To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government, the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History held a conference in November 2025 at the Victorian Trades Hall, Melbourne: ‘The Spirit of 1975: Transformations in Australian Labour History’. At the conference, I gave a paper entitled ‘The Damage was done: the demise of the Catholic-ALP Alliance’. In the paper I examine the influence of the Democratic Labor Party and its anti-communist crusade on the demise of the Catholic-Labor alliance. This alliance, which had applied for most of the twentieth century, was in decline by the time the Whitlam government was dismissed.