Sir Wilfrid Selwyn "Bill" Kent Hughes (12 June 1895 – 31 July 1970) was an Australian army officer and politician who had a long career in both state and federal politics, most notably as a minister in the Menzies government. He also had a longstanding involvement with the Olympic movement, as both an athlete and organiser.
Kent Hughes was born in Melbourne to an upper middle-class family. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1914, but postponed his studies to join the Australian Imperial Force. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1919, and combined his studies with his sporting career, representing Australia in hurdling at the 1920 Summer Olympics. Kent Hughes returned home in 1923 and began working at his father's publishing company. He was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1927, representing the Nationalist Party. He joined the new United Australia Party in 1931, and the following year was made a minister in the government of Stanley Argyle. He served as the party's deputy leader from 1935 to 1939.
When the Second World War broke out, Kent Hughes re-enlisted in the army and took part in the Malayan campaign. He was captured by the Japanese at the Battle of Singapore, and spent the next three years as a prisoner-of-war in Singapore, Taiwan, and Manchuria. Kent Hughes retained his seat in parliament during that time, and joined the new Liberal Party upon his return to Australia in 1945. He became Deputy Premier of Victoria in 1948, but resigned the following year to contest the House of Representatives at the 1949 federal election. Robert Menzies added Kent Hughes to his cabinet in 1951, as Minister for the Interior and Minister for Works and Housing.
Kent Hughes was Chairman of the Organising Committee for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. His chairmanship was widely judged a success, and he left a lasting legacy by engineering the sale of television rights, an Olympic first. Despite his high profile, Menzies removed Kent Hughes from his ministry in early 1956. He spent the rest of his career as a backbencher, dying in office in 1970. Kent Hughes was famous for his stubbornness and abrasive personality, particularly the insults he directed at opponents. He was sympathetic towards fascism early in his career (generally overlooked due to his later status as a war hero), and later became an ardent anti-communist.
Early life and family The second child of seven of English orthopaedic surgeon and publisher Wilfred Kent Hughes and his wife Clementina (née Rankin), through whom he was the first cousin of the academic and lawyer Philip Seaforth James. Kent Hughes was born in East Melbourne and educated at Trinity Grammar and Melbourne Grammar. He was accepted at Christ Church, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1914 (although he did not commence study at Oxford until 1919 due to his war service). The family name was Hughes, and young Wilfrid was usually called Bill or Billy. Later, to avoid confusion with fellow politician Billy Hughes, he adopted one of his middle names, Kent, as part of his surname. It is not known why he spelled his given name "Wilfrid" while his father's was "Wilfred."
A number of Kent Hughes's relatives also gained national recognition in their chosen fields. Uncle Canon Ernest Hughes was an influential member of the Anglican Church of Australia and a leading Australian rules footballer with St Kilda and EssendonHarper, N. (1983) "Hughes, Ernest Selwyn (1860–1942)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9. pp 388–389. Melbourne University Press: Parkdale. and uncle Frederic Hughes was a Brigadier-General, mayor of St Kilda and Aide-de-camp to the Governor-General, the Earl of Dudley.Smart, J. (1983) "Hughes, Frederic Godfrey (1858–1944)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 9. pp 387–388. Melbourne University Press: Parkdale. Aunt Eva Hughes OBE founded the Australian Women's National League, the then largest body of organised women in the country, while his sisters Dr Ellen Kent Hughes MBE was a leading paediatrician and community activist and Gwendoline Kent Lloyd, who Wilfrid referred to as "the family Communist", was a renowned proponent of Indigenous rights.
First World War Kent Hughes enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as a private on 8 August 1914. (listed third from top) He served in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at Gallipoli, where he was wounded, then Sinai, Palestine and Syria. Kent Hughes, who reached the rank of major, was mentioned in despatches four times, received the Military Cross in 1917 for his "marked ability and energy in the performance of his duties", and appointed Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General of the Australian Mounted Division. Upon his return to Australia in 1918 he published a volume of memoirs, Modern Crusaders, about his exploits in the Light Horse Brigade.
University and 1920 Olympics At war's end, Kent Hughes entered Christ Church, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, gaining a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Modern History. He also captained the Oxford ski team and showed a proficiency for athletics and finished third behind Edward Wheller in the 440 yards hurdles event at the British 1920 AAA Championships. One month later, he was selected by Australia to compete at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. He finished fourth in his heat of the 110-metre hurdles and failed to progress but won his 400-metre heat before finishing fifth in the semi-final. Kent Hughes did not return to England empty handed, as he later admitted to souveniring an official Olympic flag from the Olympic stadium.Findling, J. & Pelle, K. (2004) Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Greenwood Press.
In 1921, Kent Hughes was part of the Oxford Ski Team visit to Europe, during which he became the first Australian to ski competitively overseas. He won the 440 yards AAA title at the 1922 AAA Championships.
Following his graduation from Oxford, he married Edith Kerr, a wealthy American heiress to a thread manufacturing empire, on 3 February 1923 in Montclair, New Jersey. He subsequently returned to Melbourne to work as a director in his father's publishing company Ramsay Publishing Pty Ltd while sizing up a career in politics.
State politics
In 1926, Kent Hughes unsuccessfully sought Nationalist Party of Australia preselection for the newly created seat of Kew in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He won the seat as an independent candidate at the 1927 election, after which he joined the Nationalists. Kent Hughes soon found himself opposed to the conservative establishment, and what he considered the mediocrity of Victorian politics. He openly referred to a number of his fellow Nationalists as "boneheads" and opposition Labor Party members as "uncouth, semi-educated ill-mannered narrow-minded boors". Kent Hughes, along with his close friend and ally Robert Menzies, founded the Young Nationalists Organisation in 1929, which became an influential force in conservative politics in Victoria.
When the Nationalists came into power in Victoria in December 1928, Kent Hughes was appointed Cabinet Secretary and Government Whip but resigned his positions in July 1929, ostensibly in protest over a government subsidy to a freezing works company, but more likely in reaction to the ongoing bone headedness of his fellow parliamentarians.
Following the formation of the United Australia Party (UAP) in place of the Nationalists in 1931, Kent Hughes served in several portfolios, including Railways, Labour, Transport and Sustenance. It was as Minister for Sustenance, a portfolio designed to deal with the poverty of the Great Depression, that he became known as the "Minister for Starvation".Spenceley, G. (2001) "The minister for starvation: Wilfrid Kent Hughes, fascism and the Unemployment Relief", Labour History, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Vol. 81. Kent Hughes drafted legislation that became the Unemployment Relief (Administration) Bill which, when enacted in January 1933, forced the unemployed to work for the dole, and denied any form of financial assistance to women.Stone, J. (1998) "Brazen Hussies and God's Police", Rebel Women in Australian Working Class History, ed. Bloodworth, S. & O'Lincoln, T. Interventions: Melbourne. Kent Hughes's bill has been described as the harshest piece of legislation in Australia directed towards the unemployed during the Depression.
In January 1933, Kent Hughes became embroiled in cricket's Bodyline affair. A friend of English captain Douglas Jardine from their Oxford days, Kent Hughes publicly defended Jardine's tactics of sustained short-pitched bowling against the Australian batsmen, arguing that Australia used similar tactics against England during the 1921 Ashes tour. He also criticised the protests about Jardine by Australian cricket's governing body, the Australian Cricket Board of Control, stating they were "boorish, bitter (and) insulting".________ "The Leg Theory", The Times, London, 20 January 1933, p 6
While he was attacking the Cricket Board of Control, Kent Hughes was simultaneously organising the Australian tour of the Duke of Gloucester and, for his efforts, was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1934. In 1938, he was manager of the Australian team at the Empire Games held in Sydney.
"Why I Have Become a Fascist"
During the late 1920s and 1930s, Kent Hughes developed a strong sympathy for fascism, encouraged in part by his uncle Ernest, who visited Italy in 1926, and published an enthusiastic report on Mussolini's Italy in a local newspaper on his return. Kent Hughes was also impressed by Sir Oswald Mosley's proposal for a British parliament consisting of business and national interests, headed by a powerful executive government.
In 1933, he published a series of articles in the Melbourne Herald, titled "Why I Have Become a Fascist". In one article, he wrote that fascism "endeavours to avoid the egotistical attitude of laissez faire and the inertia of socialism". Kent Hughes saw it as "a half-way house between the two systems". In fascist countries, he said, "industrial peace and security have been found to be worth the price of sacrificing some of the individual liberty previously enjoyed". In what he called "British communities", however, he expected that fascism would "be garbed not in the dictatorial black shirt, but in the more sedate style of the British Parliamentary representative".Howard, F. (1972) Kent Hughes, Macmillan.
Kent Hughes was unique among prominent Australians in publicly identifying as a fascist, although he never joined a fascist organisation or acted overtly in a way that could be described as fascist, and there is no evidence to suggest he was an anti-semite. His biographer, Frederick Howard, maintains that Kent Hughes did not know much about fascism and used the word mainly for its shock value. He observed that "Kent Hughes does not seem to have paid enough attention to the difference between theory and practice in Mussolini's Italy".
Kent Hughes's public support of fascism failed to damage his political career, and he was elected as the deputy leader of the Victorian UAP in 1935, serving until his enlistment in the army in 1939.
Second World War and aftermath