The National Labor Party was formed by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n Prime Minister

Billy Hughes William Morris Hughes (25 September 1862 – 28 October 1952) was an Australian politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country during World War I, but ...

in 1916, following the 1916 Labor split on the issue of World War I conscription in Australia. Hughes had taken over as leader of the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...

and

Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister heads the executive branch of the federal government of Australia and is also accountable to federal parliament under the princip ...

when anti-conscriptionist

Andrew Fisher Andrew Fisher (29 August 186222 October 1928) was an Australian politician who served three terms as prime minister of Australia – from 1908 to 1909, from 1910 to 1913, and from 1914 to 1915. He was the leader of the Australian Labor Party ...

resigned in 1915. He formed the new party for himself and his followers after he was expelled from the ALP a month after the 1916 plebiscite on

conscription in Australia Conscription in Australia, also called mandatory military service or National Service, has a controversial history dating back to the first years of nationhood. Military conscription was abolished by Australian law in 1972. Australia currently h ...

. Hughes held a pro-conscription stance in relation to

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Formation

On 15 September 1916, the executive of the Political Labour League (the Labor Party organisation in New South Wales at the time) expelled Hughes from the Labor Party. When the Federal Parliamentary Labor caucus met on 14 November 1916, lengthy discussions ensued until Hughes walked out with 24 other Labor members; the remaining 43 members of Caucus then passed their motion of no confidence in the leadership, effectively expelling Hughes and the other members. Hughes and his followers, who included several early Labor leaders, formed a minority government supported by the

Commonwealth Liberal Party The Liberal Party was a parliamentary party in Australian federal politics between 1909 and 1917. The party was founded under Alfred Deakin's leadership as a merger of the Protectionist Party and Anti-Socialist Party, an event known as the Fu ...

, led by another Labor dissident,

Joseph Cook Sir Joseph Cook, (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947) was an Australian politician who served as the sixth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1913 to 1914. He was the leader of the Liberal Party from 1913 to 1917, after earlier servin ...

. Believing the Labor Party was no longer sufficiently nationalist, they began laying the groundwork for a new party that would be both socially radical and nationalist. In 1917, Hughes and Cook turned their confidence-and-supply agreement into a formal party, the

Nationalist Party of Australia The Nationalist Party, also known as the National Party, was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the latter formed by Prime Min ...

. Hughes became the merged party's leader, with Cook as his deputy. Although it was essentially an upper- and middle-class party dominated by former Liberals, the presence of several Labor men allowed the party to project an image of national unity. The National Labor Party was never formally constituted itself as a party and had no organisational structure, although some trade union officials and Labor Party branches, particularly in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

and

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

, supported it.

Queensland

The Labor Party avoided a split in Queensland due to the efforts of

T. J. Ryan Thomas Joseph Ryan (1 July 1876 – 1 August 1921) was an Australian politician who served as Premier of Queensland from 1915 to 1919, as leader of the state Labor Party. He resigned to enter federal politics, sitting in the House of Represe ...

to minimise losses. Only one member of the state parliament, John Adamson, left the party and initially there was no attempt to create an alternate vehicle at the state level. However in October 1919, Adamson was part of the formation of a party for ex-Labor supporters that used the name. It had no electoral success and soon disappeared.

Western Australia

The National Labor movement in Western Australia started off as two separate groups—one known as the Labor Solidarity Committee based out of Trades Hall in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, and the other known as National Labor and based on the goldfields. The two merged in April–May 1917, with former

Premier Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of governm ...

John Scaddan John Scaddan, CMG (4 August 1876 – 21 November 1934), popularly known as "Happy Jack", was Premier of Western Australia from 7 October 1911 until 27 July 1916. Early life John Scaddan was born in Moonta, South Australia, into a Cornish A ...

as their leader. However, by July he was without a seat in Parliament, and the party turned to Federal Senators Patrick Lynch,

Hugh de Largie Hugh de Largie (24 March 1859 – 9 May 1947) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1901 to 1922. He was initially a member of the Labor Party, but after the 1916 party split joined the National La ...

and

George Pearce Sir George Foster Pearce KCVO (14 January 1870 – 24 June 1952) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1901 to 1938. He began his career in the Labor Party but later joined the National Labor Party, ...

for leadership and guidance. Unlike its federal counterpart, it maintained its own distinct identity and structure and worked with the Nationalists as coalition partners. A number of Western Australian unions disaffiliated from the Australian Labor Federation to support the National Labor movement—most notably those representing the engine-drivers, railway employees, boilermakers and carpenters which were powerful in the goldfields. Organisationally, however, the party was believed to be over-dependent on its Senate patrons and struggled to build a genuine extraparliamentary organisation. The party scored six of 50 Assembly seats in each of the

1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Fo ...

and 1921 elections, and held three of 30

Council A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/ shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or nati ...

seats during this period. However, in the 1924 elections, their representation was reduced to one in the Assembly and two in the Council—many through the defeat of sitting NLP members by Labor candidates—and later that year, what remained of the Party was subsumed by the Nationalists.

References

Bibliography

Australian Dictionary of Biography - Billy Hughes
*Robertson, John R. (1958). ''The Scaddan government and the conscription crisis, 1911-17 : aspects of Western Australia's political history'' (thesis). University of Western Australia. Accessed in Special Collections, Reid Library, UWA. *Cusack, Danny. (2002). ''With an olive branch and a shillelagh: The political career of Senator Paddy Lynch (1867-1944)'' (thesis). Murdoch University. Accessed vi
Murdoch Digital Theses
{{Authority control Labour parties Defunct political parties in Australia Political parties established in 1916 Political parties disestablished in 1917 Australian Labor Party breakaway groups 1916 establishments in Australia

Formation

Queensland

Western Australia

See also

References

Bibliography