His efforts in denouncing socialism, attacking the labour movement, breaking strikes, organising anti-Soviet Eastern European émigrés, supporting Australia's military commitment to the Vietnam War, and championing non-communist Taiwan, established Darby's reputation as a powerful right-wing ideologue.
Instead, having studied at the University of Sydney and having graduated with a Bachelor of Economics in 1938, he was seconded from primary teaching to the Youth Section of the Federal Department of Labour and Industry, to work as a vocational officer.
[3] Representing Prime Minister Menzies' "forgotten people" in post-war Manly, Darby proved a strong advocate for his middle-class seaside constituency, and his advocacy of conservative moral values and individual liberty and his opposition to communism became the hallmarks of his career.
[3][4] A year after winning Manly for the Liberal Party,[2] Darby attempted to break a 24-hour tram and bus strike in his electorate, seeing the Tramways Union as part of Labor's "servile state".
Darby's preoccupation with the communist menace, and success of his "interventions", encouraged him to mount 'Operation Potato' in March 1947, after 6,000 Sydney waterside workers "refused to convert to a 53-hour week again", and he used volunteers to unload food ships under police protection.
[3] As the Cold War conflict intensified, Darby began to make his mark as an anti-communist, believing that the "Free World" was threatened "by Soviet Communist tyranny and its agents worldwide".
His contacts with European émigrés escaping communist regimes in the postwar period led to him becoming the founding president of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales in 1959.
[2] Darby married fellow teacher Esme Jean McKenzie in 1941 and moved to the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly in 1951, before purchasing "Whitehall",[7] at nearby 37 White Street, Balgowlah in 1953 where he spent the rest of his life.