitlam be recognised as a virulent ''anti-communist'', which he wasn't. (E.G. is 94 today - happy birthday from a lifelong admirer).
Carr concluded triumphantly that ''the whole ALP right is elevated'' by the defeat of the left and that an honour roll should be created for those who kept that ALP from falling into the hands of ''Marxist-Leninists and outright Soviet agents''.
Carr began his political career fighting the left and it was a pre-occupation throughout his premiership when perhaps his focus should have been on providing transport, education and health infrastructure.
He succeeded in keeping the ''comms'' at bay but he was less successful with the poker machine manufacturers, publicans, developers, the registered club industry and the predatory boardrooms of the banks and insurance companies.
In any high school history exam, his revisionist article would probably earn a D minus.