'A political ... as well as a propagandist movement': cultural politics and the rise of Fisher Labor.

Dyrenfurth, Nick

'[N]ever ... in the history of the world had a greater victory been achieved'. (1) So declared Ernest Farrar, Vice-President of the NSW Political Labor League, addressing a euphoric Sydney gathering in the aftermath of the April 1910 federal election. In simple electoral terms, Farrar was correct. Following its defeat of Alfred Deakin's 'Fusion', the Andrew Fisher-led Australian Labor Party (ALP) became the first party of its type to hold national office in its own right anywhere on earth.

Federal Labor previously enjoyed three months of minority government under Chris Watson's leadership during mid-1904; in 1899 Anderson Dawson's Queensland Labor party formed a seven day colonial administration, each representing world firsts. By 1913, the ALP had held office in every state, albeit for farcically short periods in both Tasmania (1909) and Victoria (1913).

Whereas British Labour was little more than a parliamentary rump and socialist parties in France and Germany extremely weak, during Fisher Labor's three year term (1910-13) the planks of Labor's platform were made law. No 'Labor' party existed in comparable nations such as New Zealand or would ever seriously exist in the United States. (2) These comparisons invite this article's central question: why did Labor enjoy such precocious success?

Labor's emergence during the late nineteenth century has been a well-documented, if narrowly concerned subject. There are institutional accounts of the origins and emergence of Labor's federal and state incarnations, numerous biographies of its leading lights, as well as more wide ranging survey histories of the broader labour movement. Narrative histories of controversial episodes such as the party's split over conscription during World War I are historiographical staples. More recently the early movement's (populist) ideological trajectory and racial and gender exclusivity have been scrutinised, and approaches emphasising locality as well as transnational and comparative frameworks deployed.

Central to this historiography is the concept of 'labourism'. For many scholars, labourism is an ideological marker, or lack thereof, describing the practices of Labor in government. For others, the concept denotes a somewhat esoteric reformist spirit that prefers pragmatism to ideological purity. (3) This longstanding debate scarcely requires explication. Suffice to say, by the early 1990s, labourism, whether celebratory or pejorative, had won the historiographical day. (4) However, many of these analyses relied upon a vision of what the party 'should be' or 'could become'. (5) Furthermore, according to Terry Irving, the dichotomous model of socialism (and we might add social democracy) versus labourism downplayed Labor's complex relationship with socialism meaning 'it was difficult to draw out in any precise way the actual ideas and practices of labourism'. (6)

This article possesses two major aims. Firstly, it seeks to develop a more historically sensitive and methodologically satisfactory model of labourism that moves us beyond the dead-end labourism/socialism debates (indeed elsewhere I argue that labourism must be seen as the Australianist version of social democracy). (7) This is not to argue that historians should jettison the concept. As Frank Bongiorno notes, labourism 'remains useful as a label for a particular set of political attitudes, centring on support for an independent Labor Party committed to constitutional methods and the modification of market outcomes to the advantage of the working class and other productive but disadvantaged members of society'. (8)

Yet few histories systemically examine why Labor governments emerged at all and cultivated constituencies to, allegedly, betray. Even fewer explore labourism's powerful cultural basis. Most assume its existence, rather than understanding it to be a crucial aspect of early Labor politics. By contrast, I will argue that the distinctive language, iconography and narrative tools wielded by early Laborites--what I term the party's cultural politics or cultural labourism--drove much of their precocious success, culminating in Fisher's majority government.

The paper's second aim (re)asserts the political and intellectual agency of Fisherera Labor and the pre-World War I labour movement more generally. Standard accounts provide a narrative description of Labor's growing parliamentary strength (often from a critical Left perspective that highlights Fisher's continuities with Deakinite Liberalism), (9) or stress the socio-economic forces that fostered a dichotomous class-based politics. (10) Other studies summarised the legislative achievements of the Fisher Labor governments of 1908-09 and 1910-13, (11) and in recent times belatedly provided biographical treatments of Fisher. (12) Even historians sympathetic to Labor have downplayed the political and intellectual agency of the early labour movement (or worse, cast Labor's success as a strain of antipodean anti-intellectualism).

Yet Labor politicians of Fisher's ilk were highly skilled practitioners, who, in tandem with the cultural warriors of the labour movement press, outperformed their conservative rivals, in the process shifting the terms of Australian politics. In 1909, veteran unionist and politician W.G. Spence's quasi-autobiographical Australia's Awakening declared his party to be the 'almost dominant factor in the political life of the community'. Labor, he insisted, was 'a political as well as a propagandist movement. Its leaders realise that before we can have social reform the people must be educated to demand and carry out ... reforms'. (13) The importance of Labor connecting with potential supporters cannot be underemphasised. Labor could not take for granted that workers would be its natural supporters: they had to be won over. Indeed, coalitions needed to be crafted, not just between classes but within the working class, and across diverse industries, occupations and regions.

The article is structured into two sections comprised of three parts. The first details the development of a distinctive labourist cultural politics across the turbulent 1890s. Whilst the various Labor parties struggled to build electoral credibility, the labour movement's novel cultural forms challenged established organisational methods and standard tropes of Australian politics. The second explores how that cultural politicking was applied to federal politics after 1901. I argue that the party's rising electoral fortunes owed much to the development of a nationally-attuned political narrative and broader 'Australian' ethos. The article concludes by examining Labor's campaign against the 'fusion' of 1909. As we shall see, the labour movement's longer-term cultural warfare proved to be a defining feature of Labor's battle against allegedly 'snobbish' foes.

Part 1. 'To ... Make Men Feel that They Should Act as Mates': Building a Labourist Political Culture

'The United Australian People's Party'

Colony-specific Labor parties emerged in the wake of the union movement's crushing defeats during the so-called 'great strikes' of 1890-91. However, prior conditions in the colonies--parliamentary democracy, freedom of association, payment of parliamentarians and high levels of unionisation--assisted the creation of a union-based party, and, in any case, Labor politics had been mooted well before the strikes. (14) Labor's first appeal to the ballot-box was made in NSW, where the party (known as the Political Labor League) sensationally won the parliamentary balance of power between Free Traders and Protectionists at the June 1891 election. Around this time Labor parties were formed in South Australia and Queensland, contesting elections in 1891 and 1893 respectively. After a promising 1892 debut, Victorian Labor was notably less successful. No Tasmanian or Western Australian 'Labor' party can be said to have existed before federation.

Taking into account heavy obstacles such as plural voting, unequal electorates and a hostile conservative press, the Labor parties enjoyed mixed fortunes during the 1890s. (15) In part this owed to the collapse of unionism and a global depression that severely disrupted Australia's export-orientated economy. Whilst rural unionism ebbed and flowed, urban unionism was virtually wiped out by the strikes and trades halls closed in some cities. In 1890 one in five workers belonged to a union; by 1896 that number was nearer to one in twenty. (16) But new and renewed organisation slowly emerged. Apart from political forays, mass unions embracing all workers in a single, often rural industry took shape and union-backed newspapers appeared (see below). Perhaps Labor's greatest achievement over the 1890s was that it managed to stay intact in key colonies.

Whether one believes that the ALP was formed by striking shearers under Barcaldine's 'Tree of Knowledge' during 1891 or that the first Labor saplings burst into life the previous year in Sydney's working-class suburbs, the party conceived of itself as a radically new type. Labor was organised in a novel manner, advocated 'socialist' policies, and spoke about politics in different terms. And from the jump Laborites did not restrict their activities to parliamentary debates and committee work. Party propagandists understood that the battle of the ballot box was prima facie a cultural conflict. If the party was to be something more than a pressure group or minor party it would need to transform the electoral contest beyond that of its hitherto natural arrangement: liberal versus conservative. Thus, with a quasi-religious zeal Laborites stumped the length of the country, making speeches, issuing pamphlets and founding branches. Some, such as Spence, penned whole books devoted to winning Labor's cultural war.

Union-backed publications emerged: the Worker newspapers, first in Brisbane and later in Sydney, the short-lived Wagga Hummer, Adelaide's Weekly Herald, Hobart's Clipper, Melbourne's Tocsin (later Labor Call), the Westralian Worker, and the Barrier Daily Truth (Broken Hill). Apart from countering conservative bias and liberal enmity, the labour press went on a virtually permanent election footing, relentlessly proselytising for Labor politics, unionism and socialism, whilst interpreting the events of the day to their readership. These (almost uniformly) men, whom Sean Scalmer and Terry Irving term 'labour intellectuals', were conscious of the didactic task at hand. (17) 'Some people, especially our enemies, say that men will only work from selfish motives ... [but] those folks are all wrong', asserted one Hummer editorial. 'We know that a paper can do more than anything else to ... make men feel that they should act as mates.' (18) To achieve progressive reforms, Laborites understood the need to cultivate collectively-minded values, so that citizens saw their party's program as not only justifiable but as the consensus viewpoint.

Labor's cultural battle also found expression in the party's union-accented organisation inside and outside of parliament. Collective democratic decision-making processes were enshrined, somewhat unevenly, within the institutions of the local branch, pre-selection processes, party conferences and in the parliamentary 'pledge' of caucus solidarity. Even here words and imagery were as important as the party's rules and platform, especially when forming governments appeared some way off. According to NSW MP George Black, an ex-journalist, Labor's robust form of communication contrasted starkly with liberal 'speechifying'. 'Too long have the people of this country been gulled by promises made on the hustings or in governor's speeches', Black announced to parliament. 'We have been sent here by people who are not accustomed to mince matters.' (19) Black's statement begs question: which 'people' did his ilk speak for?

At their foundation, the Labor parties confronted an existential dilemma: who did they primarily represent? Should Labor appeal to manual and/or 'blue-collar' workers or a broader constituency reflective of Australia's heterogeneous workforce and regionally diverse society? More and more citizens had come to think of themselves in 'class' terms. By 1891 some 76 per cent of Australians could be described as wage or salary earners, and the population, both rural and urban was now permanently placed in those categories. Those classified as unemployed or underemployed numbered one-in-three during 1892. (20) Something of a class consciousness was forced upon Australians by sheer economic facts. Yet a deteriorating standard of living was not in of itself a reason to vote Labor; recessions had come and gone before, as had industrial conflict, albeit never on such a scale. Voters had to be won over and many did shift their political allegiances to Labor, permanently.

The working-class based Labor parties cast their electoral net widely. Rather than speaking to some abstract 'working class' constituency, Laborites pitched itself to 'the People'. As Tommy Ryan, the short-lived Queensland Labor politician selected under the 'Tree of Knowledge' told electors: 'We want a People's Parliament, not a squatter parliament, nor a bank owned parliament'. (21)

Who exactly were the People? Primarily they were white British-Australians, New World citizens whose values allegedly stood in stark contrast to the poverty, violence and class inequity of the Old World. So whilst Labor's vision of the People was largely premised upon the material interests of (male) workers and their dependants, it appealed to a broader 'democratic' alliance of liberally-minded citizens, small-scale farmers and manufacturers, and other lower middle-class interest groups. That alliance was rooted in the supra-class language of popular radicalism: progressive liberals, the dominant force of the political Left before the 1890s, as well as proto-Laborite unionists and other (often ex-Chartist) radicals, had long cast themselves in the role of the People's champions. (22)

Labor's invocation of the People was therefore a case of 'new wine' in 'old bottles', to borrow a phrase from English historian Patrick Joyce, in order to make familiar the party's class-accented politics. (23) In Labor rhetoric, it was not a 'working class' who were encouraged to become class conscious, on account of shared economic interests or 'capitalist' or 'ruling class' enemies. When the Clipper endorsed 'labour' candidates for the 1893 Tasmanian elections it voiced a typical refrain: 'will the people awake?' (24) This is clearly the language of class, albeit one which dared not speaketh its name, a point I return to below.

Other Laborites sought to impart this constituency with a more radical meaning. The Queensland-based Australian Labour Federation's 1890 'People's Parliament[ary] Platform' declared its aim to be the 'Nationalisation of all sources of wealth and all means of producing and exchanging wealth'. 'In one year' 'a true People's Parliament', it optimistically claimed, 'will give Queensland workers more justice than can be wrung from capitalistic parliaments in a generation'. (25) In Victoria, progressive liberalism's potency complicated matters and the class-based message was less overt. During the 1892 election, W.D. Beazley, Mayor and soon-to-be MLA for Collingwood, warned: '[a]nyone who did not support the platform of the Progressive League was not a Liberal'. (26)

So strong was the People's political legitimacy that some believed the emergent party should avoid calling itself 'Labor' and risk alienating electors worried about its class basis. '[T]he danger [is] calling themselves Labor', pleaded 'Radical', an 1892 correspondent to The Pioneer. 'Why can't we unite and adopt one standard to fight the enemy. The landowners and capitalists are thoroughly satisfied so far as they see us here, torn asunder into such fragments'. (27)

It is unsurprising that a middle-class single-taxer would make this intervention, but the insistence that Labor was, or ought to be, 'above' class was repeatedly made in the labour press. Some argued that Labor needed to follow the example of the contemporaneous American People's Party. Hummer insisted that Labor was really 'the United Australian People's Party'. (28) So whilst 'Labor' nomenclature prevailed, the spirit of the 'People's Party' lived on.

In a similar vein, although parliamentary alliances were common until the mid-1900s, Labor targeted the People's liberal patrons. Here they drew upon British Chartism's earlier identification of the 'false friend'--the middle-class politician (even though Labor contained a good few of these types). (29) According to the Australian Workman, these so-called 'friends of the People' were 'impostors and frauds' who should be turfed from office. (30)

How else did Labor appeal to potential supporters? If not the People, it was a class-laced exhortation to the 'producers'. At the Intercolonial Trades Union Congress directly following the 1890 maritime strike, one might expect to hear how Labor would protect unionised workers. Rather, the party's aims were described as advancing the 'interests' of all 'wealth producers': '[t]o bring all electors who are in favor of democratic and progressive legislation under one common banner'. (31) Appeals to the 'producers' were dualistic--at once speaking to and beyond manual workers--largely for electoral purposes. Whichever constituency Labor spoke to, the common enemy was always defined in populist and sometimes conspiratorial terms; as a non-productive, minority 'class' of 'loafers' or 'parasites' who contributed only unearned capital.

Perhaps it is the figure of Fisher, by 1896 already a senior Queensland Labor MP, who best expressed this populist class analysis. Fisher distinguished between the 'labouring classes' and the 'speculating classes', with the latter comprising 'systematic swindlers' who promoted 'land booms'; 'commercial men' possessed of low moral standards; and 'squatters and western landlords who exploited and manipulated the nomadic bush worker'. (32)

Labor's vision of the People always presumed a white collective and stressed the racialised interests of working Australians. Brisbane Worker editor William Lane thought capitalism 'would drive every white worker from Queensland', to be replaced by 'coolies', and that this would send 'the daughters of the people' to 'the streets and destitution', (33) a theme repeated in his ironically titled novel, The Workingman's Paradise. Others suggested that capitalism was merely a device of the shady, Jewish-controlled 'Money Power'. (34) Only Labor, they said, was truly committed to a racially homogenous society that would usher in a new era of equality.

Although racial hostility played little part in the official platforms of Labor outside of Queensland during the 1890s, the electoral fruits of racial politicking were rich. Whenever Queensland Labor played the race card the electorate responded approvingly. Fisher's successful 1899 campaign alleged that his opponent was an employer of black labour who desired to undermine white living standards, was tacitly in favour of introducing leprosy, and cared little for the sexual threat Kanakas posed towards white women. By contrast Fisher was hailed as the 'champion' of a 'White Australia governed by honest men'. (35) Such racial politicking, in Robin Archer's view, fostered Labor's growth, aiding attempts to present as more than purely class parties, whereas it hindered the development of union-based politics in the US. (36)

Labor's populist politicking was clearly a means of negotiating the problem of explicitly talking about class, still seen as a problematic political expression in the so-called workingman's paradise. Following its early success, the party faced conservative claims that it was introducing 'class legislation'. The Brisbane Courier's 1898 warning was typical: 'Placed in power the Labor form of class representation would work out most mischievously for the country, and for no class more than the labourers themselves.' (37) In response, Laborites argued that theirs was a party committed to undoing 'class legislation'. Black's oft-cited speech offering 'support in return for concessions' repudiated class-bias allegations: 'We have been told that we have come into this House to represent a class. Well that may be, but that class is the class of all classes. It is a class which is as wide as humanity.' (38) Similar arguments were put by Fisher to his opponents in Queensland. (39)

There is however little doubt that conservative attacks did blunt Labor's parliamentary forays. As a turn of the century Weekly Herald editorial acknowledged, 'the success of the party has been qualified in consequence of the prevalence of these absurd opinions'. (40) At this juncture Labor's more experienced opponents were better attuned to parliamentary and electoral machinations, playing up Labor's sectional and radical qualities. The Brisbane Courier mocked Labor-in-politics as an appeal 'to the interests, the passions, and prejudices of a class' which was not 'altered by the circumstance that the class itself constitutes a large section or even a considerable majority ... on the strength of which the Labour party frequently claim to represent "the people"'. (41)

Still, for a solid, if relatively small core of voters, Labor had established itself as the People's most ardent defender, although as we have seen its appeal was never simply made in terms of the economic self-interest of a 'class'. Instead the party managed to hitch its working-class politics to older traditions of popular radicalism and liberal thought. In the process, Australian politics had begun to move beyond a simple contest between liberals and conservatives, evinced by the fact that Labor's enemies felt obliged to make such hyperbolic interventions, in of itself a revolutionary cultural development.

'By Putting the Fat Man in Parliament You Get No Good'

If the language of popular radicalism was familiar to many Australians and that of class becoming more recognisable, then a series of iconographic and linguistic tools invented by Laborites constituted a break from the past and contributed to the making of an independent working-class culture.

For example, the cartoons which adorned the front page of labour newspapers were a perfect way of distilling quite complex messages. Often with the use of a simple metaphor a cartoonist could explain what might take hundreds of words in an editorial piece. Take, for instance, the villainous figure of 'Mr Fat Man'--a depiction of either big business or capitalism or both as a grossly overweight, top-hatted old man, often with spats and morning coat, and occasionally with cigar in hand--who made his first Australian appearances in the Bulletin newspaper during the 1880s. The Brisbane Worker's staff cartoonist 'Monty' Scott most exploited this imagery to communicate Labor's partisan message: in most Worker images he depicts Fat as a villain opposed to a rural worker-hero symbolising Labo(u)r and/or Australia. One memorable image pictured the icons of 'Labour' and 'Capital' engaged in a life and death struggle titled 'All the world over' (Figure 1). (42) Scott's depiction of an internationally attuned worker was an unrealistic characterisation of Australian labour's militancy. Nonetheless, the assumed confidence of the worker-hero contained a more important message as to the merits of collective action.

The most striking aspect of these images is the worker's innate politicalism. To be a worker was to naturally vote Labor, rather than side with his previous liberal patrons. Scott thus made a hero of the worker's parliamentary representative and, conversely, a villain of his anti-Labor rival. In his commentary on the 1893 Queensland elections, Scott portrays the newly elected Labor MPs advancing upon a 'Fat Man' Premier McIlwraith ('Falstaffilwraith'). The racist ideology of early Labor is encapsulated by their banner--'Advance White Queensland: Justice for the People'--whilst a frail McIlwraith is protected by the powerful 'Banks'. (43)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Here Fat Man mirrored Labor's populist appeal to 'productive' citizens: middling employers, skilled artisans and small-scale farmers, the latter a constituency keenly courted by Scott's eventual employer, the Australian Workers Union. In a salient 1895 Scott image, a gargantuan Fat appears as a bullying 'middleman' oppressing a small white farmer and an elderly female consumer. (44) For the most part Fat Man constituted a serious trope of working-class cultural criticism, yet his sheer ridiculousness also targeted a wider audience of electors who enjoyed a laugh at Fat's expense. This is not to argue that images of heroic, muscular workers battling gargantuan fat capitalists were realistic. Rather, our hero was intended to inspire and his portly, villainous counterpart deployed to entertain and educate.

Labor propagandists gleefully took up Fat's linguistic version. Rather than deploy complex socialist theories, it was left to Fat to illustrate capitalism's iniquity and immorality. 'We have been giving the greedy, gormandising Fat Man more than half the result of our hard labour', declared Worker contributor Spence. 'Let him go to work if he can't live on it.' (45) Fat also simplified Labor's electoral message. When English socialist Ben Tillett addressed the Melbourne faithful in 1897, his speech was consciously peppered with such rhetoric: 'By putting the Fat man in parliament you get no good.' (46)

Not all workers were voting for Labor and against Fat, but the assumption that they shared a common cultural milieu is instructive. Fat Man carried understandings antithetical to a rigorous structural analysis of society and his deployment evinces the conspiratorial underbelly of Labor thought. Nonetheless Fat and his heroic opponent were important instruments in the rhetorical tool kit available to early Laborites. On the ground, however, the idealised solidarity of the workers whom Fat allegedly oppressed, and that of the heroic Labor politicians sent into parliament to protect them, was anything from assured.

'Socialism is ... this Desire to be Mates'

Socialism had flowered in 1880s Australia. The Sydney-based Australian Socialist League (ASL) was a particularly influential organisation and a majority of early Laborites came to think of themselves as socialists. From a variety of economic and moral viewpoints, they regarded capitalist institutions--private property and free markets--as responsible for the injuries of class, widespread poverty and the undesirable concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. This capitalist system could be reformed or 'civilised' through democratic, constitutional means. Many thought of this as 'state socialism'. But there was a conflict within the labour movement over how best to achieve 'socialism in our time'. Pragmatists committed to gradual reform battled militants who insisted that Labor proclaim its socialism explicitly.

It wasn't only socialists who were attracted to Labor politics. As Bruce Scates argues, 'despite close affiliations with the union movement, the first [L]abor parties were unstable populist alliances'. (47) There was a strong sense of a wider progressive movement with Labor as its foci. '[T]he object of every section of the party is the same--viz. to improve the conditions of the masses of the people', affirmed the Commonweal and Workers' Advocate. The 'State Socialist', the 'Anarchist', 'Single Taxer' and 'the Land Nationaliser' 'only differ as to means'. (48) But by the late 1890s Labor came under the control of major unions such as the AWU, who had formed alliances with semi-professional politicians such as the ex-ASL, NSW contingent of Chris Watson, Billy Hughes and William Holman. (49) Single taxers, revolutionary socialists and other radicals were ultimately expelled from the Labor parties.

Whatever their precise ideological stripe, Laborites understood the need to make ideas such as socialism accessible. Thus 'Socialism', according to William Lane, was merely the 'desire to be mates'. (50) However the ethic of mateship, let alone socialism, only slowly permeated workers. In strike after strike, labour was repeatedly undermined by the presence of strikebreakers--non-union and union. In response the movement embarked upon building a highly masculine cult of solidarity. Here 'mateship' was deified as the salvation of the working man; conversely, the figure of the strikebreaking 'scab' was reviled like no other. As an editorial from Spence's Shearers' and General Laborers' Record declared, 'We aim at the introduction of cooperation in all forms, based upon the idea of mateship'. (51) Mateship appealed to working men's identities over and above a still embryonic consciousness of class. (52) If more men were to act as mates then unionism would grow, industrial warfare might dissipate and a spirit of co-operation would spread, perhaps even ushering in a socialist society, so the logic went.

As with Labor's other populist discourses, mateship attached itself to exclusionary forms of collective identity. Many Australians, whether owing to their race or to an extent their gender, were debarred from this creed. When 'Martha Guy' wrote to the Hummer imploring female worker solidarity, mateship's boundaries were clear: 'There are four of us "mates"--as you men call it--and as we term it when the missus isn't within hearing'. (53) Yet for all its foibles, when working men entered parliament they took this distinctive language into its hallowed halls or onto the hustings that got them there in the first place. When Queensland Labor Senator Jim Page addressed federal parliament in the early 1900s he proudly drew on his experiences of white 'mateship' as a pastoral worker. (54)

In this period of industrial failure and economic depression mateship's counterpart, the 'scab', was arguably the more prominent facet of labour's cult of solidarity. Lane's celebration of mateship entailed a clear converse: 'The scab, the blackleg, is not a Socialist'. As he well knew, the problem of strikebreakers was substantial, as mass unemployment and poverty drove workers to undercut the wages and conditions, and even take the jobs, of fellow toilers. Like mateship, the trope of scabbing sought to appeal to working men's identities over and above class, as Hummer's 'Old Hank' explained: 'if you want an all-round man, he is no more fit for use than a waxwork image would be for a gas-stoker'. (55)

Scabbing possessed very real consequences: offenders were named in some union journals and the subject of threats, intimidation and social ostracising. Yet a preoccupation with the scab likely had the effect of setting worker against worker. The Worker's 'Spartacus' warned against such analyses: 'The fat man sits on the rail rejoicing when he sees scabs and unionists in the field fighting for existence. He laughs loudly when they maltreat each other.' (56) Yet neither workers nor leaders challenged the dominant culture of inclusion via the threat of exclusion.

Revealingly, this tendency was mirrored by the travails of political Labor. NSW Labor's first caucus meeting resolved that 'in order to secure the solidarity of the Labor party, only those will be allowed to assist at its private deliberations who are pledged to vote in the House as a majority of the party, sitting in Caucus, has decided'. (57) This was an attempt to import the ethos of industrial solidarity into parliamentary politics, although caucusing pre-dated Labor. Solidarity was notably short-lived and the party soon split into free trade and protectionist wings. A party divided was clearly incapable of extracting concessions in exchange for supporting the government of the day.

But the issue was not simply a 'fiscal' one. A fundamental question at play was whether parliamentarians would simply carry out the party's platform, or exercise more independent judgment. Many Labor MPs argued that the realities of parliamentary politics compelled pragmatic compromise: voters and unionists needed to place their trust in MPs. Labor soon split again and in early 1894 its leader Joseph Cook resigned, subsequently joining George Reid's free traders. This pattern of division was replicated in the other colonies. In Victoria and Queensland early party leaders William Trenwith and Thomas Glassey departed after refusing to accept party discipline.

The issues and motives at play in this dispute over organisational discipline were not black and white. Whatever the truth, the first incarnation of the hated Labor 'rat' had emerged. On one hand, ratting reflected the paradoxes built into the foundations of the first parties--payment for representation often replaced service for nothing. On the other, via the rat Labor pronounced its independence and the methods--brutal if required--of ensuring its survival. For liberals and conservatives, this symbolised all that was wrong with Labor politics and proved a recurring theme in anti-Labor propaganda. But what liberals saw as dictatorial demands, Laborites perceived to be the party's greatest strength. The Gympie Truth thus condemned Glassey's 'ratting' in 1899: Laborites 'should not revile Glassey as a traitor', but a 'benefactor'. 'He was a source of weakness in the ranks; the Party is really strengthened by his secession.' (58) So the propaganda went those workers who failed to vote for Labor also ratted. 'In all elections no one can now mistake which is Labor's side', warned Spence, 'and the worker who goes against Labor is as much a scab as the man who takes a Unionist's place in a shed or a factory'. (59)

As the century drew to a close workers had generally not heeded his call to arms. Emblematic of Labor's problems was its exclusion from federation planning. Many Laborites believed the proposed Constitution was insufficiently democratic, if not a conspiracy to kill off Labor. 'Capitalists rejoiced', noted Spence, 'in the hope that now they would have a Parliament to which Labor could never attain'. (60) In Queensland, however, a remarkable development occurred, when Labor won enough seats at the 1899 election to become the opposition party. On 1 December 1899, the former miner Anderson Dawson was sworn in as premier, ushering in the world's first Labor government. Dawson's administration lasted seven days, but the Brisbane Worker took an optimistic view: the experience had 'reconciled the public mind to the inevitable and excited a renewed interest in the Labour movement'. (61)

Hyperbole aside, that Labor survived the 1890s was a triumph in of itself and a testament to its cultural battle. Despite its patchy electoral progress, Labor arguably shifted Australian politics to the Left, or to be precise, beyond a contest between liberals and conservatives. In the process a distinctive working-class--or what equally can be seen as a social democratic--culture flowered, albeit with strong continuities to older colonial political traditions. Ironically, Labor's class-based cultural politicking was arguably more suited to the nation-building environment of the next decade.

Part 2. 'The Only REAL National Party in Australia': Federal Politics and the Rise of Labor

They Must Have a White Australia'

Spence's reading of federation was overly pessimistic. The inauguration of a national polity, combined with improved economic conditions, revived the movement's flagging fortunes. Its advance was starkest at the new national level, though this in turn aided the progress of the state-based parties. In January 1900 a Sydney-based conference tentatively established plans for a federal party and delegates adopted a four point platform: 1) Electoral Reform, providing for one adult, one vote; 2) Total exclusion of coloured and other undesirable races; 3) Old age pensions; and 4) Constitutional Reform. (62)

Australia's leading Laborites, such as the 30-something NSW duo Watson and Hughes, and Queenslander Fisher, sensed that the gravity of political power was shifting. Still, outside of parliament many Laborites thought federation would prove disastrous. According to Tocsin: 'In the very nature of the Federal Constitution a Federal Labor Party cannot do a great deal of good, because the Federal Parliament cannot; but it can, if strong enough, prevent a great deal of harm'. (63) Yet, just two years later, Tocsin was hailing the 'wider ocean of national citizenship'; Labor was 'the only REAL National Party in Australia'. (64)

That change of heart was driven by Labor's impressive electoral gains. At the 1901 election the new federal party won 24 of 123 seats across the House of Representatives and Senate, securing the balance of power between Free Traders and Protectionists in the lower house. Watson was elected parliamentary leader and forged an informal coalition with the liberal protectionists, the governments of Edmund Barton and, from 1903, Alfred Deakin. Both Labor and the Deakinites believed in using the state to regulate market capitalism to provide a protected living standard. Yet Labor favoured a more heavily interventionist state with an enlarged role for state-owned enterprises. Combined with its distinctive cultural forms, Labor's union links also meant that it was determined upon tilting the workplace balance of power in favour of employees. And in a short time, Labor was granted many of its aims--White Australia, electoral reform and compulsory arbitration.

Perhaps the issue Labor pushed hardest was White Australia: legislation which excluded non-white immigrants and repatriated Melanesian labourers. Each of the three main political groupings--liberal protectionist, free trade and Labor--were in broad agreement on the issue and Barton enacted the two most prominent acts: the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and Pacific Island Labourers Act 1902. But such was the energetic manner that Labor claimed the policy as its own, it became identified as the party's. Labor hung its political credentials upon White Australia, a nation-building vision that tied infrastructure spending and physical development to a more ephemeral sense of national identity. Spence, now a federal MP, believed White Australia to be the only basis for Labor's policy aims: 'If we are not to have [White Australia] I do not think it is worthwhile working for social reform any longer, because all such reform would be nullified by the deterioration of the race'. (65)

There was some limited internal opposition to the bald racist underpinnings, but none to the broad policy of White Australia. Labor essentially framed the 1901 election as a referendum on the subject: the Brisbane Worker called it 'a referendum on the coloured alien question', (66) describing Queensland Laborites as the 'White Australia Labour Senatorial candidates--Dawson, Stewart and Higgs'. (67) When the election results arrived, and despite its practical status as the third most popular party, propagandists somewhat inevitably claimed 'A Victory for White Australia' (68) and thus a triumph for Labor. Conversely, the election outcome represented a crushing defeat for its enemies and even the sign of a racially inflexed class-consciousness. 'Capitalists have little pride of race', the Clipper indignantly asserted, but 'the conscience of the people was awakened, their pride of race was aroused, and Australia demanded through the ballot box purity of race'. (69)

How do we explain Labor's fevered support for White Australia? Its stance resulted from a combination of bald racial prejudice and idealistic desire to see progressive legislation passed, such as the soon-to-be minimum 'living' wage, itself linked to tariff protection, compulsory arbitration and encouragement of unionism. The prohibition of non-white labour, it was argued, protected white workers, but the racial 'purity' this assumed benefited the broader community's task of nation-building as well. Watson conflated racial and economic arguments when he launched a doomed legislative amendment to ban any Asian or African from entering Australia: he objected to the 'mixing' of 'coloured people with the white people of Australia' less because of 'industrial' 'considerations' than 'the possibility and probability of racial contamination'. (70)

For all its crude social Darwinism, slipshod economic rationale and outright racism, White Australia provided the disparate Labor parties with a unifying working-class call to arms. Moreover, White Australia was thought to broaden Labor's appeal beyond a narrow band of unionised workers. Ray Markey has demonstrated the importance of NSW Labor's racialist appeal to a populist constituency of rural workers and small-scale farmers before 1901. (71) Some of this occurred by default: small landholders had few other political avenues at that stage. These efforts continued post-federation with Queensland Labor leading the charge. In the context of farmers being tempted to employ 'coloured' labour, Brisbane Worker correspondent 'Veilleur' aggressively demanded the solidarity of race: Farmers of Queensland, do you want to leave your children and grandchildren the glorious heritage of a White Australia? [Only] the White Labour party is the one to do so, and if you forget that on polling day your conscience, till the day you die, will proclaim you a traitor to White Australia. (72)

When the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was introduced Labor pressed its White Australia credentials even more aggressively. Some Laborites argued that the Barton administration had 'stolen' their policy. (73) The bill gained almost unanimous support: the only real party differences existed on the desirability of a dictation test (which proscribed that any potential immigrant must be tested in any European language). Laborites vehemently argued for a complete exclusion of all non-whites on explicitly racial grounds. By contrast, protectionists and free traders desired a dictation test, in deference to British diplomatic sensitivities to Japan.

Despite the failure of Watson's amendment, Labor supported the bill. When the dictation test did become law, Laborites claimed that the legislation was really Labor's--see for instance a celebratory cartoon by Scott at year's end 1901 (Figure 2). (74) Others accused Barton of selling out White Australia with a view to seeking imperial honours: 'Barton stands convicted of endeavouring to sell the fair maiden of White Australia to a lecherous colo[u]red ... savage, for no other apparent reason than that the aforesaid gent is a pal of the Briton whose baubles and blessings Barton hopes to gain.' (75)

With the passing of the White Australia legislation, Labor continued to claim the policy as its own. Alleged breaches of the legislation were frequently raised in parliament and the labour press. (76) At the 1903 election Labor's central message was that only Labor would defend White Australia vigorously enough. The linking of racial exclusivity to nation-building and working-class prosperity formed the cornerstone to Labor's 1903 and 1906 campaigns, and along with compulsory arbitration and old-age pensions it formed a continuum of Labor policy in the federation decade. In conjunction with its tight organisational form, such cultural interventions ultimately differentiated Labor from the other political groupings.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Labor's White Australia prosecution was critical to its recovery, a trend borne out by the party's performance at the 1903 election. With its increased support spread evenly across the continent, Labor drew level with the free trade and protectionist parties (its primary vote almost doubled). Electoral success only encouraged Labor to pursue custodianship of White Australia. During the mid-1900s, federal and state Labor enshrined the defence of racial exclusion in their various platforms. The 'fighting platform' agreed to at the 1905 federal conference, declared the 'maintenance of a white Australia' to be its prime concern, whilst the 'official objective' explicitly sought 'the cultivation of an Australian sentiment based upon the maintenance of racial purity'. (77) From our contemporary perspective such vulgar politicking is rightly obnoxious and seems at odds with what a 'progressive' party ought to represent. White Australia nonetheless provided the basis for a plausible national political narrative; the key to not only shaping progressive policy but to forming governments that might legislate for it.

'The Noblest Aims and Highest Ideals of True Australianism'

Labor's White Australia prosecution cannot alone explain its precocious electoral gains. The party's class-based organisation was clearly important, certainly in comparison with the well-financed but poorly organised non-Laborites, in an age when voting was non-compulsory. By the mid-1900s every state possessed an extensive network of branches and a state-based executive, who came together at a triennial federal conference, with solid connections to the resurgent unions. Labor's progress went hand in hand with union membership growth, institutionalised by compulsory conciliation and arbitration from 1904. In 1901, six per cent of all employees were unionised; in 1911, it was 27.90 per cent, a degree of coverage unprecedented in the world at the time. (78) That mobilisation relied upon a rising level of political consciousness amongst working Australians, despite improving economic fortunes as large-scale secondary industries developed. Equally, the interventionist and collectivist content of the party's policies, paired with the growing reputations of its federal leadership, were conducive to the collective sentiment of the post-federation period.

Backed by a now continent-wide network of newspapers, federal Labor's leadership team of Watson, Fisher and Hughes, relentlessly argued only they could be trusted to put Australia's interests first, building both a prosperous and egalitarian nation. Watson put the case bluntly in a 1903 interview, 'there was no party in Australia likely to push the interests of Australia as well as the Labor Party'. (79) From 1905, this nation-building ethos was institutionalised by the federal party's official objective quoted earlier.

The heroes of Labor's story were its target audience, the working men and women of Australia. Far from constituting some wretched proletariat, workers were lauded as the most valuable and eminently respectable of nation-builders. In 1902, the Clipper asserted that 'the Australian working classes are not the lower orders. Indeed, they contain the cream of all that is best and making for greatness in the new nation'. (80) As Neville Kirk suggests, Australian Labor had 'a far more influential imprint upon the form and content of national consciousness, upon what it meant to be an Australian' (81) than comparable meanings in Britain and America.

Labor's portrayal of Australian nationhood played to xenophobia and outright racism in the electorate. Yet Labor's newfound nation-building ethos was a recalibration of its older thesis of producerism and appeals to the People. Productive Australians were allegedly preyed upon by powerful banks, financiers and other monopoly interests, whose selfish ways impaired the nation's full economic development. In 1905, the Victorian activist Patrick Heagney explained how Labor claimed to represent 'the small farmers "by oppression's ruffian gluttony driven" from the arable lands; the business men struggling in the grip of the usurer ... every interest in Australia ... except the interests of the parasitic classes'. (82) While attuned to ballot box realities, in the minds of Laborites, racially exclusive nation-building legislation in the interest of such real producers was genuinely thought to be the best means of achieving a classless society. In Spence's words: In the state of society Labor aims at setting up there will be no room for the idler. Every individual will have to contribute some service having a social value. The teacher, the artist, the writer, the scientist, the medical man, and those who entertain as well as those who make things are all entitled to income, but there is no place for the profit-grabber--the being who lives on rent or usury. Governed by the Ethics of Fellowship there will only be one class, and that the producing class ... Such a condition must come sooner in white Australia than in older lands. (83)

Labor's emphasis on its national credentials also aimed to deflect ongoing criticism that it was a sectional party of 'class'. Until the mid-1900s, Labor's support was often concentrated in blue-ribbon urban industrial or major regional electorates. To transform itself beyond a 'balance of power' party, and potentially take office, city and rural marginal seats would have to be won. Labor's message needed to be preached beyond the already converted. W.A. Woods described Labor's platform with a view to luring such supporters: 'Embodied in its various planks would be found the noblest aims and highest ideals of true Australianism ... which made for the prosperity and well-being of the whole community.' (84) In fact, Laborites continued to claim that their working-class base did not constitute a 'class', but was merely the natural majority and backbone of the nation. The Sydney Worker put the case with this verbal legerdemain: The Wage-Earning Class is the only Class which is not a Class. Representing the Body as a Whole, while the other Classes only represent Special Organs, it is the Nation. Therefore, in voting for the Labor Men you vote for those who will most fully represent you and all others. (85)

Other symbolic declarations defined Labor as the party of Australian nationhood. At its 1908 federal conference the 'workers' party' took on the title of the Australian Labor Party, distinguishing itself from other members of the Socialist International. (86) Practically speaking, Labor used its cultural nationalism to purloin much of the tripartisan nation-building program of the federation decade. A 1908 Claude Marquet cartoon thus pictured Labor as the sole builder of the nation beneath the Australian flag (Figure 3): old-age pensions, a Deakinite initiative, are now presented as a Laborite invention. (87)

Like its appropriation of White Australia, much of this was audacious political thievery, although a strong case can be made that Labor forced Deakin's enactment of much legislation. (88) And this is not to argue that the primacy of the national interest embodied in Labor's platform was somehow unproblematic or, indeed, went unchallenged. Billy Hughes's early advocacy of compulsory military training raised the ire of those unionists still wary over the coercive role of the State. Others too were beginning to question the legislative dividend accruing from parliamentary success and, for that matter, just how socialist Labor's policies really were.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Labor played down its socialist character during the 1900s. Socialism barely featured in its 1901 or 1903 campaigns. Partially as a result, when delegates gathered for the 1905 federal conference, debates centred on the explicitness of Labor's socialisation plans. The Victorians put forward a failed 'Melbourne Proposal', which aimed to obtain 'control of the means of production, distribution and exchange'. However, a more moderate proposal championed by NSW prevailed: Labor would aim to secure 'the full results of their industry to all producers by the collective ownership of monopolies, and the extension of the industrial and economic functions of the State and Municipality'. (89)

Nonetheless, conservatives played up Labor's ideological purity, at least in part with the intention of smearing the Deakinite liberals with the socialist tag. Free trade leader George Reid ran a high-profile 'Anti-Socialist' scare campaign before the 1906 election, arguing that Labor threatened the sanctities of private property, religion and even marriage. (90) Reid's campaign arguably only drew attention to the moderation of Labor's socialism. Watson mocked the 'anti-Sosh' brigade when he insisted that socialism was really common-sense nation-building: The very people who objected to socialism were immersed in it. They rode in socialistic railways, sent their children to socialistic schools, received their letters through a socialistic post-office, read them by a socialistic light, rang up their friends on a socialistic telephone, washed in socialistic baths, read in socialistic libraries, and if through studying the advantages of individualism they became insane, they retired to a socialistic asylum. (91)

At the 1906 election, Labor won four seats from Reid's party in NSW alone. Soon afterwards Fisher made this boast to federal Labor conference delegates: 'We are all Socialists now, and indeed the only qualification you hear from anybody is probably that he is "not an extreme Socialist"'. (92)

As I have stressed, most Laborites considered themselves to be socialists, yet they clearly understood the electoral value of attacking foes from both Right and Left. It is no coincidence that the emergence of an anti-Labor Left--groups such as the Socialist Labor Party and Industrial Workers of the World--witnessed a further growth in its share of the vote. In a 1909 debate against the Socialist Party, NSW Labor MLA Arthur Griffith contrasted the 'sane and commonsense Socialists who believe in going step by step and who realise that you can never get to the top of the ladder unless you climb rung by rung' with 'the scattered groups of Socialists [who] ... instead of helping us ... knife us in the back'. (93)

But had Labor shifted the political culture of the nation during the 1900s or did its socialist will crumble under Tory assault? In a sense this is to ask the wrong question. Rather we might ponder why, in the first place, socialism occupied such as central place in Australian political discourse. To be sure, policy wise labourism had become an eclectic mix of socialist, radical liberal and collectivist union ideology bound into a racialised national narrative that emphasised special working-class interests. It was Labor's cultural politics, however, that most mattered; though crystallising during the 1890s, it was ultimately most suited to the nation-building ethos of 1900s Australia. The scale of Labor's electoral progress, combined with its unique cultural forms, would soon drive a political coalescence of lasting import.

'That the Workers Should Rule is a Thought that Rankles in their Hearts'

On 23 April 1904 Chris Watson formed the world's first national Labor government, in many respects a dress rehearsal for later events. Amidst howls from the conservative press, the 37 year old Watson declared that he would govern 'in the interests of the whole people'. (94) Watson's three-month administration passed just six bills of little consequence (and in fact brought tensions between him and the wider labour movement to the surface). (95) Yet from its outset, the reactions of non-Labor politicians and the conservative press played into Labor's narrative hands. During the government's first parliamentary sitting, George Reid and Sir John Forrest delivered hectoring, snobbish speeches. 'Mr Speaker, what are those men doing in our places? Those are our seats', roared Forrest. (96)

On 13 August 1904 the Watson government was defeated when hitherto bitter foes Deakin and Reid combined to defeat it in parliament. The conservative press rejoiced in the removal of the 'untried extremists'. (97) In the long run, however, this was a Pyrrhic victory for the anti-Labor forces. Watson appeared statesman-like, and the country had clearly not collapsed into anarchy. Moreover, Labor's unceremonious removal lent gravitas to Labor's evolving narrative of a conspiracy of ruling class 'snobs' offended by the prospect of the workers taking power. A jubilant Fisher claimed, 'those who have been accustomed to regard themselves as the only persons able to administer [Australia's] affairs are in fear and trembling'. (98)

Federal Labor gained further ground at the 1906 election, fuelling impatience with its continuing alliance with Deakin. Partly as a result, Watson resigned the leadership in October 1907 and was replaced by Fisher. The 45-year-old Scottish-born former child-miner had been Watson's deputy since August 1905, and defeated Hughes in the subsequent party room ballot. He was elected, in part, because he was expected to take a more independent, uncompromising line against Deakin. Under Fisher's stewardship, the July 1908 federal Labor conference ruled out any form of alliance or electoral immunity for the Deakinites, the so-called 'good as Labor men'. (99)

Soon afterwards, having withdrawn the party's support for Deakin's government, Fisher became Labor's second prime minister. Fisher's seven-month-long minority administration of 1908-09 saw little of parliament as it went into recess almost immediately. However two events during this period further solidified Labor's narrative account of its enemies. Seizing upon worried cables from Britain concerning the growing naval power of Germany, in early 1909 the conservative press and non-Labor politicians began a campaign for the Commonwealth to 'gift' a dreadnought, financed by a 3,500,000 [pounds sterling] loan, to the British government.

In what became known as the 'Dreadnought scare', Fisher pointedly refused the demands of conservatives, arguing that Australia's best contribution to defending the British Empire was the establishment of independent Australian Navy. Fisher denounced the manufactured 'hysteria'. (100) In a story recounted countless times during the later 1910 campaign, Fisher boasted of how Labor bravely founded the Australian Navy despite the fawning imperialist demands of its opponents. NSW Labor deputy leader Holman, mockingly alleged that the 'Dreadnought ... patriots had their eyes on the next Birthday Honours'. (101) Fisher stood his ground and the end result of this political storm in a teacup was to allow Laborites to define the political debate in increasingly natural--and overwhelmingly cultural--terms of Labor versus anti-Labor.

Shortly afterwards, Fisher delivered a widely reported speech in his home town of Gympie during March 1909. Fisher committed Labor to a referendum for the purpose of reinstating New Protection, an independent Australian Navy, compulsory military service, increased pensions, a transcontinental railway, and most controversially, a graduated tax on unimproved land valued over 5,000 [pounds sterling]. (102) If the July 1908 conference constituted notice of impending divorce, this was the official paperwork, a declaration of open electoral warfare upon the Deakinites.

Thus, in late May 1909, following protracted negotiations between Deakin and the free trade and conservative factions, headed by Cook and Forrest, agreement was struck for a 'fusion' between the non-Labor groupings.

The newly aligned forces soon defeated Fisher's government on the floor of parliament. Deakin formed a new 'fusion' ministry in early June 1909 which tentatively adopted the name 'Liberal Party'. Fusion's very execution played into Labor's hands. That fusion was brought forward to prevent Defence Minister George Pearce attending an important naval conference in London created the inference that working-class men could not be trusted with the performance of high office. When Fisher addressed a pro-Labor crowd at Melbourne Town Hall he explicitly alleged: 'The new [fusion] Ministry was brought-in in a hurry in order to prevent Senator Pearce from representing Australia at the Naval Conference'. (103) While some Laborites denounced the 'treachery' of Deakin and his followers, others celebrated this turn of events. According to Spence, 'Labor ha[d] forced them into one camp, and the country can see that they were really one crowd all the time'. (104)

The subsequent 1910 election was Labor's most co-ordinated and professional campaign to date. Monster meetings were held in practically every city and town across the continent denouncing the fusion. Labor's supporters outside of parliament reacted with surprise and disgust, arguing that Labor's downfall owed to the fusionists' class snobbery and the conspiratorial machinations of the conservative press. 'Mr. Fisher had been extolled in the highest places', declared one outraged Laborite to a Sydney meeting: 'Labor men--those who knew Labor, thought Labor, who had gained their living by their own hands--were not fit men--so it appeared--to govern a great country such as Australia'. (105)

Deakin, supposedly the main conspirator, was the target of unprecedented personal abuse. The Sydney Worker alleged: 'Office is [Deakin's] vice, and is as indispensable to him as opium is to the Chow and grog to the drunkard'. (106) In Queensland, the Worker alleged that a continent-wide 'snobility' had arisen to confront the rise of Labor: 'That the workers should rule is a thought that rankles in their hearts. That a Labor party should make or dictate laws to which they have to submit, is bitterness indescribable.' (107) The fusionist's alleged snobbery was linked to other facets of Labor's cultural politicking, including racism. Cartoonist Jim Case presented an omen of 'fusion secret policy'; a female White Australia is literally about to be painted black by Deakin (Figure 4) prompting its author to implore: 'Electors] Will you let him?' (108) That this image was reprinted on the Worker's front page two weeks before polling day speaks volumes.

On one level, then, Labor claimed that its snobbish foes had combined to protect their shared economic interests, appealing to the class-based identity of its core constituency. 'The Fusion] What is the Fusion?' asked Labor Call. 'It is a compact of Land Sharks, Sweaters, Monopolists, Coal Barons, Sugar Kings, Greedy Middlemen and Idle Rich. It is the Associated Banks, the Squatters, the Money Lords, the Federation of Employers'. (109) Labor's campaign narrative was not, however, solely limited to class. All democratically-minded Australians had to oppose the fusion. Senator Arthur Rae began one speech by damning fusion as 'the instrument of the wealthy and privileged classes'. Yet Rae maintained that Labor stood for a wider constituency than 'the workers' such as the 'middle-class men' and 'the producers' who were 'crushed' and 'robbed' by 'the capitalists and monopolists'. (110)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

Some of these 'liberal' citizens, Laborites claimed, had been personally betrayed by Deakin, a message with particular resonance in Victoria. 'Which is it? Deakinism or Liberalism?' asked a contemptuous Ballarat-based (Deakin's seat) Labor Vanguard. (111) Another means of couching Labor's cross-class appeal was by emphasising the land tax, especially in rural electorates where Labor's proposal appealed to small farmers. Hughes went so far as to claim that Labor had been 'put out' because 'the vested interest class was afraid of the land tax'. (112) Labor's stress on the land tax is further evidence that it simultaneously played to class yet downplayed its class identity, perhaps confirming the illegitimacy of naked class analysis in Australian political life. As Labor Call piece later warned, The success of the party at the Federal elections was due to the fact that ... the Labor Party's platform was more of a national policy than that of the Fusion party. If it had been believed that the platform was for a class-party, the result may have been very different. (113)

Conclusion: 'No Parallel Elsewhere on Earth'?

'Australia has spoken with trumpet tongue and Labor stands at the open door of opportunity', exulted the Sydney Worker on 21 April 1910. (114) In an electoral landslide, Labor won a crushing majority in both houses: the first time since federation that a government controlled both chambers. Two weeks later the Sydney Worker was still glorying in the victory of the 'men of the people' over the 'flabbergasted' 'pinchbeck, copper-bottomed, goldplated, brass-faced nobles of Australia'. (115) Yet this genuflection to the 'men of the people' belied Labor's sophisticated organisation and reality that its skilful politicians simply out-politicked their rivals. Despite its considerable achievements in office (see the introduction to this edition and other articles), when Fisher unwisely decided to resubmit the failed referenda at the 1913 federal election, and despite good economic conditions, the forward march of Labor was halted, with the party losing office by the narrowest of margins. Musing on Labor's defeat, Fisher's friend and Australian Worker editor, Henry Boote, counselled against 'disappointment' because 'the righteous cause is strengthened in adversity': 'We have reached a stage of progress which has no parallel elsewhere on earth. A Labor government here is no longer a wild improbability, but the probable outcome of every appeal to the ... ballot'. (116)

Labor's glad, confident morning was terminated by the onset of the Great War in 1914. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Australia was in the midst of an election. Fisher returned Labor to the treasury benches on the back of his emotive promise to 'stand beside our own to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling'. (117) Tragically, his government was soon overwhelmed by the war. Under pressure from both his party's Left and Right, Fisher resigned to become Australian High Commissioner in London during late 1915, replaced by his ambitious deputy Billy Hughes. He could only watch in horror as Hughes proceeded to split the party over the issue of conscription for overseas military service in 1916. Labor's populist cultural politics was brutally turned against it. During the later part of the war and throughout much of the 1920s Labor was subjected to virulent scare campaigns accusing it of gross national (and empire) disloyalty. The world's most precocious social democratic party ironically held national office for just 27 years of the next nine decades--in the words of one 1970s internal party review, Labor possessed 'one of the worst electoral records of any democratic socialist party in the western world'. (118)

Endnotes

* My thanks to the two anonymous Labour History referees for their helpful suggestions.

(1.) Worker (Sydney), 21 April 1910.

(2.) Nick Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains: The Rise and Fall of the Early Australian Labor Party, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2011, p. 156.

(3.) Jim Hagan, The History of the ACTU, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1981, p. 45. See the similar British definition of labourism in W. Thompson, The Long Death of British Labourism: Interpreting a Political Culture, Pluto Press, London, 1993, p. 17.

(4.) Nick Dyrenfurth, 'Rethinking Labor Tradition', Labour History, vol. 90, May 2006, pp. 175-97; and Nick Dyrenfurth, 'Labour and Politics', Labour History, vol. 100, May 2011, pp. 105-26. See also Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, 'Introduction'; Terry Irving, 'Labourism: A Political Genealogy', Labour History, vol. 66, May 1994, pp. 1-13; Frank Bongiorno, The People's Party: Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition, 1875-1914, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1996, pp. 4-5; and Frank Bongiorno, 'Labourism', in Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre (eds), Oxford Companion to Australian History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, p. 374.

(5.) R. Neil Massey, 'A Century of Labourism, 1891-1993: An Historical Interpretation', Labour History, vol. 66, May 1994, p. 47.

(6.) Terry Irving, 'The Roots of Parliamentary Socialism in Australia, 1850-1920', Labour History, no. 67, November 1994, p. 102.

(7.) Nick Dyrenfurth, 'It's the Culture, Stupid]', in Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane (eds), All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For, New South, Sydney, 2010, pp. 18-21.

(8.) Bongiorno, The People's Party, p. 5.

(9.) Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850-1910, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1960, ch. 11; Brian Fitzpatrick, A Short History of the Australian Labor Movement, Rawson's Bookshop, Melbourne, 1944, p. 111 and ch. 8; and more sympathetically, Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party, 1891-1991, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 62-70, and chs 2-4 more generally.

(10.) Ian Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labour Movement in Eastern Australia, 1900-1921, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1979, chs 1-2; Stuart Macintyre, The Labour Experiment, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 13-19, 39-54. From a more cultural perspective, consult John Rickard, Class and Politics: New South Wales, Victoria and the Early Commonwealth, 1890-1910, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1976.

(11.) Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law, Volume 1, Melbourne University Press, 1956, ch. 6; Gordon Greenwood, 'National Development and Social Experimentation, 1901-1914', in Gordon Greenwood (ed.), Australia : A Social and Political History, Angus & Robertson, London, 1977, pp. 226-32.

(12.) David Day, Andrew Fisher, Prime Minister of Australia, Harper Collins Australia, 2008, especially chs 6-10; Peter Bastian, Andrew Fisher: An Underestimated Man, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009, chs 8-16; and Edward W. Humphreys, Andrew Fisher: A Forgotten Man, Sports and Editorial Services, Teesdale, 2008. See also Geoffrey Marginson, 'Andrew Fisher: The Views of the Practical Reformer', in D.J. Murphy, R.B. Joyce and Colin A. Hughes (eds), Prelude to Power: The Rise of the Labour Party in Queensland 1885-1915, Jacaranda, South Melbourne, 1970.

(13.) W.G. Spence, Australia's Awakening: Thirty Years in the Life of an Australian Agitator, Sydney, 1909, p. 9.

(14.) Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno, A Little History of the Australian Labor Party, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2011, pp. 22-23; Robin Archer, Why is there No Labor Party in the United States?, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007, 'Introduction'.

(15.) For a summary of their varied progress, see Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, pp. 55-56.

(16.) Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, 3rd edn, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 124-25.

(17.) On 'labour movement intellectuals' see Sean Scalmer and Terry Irving, 'Labour Intellectuals in Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations', International Review of Social History, vol. 50, no. 1, April, 2005, pp. 1-26; and Sean Scalmer and Terry Irving 'Australian Labour Intellectuals: An Introduction', Labour History, no. 77, November 1999, pp. 1-10.

(18.) Hummer, 26 December 1891.

(19.) Cited in Joe Harris, The Bitter Fight: A Pictorial History of the Australian Labor Movement, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1970, p. 99.

(20.) Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics, p. 99.

(21.) Worker (Brisbane), 20 February 1892.

(22.) I have explored the labour movement's engagement with liberalism in depth in Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, ch. 1. See also Bongiorno, The People's Party, ch. 1.

(23.) Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848-1914, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991, p. 29.

(24.) The Clipper, 9 December 1893.

(25.) 'Australian Labour Federation Platform, 1890', cited at http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/bib/ PR0000266.pdf (emphasis in the original), accessed July 2007.

(26.) The Age, 2 April 1892.

(27.) The Pioneer, 1 October 1892.

(28.) Hummer, 7 November 1891.

(29.) Jacqueline Dickenson, Renegades and Rats: Betrayal and the Remaking of Radical Organisations in Britain and Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2006, p. 195.

(30.) Australian Workman, 17 October 1897.

(31.) Official Report of the Seventh Intercolonial Trades and Labour Congress, Ballarat, 1891, p. 8.

(32.) Gympie Truth, 24 March 1896, cited in Marginson, 'Andrew Fisher', p. 187.

(33.) Worker (Brisbane), 1 July 1890.

(34.) Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, pp. 74-75.

(35.) Cited in Day, Andrew Fisher, p. 85.

(36.) Archer, Why is there No Labor Party, p. 58 and more generally ch. 2, 'Race'.

(37.) Brisbane Courier, 25 February 1898.

(38.) Cited in Brian McKinlay, Australian Labor History in Documents, Volume 2: The Labor Party, Collins Dove, Melbourne, 1990, p. 17.

(39.) See Bastian, Andrew Fisher, pp. 49-50.

(40.) Weekly Herald, April 1901, cited at http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/manning/sa/politics/labour.htm, accessed November 2008.

(41.) Brisbane Courier, 25 February 1898.

(42.) Montagu Scott, 'All the World Over', Worker (Brisbane), 23 May 1903.

(43.) Montagu Scott, 'Falstaff up to Date', Worker (Brisbane), 8 May 1893.

(44.) Montagu Scott, 'The Middle Man', Worker (Brisbane), 12 January 1895.

(45.) Worker (Sydney), 28 April 1894.

(46.) Ben Tillett, 'What Shall We Do with Australia?', speech at Melbourne Temperance Hall, 13 September 1897, cited in Tocsin, 9 December 1897.

(47.) Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, p. 75 and, more broadly, ch. 3; and Stuart Macintyre, 'The Concept of Class in Recent Labourist Historiography: Early Socialism and Labor', Intervention, no. 8, March 1977, pp. 79-87.

(48.) Commonweal and Workers' Advocate, 12 March 1892.

(49.) Ray Markey, 'Populism and the Formation of a Labor Party in New South Wales, 1890-1900', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 20, May 1987, pp. 41-2; and also Ray Markey, The Making of the Labor Party in New South Wales, 1880-1900, UNSW Press, Kensington, 1988, pp. 18i>89.

(50.) William Lane (under the pseudonym John Miller), 'Mates', Hummer, 16 January 1892.

(51.) Shearers' and General Laborers' Record, 15 March 1893.

(52.) Michael Leach, '"Manly, True, and White": Masculine Identity and Australian Socialism', in Geoff Stokes (ed.), The Politics of Identity in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 64-65.

(53.) Hummer, 5 April 1892.

(54.) Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (CPD), 12 August 1904, 21: 4264.

(55.) Hummer, 5 December 1891.

(56.) Cited in Mark Hearn, 'Mates and Strangers: The Ethos of the Australian Workers Union', in David Palmer, Ross Shanahan and Martin Shanahan (eds), Australian Labour History Reconsidered, Australian Humanities Press, Parkdale, 1999, p. 22.

(57.) Cited in Frank Bongiorno, 'The Origins of Caucus: 1856-1901', in John Faulkner and Stuart Macintyre (eds), True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001, p. 6.

(58.) Cited in Worker (Brisbane), 14 July 1900.

(59.) Worker (Sydney), 20 April 1895.

(60.) Cited in Stuart Macintyre, 'Federation and the Labour Movement', in Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore (eds), Working the Nation: Working Life and Federation, 1890-1914, Pluto Press, Annandale, 2001, p. 18.

(61.) Worker (Brisbane), 6 January 1900.

(62.) McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 47.

(63.) Tocsin, 10 January 1901.

(64.) Tocsin, 10 December 1903 (capitalisation in original).

(65.) CPD, 25 September 1901, 1: 5153.

(66.) Worker (Brisbane), 6 April 1901.

(67.) Worker (Brisbane), 16 March 1901.

(68.) Gympie Truth, 2 April 1901.

(69.) The Clipper, 21 September 1901. See also 'Victory', Westralian Worker, 4 April 1901.

(70.) CPD, 7 August 1901, 4: 4633-6.

(71.) Markey, 'Populism and the Formation of a Labor Party in New South Wales', pp. 41-42; and also Markey, Making of the Labor Party, pp. 186-89.

(72.) Worker (Brisbane), 26 January 1902 (my emphasis).

(73.) Worker (Brisbane), 9 March 1901.

(74.) Montagu Scott, 'Labor's Xmas Box to the Commonwealth', Worker (Brisbane), 14 December 1901.

(75.) The Clipper, 31 May 1902. Revealingly senior Laborites were at pains to point out that the party's position was not anti-British empire; see Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, pp. 102-3.

(76.) McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 47.

(77.) '1905 Federal Labor Platform', cited in Spence, Australia's Awakening, p. 377.

(78.) Macintyre, The Labour Experiment, p. 34; Neville Kirk, Comrades and Cousins: Globalization, Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914, Merlin Press, London, 2003, pp. 60-61.

(79.) Wagga Express, 14 November 1903, cited in F.K. Crowley, Modern Australia in Documents, 1901-1939: Volume 1, Wren, Melbourne, 1973, p. 62.

(80.) The Clipper, 15 February 1902.

(81.) Kirk, Comrades and Cousins, p. 101.

(82.) Cited in Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics, p. 45.

(83.) Spence, Australia's Awakening, p. 342.

(84.) The Clipper, 3 March 1906.

(85.) Worker (Sydney), 23 March 1901. For more on these claims, see Peter Love, Labour and the Money Power: Australian Labour Populism 1890-1950, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1984, ch. 1.

(86.) Stuart Macintyre, '"Temper democratic, bias Australian": 100 Years of the Australian Labor Party', Overland, no. 162, Autumn 2001, p. 6.

(87.) Claude Marquet, 'The Builder', Worker (Sydney), 11 June 1908.

(88.) Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics, p. 50.

(89.) 'Motion Moved by Melbourne Political Labor Council', cited in Noel Ebbels (ed.), The Australian Labor Movement, 1850-1907: Extracts from Contemporary Documents, Australasian Book Society, Sydney, 1960, p. 223; '3rd Interstate Political Labor Conference Report 1905', cited in Bronwyn Stevens and Patrick Weller (eds), The Australian Labor Party and Federal Politics: A Documentary Survey, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1976, p. 72.

(90.) McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 56.

(91.) Cited in McMullin, The Light on the Hill, pp. 5i>57.

(92.) 'Fourth Interstate Political Labor Conference Report', cited in Worker (Sydney), 23 July 1908.

(93.) Cited in McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 55.

(94.) CPD, 27 April 1904, 19: 1247.

(95.) Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, p. 128.

(96.) Cited in McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 35.

(97.) Ross McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World's First National Labour Government, Scribe, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 141-43.

(98.) CPD, 12 August 1904, 21: 4240.

(99.) 'Fourth Interstate Political Labor Conference Report', cited in Worker (Sydney), 23 July 1908.

(100.) Worker (Sydney), 1 April 1909.

(101.) Cited in Humphreys, Andrew Fisher, p. 32.

(102.) McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 67.

(103.) Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June 1909.

(104.) Spence, Australia's Awakening, p. 278.

(105.) Worker (Sydney), 3 June 1909.

(106.) Worker (Sydney), 3 June 1909.

(107.) Worker (Brisbane), 15 January 1910.

(108.) Jim Case, 'Electors] Will You Let Him?', Worker (Sydney), 23 March 1910.

(109.) Labor Call, 14 April 1910.

(110.) Worker (Sydney), 4 November 1909.

(111.) Labor Vanguard, 21 January 1910. For more on this issue, see Dyrenfurth, Heroes & Villains, pp. 146-50 and Paul Strangio, '"An Intensity of Feeling such as I had Never Before Witnessed": Fusion in Victoria', in Nick Dyrenfurth and Paul Strangio (eds), Confusion: The Making of the Australian Two-Party Political System, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2009, pp. 137-38; Bongiorno, The People's Party, pp. 109-10; and Rickard, Class and Politics, p. 250.

(112.) Worker (Sydney), 17 June 1909.

(113.) Labor Call, 6 July 1911.

(114.) Worker (Sydney), 21 April 1910.

(115.) Worker (Sydney), 3 May 1910.

(116.) Australian Worker, 5 June 1913.

(117.) Cited in John Hirst, 'Labor and the Great War', in Robert Manne (ed.), Australian Century: Political Struggle in the Building of a Nation, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999, pp. 58-59.

(118.) Cited in McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 388.

Nick Dyrenfurth *

Nick Dyrenfurth is a Lecturer in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. He is the author of A Little History of the Australian Labor Party (with Frank Bongiorno).

<nick.dyrenfurth@monash.edu>