The history of the Australian Labor Party (federally spelt Labour prior to 1912) has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree (the "Tree of Knowledge") in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies.
The first general election contested by Labour candidates was the 1891 New South Wales election, where Labour candidates (then called the Labor Electoral League of New South Wales) won 35 of 141 seats. The major parties were the Protectionist and Free Trade parties and Labour held the balance of power. It offered parliamentary support in exchange for policy enactment.So Monstrous a Travesty, Ross McMullen. Scribe Publications 2004. p.4. Also in 1891, three United Labor Party (ULP) of South Australia candidates were elected to the South Australian Legislative Council. At the 1893 South Australian election the United Labor Party led by John McPherson won 10 of the 54 seats and the balance of power in the House of Assembly, allowing the liberal government of Charles Kingston to be formed, ousting the conservative government of John Downer. By the 1905 South Australian election Thomas Price became the first Labor Premier of South Australia. Re-elected at the 1906 double dissolution election serving until his death in 1909, it was the world's first stable Labour Party government. So successful, John Verran led Labor to form the state's first of many majority governments at the 1910 South Australian election. In 1899, Anderson Dawson formed a Labour minority government in Queensland, the first Labour Party government in the world, which lasted one week while the conservatives regrouped after a split.
The colonial Labour parties and the trade unions were mixed in their support for the Federation of Australia. Some Labour representatives argued against the proposed constitution, claiming the Senate as proposed was too powerful, similar to the anti-reformist colonial upper houses and the British House of Lords. They feared federation would further entrench the power of the conservative forces. The first Labour leader following the inaugural 1901 federal election and later prime minister, Chris Watson, however, was a supporter of federation.
Following the 1903 federal election, the four-month 1904 Chris Watson minority government was the world's first Labour Party government at a national level. Then led by Andrew Fisher, Labour success at the 1910 federal election represented a number of firsts: it was Australia's first elected federal majority government; Australia's first elected Senate majority; the world's first Labour Party majority government at a national level.
By 1910, Labor members of both state and federal parliaments had successfully won concessions from other parties and influence various social reforms, such as those concerning industrial arbitration, working hours, wages boards, and old age pensions.UNITED EMPIRE THE ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE JOURNAL, January 1910, P.292
Overview The Labor Party is commonly described as a social democratic party and its constitution stipulates that it is a democratic socialist party. The party was created by, and has always been influenced by, the trade unions, and in practice Labor politicians regard themselves as part of the broader labour movement and tradition. At the first federal election in 1901 Labor's platform called for a White Australia Policy, a citizen army and compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes.McKinlay (1981) p. 19 Labor has historically been a pragmatic party, and has at various times supported high tariffs and low tariffs, conscription and pacifism, White Australia and multiculturalism, nationalisation and privatisation, isolationism and internationalism.
Historically, Labor and its affiliated unions were strong opponents of non-British immigration, expressed as the White Australia policy which barred all non-European migration to Australia. Besides the 19th century pseudo-scientific theories about "racial purity", the main labour concern was the fear of economic competition from immigrants prepared to accept low-wage, views which were shared by the vast majority of Australians and all major political parties. In practice the labour movement opposed all migration, on the grounds that immigrants competed with Australian workers and drove down wages. This objection continued until after World War II, when the Chifley government launched a major immigration program. The party's opposition to non-European immigration did not change until after the retirement of Arthur Calwell as leader in 1967. Subsequently, Labor has become an advocate of multiculturalism, although some of its trade union base and some of its members continued to oppose high immigration levels.
One of the first members of the NSW Labor caucus described themselves as "a band of unhappy amateurs", made up of blue collar workers, a squatter, a doctor, and even a mine owner, indicating that Labor was formed of more than just unions. In addition, many members from the working class supported the liberal notion of free trade between the colonies – in the first grouping of state MPs, 17 of the 35 were free-traders.
In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, support for socialism grew in trade union ranks, and at the 1921 All-Australian Trades Union Congress a resolution was passed calling for "the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange." As a result, Labor's Federal Conference in 1922 adopted a similarly worded "socialist objective," which remained official policy for many years. The resolution was immediately qualified, however, by the "Blackburn amendment," which said that "socialisation" was desirable only when was necessary to "eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features."McKinlay (1981) p. 53
The Labour years
Celia Hamilton, examining New South Wales, argues for the central role of Irish Catholics. Before 1890, they opposed Henry Parkes, the main Liberal leader, and free trade, seeing them as representative of Protestant Englishmen who represented landholding and large business interests. In the strike of 1890 the leading Catholic Sydney's Archbishop Patrick Francis Moran was sympathetic toward unions, but Catholic newspapers were negative. After 1900, says Hamilton, Irish Catholics were drawn to the Labour Party because its stress on equality and social welfare fitted with their status as manual laborers and small farmers. In the 1910 elections Labour gained in the more Catholic areas and the representation of Catholics increased in Labour's parliamentary ranks.Celia Hamilton, "Irish‐Catholics of New South Wales and the Labor Party, 1890–1910." Historical Studies: Australia & New Zealand (1958) 8#31: 254-267.
At Federation, the Labour Party did not have any national organisation. It was some years before the party would have any significant structure or organisation at the federal level. The first election to the federal Parliament in 1901 was contested by state Labour parties in five of the six states – in Tasmania, where there was no Labour party, King O'Malley was elected as an independent labour candidate. In total, they won 15% of the vote and 15 of the 75 seats in the House of Representatives and eight Senate places, and two Independents joined the party. The 25 Labour members met as the federal parliamentary Labour Party (informally known as the Caucus, comprising members of the House of Representatives and the Senate) on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first federal Parliament.Faulkner; Macintyre (2001) p. 3 Caucus elected Chris Watson leader, decided to call the party Federal Labour Party and to support the Protectionist Party minority government against the Free Trade Party. Federal Labour under Watson increased its numbers to 23 in the House and 8 in the Senate at the 1903 federal election and continued to hold the balance of power and support the Protectionist Party. In April 1904, however, Watson and Deakin fell out over the issue of extending the scope of industrial relations laws concerning the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to cover state public servants, the fallout causing Deakin to resign. Free Trade leader George Reid declined to take office, which saw Watson become the first Labour Prime Minister, and the world's first Labour head of government at a national level (Anderson Dawson had led a short-lived Labour government in Queensland in December 1899), though his was a minority government that lasted only four months. He was aged only 37, and is still the youngest prime minister in Australia's history. After Watson's government fell, Deakin became prime minister again for a short period, to be followed by the Free Trade Party's Reid, who had Labour's Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, which was the cause of the political upheaval, passed.
George Reid of the Free Trade Party adopted a strategy of trying to reorient the party system along Labour vs non-Labour lines – prior to the 1906 federal election, he renamed his Free Trade Party to the Anti-Socialist Party. Reid envisaged a spectrum running from socialist to anti-socialist, with the Protectionist Party in the middle. This attempt struck a chord with politicians who were steeped in the Westminster tradition and regarded a two-party system as very much the norm.
At the election of 1906, which now permitted postal voting, Watson increased Labour House seats to 26. Though they had more seats than the Protectionist Party with 16, Labour supported Deakin as prime minister. Watson resigned as leader in 1907 and was succeeded by Andrew Fisher. Fisher withdrew its support of the Deakin government on 13 November 1908 and formed a minority government. The Fisher government passed a large number of its legislation. A scandalised establishment, believing an anti-socialist alliance was necessary to counter Labor's growing electoral dominance, pressured Deakin and Anti-Socialist Party's new leader, Joseph Cook, to begin merger talks. The main body of Protectionists, including Deakin and his supporters merged with the Anti-Socialist Party in May 1909 to become the Commonwealth Liberal Party, popularly known as "the Fusion", with Deakin as leader and Cook as deputy leader. The more liberal Protectionists defected to Labour. Deakin now held a majority in the House of Representatives and the Fisher government fell in a vote on 27 May 1909. Fisher failed to persuade the Governor-General Lord Dudley to dissolve Parliament and Deakin formed Australia's first majority government in June 1909, under the CLP banner, which governed less than a year until the 1910 federal election, held in April of that year.