The restless ambition of James Ford Cairns took him from a modest background to Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. After his astonishing downfall he went on to preach sexual freedom and love as the basis of social change, continuing to baffle and enrage a nation that for a long time had been divided between distrust of him and hero worship. From his conservative days as a clerk and athlete, then Special Branch detective, Jim Cairns rose to lead the historic marches against the Vietnam war and to give protest a respectable face.
But there were those who saw him as a traitor, authoritarian behind the facade of peace, and a man easily flattered by those he saw as important.
This book penetrates Cairn's psychological defences. It traces a career that was accompanied by triumph, scandal, vilification, isolation and the outrage of his Labor supporters. His fundamental personal changes came when he was made Treasurer, and Junie Morosi, strong and and beautiful, entered his life and unzipped him emotionally.
Never afraid to take an unpopular course, Cairns followed his causes to the end. This quality, which so distinguished him as a man, crippled him as a politician.