From Pit Boy to Prime Minister: Andrew Fisher
Kathleen Fisher looks at the legacy of a neglected Australian From pit boy to prime minister’—this popular summation of the life of Andrew Fisher, three times Australian prime minister, evokes a journey of romance and overnight sensation. In fact, nothing could be more misleading, for Fisher’s course to high office comprised some 30 years hard work, perseverance and unwavering dedication to unionism and politics. However, the class intimations in the phrase are revealing. In a time when most high-level politicians had elite academic records and moved in esteemed circles, Fisher was a manual labourer—making his political career remarkable. The coalfields of Ayrshire, Scotland, were an unlikely breeding ground for an Australian prime minister. Fisher was the second son, born into a mining family in Crosshouse, near Glasgow, on 29 August 1862, some 20 years after women had been banned from working underground and the minimum age for child miners lifted to 12. Despite this, Fisher’s daughter Margaret (better known as Peggy) places him at nine when he started in the mines. Initially, he supplied air to men at the coalface, before carting coal underground with a pony, juggling elementary school at the same time. On leaving school at 11, full-time work would have been arduous—a standard 76-hour week comprised 12-hour shifts from Monday to Saturday and four hours on Sunday. Yet, like many exceptional achievers, Fisher appears to have had unending energy, with plenty of strength for fishing and hiking in his leisure hours. What’s more, he spent evenings with his parents, Robert and Jane, and five brothers and two sisters, engaged in self-learning—in his case soaking up classics and political philosophy. This must have been a novel sight considering the context in which the Fisher family would have lived: a boy studying lofty topics, the kind widely considered beyond the comprehension of his class, in a tiny one- or two-room home rented from a mine owner and served by water from a communal street pump. At first, it seems curious that a child miner would be interested in government affairs. However, Fisher came from an activist family, one committed to improving living standards in their local community. His father, for example, joined a collective to establish an affordable grocery store in Crosshouse, independent of those operated by mine owners, who charged what they wished. Fisher also grew up in a time of political reform. Notably, the Reform Act 1867 gave working-class men voting rights for the first time—previously available only to men with wealth, land or unique concessions. Combined with increasing union power and the rise of labour politics to petition their concerns, the working class tasted political power, demonstrated best by the entry of two former miners into Parliament in 1874. Fisher must surely have been fascinated with the potential that he and those around him had for further influence.
At 17, he became Crosshouse district secretary of the Ayrshire Branch of the Miners’ Union—the first step in a career of activism that would propel him into politics. Not surprisingly, local colliery owners were unimpressed with Fisher’s union activity, particularly his role as strike leader. Blacklisted twice, and consequently unable to find work, he migrated to Australia in 1885, aged 22, with the knowledge that activism came with a price rather than glory. Fisher landed in Brisbane and headed north to the Burrum Coalfield, where he soon became a mine manager with Queensland Colliery Company. An unsuccessful job application with another company prompted a move to Gympie in 1888, which heralded the diversification of both his mining interest (changing to gold), and his activism—the perhaps inevitable merging of his unionism with politics. Across colonies and industries, Australian unions amalgamated in 1879 through the Inter-Colonial Trade Union Congress (precursor to the Australian Council of Trade Unions). They exercised their new power over the next decade through dramatic strikes, and fuelled the rise of labour politics and, eventually, the foundation of the Labor Party. Given this link, it’s unsurprising that, by 1891, Fisher was president of the Gympie branches of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association of Australasia and the Workers Political Organisation, forerunner to Queensland’s Labor Party. Fisher gained the seat of Gympie in the Queensland parliament two years later. His transition from miner to union leader to colonial statesman appears to have been effortless, realised within eight years of migration. Fisher’s community-minded character would have aided his success, says historian Geoffrey Bolton. Hearty involvement in the local chess club, the Presbyterian church, Sunday school and co-operative society would have provided the public profile required to attract votes in a tight-knit neighbourhood.
Nonetheless, Fisher lost his seat in 1896, certain that the anti-socialist Gympie Times had prejudiced the electorate. Revealing an understanding of the power of the mass media, he established the Gympie Truth, a mouthpiece for Labor. Fisher toiled at the newspaper, working for free and living off his savings. According to founding editor Henry Boote, this was motivated by personal survival rather than political ambition—Fisher simply couldn’t get another job. He tried to return to mining, Boote asserted in The Australian Worker in 1928, but Gympie’s powerful few, threatened by politics that favoured the working majority, ‘were determined to starve out the ex-Labor member’. Fortunately, Fisher succeeded in the 1899 elections and joined Australia’s first colonial Labor government as Minister for Railways and Public Works. His joy, however, was brief, for Anderson Dawson’s government fell within a week. By 1901, with 21 years in union leadership and politics, and a reputation for honesty and integrity even among opponents, Fisher stood for Australia’s first national parliament, winning the seat of Wide Bay in Queensland, which he held continuously for the rest of his political career. While his individual fortune in parliament was consistent, the first decade of federal politics would pass before he enjoyed a stable and full term in a Labor government.
Fisher tasted four months of power as Minister for Trade and Customs in Australia’s first national Labor government in 1904. Led by Chris Watson, this government tumbled due to the lack of a definite majority, and thus decision-making power, in parliament. This type of problem dogged early federal governments in general, including Fisher’s first term as prime minister in 1908. Lack of support allowed Alfred Deakin to seize power with a coalition government just seven months into Fisher’s term. Labor’s first secure national government came after an electoral landslide in 1910. With Australia’s first majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the party finally had the backing to ensure a long and fruitful term in power. Again given the top job, Fisher entered his golden era as Australia’s first truly working-class prime minister. Not that his second term came without pressure—nor, for that matter, his third, in 1914–15. In a milieu convinced that only the middle- and upper-classes had the required nous for politics, Fisher would certainly have needed to prove he possessed the required leadership skills and a social finesse with dignitaries, including royalty. Fisher’s achievements show he met the challenge. Driven by his upbringing, his policies were practical and inclined to help everyday Australians, securing life in a fledgling nation through improved infrastructure and social services. For instance, he linked Australia’s geographical extremes by commencing the construction of two major railways. He also established Canberra and the Royal Australian Navy, and introduced invalid pensions, worker’s compensation and maternity allowance. In addition, Fisher built Labor’s credibility and, thus long-term sustainability, by resolving the party’s colonial legacy of tending to fracture and lose office over personality or policy squabbles. ‘Labor members needed to show they had the unity and reliability to hold an effective government together, and that needed a leader who could maximise consensus,’ says Bolton. With ‘surprisingly little ego for a politician’ and a dedication to teamwork, Fisher was that leader.
Further, Fisher performed his social duties with poise, as confirmed by his retirement posting as High Commissioner to Britain during World War One. Glowing tributes following his death are added testament to the regard in which he was held. The Gympie Truth paraphrased James Scullin, then Labor leader: ‘Andrew Fisher was the soul of honour … he inspired the confidence of his followers and won not only their loyalty but also their affection.’ A touching eulogy came from Ramsay MacDonald, British prime minister, who, unveiling a memorial to Fisher in 1930, emotionally referred to ‘my old friend who was more than a prime minister’. Given his accomplishments and the Australian penchant for self-made men, it is intriguing that Fisher hasn’t joined the canon of working-class heroes. Few people recognise his name, making his legacy silent. Quiet leadership and disinterest in fame are the most obvious reasons for this, setting him apart from contemporaries. For example, where Alfred Deakin, Edmund Barton and George Reid mesmerised crowds with their fine or amusing speeches, Fisher was not theatrical. As John Malkin writes in Andrew Fisher: 1862–1928, he preferred the innate logic of a cause to sway opinion, rather than ‘verbal jugglery’. In keeping, he ran his ministries with modesty, eschewing the spotlight in favour of teamwork, which he believed produced the greatest achievements. It appears he saw the role of prime minister as one of service rather than prestige, which explains why he declined a knighthood and a proposal that the federal capital bear his name. At the same time, Fisher left few papers to reveal his inner thoughts, turmoils and passions. As Bolton notes, his public life was expressed through formal statements and documents, rather than more personal and heartfelt communications such as the cathartic and sentiment-filled letters of Deakin and Barton. His private life was equally reserved—Peggy Fisher describes a family man who seemed happiest with his wife, Margaret, and six children in a home free of alcohol, swearing and gambling, and full of home-baked birthday cakes and Scottish folk culture. Both Fisher and his family leave little to capture history’s imagination. Finally, Geoffrey Bolton suggests that there’s no room in collective memory for a humble achiever from a period when key Australian myths of identity emerged. In between the founding of a nation in 1901, and soldiers charging up the cliffs of Gallipoli in 1915, thoughts of Fisher and Labor’s legislative efforts are decidedly humdrum. Fisher resigned as prime minister on 27 October 1915, dissatisfied with wartime issues, including Britain’s bungling command of Australian troops, and conscription, which he opposed. Among rumours of failing health and the desire for a more subdued life, he went to London as Australian High Commissioner, a position he held from 1916 to 1921. The seven years to his death—from heart failure, following influenza on 22 October 1928—were marred by dementia, and chest problems caused by some 20 years of mining. These last years were passed in obscurity—an ironic end for the man who James Keir Hardie (union leader and British Labor MP) proclaimed in 1911 as signifying the future: ‘who more than any other public man … represented the force that was coming—the rule of the common people’. KATHLEEN FISHER is a Canberra-based freelance writer and photographer. While there are family likenesses, and rumours of links, no firm evidence of being a relation to Andrew Fisher has been uncovered |
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