Labor Party History
- Tree of Knowledge - Barcaldine - Labour Leagues - Chris Watson - Andrew Fisher - James Scullin - John Curtin - Ben Chifley - Gough Whitlam - Gough Whitlam - Paul Keating -
|
|
 Hon Chris Watson, first Labor Prime Minister of Australia 1904
|
No exact date can be given for the founding of the Australian Labor Party, originating as it did from the various colonial labour movements. Labour Leagues and similar electoral organisations existed in New South Wales and Queensland from 1889 when the first meeting of the new Australian Labour Federation was held in Brisbane.
Delegates from 10 Australian trade unions attended the inaugural meeting, however organisers expressed the hope that the ALF will ultimately represent all major unions in the country. Leading newspaper journalist of the day, William Lane was instrumental in setting up the ALF. He also played a key role in the establishment of the Brisbane Trades and Labour Council.
Party mythology says the first Labor branch was founded at a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree (the "Tree of Knowledge") in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party also claims to be the oldest in Australia.
The party, as a serious electoral force, dates from 1891 in New South Wales under the name of the Labour Electoral League. It won 36 seats in that year's general election.
With large Labour representation in Parliament for the first time, the Trades and Labour Council endorsed candidates have pledged to serve the interests of workers all over the colony. The league’s success in NSW followed another victory in the SA election the previous month in which Labour candidates had won three seats.
Members of the league were required to accept the political platform drawn up by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades and Labour Council and endorsed by delegates of all NSW unions. Their main policies of electoral reform included the abolition of plural voting; free compulsory and technical education for all; a maximum eight-hour working day and a Workshop and Factories Act to prohibit the system of ‘sweating’ and provide for the appointment of representative working men as inspectors.
They are also calling for the repeal of the Masters and Servants Act; establishment of a Department of Labour; election of magistrates; Federation of Australian colonies; and the abolition of the present defence force in favour of a purely voluntary military force. In summary, the league stands for ‘any measure which will secure for the wage-earner fair and equitable return for his or her labour’.
In 1899, Anderson Dawson formed a minority Labour government in Queensland, the first in the world, which lasted one week.
After Federation, the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (informally known as the Caucus) first met on the 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first Federal Parliament. This is now taken as the founding date of the federal Labor Party, but it was some years before there was any significant structure or organisation at a national level. (The formal name Australian Labour Party was adopted in 1908, with the American spelling of "Labor" adopted from 1912.)
The ALP during its early years was distinguished by its rapid growth and success at a national level, first forming a minority national government under Chris Watson in April 1904, and forming its first majority government under Andrew Fisher in 1910. The state branches were also successful, except in Victoria, where the strength of Deakinite liberalism inhibited the party's growth. The first majority Labor state governments were formed in New South Wales and South Australia in 1910, in Western Australia in 1911 and in Queensland in 1915. Such success eluded equivalent social democratic and labour parties in other countries for many years.
One of the party's early innovations was the establishment of a federal arbitration system for the resolution of industrial disputes, which formed the basis of the industrial relations system for many decades.
The party was historically committed to socialist economic policies, but this term was never clearly defined, and no Labor government ever attempted to implement "socialism" in any serious sense. Labor supported national wage fixing and a strong welfare system, it did not nationalise private enterprise. The single exception to this was Ben Chifley's attempt to nationalise the private banks in the 1940s, but this was ruled unconstitutional by the High Court of Australia. The commitment to nationalisation was dropped by Gough Whitlam.
In the 1970s and beyond, the party, through the efforts of Gough Whitlam and his supporters within the party, gave up its theoretical commitment to socialism and became a social democratic party. (Some references to democratic socialism still remain in the party's constitution, but they are generally regarded as a relic). Indeed, during the 1980s the party was responsible for the introduction of many economic policies such as privatisation of government enterprises (such as the Commonwealth Bank, which was itself established by an earlier Labor government), and deregulation of many previously tightly-controlled industries, which are normally the province of conservative governments.
From its formation until the 1950s Labor and its affiliated unions were the strongest defenders of the White Australia Policy, which banned all non-European migration to Australia. This policy was partly motivated by 19th-century theories about "racial purity" (shared by most Australians at this time), and partly by fears of economic competition from low-wage labour. In practice the party opposed all migration, on the grounds that immigrants competed with Australian workers and drove down wages, until after World War II, when the Chifley government launched a major immigration program. The party's opposition to non-European immigration did not change until after the retirement of Arthur Calwell as leader in 1967. Subsequently Labor has become an advocate of multiculturalism, although some of its trade union base and some of its members continue to oppose high immigration levels.
Labor splits
The Labor Party has suffered three major splits:
In 1915 over the the issue of conscription during the First World War. Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes supported the introduction of conscription, while the majority of his colleagues in the ALP and trade union movement opposed it. After failing to gain majority support for conscription in two national plebiscites which bitterly divided the country in the process, Hughes and his followers were expelled from the Labor Party. He formed the Nationalist Party of Australia in alliance with the conservatives and remained Prime Minister until 1923.
In 1931 over economic issues revolving around how best to handle the Great Depression. The ALP was essentially split three ways, between those who believed in radical policies such as NSW Premier Jack Lang, who wanted to repudiate Australia's debt to British bondholders; proto-Keynesians such as federal Treasurer Ted Theodore; and believers in orthodox finance such as Prime Minister James Scullin and a senior minister in his government, Joseph Lyons. In 1931 Lyons left the party and joined the conservatives, forming the United Australia Party as successors to the Nationalists and becoming Prime Minister in 1932.
The 1954 split on communism. During the 1950s the issue of communism and support for communist causes or governments caused great internal conflict in the Labor party and the trade union movement in general. During the 1950s, staunchly anti-Communist Roman Catholic members (Catholics being an important traditional support base) became suspicious of Communist infiltration of unions and formed Industrial Groups to gain control of them, fostering intense internal conflict. After Labor's loss of the 1954 election, federal leader Dr H.V. Evatt blamed subversive activities of the "Groupers" for the defeat. After bitter public dispute many Groupers were expelled from the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) whose intellectual leader was B.A. Santamaria. The DLP was heavily influenced by Catholic social teaching and had the support of the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix. The DLP's preferences helped the Liberal Party of Australia remain in power for almost two decades but it was successfully undermined by the Whitlam Labor Government during the 1970s and ceased to exist as a federal parliamentary party after the 1974 election.
The Labor Party served as a development ground for several conservative leaders. Conservative Prime Ministers Joseph Cook, Billy Hughes and Joseph Lyons were all ex-members of the Labor Party, with both Hughes and Lyons holding very senior positions in the party (Prime Minister and Premier respectively). Non-Labor premiers such as William Holman also began their careers in the Labor Party.