FOUNDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA – HOW WOMEN MADE A DIFFERENCE – ANNE HENDERSON

August 2024 marked 80 years since Robert Menzies brought together the dysfunctional groups of non Labor political associations and the remnants of the United Australia Party to found a new party to be called The Liberal Party of Australia. Over two conferences in Canberra and Albury at the end of 1944, the Party took roots and would go on to win government from the Labor Party in a stunning victory in December 1949. On Thursday 28 November, former Australian Prime Minister The Hon John Howard OM AC and former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister The Hon John Anderson AC launched Unity in Autonomy – A Federal History of the Founding of the Liberal Party at The Sydney Institute. They were joined by the Robert Menzies Institute’s director Georgina Downer, The Sydney Institute’s Anne Henderson and Unity in Autonomy contributing editor Zachary Gorman.

FOUNDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA – HOW WOMEN MADE A DIFFERENCE

ANNE HENDERSON

It has been my job to add the role of women in the founding of the Liberal Party of Australia.

After many days and eight counts of preferences, on 14 September 1943, Enid Lyons was declared the winner of the seat of Darwin with 51.49 per cent of the preferred vote. She had not only won but had beaten her main Labor rival Eric Reece, a future premier of Tasmania. It was a win very much against the odds, with the Curtin Labor government recording one of Australia’s largest landslides. Robert Menzies said it was like being run over by a steam roller while Billy Hughes telegraphed Enid that “Your victory compensates for many defeats”.

Enid Lyons’ arrival in the parliament was greeted warmly. More than that, she would be the first woman not only to take a seat and speak in the House of Representatives but also the first of those women who had won seats in the various houses of parliament across the nation to keep her seat over forthcoming elections until she chose to retire at the 1951 election.

In 1944, led by Robert Menzies, Enid Lyons would be one of the team that became the Liberal Party of Australia – her presence endlessly confirming that women could make a difference, however hard the road to success.

In many ways, this unique victory is emblematic of the way in which women would become an important part of the formation of the Liberal Party of Australia in 1944. Their influence was the result of three important factors that had evolved in a few decades leading up to that moment – leadership, organisation and dedication to a woman’s right and duty to be part of the political process. In this, the non-Labor side of politics would be shown to be ahead of its Labor rival.

Two women stand tall is this development – Dame Enid Lyons and Elizabeth May Couchman. But behind them was also a well-oiled movement of politically involved women especially the members of the Australian Women’s National League.

As a leader of women, 17-year old Enid Burnell had come to politics by marrying Joe Lyons, then already a senior Labor minister. As Tasmanian Labor leader, Labor premier and federal minister, then United Australia prime minister, Lyons had schooled Enid in the political processes which she took to like a duck to water – in spite of becoming the mother of 12 children.

As spouse of Joe Lyons, Enid was encouraged to speak at podiums alongside her husband. On other podiums she addressed groups of women in Australia and abroad. She also wrote press articles encouraging the interests of women to be included in the decisions of political leaders. She soon became a role model for other women to have a go.

And then there was the growing movement for women to take on a public presence.

With the achievement of votes for women after federation, various interest groups brought women into the public arena. The most effective of these was the Australian Women’s National League which could boast some 54,000 members at the time of the First World War. The League was anti-socialist, loyalist and linked with the Nationalist and non-Labor side of politics. And, in the 1920s with the influence of Elizabeth May Couchman, the League finally accepted that women should be part of the parliamentary process.

Elizabeth May Couchman was an exemplary leader and manager. Under her watch as president from 1927, the League became a vital backstop for a broad base of support on the non-Labor side of politics. But it retained its independence as a political group, refusing to fold into the Nationalist or United Australia Party. At elections, the League would send out an army of women volunteers in support of non-Labor candidates. In spite of some attempts to stand for parliament, Elizabeth Couchman would never win a seat.

International gatherings and associations in the 1930s brought women to the fore as representatives for women on global platforms. Elizabeth May Couchman, arriving back in Australia in December 1934 after months abroad attending conferences at the League of Nations in Geneva and the International Council of Women in Paris, spoke of ten days of “solid discussion on questions of great importance and interest to women”. What trade union organisations did for (mostly) male workers, women’s associations from temperance unions to women’s electoral leagues did for women.

As a significant group of influence in the public sphere, meetings of the AWNL were addressed by leading figures of the UAP and often reported on in daily newspapers. Elizabeth May Couchman’s election as president of the AWNL was acknowledged in the Argus on 2 March 1927, describing her as having made “a special study of sociology, constitutional history and economics” to which it added that her “theoretical knowledge of social reform will be of great value to her new office”. Four months later, reporting on a protest gathering of women’s organisations opposing beauty pageants, the Argus noted Couchman, representing the AWNL, as among the prominent speakers.

As the United Australia Party disintegrated under leader Billy Hughes in 1943 and Robert Menzies gathered the disparate groups in non-Labor politics, it was his great genius to see that women could be a strong force in the new party he envisaged.

The master stroke out of the conferences forming the Liberal Party of Australia was a deal pulled off between Couchman and her AWNL colleagues such as Ivy Wedgwood and Edith Haynes at the party’s formation meetings. The women had warmed to the idea that the AWNL should disband and fold into the new party. They knew the best years of the AWNL were behind them. Here was a new way of being involved in politics for women.

On their return to Melbourne, and in meetings of the AWNL, Elizabeth Couchman prevailed over the resistance of other members and achieved a vote to have the AWNL vote fold into the Liberal Party of Australia. When the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party evolved, Couchman worked to achieve equal representation of men and women on all significant committees. And she got it.

In closing the Albury 1944 conference, Robert Menzies especially devoted part of his remarks to the place of women in politics and the Liberal Party. His words echoed those of Couchman that it was time to look forward to where women were headed. Women, in fact, like Enid Lyons. As he announced the nature of the Liberal Party of Australia, Menzies voiced a new look for any contemporary political organisation:

… men and women will side by side be members of this organisation.  … [he hoped that] on behalf of the men represented here that as a result of this joint and equal membership of this great movement we will find on councils and executives an adequate representation of women.

Women are unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence upon practical politics in Australia … In the educating of the electorate in liberal ideas they have for many years been an effective force.

The challenge for the contemporary Liberal Party is to make good that aspiration.