Stan Keon

Stan Keon
Member of the Australian Parliament for Yarra
In office 10 December 1949 – 10 December 1955
Preceded by	James Scullin
Succeeded by	Jim Cairns
Personal details
Born	Horace Stanley Keon (1915-07-02)2 July 1915 Melbourne, Victoria
Died	22 January 1987(1987-01-22) (aged 71)
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Labor (1949–1955) Labor (A-C) (1955–1957) DLP (1957–)

Standish Michael Keon (2 July 1915 – 22 January 1987) was an Australian politician who represented the Australian Labor Party in the Federal Parliament from 1949 to 1955, having served previously in the State Parliament of Victoria.

Early life

He was the third surviving son of Australian-born parents, Philip Tobyn Keon, a lorry driver, and his wife, Jane (née Scott). His Christian names were registered as Horace Stanley; Horace being the name of a brother who had died the previous year. He attended Roman Catholic schools in East Melbourne and Richmond, and later won a scholarship to attend Xavier College, but couldn't attend due to reduced family circumstances, which compelled him to start working at the age of 12.

Political career

Keon's November 1945 election to the electoral district of Richmond in the Victorian Parliament followed a bitter pre-selection contest between supporters of the political machine of John Wren, on one hand, and the "Catholic Social Studies Movement" of B. A. Santamaria, on the other.

Keon won the House of Representatives seat of Yarra at the 1949 federal election, succeeding former Prime Minister James Scullin. Keon himself was widely seen as a future Prime Minister. In 1955, he and six other Victorian federal members were expelled from the Labor Party as a result of the split in the party caused by the controversy surrounding the role of Industrial Groups within the ALP. In April 1955, the seven expelled Labor parliamentarians became founding members of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), which was renamed the Democratic Labor Party in 1957. Keon became the deputy leader of the new party in federal parliament under Bob Joshua.

Keon was narrowly defeated in Yarra by the Labor candidate, Jim Cairns; all of the other Labor defectors were defeated as well. He made four subsequent but unsuccessful attempts to vanquish Cairns at succeeding federal elections. He eventually had a spectacular falling-out with his controversial one-time ally Santamaria. Keon also unsuccessfully contested a 1978 state by-election in Ballarat Province for the DLP.

 

Further reading

• Abate, Tony (1994). A man of principle? : a political biography of Standish Michael Keon (PDF) (M.A. thesis). Victoria University of Technology.
• Macintyre, Stuart; Strangio, Paul (2004). "'Young, Ambitious and Eager': Stan Keon and the Victorian Public Service Association". Labour History (87). Liverpool University Press: 167–186. doi:10.2307/27516004.