Birth and family background

Memorial cairn in Crosshouse, Fisher's birthplace in rural Scotland

Fisher was born on 29 August 1862 in Crosshouse,^[1] a mining village 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Kilmarnock, Scotland. He was the second of eight children born to Jane (née Garven or Garvin) and Robert Fisher; he had one older brother, four younger brothers, and two younger sisters.^[2] His younger sister died at the age of 10 in 1879, the only one of the siblings not to live to adulthood.^[3] Fisher's mother was the daughter of a blacksmith and worked as a domestic servant.^[2] On his father's side, he was descended from a long line of Ayrshire coalminers. According to family tradition, his paternal grandfather was persecuted for his involvement in the fledgling union movement, and on one occasion was left homeless with five young children.^[4] Although he was probably only partially literate,^{[lower-alpha 1]} Fisher's father was prominent in the local community and involved with various community organisations. He was the leader of a temperance society,^[5] and in 1863 was one of ten miners who co-founded a cooperative society.^[4] He and his family were active members of the Free Church of Scotland.^[6]

Childhood

Fisher spent most of his childhood living in a miners' row, which had an earthen floor and no running water.^[7] He was kicked in the head by a cow as a small child, leaving him mostly deaf in one ear. The injury may have contributed to a childhood speech impediment and his reserved nature as an adult.^[8] As a boy, Fisher and his brothers fished in Carmel Water, a tributary of the River Irvine, and enjoyed long walks across the countryside.^[9] He was athletic, helping form a local football team, and stood 178 centimetres (5 ft 10 in) as an adult, above the average at the time.^[8] In later life, Fisher recalled attending four schools as a boy. The exact details are uncertain, but he is known to have finished his schooling in Crosshouse and to have attended a school in nearby Dreghorn for a period.^{[10][lower-alpha 2]} The standard of public education in Scotland was relatively high at the time, and his schoolmaster in Crosshouse had received formal training in Edinburgh; the main focus of the curriculum was on the three Rs.^[11] He later supplemented his limited formal education by attending night school in Kilmarnock and reading at the town library.^[12]

The exact age at which Fisher left school is uncertain, but he could have been as young as nine or as old as thirteen.^{[lower-alpha 3]} He is believed to have begun his working life as a coal trapper, opening and closing the trapdoors that allowed for ventilation and the movement of coal. He was later placed in charge of the pit ponies, and finally took his place performing "pick-and-shovel work" at the coalface. When he was 16, he was promoted to air-pump operator, which required additional training and was seen as a relatively prestigious position.^[15] Fisher's father had black lung disease, and gave up mining around the same time as his oldest sons began working. He subsequently became the manager of the foodstore at the local cooperative, and the family moved out of miners' row. They later lived in Kilmaurs for a period, but eventually returned to Crosshouse and leased a small farm. Fisher's father then worked as a gardener and apiarist, supplementing his income with contract work repairing the machinery at local mines.^[7] He died of lung disease in 1887, aged 53.^[16]

Early political involvement

In 1879, aged 17, Fisher was elected secretary of the Crosshouse branch of the Ayrshire Miners' Union. He soon came into contact with Keir Hardie, a leading figure in the union and a future leader of the British Labour Party. The pair met frequently to discuss politics and would renew their acquaintance later in life.^[17] Fisher and Hardie were leaders of the 1881 Ayrshire miners' strike, which was widely seen as a failure. The ten-week strike resulted in only a small pay rise rather than the 10 percent that had been asked for; many workers depleted their savings and some cooperatives came close to bankruptcy. Fisher had originally been opposed to the strike, and unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a compromise with mine-owners. He lost his job, but soon found work at a different mine.^[18] Like many miners, Fisher was a supporter of Gladstone's Liberal Party, in particular the "Liberal-Labour" candidates who had the support of the unions. In 1884, he chaired a public meeting in Crosshouse in support of the Third Reform Bill. He subsequently wrote a letter to Gladstone and received a reply thanking him for his support.^[19] The following year, Fisher was involved in another miners' strike. He was not only sacked but also blacklisted. He was left with little future in Scotland and decided to emigrate; his older brother John had already left for England a few years earlier, becoming a police constable in Liverpool.^[20]

Queensland politics

Fisher as a Queensland MP, c. 1899

In 1891, Fisher was elected as the first president of the Gympie branch of the Labour Party. In 1893, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland as Labour member for the Electoral district of Gympie and by the following year had become Labour's deputy leader in the Legislative Assembly. In his maiden speech, he pushed for a 50% decrease in military spending and declared support for a federation.^[36] He was also active in the Amalgamated Miners Union, becoming President of the Gympie branch by 1891.^[37] Another policy area that captured his attention during this term, was the employment of workers from the Pacific Islands in sugar plantations, a practice that Fisher and Labour both strongly opposed. He lost his seat in 1896 following a campaign in which he was charged by his opponent Jacob Stumm with being a dangerous revolutionary and an anti-Catholic, accusations that were propagated by the newspaper Gympie Times.^[36]

The 1896 establishment of the Gympie Truth, a newspaper that he was to partly own,^[38] was part of his response. Intended as a medium to broadcast Labour's message, the newspaper played a vital role in Fisher's return to parliament in 1899. This time, he was the beneficiary of a scare campaign, in which conservative candidate Francis Power was consistently painted by the Gympie Truth as being a supporter of black labour and the alleged economic and social ills that accompanied it.^[36] In that year he was Secretary for Railways and Public Works in the seven-day government of Anderson Dawson, the first parliamentary Labour government in the world.^[38]

Federal politics

Labour Party MPs elected at the inaugural 1901 election, including Watson, Fisher, Hughes, O'Malley, and Tudor

The state Labour parties and their MPs were mixed in their support for the Federation of Australia.^[39] However Fisher was a firm believer in federation, supporting the union of the Australian colonies and campaigned for the 'Yes' vote in Queensland's 1899 referendum.^[38] Fisher stood for the Division of Wide Bay at the inaugural 1901 Australian federal election and won the seat, which he held continuously for the rest of his political career.^[37] At the end of 1901, Fisher married Margaret Irvine, his previous landlady's daughter.^[40]

Fisher supported the White Australia policy but also argued that any Kanaka who had converted to Christianity and married should be allowed to remain in Australia.

Labour improved their position at the 1903 election, gaining enough seats to be on par with the other two, a legislative time colloquially known as the "three elevens". When the Deakin government resigned in 1904, George Reid of the Free Trade Party declined to take office, resulting in Labour taking power and Chris Watson becoming Labour's first prime minister for a four-month period in 1904. Fisher established and demonstrated his ministerial capabilities as Minister for Trade and Customs in the Watson Ministry. The fourth Labour member in the ministry after Watson, Hughes, and Lee Batchelor, Fisher was promoted to Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1905.

Fisher in 1904, around the time of the Watson government

George Reid adopted a strategy of trying to reorient the party system along Labour vs non-Labour lines – prior to the 1906 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.^[41]

Party leader

At the 1906 election, Deakin remained prime minister even though Labour gained considerably more seats than the Protectionists. When Watson resigned in 1907, Fisher succeeded him as Labour leader, although Hughes and William Spence also stood for the position. Fisher was considered to have a better understanding of economic matters, was better at handling caucus, had better relations with the party organisation and the unions, and was more in touch with party opinion. He did not share Hughes' passion for free trade or that of Watson and Hughes for defence (and later conscription). In political terms he was a radical, on the left-wing of his party, with a strong sense of Labour's part in British working-class history.

At the 1908 Labour Federal Conference, Fisher argued for female representation in parliament:

I trust that not another Federal election will take place without there being a woman endorsed as a Labour candidate for the Senate.

With a majority of seats in the Labour-Protectionist government, Labour caucus by early 1908 had become restive as to the future of the Deakin minority government. With the Deakin ministry in trouble, Deakin spoke to Fisher and Watson about a possible coalition, and following a report agreed to it providing Labour had a majority in cabinet, that there was immediate legislation for old-age pensions, that New Protection was carried and that at the following election the government would promise a progressive land tax. No coalition was formed, however the pressure from Labour brought about productive change by Deakin: he agreed to a royal commission into the post office, old-age pensions were to be provided from the surplus revenue fund and £250,000 set aside for ships for an Australian Navy. New Protection was declared invalid by the High Court in June, Fisher found the tariff proposals of Deakin unsatisfactory, while caucus was also dissatisfied with the old-age pension proposals. Without Labour support the Deakin government collapsed in November 1908.^[38]

During the parliamentary ballots that selected Yass-Canberra as the site of the national capital, in October 1908, Fisher voted consistently for Dalgety.^[42]

First term (1908–1909)

Fisher in 1908

Fisher formed his only minority government and the First Fisher Ministry. The government passed the Seat of Government Act 1908, providing for the new federal capital to be in the Yass-Canberra area, passed the Manufacturers' Encouragement Act to provide bounties for iron and steel manufacturers who paid fair and reasonable wages,^[38] ordered three torpedo boat destroyers, and assumed local naval defence responsibility and placed the Australian Navy at the disposal of the Royal Navy in wartime.

Fisher committed Labour to amending the Constitution to give the Commonwealth power over labour, wages and prices, to expanding the navy and providing compulsory military training for youths, to extending pensions, to a land tax, to the construction of a transcontinental railway, to the replacement of pound sterling with Australian currency and to tariffs to protect the sugar industry.^[43] In May 1909, the more conservative Protectionists and Freetraders merged to form the Commonwealth Liberal Party, while the more liberal Protectionists joined Labour. With a majority of seats, the CLP led by Alfred Deakin ousted Labour from office, with Fisher failing to persuade the Governor-General Lord Dudley to dissolve Parliament.^[38]

Second term (1910–1913)

A studio portrait of the prime ministerial family in 1910

At the 1910 election, Labour gained sixteen additional seats to hold a total of forty-two of the seventy-five House of Representatives' seats, and all eighteen Senate seats up for election to hold a total of twenty-two out of thirty-six seats. This gave Labour control of both upper and lower houses and enabled Fisher to form his Second Fisher Ministry, Australia's first elected federal majority government, Australia's first elected Senate majority, and the world's first Labour Party majority government.^[38] The 113 acts passed in the three years of the second Fisher government exceeded even the output of the second Deakin government over a similar period.^[43] The 1910–13 Fisher government represented the culmination of Labour's involvement in politics, and was a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, under John Curtin and Ben Chifley.^[38] The Fisher government carried out many reforms in defence, finance, transport and communications, and social security, achieving the vast majority of their aims in just three years of government. These included extending old-age and disability pensions,^[44] introducing a maternity allowance and issuing Australia's first paper currency, forming the Royal Australian Navy, the start of construction of the Trans-Australian Railway, expanding the bench of the High Court of Australia, the founding of Canberra, and the establishment of the state-owned Commonwealth Bank.^[43] Fisher's second government also introduced uniform postal charges throughout Australia, carried out measures to break up land monopolies, put forward proposals for closer regulation of working hours, wages and employment conditions,^[45] and amended the 1904 Conciliation and Arbitration Act to provide greater authority for the court president, and to allow for Commonwealth employees' industrial unions, registered with the Arbitration Court.^[38]

A land tax, aimed at breaking up big estates and give wider scope for small-scale farming, was also introduced, while coverage of the Arbitration system was extended to agricultural workers, domestics, and federal public servants. In addition, the age at which women became entitled to the old-age pension was lowered from sixty-five to sixty. The introduction of the maternity allowance was a major reform, because it enabled more births to be attended by doctors, thus leading to reductions in infant mortality rates.^[46] Compulsory preference to trade unionists in federal employment was also introduced,^[47] while the Seaman's Compensation Act of 1911^[48] and the Navigation Act of 1912^[49] were enacted to improve conditions for those working at sea, together with compensatory arrangements for seamen and next of kin.^[50] Eligibility for pensions was also widened. From December 1912 onwards, naturalised residents no longer had to wait three years to be eligible for a pension.^[44] That same year, the value of a pensioner's home was excluded from consideration when assessing the value of their property.^[51]

Andrew Fisher at the naming of Canberra ceremony, 1913.^{[lower-alpha 4]}

Fisher wanted additional Commonwealth power in certain areas, such as the nationalisation of monopolies. A constitutional referendum was initiated in 1911 which aimed to increase the federal government's legislative powers over trade and commerce and over monopolies. Both questions were defeated, with around 61 per cent voting 'No'. The Fisher government made another attempt, holding a referendum in 1913 which asked for greater federal powers over trade and commerce, corporations, industrial matters, trusts, monopolies, and railway disputes. All six questions were defeated, with around 51 per cent voting 'No'. At the 1913 election, the Commonwealth Liberal Party, led by Joseph Cook, defeated the Labor Party by a single seat.^[38]

Third term (1914–1915)

Labor retained control of the Australian Senate despite defeat. In 1914, Cook, frustrated by the Labor-controlled Senate's rejection of his legislation, recommended to the new Governor-General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson that both houses of the parliament be dissolved and elections called. This was Australia's first double dissolution election, and the only one until the 1951 election. The First World War had broken out in the middle of the 1914 election campaign, with both sides committing Australia to the British Empire. Fisher campaigned on Labor's record of support for an independent Australian defence force, and pledged that Australia would "stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling". Labor won the election with another absolute majority in both houses and Fisher formed his third government on 17 September 1914.^[38][52]

Fisher and his party visit the Army camp in 1914

Fisher and his party were immediately underway in organising urgent defence measures for planning and implementing Australian war effort. Fisher visited New Zealand during this time which saw Billy Hughes serve as acting prime minister for two months. Fisher and Labor continued to implement promised peacetime legislation, including the River Murray Waters Act 1915, the Freight Arrangements Act 1915, the Sugar Purchase Act 1915, the Estate Duty Assessment and the Estate Duty acts in 1914. Wartime legislation in 1914 and 1915 included the War Precautions acts (giving the Governor-General power to make regulations for national security), a Trading with the Enemy Act, War Census acts, a Crimes Act, a Belgium Grant Act, and an Enemy Contracts Annulment Act.^[43] In December 1914, a War Pensions Act was passed to provide for the grant of Pensions upon the death or incapacity of Members of the Defence Force of the Commonwealth and Members of the Imperial Reserve Forces residents in Australia whose death or incapacity resulted from their employment in connection with warlike operations.^[53]

In October 1915, journalist Keith Murdoch reported on the situation in Gallipoli at Fisher's request, and advised him, "Your fears have been justified". He described the Dardanelles Expedition as being "a series of disastrous underestimations" and "one of the most terrible chapters in our history" concluding:

What I want to say to you now very seriously is that the continuous and ghastly bungling over the Dardanelles enterprise was to be expected from such a general staff as the British Army possesses ... the conceit and self complacency of the red feather men are equalled only by their incapacity.

Fisher in 1915

Fisher passed this report on to Hughes and to Defence Minister George Pearce, ultimately leading to the evacuation of the Australian troops in December 1915. The report was also used by the Dardanelles Commission on which Fisher served, while High Commissioner in London.^[43]

Fisher resigned as prime minister and from Parliament on 27 October 1915 after being absent from parliament without explanation for three sitting days.^[43] Three days later, Labor Caucus unanimously elected Billy Hughes leader of the Federal Parliamentary Party.^[54] Fisher's seat was narrowly won by the Commonwealth Liberal Party on a 0.2% margin at the 1915 Wide Bay by-election.

Citations

Notes