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Chris Watson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hon Chris Watson
Chris Watson

In office
27 April â€“ 18 August 1904
Preceded by Alfred Deakin
Succeeded by George Reid

Born c. 9 April 1867
Valparaiso, Chile
Died 18 November 1941
Political party Labor

John Christian Watson (on or around 9 April 1867 [exact date uncertain] - 18 November 1941), known as Chris Watson, Australian politician, was the third Prime Minister of Australia and the first federal parliamentary leader of the Australian Labor Party.

Watson was born in Valparaíso, Chile. During his lifetime he maintained that his father was a British seaman called George Watson. In fact his father was a Chilean citizen of German descent, Johan Cristian Tanck. His mother was a New Zealander, Martha Minchin, who had married Tanck in New Zealand and then gone to sea with him. In 1868 his parents separated, and in 1869 she married George Watson, whose name young Chris then took. None of these facts became known until after Watson's death.

Watson went to school in Oamaru, New Zealand, and at 13 was apprenticed as a printer. In 1886 he moved to Sydney to better his prospects. He found work as a compositor for several newspapers. Through this proximity to newspapers, books and writers he furthered his education and developed an interest in politics. He was an active trade unionist, becoming Vice-President of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council. He was a founding member of the New South Wales Labor Party in 1891.

In 1894 Watson was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for the country seat of Young. Labor at this time had a policy of "support in return for concessions," and Watson voted with his colleagues to keep the Free Trade Premier, Sir George Reid, in office.

Like most Labor members Watson was at best a lukewarm supporter of Federation, but once it was accomplished, he decided to stand for the new federal Parliament. In March 1901 he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the rural seat of Bland.

Arriving in Melbourne, the temporary capital, in May, Watson was elected the first leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (usually known as the Caucus). The New South Wales Labor leader, James McGowan, had failed to gain election, and Billy Hughes, the other prominent New South Wales MP elected, had too many enemies. Watson, though a compromise choice, soon established his authority as leader.

In the federal Parliament, where Labor was the smallest of the three parties, but held the balance of power, Watson pursued the same policy as Labor had done in the colonial parliaments. He kept the Protectionist governments of Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin in office, in exchange for legislation enacting the Labor platform, particularly the enactment of White Australia.

Watson, as a Labor moderate, genuinely admired Deakin and shared his liberal views on many subjects. Deakin reciprocated this sentiment. He wrote in one of his anonymous articles in a London newspaper: "The Labour section has much cause for gratitude to Mr Watson, the leader whose tact and judgement have enabled it to achieve many of its Parliamentary successes."

In April 1904, however, Watson and Deakin fell out over the issue of extending the scope of the Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to cover state public servants. Watson would probably have found a compromise on the issue but he was being pushed by the trade unions. Deakin was tired of being held to ransom by Labor, and resigned. Reid declined to take office, and Watson found himself Prime Minister. He was the first Labor Prime Minister, and also the youngest-ever Australian Prime Minister.

Watson knew his government could not last long, and he knew he had no chance of passing any of the (mildly) socialist measures in the Labor platform, so he carried on with the legislative program that Deakin had abandoned. Since Labor had no suitable qualified lawyer in its ranks, he appointed the Victorian liberal H.B. Higgins as Attorney-General. But Deakin and Reid soon settled their differences, and in August defeated Watson's government in the House. When the Governor-General refused him a dissolution, Watson resigned his office, and Reid became Prime Minister.

Watson led the Labor Party into the 1906 federal election and improved its position again. At this election Bland was abolished, so he shifted to the seat of South Sydney. But in October 1907, mainly due to concern over the health of his wife Ada, he resigned the Labor leadership in favour of Andrew Fisher. At the 1910 elections, at which Fisher beat Deakin comfortably, he retired from politics, aged only 42.

Out of the Parliamentary arena, Watson continued to work for Labor, becoming Director of Labor Papers Ltd, publishers of The Worker, the Australian Workers Union paper. He also pursued a business career. But in 1916 the Labor party split over the issue of conscription for World War I, and Watson sided with Hughes and the conscriptionists. He was expelled from the party he had helped found. He remained active in the affairs of Hughes's Nationalist Party until 1922, but after that he drifted out of politics altogether.

Watson devoted the rest of his life to business. He helped found the National Roads and Motorists Association (NRMA) and remained its chairman until his death. He was also a founder of the Australian Motorists Petrol Co Ltd (Ampol). His wife died in 1921, but he remarried in 1925, and lived quietly and largely forgotten in Sydney for another sixteen years.

In April 2004 the Labor Party marked the centenary of the Watson Government with a series of public events in Canberra and Melbourne, attended by then party leader Mark Latham and former leaders Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Watson's daughter, Jacqueline Dunn, 77, was guest of honour at these functions. Australian historian Dr Ross McMullin published a new study of Watson and the Watson government, called So Monstrous a Travesty.

The Canberra suburb Watson and the federal electorate of Watson are named after him.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Al Grassby and Silvia Ordonez, The Man Time Forgot: The Life and Times of John Christian Watson, Australia's First Labor Prime Minister, Pluto Press 1999
  • Ross McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World's First National Labour Government, Scribe Press 2004

[edit] External links

  • Chris Watson - Australia's Prime Ministers / National Archives of Australia
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by
None
Leader of the Labor Party
1901–1907
Succeeded by
Andrew Fisher
Preceded by
Sir George Turner
Treasurer of Australia
1904
Succeeded by
Sir George Turner
Preceded by
Alfred Deakin
Prime Minister of Australia
1904
Succeeded by
George Reid
Prime Ministers of Australia
Barton | Deakin | Watson | Reid | Fisher | Cook | Hughes | Bruce | Scullin | Lyons | Page | Menzies | Fadden | Curtin | Forde | Chifley | Holt | McEwen | Gorton | McMahon | Whitlam | Fraser | Hawke | Keating | Howard
Leaders of the Australian Labor Party
Watson | Fisher | Hughes | Tudor | Charlton | Scullin | Curtin | Chifley | Evatt | Calwell | Whitlam | Hayden | Hawke | Keating | Beazley | Crean | Latham | Beazley | Rudd
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