Launching “Joseph Lyons – The People’s Prime Minister” – John Howard

On Tuesday 18 October, the Hon John Howard launched Anne Henderson’s Joseph Lyons – The People’s Prime Minister (New South Press). John Howard was introduced by Stuart Clark, a managing partner at Clayton Utz. Anne Henderson is Deputy Director of The Sydney Institute.

Introduction – Stuart Clark

Welcome to Clayton Utz. It is a real pleasure to welcome you all here today. We’ve only been in this building, Sydney’s biggest sixth star sustainable building, since June, and I still get a buzz showing the building off to our visitors. So welcome. To Anne and Gerard, but particularly to Anne, welcome. As many of you would know, we have the great pleasure of hosting a number of Sydney Institute functions and dinners and both Gerard and Anne Henderson are very good and long-standing friends of the firm.

Of course, my principal duty today is to introduce the person who will launch Joseph Lyons – The People’s Prime Minister, the Honourable John Howard.

Now, if ever there was a case, particularly in this group, of saying here is a man who needs no introduction, this would probably be it. It’s true. So, my challenge today is to introduce John Howard and say something about him which you may not know. And that is a difficult task.

John Howard’s political career can only be described as extraordinary. If you think only of the time he was Prime Minister he was, in my view and one shared by many Australians, the most successful Australian Prime Minister. Significantly, it was John Howard who established an extraordinarily close relationship with our key allies, at a time when the world changed more than it had at any moment in my lifetime. Moreover, John Howard led an administration that left a legacy we are still benefiting from today, especially in terms of having the strongest economy to cope with the current economic crisis – the worst in my memory. This is an extraordinary legacy, one which has left us with an economy that stands head and shoulders above all.

So, I can’t say anything about John Howard’s political career you do not already know. What can I tell you, though, is something you may not know about him. What people don’t often talk about is John Howard’s career before politics. That was his career as a lawyer. And I can tell you that John Howard is a Clayton Utz alumnus. He started his career here, and he came back to the firm to join us again as a consultant, prior to taking on the parliamentary Liberal Party leadership which ultimately led to his election as Prime Minister. This Clayton Utz association, I’m happy to say, has been continued by the Howard children and is something we are very proud of.

So, without further ado, it gives me the greatest of pleasures to invite the former Prime Minister and Clayton Utz alumnus the Honourable John Howard to launch Joseph Lyons – The People’s Prime Minister.

LAUNCHING JOSEPH LYONS – THE PEOPLE’S PRIME MINISTER

JOHN HOWARD

Gerard and Anne, many of my former parliamentary colleagues and many friends, ladies and gentlemen.

Stuart, thank you for that personal, non-political reference to me. And can I say by way of reciprocity that if you look at the sort of, the ledger board of great Australian law firms in the last ten years, none has had a more spectacular advance than the great firm of Clayton Utz.

I am very pleased and honoured to have been asked by Anne Henderson to launch this book today. It is a marvellous read, and an excellent historical traversal of the career of a person who had been ignored, insulted, down-played and underwritten for far too long. Joseph Lyons was a very successful Australian Prime Minister at a time when this country faced enormous challenges.

He was Prime Minister of Australia through a large part of the Great Depression. He was Prime Minister of Australia in the lead-up to the World War II and, in the process, he displayed qualities of leadership which Anne draws on, and which have not been properly recognised over the years. Indeed, in the preface to the book, Anne recalls some of the dismissive comments made about Lyons by historians and people who should have known better. Perhaps this was a product of being regarded as belonging to that category of the most despised in politics, that is people who are believed to have ratted on the party of their forebears, and the party which gave them their first political opportunity, and their first political nourishment.

Something that comes out very strongly in reading this book is that it is true, that rather than Joe Lyons leaving the Labor Party, the Labor Party left Joe Lyons. Because the catalyst for his leaving the Labor Party, in a formal sense, was the abandonment of accepted Labor policy to counter the Depression. And this under the pressure of a man who could only be called something of a provincial political terrorist at the time – namely NSW Premier Jack Lang. Lang imposed enormous pressure on the federal parliamentary Labor caucus which resulted in both the then prime minister, Jim Scullin, and the reinstated federal treasurer, Ted Theodore, both repudiating policies which they had previously supported. And to which Lyons, to his credit, remained loyal, and the implementation of which, it can be argued, played a major role in Australia coming out of the Great Depression.

One of very interesting statistics in the book, and it’s not a book that’s overladen with statistics, was Anne recalling the fact that between 1929 and 1940, the following GDP growth figures bear a lot of study, and a lot of thought. During that period of 11 years, American GDP grew by only 1.6 per cent while Australian GDP grew by 16.6 per cent and the GDP of the United Kingdom grew by 24 per cent. Now, I acknowledge immediately that, probably, the starting points were different, particularly in relation to the United Kingdom. Arguably that country entered the Great Depression in worse shape than, perhaps, Australia and the United States. But, it does make the point that Joe Lyons’s administration, and therefore his leadership, can be given an enormous amount of credit for taking Australia out of the Great Depression.

Lyons was notable for being a first in a number of areas. He was the first and only person from Tasmania to have served as Prime Minister of Australia. Joseph Lyons is also the first Catholic  to have led a non-Labor administration in Australia. Thirdly, and very importantly, he was the first person to be elected three time and survive as prime minister. Billy Hughes won his third election, but then was unable to put together a coalition with the Country Party so Stanley Melbourne Bruce emerged.

The other, perhaps debatable, first is that in the genuine sense of a family living in the Lodge, the Lyons family was the first to occupy the Lodge as a family. Bruce and his wife Ethel had no children and Scullin, like Chifley, elected not to live at the Lodge. What is also fascinating about Lyons, when I read this book, is that he really does qualify in the pluperfect sense for that often invoked description of politicians that, oh,  “he was a typical family man”. Joseph and Enid Lyons had 12 children (11 who lived to adulthood) and on more than one occasion Janette and I, when we were at the Lodge, marvelled at how on earth they fitted all those children in to what was then an even smaller residence than it is now. This was before some of the post-World War II additions to the Lodge were made. It’s a very comfortable house and nobody should argue that it should be more palatial. But it would have stretched the capacity of that very charming 1920s residence to have put all of those people into it.

So, Joseph Lyons had a remarkable career. He did connect with people. He was the genuine article, a family man, and his feeling for the underdog was very genuine. He had a great belief that everybody owed not only themselves but also their fellow citizens a sense of not just self-belief but also self-reliance. He understood very much the ups and downs. His father, through an addiction to gambling, dissipated what family resources there were. As well, the demands of such a very large family would have put enormous strain on Lyons.

Reading the book reminded me very much of how much, in simple ways, Australia has changed since the 1930s. People wrote letters to each other a great deal more. In that sense, it makes the job of the author a little easier, and more enlightened. Distance was an enormous factor. I was absolutely fascinated to read that when Lyons decided to travel to Western Australia, to campaign for the “No” vote in the secession referendum in 1933, he felt it necessary to appoint John Latham as acting prime minister during his absence from Canberra. The mind does boggle when you think of it. The prime minister wasn’t out of the country, he was just out of Canberra. Such was the enormous sense of separation.

It was, of course, a period of great trauma for Australia, and also a period of great trauma for the Australian Labor Party. The stand taken by Joe Lyons and his Labor colleague Jim Fenton, and others, to stand against the ministrations of Lang and those who followed Lang in the parliamentary caucus, as well as Ted Theodore’s switch to an expansionary monetary position, imposed tremendous stresses. And when a political party suffers any kind of internal stress of a prolonged nature, it does rupture friendships and challenge the organisation.

Lyons emerges from this period with very great honour. As somebody who, not because of my own time in politics but more generally, believes that we don’t write enough, think enough, debate enough and talk enough about our own history, I must say that this book is a very valuable contribution. And I hope it will begin to change assessments of this man. Because he belonged to the Labor Party and left it, joining up with the Labor Party’s political enemies and leading a government through most of the 1930s, he’s tended to fall between the stools. His old Labor comrades do not rally in his defence while many of those who saw him as a temporary blow-in, on the conservative side of politics, looked at him with a certain immediate forbearance but long-term disdain.

So, Joseph Lyons has fallen between those two stools. In some respects, you could say that the United Australia Party was born with Lyons and although it didn’t die with him on Good Friday 1939, it nonetheless did not survive very much longer. And it was, I’m very happy to say, replaced largely through the tremendous effort of Robert Gordon Menzies with a far more virulent and a far stronger political animal in the Liberal Party of Australia.

The last thing I want to say before introducing Anne is that some things change, but some things stay the same. In one of Joe Lyons’ letters to his beloved wife Enid – and theirs was an impressive marriage and contribution to Australia’s family life that anybody would have to admire and one of the reasons Lyons was so well-liked and so popular across the political spectrum – there’s a wonderful quote. Lyons had this to say: “You must expect to be misrepresented and lied about as long as you are in politics. The alternative is to get out.” That, I think it’s fair to say, was true in the 1930s and it’s certainly true in 2011.

Can I also draw your attention to the wonderful photographs in this book. They capture the period aptly. There’s a wonderful photograph from an Imperial meeting in 1937. Appropriately we are here on the eve of having a CHOGM meeting (Commonwealth Heads of Government,) in Australia. Today there are some 55 countries represented at this 2011 meeting. In Anne’s book there’s a great photograph of the 1937 Dominion Prime Ministers at the time of the coronation. It shows the then Prime Ministers of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa along with the shortly-to-be crowned King George VI. Just five prime ministers of note in 1937 – what a reminder of how all that has changed,

This is a very, very good book. I enjoyed reading it. It gives a wonderful coverage of the Labor split of the early 1930s but, most importantly, what it does is give proper perspective to a remarkable Australian who made a tremendous contribution in leading this country out of the Great Depression.

Response – Anne Henderson

Well, thank you John Howard.

All I can say is, let’s hope that Joseph Lyons can keep up with you as a subject to attract readers and book buyers. If we could even come in second, that would be wonderful, or even third or fourth. Because, over the last couple of years, John Howard has produced the best-selling ever autobiography from a former political leader.

Before I go anywhere into this, I want to thank two grand-children of Joe Lyons for being here today: Jo Brady and David McGrath, welcome both. And, Enid Lyons’s niece, Marion Paul. All three have been with me during this fun time, writing about Joe.

John Howard broke a few records in his day as Prime Minister. And, as he said, so did Joe Lyons, though at a much earlier time. In fact, as I did the book, it was startling to remember that when Joe Lyons became Prime Minister, we had only had a Federation for 30 years.

And the reason New South Wales premier Jack Lang was so important, and devastatingly destructive, was that the economy of New South Wales was a huge chunk, a huge chunk, of Australia’s economy at that time. So defeating Lang was a quite a record for Lyons.

Another record, somewhat whimsical, I could say about Joe Lyons is that the book is dedicated to a baby girl who was born this year on the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day – little Molly Anne. That is also significant because Joe Lyons was a different kind of leader. And he was also a leader at a time of famed paternalistic, macho men. But Joe Lyons himself was never threatened by a strong woman. He would drag his wife onto podiums where she performed and even outshone her husband. He never worried; he used her attraction to pull in votes from women.

Joe Lyons was, also, not only both a premier and prime minister, but also a leader of both major parties of his day. Another record.

When Lyons broke from Labor in March 1931 and went over eventually to the conservatives as leader of the new United Australia Party, he took with him the votes of disaffected Laborites in their thousands. In December 1931, the UAP won a record result for the number of seats won for the House of Representatives, a record that hasn’t been matched, even by Malcolm Fraser in 1976.

That win was the culmination of a huge underbelly response to, basically, what was happening with Jack Lang and the Labor Party. There was a mushrooming of citizens movements. Imagine today tens of thousands of ordinary citizens disappointed with the Gillard Government, worried about their savings and their jobs, joining forces to create a movement of voters across Australia.

In 1931, people were joining these groups at tens of thousands a week, all over the south-east of Australia. They were called the citizens groups. And, after Lyons left Labor – driven out by the Lang forces – these groups became the great support for the conservative side of politics. And they included many disaffected Labor voters.

These groups eventually came together under the banner of the United Australia Party. And it was meant to be exactly that. Labor’s Ramsay MacDonald that year in Britain had formed a national government, coming from Labor and linking up with the Conservatives. It was Joe Lyons’ imagined goal that he would be a kind of Ramsay McDonald. Instead he became the leader of the conservative United Australia Party.

But Lyons was the people’s prime minister nonetheless. The Catholic leader of a predominantly Protestant, and somewhat Masonic, party – and a man with a Labor past. This was quite an aberration in Australian politics.

When Lyons died in 1939, because of his popularity as people’s prime minister, there was a huge outpouring of grief, even though the Lyons Government had struggled over that past year. In 1937, with the UAP thinking it was facing certain defeat at the federal election, Lyons campaigned with renewed vigour against the new Labor leader John Curtin. The UAP had its back against a wall, with everybody on that side of politics thinking they didn’t have a hope. Yet Lyons won the 1937 election with hardly the loss of a seat.

Lyons was a figure who could draw out the vote, draw the support of ordinary people, and he was mourned hugely when he died.

So, why was he forgotten? Well, he fell between the cracks. Neither Labor, who called him a rat for ever after he left them, would claim him. Nor the Liberals, since he died before the Liberal Party was formed.

So, the message from Joe Lyons for any serving politician who wants to leave his or her legacy in history must be, if you’re going to die, make sure you do it when you’ve got your fan club in place to write the history. Don’t die if you haven’t got a history-minded fan-club.

John Curtin had a fan club and he’s done very well from their scribbles. But Joe Lyons did not. So his record became diminished because he was largely remembered in the lives of others, or in the mentions he gets here and there in the history books. But, if you look for such mentions, you would think ten years of politics in Australia didn’t happen.

And when Enid Lyons wrote her memoirs, as a retired politician herself, and a very successful one – Dame Enid Lyons was a name all around the country – her very well written and researched memoirs left Joe Lyons looking as if she was the strong figure behind the rather weak and affable Joe Lyons. After all, his voice was very faint – he was dead.

Lyons was a practising Catholic, even though he never used his Catholic background as a political weapon in any way, shape or form; he wasn’t B A Santamaria-style at all. But, as a practising Catholic, and a very significant politician in Australia, Lyons doesn’t even make Edmund Campion’s Australian Catholics, which was published in the 1980s. Not even a mention.

Historian Manning Clark had a big row with Enid Lyons after one of her grandchildren came home and mentioned what was being said about his grandfather at school. Enid dug into the work of Manning Clark and found that he’d written that while Lyons was noble on the surface, “at a deeper level he had the cunning and skill of a people who for hundreds of years have been striving for survival against a powerful foe”. A little sectarian, you might say.

After Dame Enid had taken on Clark, he wrote to apologise for his imprudent words. But, it took a stoush with Enid to do that.

Labor-leaning academics like Stuart Macintyre, a hero of the history club, were so busy recording the dramas of the exciting Labor movement, they passed over Lyons. In one of Macintyre’s most recent books, he relied on worn-out and inaccurate hearsay about Lyons, and simply got the facts wrong as to how Lyons left Labor, or why he left Labor – it’s just not there.

And then, on the other side, Lyons was regarded as just a nice bloke who had been protected by a conservative clique. They saw themselves as the strength behind him. Joe Lyons was always just a paper man. Stanley Bruce let it be known that he was the real strength behind Lyons, and so forth.

So, I felt it was time to go for it, to write what actually happened and make it a reasonable and objective look. I don’t belong to the Labor Party or the Liberal Party. I just wanted to find out who Joe Lyons was. Lyons came to office in Depression times, when unemployment levels were around 30 per cent. It’s staggering to think of now. And Lyons governed well over most of a decade. In fact, Lyons brought Australians to a new unity.

Public debts in Australia, which everyone’s forgotten, were so high in the 1920s that Australia actually entered the Depression before the stock market crashed in 1929. Our debts were shocking. And it’s to be remembered, as many economists wrote at the time, that we rode on the sheep’s back, we thought we could live high and long on the income from our products – wheat and wool particularly. When those prices dropped in the mid to late 1920s, we were in over our heads.

Ironically, John Maynard Keynes was one of the strongest critics of Australia for borrowing so much and spending so much in the late 1920s. That’s an interesting one to note.

1931 was a year of great moment in Australian history. The UAP, hastily cobbled together with Lyons as leader could barely keep up with events. Lyons became leader of the UAP forces through a vote in the Nationalist Party room and he wasn’t even there because he wasn’t a Nationalist MP. So, when we look at Queensland and think that politics has taken on a rather unusual turn, politics in Australia was pretty unusual in 1931.

Before the end of his first year in office, Lyons had brought the budget back to surplus. In July 1935, staying with Enid at the White House (the first Australian Prime Minister to be feted by the White House since although Billy Hughes had visited Washington he didn’t get on with President Wilson), Lyons was able to tell the Roosevelt that Australia had unemployment levels down close to 15 per cent. In the US, with the New Deal, unemployment was still hanging around 21 per cent.

US unemployment levels stayed in the teens right up until the Second World War. We had single-digit unemployment by 1937. Lyons presided over a very high GDP growth – along with the UK our GDP growths were far ahead of the USA.

But we’ve also forgotten, with our Labor historians’ emphasis on Curtin and the Second World War, Singapore and the American Alliance coming out of the war, that it was Joe Lyons who sent John Latham on the Eastern Mission in 1934. This sort of contact with our nearest neighbours at the time was unheard of. Latham, over three months, visited Indonesia, South East Asia, China and Japan. He met with leaders in a unique effort to forge relations with our nearest neighbours, and to encourage our neighbours to look at us as a valuable trading partner. Lyons was obsessed with the idea of trading our way out of depression.

It was that Eastern Mission, and Lyons’ “appeasement” of the Japanese that took us to trade with Japan in a way which, at times, irritated our imperial colleagues, who preferred what was known as Imperial preference. And this went on all through the 1930s, attempts to widen our markets, to become part of the region.

It was also Lyons who first spoke of a Pacific Pact, pushing hard and long for it at the Imperial Conference of 1937. And because of his efforts, we opened an embassy of our own in Washington shortly after his death. We had been represented there by the British until that time.

Lyons indeed belonged to an era of patriarchal and macho leadership. And some of the failure to understand of Lyons, a reaction that he was a weak leader, has come from not understanding what are now regarded as modern leadership strengths.

In Lyons’ time, to have any male prime minister cry, would have been regarded as the absolute sign of weakness. Nowadays, we don’t worry as much about our weaknesses; we actually engage with the electorate far more. Our leaders are human, they have pressures, they have to be strong in spite of that.

Lyons was a bit of a SNAG – a sensitive New Age Guy as one of his granddaughters told me – never threatened by a successful wife.

But with all that equal-among-colleagues, conciliatory style, the figures of importance around Lyons failed to see he was at all times still at the controls. As Thomas Playford, a long-serving South Australian premier, once said after Lyons was dead, “Mr Lyons always got his way.” It was a different style and many of the leaders of the day just didn’t understand it.

So I’m really proud and happy that both Labor and Liberal figures have read this manuscript before its publication. And that one senior Labor figure, Rodney Cavalier, has been brave enough to put his positive words on the cover, along with John Howard, Jocelyn Newman, and Nick Greiner.

All have recognised that this man was indeed a significant political figure in our history, and they’ve concluded that Lyons was one of Australia’s great leaders. That gives me hope. After more than 70 years, it’s well and truly time to put Joe Lyons back into the history books. Or, as they say in our local libraries, the serious online information services.

Thank you all.