Wikipedia talk:GLAM/State Library of Queensland/First World War Wikipedian in Residence

2016 comments

I hope this isn't out of place to ask here, but I would be incredibly interested in anything you can dig up out of the library's more obscure resources about the 1916 Labor split over conscription. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:40, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

No problem to ask. AFAIK, Queensland Labor was united on their anti-conscription stance with the exception of John Adamson who left the party over it. I've just finished writing Queensland Recruiting Committee, which touches in part on conscription in 1916 and in that process I found the digitised newspapers to be the most useful resource. For example, one thing I found that I did not see mentioned in any modern work is the fact that T. J. Ryan was a relatively young premier, young enough to be eligible to enlist. Despite publically declaring that he was ready to serve (when he was heckled from the crowd at a recruiting rally), it seems that behind the scenes he was trying (unsuccessfully) to get some kind of exemption based on the work of the Premier being more valuable to the Empire than military service. If conscription had been introduced, Ryan could have been called up. Ditto Qld Treasurer Ted Theodore and cabinet member John Fihelly (both also strongly anti-conscription). So the Qld position on conscription might well have been influenced by personal factors. Fihelly was a passionate Fenian (so unlikely to be supportive of any initiative to assist the British Empire or the British Army) and Ryan may have been sympathetic to this too (given his Irish ancestry, although he did participate in recruiting rallies which I doubt Fihelly would have). So personal risk (to self or sons) of conscription and Irish Home Rule sympathies may have influenced the split in Labor elsewhere. Kerry (talk) 04:36, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

I haven't had a chance to read it yet but Loyalty and Disloyalty by Raymond Evans might be relevant to the topic. It is available online (direct link is at the bottom)from State Library of Queensland. But it's a very large download! Kerry (talk) 04:45, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

From Loyalty and Disloyalty (p78)

After the Queensland AWU conference had endorsed a motion strongly condemning conscription on 18 January 1916, the annual convention of the AWU, ten days later, unanimously supported an anti-conscription motion introduced by the radicals from Queensland and Western New South Wales.73 This unequivocal commitment to anti-conscription by the moderate flank of the Queensland union movement persuasively pointed the way for the parliamentary Labor party to follow.

p93

What ruling considerations, then, had finally precipitated a near unanimous swing throughout the parliamentary party to the No cause, rendering the Ryan regime the only government in the Empire to oppose military conscription? Following the referenda, Queensland's governor, Goold-Adams provided the remarkable answer that it was neither concern over the sanctity of human life nor Australia being bled white which had primarily motivated the PLP. Rather, the governor asserted, it was the moderates fear of what the extremists of the IWW and revolutionary classes would do ifvconscription was carried which determined their response. As he wrote,

The members of the government . . . possessed secret channels of information of what these classes contemplated. . . [I]f conscription was adopted, the extremists would by acts of violence and sabotage upset the whole social and industrial life of Australia . . . It was, I believe, a real fear of a crisis of this description which influenced my Premier and his colleagues ..

KR: Note that PLP here refers to the Queensland Parliamentary Labor Party.

Also from p93, it seems the Labor Party in Qld was possibly more divided than I thought, but evidently they must have supported the party decision once it was made (apart from Adamson).

Even more signi�cantly, as Murphy indicates, two cabinet ministers and �five other caucus members favoured conscription openly.�

citing Murphy's biography of T J Ryan.

Thanks so much for this. One of my medium-term projects is going to be writing a GA-length version of Australian Labor Party split of 1916, the latter half of it broken down by state, and this is incredibly useful for explaining why Queensland was kind of a unique case there. I didn't know a whole lot about how it'd played out there (obviously it's not as well-documented since it didn't involve high drama) but this gives me the beginnings of a decent section there. I'd be thrilled if anything else comes up in your travels but this has already been really helpful. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife: Is this still something you're interested in pursuing? I'm on-site for the next couple of months one day a week, and I'm happy to go dig for you if you're interested in expanding on this point. Craig Franklin (SLQ) (talk) 04:02, 7 September 2016 (UTC).

Absolutely! I'd love anything you can turn up. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, the best introduction I've found online for the topic is this post from the State Archive: [1]. Apart from the issue with John Adamson that Kerry mentions above, things were relatively quiet in Queensland up until the 1916 referendum; the high drama began in 1917 with incidents like Hughes calling in a raid on the Government Printing Office due to censored anti-conscription material being printed in Hansard. The footnotes to that article cite a number of primary sources, most of these aren't online though and the Archive is out in the suburbs and non physically accessible to me here.

I am curious as to the identity of the openly pro-conscriptionist cabinet ministers and caucus members, am looking into finding out who they might have been. Craig Franklin (SLQ) (talk) 01:54, 14 September 2016 (UTC).