Hughes, William Morris (1862-1952), was prime minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923. At the time, he was one of the country’s longest-serving prime ministers. Commonly known as Billy Hughes, he also holds the record for the longest service in Australia’s federal Parliament. He served in the House of Representatives from 1901, the year the House was created, to 1952, the year of his death. During his long political career, Hughes belonged to six different political parties, three of which he founded or helped establish. Three of the six parties expelled him.
Hughes came from a working-class background and developed his political foundation in labor organizations. As prime minister, he sought an active role for Australia in world politics. His efforts resulted in Australia becoming a full member of the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations, in 1919. Hughes strongly backed the Allied effort during World War I (1914-1918) and was a leading supporter of military conscription (draft) for overseas service during the war. His position on conscription ultimately caused the Labor Party to split, affecting Australian party politics for many years.
Early life and family
William Morris Hughes was born in London on Sept. 25, 1862, to Welsh parents. His father, William Hughes, was a carpenter, and his mother, born Jane Morris, was a domestic servant. Following his mother’s death, Hughes spent several years in Wales with relatives. He returned to London in 1874. Hughes completed his elementary education at St. Stephen’s School, Westminster (now the Burdett-Coutts and Townshend Foundation Church of England Primary School). He then worked at the school for a number of years as a pupil-teacher and, later, an assistant teacher.
Early career.
Hughes left England and came to Queensland, Australia, in 1884. Over the next few years, he took various jobs, first in the Australian outback—that is, the rural interior of Australia—and later on a coastal ship. About 1886, he arrived in Sydney, New South Wales. He and his landlady’s daughter Elizabeth Cutts (1864-1906) began to live together as husband and wife. The couple opened a small store in Balmain, a suburb in Sydney.
During the 1890’s, Hughes became active in labor politics, and his shop became a gathering place for reformers. Hughes was an early member of the Balmain Labour Electoral League—later a local branch of the Labor Party—and the Socialist League. He also spent several months working as a labor organizer for the Amalgamated Shearers’ Union in the outback region of western New South Wales.
Family.
Billy and Elizabeth Hughes had seven children: Arthur, Ethel, William (who died in infancy), Lilly, Dolly, Ernest, and Charles. Elizabeth died from heart disease in 1906. In 1911, Hughes married Mary Ethel Campbell (1874-1958), a nurse. The couple set up their home in Melbourne, while Hughes’s children remained in Sydney. Hughes and Mary later had one child, Helen.
Political career
New South Wales legislator.
In 1894, Hughes ran as a Labor candidate and won the seat of Lang, Sydney, in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, the lower house of the New South Wales Parliament. As a member of the Assembly until 1901, Hughes became known for his skills as a speaker. He supported free trade and opposed Australian federation—that is, the combining of the six Australian colonies—as it was then proposed. During his career in the Assembly, Hughes also organized the Trolley, Draymen and Carters’ Union of Sydney and the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia. He served as president of both groups. From 1899 to 1916, he was secretary for the Sydney Wharf Labourers’ Union.
Federal Parliamentarian.
During Hughes’s initial opposition to federation, the Australian colonies became states of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. In March of that year, Hughes won election as a Labor candidate to a seat in Australia’s first House of Representatives. Hughes then lived mostly in Melbourne, the seat of the federal Parliament, and his family remained in Sydney. Hughes served as a member of the House for more than 51 years—the longest career of any Australian member of Parliament.
In 1903, after studying law part-time for some years, Hughes was admitted to the bar of New South Wales, the body of lawyers licensed to practice law in the state. In 1909, Hughes was appointed a king’s counsel—that is, a lawyer who serves as a legal adviser to the Crown.
In April 1904, Australians elected their first federal Labor government, led by Prime Minister Chris Watson. Hughes served as minister for trade and customs for the four months this government remained in power. During the three Labor administrations of Prime Minister Andrew Fisher—from 1908 to 1909, 1910 to 1913, and 1914 to 1915—Hughes was Australian attorney general, the chief law officer. From 1907 to 1915, Hughes also served as deputy Labor leader under Fisher. Fisher retired as prime minister in October 1915, and Hughes was his unopposed successor as the new Labor leader. He became prime minister of Australia on October 27.
Prime minister.
Hughes took office during World War I. Unlike Fisher, Hughes strongly supported military conscription. Following a 1916 trip to England and France, where he saw Australian soldiers, Hughes became convinced of the urgency of drafting more troops to aid the Allied war effort. Hughes’s strong stance on conscription caused the leadership of the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party to expel him in September 1916. In hopes of demonstrating public support, Hughes called a referendum (public vote) on conscription for October. Voters narrowly rejected a military draft.
In November, some members of the federal Labor caucus, a gathering of Labor parliamentary members, made a motion of no confidence in Hughes’s leadership. They fiercely attacked his actions, especially his support of conscription, in the debate that followed. With a majority of the caucus against him, Hughes and his followers walked out of the meeting. In effect, Hughes had been expelled from the Labor Party. However, the governor general at that time asked Hughes to form a new government immediately. Hughes and his supporters, who called themselves the National Labor Party, formed a minority government. They negotiated with the Liberal Party to govern with its backing.
Following a general election in May 1917, National Labor merged with members of the Liberal Party to form the Nationalist Party. Hughes remained prime minister and served as Nationalist Party leader. Hughes’s government held a second referendum on conscription the same year, but Australians again voted against it, this time by a larger margin.
In 1918, Hughes attended meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet, which consisted of the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and all the British dominions, in London. He sought to ensure Australian representation in the World War I peace negotiations. In 1919, he attended the Paris Peace Conference, where he signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Australia. At the conference, Hughes argued that Germany should make heavy reparations (payments for wrongs done) and that Australia should be compensated for its war losses. He secured Australian control of previously German territory on the island of New Guinea and other islands in the Pacific. During the conference, Hughes also secured independent membership for Australia in the League of Nations.
The Nationalist Party lost its majority in Parliament in a general election in December 1919. However, it won the most seats in the House and continued to govern with support from the Country Party. In the general election of December 1922, the Nationalists did not win the most seats in Parliament. To form a government, they would need the support of the Country Party. However, Country Party leader Earle Page refused to form a government with Hughes as prime minister. Hughes resigned as Nationalist Party leader and prime minister on Feb. 9, 1923. He was succeeded by Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who led a coalition government with the Country Party.
Later years.
Following his resignation as prime minister, Hughes remained a Nationalist member of Parliament. However, his opposition to Bruce’s policies contributed to the fall of the Nationalist-Country coalition government, and the Nationalist Party expelled him in 1929. The same year, Hughes launched the Australian Party, but the party only lasted until 1931. Hughes soon joined the new United Australia Party (UAP), founded by former Labor politician Joseph Lyons. The UAP won control of the government in 1931. In the course of the next 10 years, Hughes held several government ministries, including the portfolio of attorney general. He also represented Australia at the General Assembly of the League of Nations in 1932.
Hughes was expelled from the UAP in 1944 for remaining a member of the Australian Advisory War Council after the UAP had withdrawn from it. The council was an all-party government body set up to discuss policy during World War II (1939-1945). Hughes then joined the Liberal Party, newly established by former Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Hughes served as a Liberal member of Parliament until his death in Lindfield, a suburb of Sydney, on Oct. 28, 1952. He wrote two books of reminiscences, Crusts and Crusades (1947) and Policies and Potentates (1950), and his reflections on relations within the British Empire were contained in The Splendid Adventure (1929).
