FROM NAVVY’S ASSISTANT TO PRIME MINISTER – THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AUSTRALIA’S FIRST LABOR PM
IN SEARCH OF JOHN CHRISTIAN WATSON: LABOR’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER by Michael Easson
Connor Court Publishing 2024
ISBN: 9781923224155
RRP: $29.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Keith Harvey
Johan Christian Tanck, the son of a German-Chilean merchant seaman and born [most probably] in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso, was in 1904 Australia’s first Labor Prime Minister, his Government lasting just 113 days.
Of course, as an NSW MP and later as a Federal MP and PM, he was known as John Christian Watson, his new surname taken from the name of his mother’s second husband (and his first name being anglicised). The mystery surrounding Watson’s origins is almost enough in its own right to justify the title of Michael Easson’s new biography of Watson In Search of John Christian Watson. But there is more to understanding Watson and Easson explores his subject well.
Today, Watson’s right to sit in the Federal parliament would almost certainly be challenged on the grounds that he was not an Australian citizen, either native born nor naturalised. But 120 years ago, although the Constitution has not changed, these matters were either not raised or were simply assumed (and much harder to check). A contemporary of Watson, American born King O’Malley, also served in the Federal parliament, claiming improbably that his mother had crawled across the border into Canada to give birth to him in order for him to be a British subject.
While the story of Watson’s origins (and indeed, how much even he knew of them) is interesting and worth exploring, they are far from the central focus of Easson’s consideration of Watson’s contribution to the Labor movement, the NSW and Federal parliaments and his post-parliamentary life in business organisations, especially the NRMA.
Easson’s account begins with a summary of Watson’s life and then proceeds deal with the course of that life in a chronological fashion, beginning with his childhood in New Zealand, where his mother had returned after the death or disappearance of her first husband and the father of her first child. Watson’s mother was of Irish Catholic origins but her second husband was Protestant.
After growing up in New Zealand, Watson came to NSW in time to become active in the trade union movement and in the very earliest days of political Labor in NSW. Easson credits Watson with a significant influence on the creation and ethos of the early Labor Party.
Watson was one of a number of early politicians on the Labor side of politics who were essentially self-made and self-taught who despite their humble beginnings rose to successfully occupy the highest offices in the country.
Watson left school at the young age of 10, working initially as a navvy’s assistant in railway construction in New Zealand. He was the eldest child and his modest income assisted the family’s circumstances, which were not good. At age 13, he became apprenticed as a compositor in a newspaper composing room, putting type together by hand.
Losing his job in New Zealand in 1886, the young Watson moved to Australia, working initially as a stable hand and then employed as a timber lumper. These were not glamorous or well-paid occupations. Later, however, he found work in his old trade of compositing and became active in his trade union. In 1890, Watson was elected as a delegate from his union to the Sydney Trades and Labour Council (TLC) and in 1892, found himself as TLC President and chair of the new Labour Party in NSW – at the age of just 25.
As Easson records, in his spare time, Watson was not to be found in a local “public house” but at home or in a library. It is remarkable that people like Watson, who had no education beyond primary level were able to acquit themselves so well in public life.
Watson was elected as a Labor member of the NSW parliament in1894 and served until 1901 when he was elected as a member of the new Federal parliament. He then became the first leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (FPLP).
This was in the period in which the Federal parliament was made up of the “three elevens”, a cricketing analogy expressed by Alfred Deakin. The parliament was composed of three more or less equal groupings: Labor, Free-Traders and Protectionists. No one group commanded a majority and needed the support of one of the other two groups to govern. Ministries came and went (until the non-Labor parties eventually fused).
It was in these circumstances, that Watson became Prime Minister (and Treasurer) in Australia’s first ALP Government. It fell less than four months old on a procedural motion dealing with the proposed insertion of a “preference to unionists” provision in the 1904 Conciliation and Arbitration Bill.
Watson remained ALP leader until 1907 when he handed the reins to Andrew Fisher (who was briefly Prime Minister in 1908-9 and again as leader of a majority Labor Government in 1910). Watson left the Federal parliament in1910 and was thus not a member of the Fisher administration.
Watson’s brief stint as a Labor Prime Minister may not be thought enough to warrant a biography of this thoroughness, but in subsequent thematic chapters Easson makes a compelling case that Watson’s significance was much broader than his brief premiership may have indicated. Watson was involved in not only the formation of the ALP from its earliest days in NSW but, argues Easson, in setting the policy tone defining what a Labor party should and could do in modern democracy.
Watson helped define the unsexy and often prosaic notion of “Laborism”, steering a narrow path through the pitfalls of the early (and continuing) debates in the party about the Labor movement’s “socialist objective”, which remains (and largely ignored) in the Party’s platform today.
Sometimes described as lacking a defining ideology, the ALP’s approach to social reform has been one of reformism and gradualism not doctrinaire socialism or Marxism more typical of Labor parties in Europe. Easson notes Watson’s role in helping the ALP define its approach to these issues in the early years of the twentieth century. A chapter is also devoted to Watson’s views on defence, an important issue for the new nation, part of the “British Empire” but a long way from the motherland.
One of the difficulties for historians of the Labor Party – and for the party itself – is that so many of its early leaders ended up being classed as “Labor rats” and being expelled from the party they helped found. Watson was one of those. He was caught up in the great disaster of the conscription debate during the First World War, when Labor Prime Minister Hughes defied the Party to call a referendum seeking to introduce conscription – “universal service”, as it was then called – to supply soldiers for the war.
Watson supported universal service and was expelled from the party by his local branch. The same fate befell many of his contemporaries in the early ALP, including Hughes and Holman in NSW. The issue split the party and brought down Labor governments. Only the Queensland Labor government of T J Ryan survived this period.
Easson notes that Watson moved to the right after his expulsion, supporting non-Labor parties. In 1920, he took up the position of president of the NRMA – the motorists association in NSW – which post he held until his death in 1941.
Despite his status as a “Labor rat” he was mourned by the party he had helped create. Easson notes that there were eight pallbearers at Watson’s funeral, including the ALP wartime PM John Curtin, NSW Labor Premier McKell and six others, all six of whom were either expelled or otherwise alienated from their old party. The pallbearers were a ‘unity ticket’ of another kind, but one which was a tribute Chris Watson the man and the former ALP parliamentarian. Easson’s book was launched in Sydney by current ALP PM, Anthony Albanese, another tribute to this former leader.
Michael Easson, former Secretary of the NSW TLC himself, is now an important chronicler of ALP history. His depth of knowledge of the Labor party particularly in NSW is deep and well-informed. Moreover, his understanding of history in general and political philosophy in particular means he is well-placed to put Chris Watson’s role in Labor politics in a rich context that adds to our appreciation of his subject.
Easson’s book is well researched, including through contact with a descendant of Watson’s half-siblings in New Zealand, as well as using traditional sources, and the bibliography and referencing is extensive. The book has many illustrations which add significantly to the portrait of Chris Watson, a “forgotten man” of Australian politics, who Michael Easson has done much to bring back into our consciousness and to improve our understanding of the nation’s early political history.
Keith Harvey is a member of the Victorian Branch of the ALP and a former union official. His Memoirs of a Cold War Warrior (2021) and Brian Harradine (2024) are both published by Connor Court.