government of Robert Menzies held a referendum to give the government the constitutional power to ban the Communist Party. Mannix surprised many of his supporters by opposing this, on the grounds that the bill was totalitarianism, which in his view was worse than communism: his may have been a decisive influence in the referendum's narrow defeat. This alliance with the Labor leader, H. V. Evatt, was short-lived. The Labor Party split again in 1954 over attitudes to Communism and the Cold War. Santamaria's supporters were expelled and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Mannix covertly supported the DLP and allowed many priests and religious to work openly for it. This involvement in politics was opposed by Cardinal Sir Norman Gilroy, Archbishop of Sydney, who worked with the Catholic Premier of New South Wales, Joseph Cahill, to hold together the Labor Party in that state, and also by the Vatican which, in 1957, ruled that the Movement should not interfere in politics. Rome appointed Archbishop Justin Simonds as coadjutor to Mannix – Simonds was widely seen as Rome's man in Melbourne. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Mannix spoke against the White Australia policy, which was in effect at the time. He described the policy as "crude" and said that Australia had much to learn from other races. In his opposition to the policy, Mannix stated in 1949 that "there is no colour bar in Australia". He continued his friendship with long time Irish leader, Éamon de Valera, with the two men continuing their correspondence when Mannix was aged 98 years. In 1960 Calwell became Labor leader and sought Mannix's support to bring about a reconciliation between Labor and the DLP, essential if the Menzies government was to be defeated. Some figures in the DLP supported this idea, but Mannix supported Santamaria in his resistance to such suggestions. The negotiations fell through and Menzies was re-elected in 1961. Mannix and Calwell became permanently estranged. By the 1960s the distinct identity of the Irish community in Melbourne was fading, and Irish Catholics were increasingly outnumbered by Italian, Croatian, Polish, Maltese and other postwar immigrant Catholic communities. Mannix, who turned 90 in 1954, remained active and in full authority, but he was no longer a central figure in the city's politics. He died suddenly on 7 November 1963, aged 99, while the archdiocese was preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday. He was buried