Sir Walter James

WESTRALIAN PORTRAITS

LYALL HUNT editor

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA PRESS FOR THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS 1979

Contents

Foreword Committee Acknowledgements Editor's Acknowledgements Introduction Yagan, the patriot Sir James Stirling, the founder Francis Thomas Gregory, the explorer Edward Hamersley, the landtaker Dom Rosendo Salvado, the abbot Sir Frederick Barlee, the administrator J. S. Hampton, the governor Sir Archibald Burt, the chief justice Sir George Shenton, the merchant Maurice Coleman Davies, the timberman Patrick Hannan, the prospector Sir John Forrest, the statesman Sir J. Winthrop Hackett, the editor Charles Yelverton O'Connor, the engineer F. C. B. Vosper, the agitator Sir Walter James, the social reformer Canon Edward Collick, the priest William Paterson, the banker Michael Patrick Durack, the cattleman John Scaddan, the practical socialist J. W. R. Linton, the craftsman Sir J. J. Talbot Hobbs, the general Sir James Mitchell, the optimist

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N.-J. Green J. M. R. Cameron F. W. Birman Rica Erickson George Russo J. H. M. Honniball P. J. Boyce Sheila McClemans Brian de Garis Bruce F. Ham I ing Geoffrey Blainey F. K. Crow ley O. K. Battye Merab Tauman E. Jaggard Lyall Hunt Elizabeth Willis A nne Porter Mary Durack John Rodway Robertson Janet Kovesi P. C. Firkins Geoffrey Bo/Ion

Western

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Sir Walter James THE SOCIAL REFORMER

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A paradox is apparent in the life of Sir Walter James. In later life he appeared the epitome of conservatism: the doyen of Perth's legal fraternity; pillar of the Anglican Church; director and prominent shareholder in West Australian Newspapers; senator and then chancellor of the University of Western Australia; president of the state branch of the conservative Nationalist Party; president also of Perth's exclusive Weld Club; and a knight to boot. In his younger days he had been a brash political activist, hell-bent on breaking the political power of Westralia's landed coterie; then a radical politician and social reformer who played a major role in the Western Australian variant of the social revolution. As such he saw his state transformed from a conservative backwater when he entered parliament to the mainstream of Australian social reform a decade later. Walter Hartwell James was born in Perth on 29 March 1863. He died in his native city in 1943. His life thus neatly bestrode Western Australia's first 150 years of history.' James's background was middle class. His father, Edward James, sometimes storekeeper for the colonial commissiariat and, later, publican, died when the boy was fourteen. His mother, nee Lucy Francisco, of an old Fremantle family, was far from affluent, but was ambitious for her son. She gave him the chance to qualify as a lawyer and thus secured his future. Walter James grew up with a hatred of privilege and a concern for the underdog in a society highly structured in terms of land, wealth and status. He was warm and gregarious by nature; loyal and generous to his friends. At the same time he could be intense and voluble on social questions and developed something of a reputation as a street-corner spruiker for the various reforming associations which sprang up in Perth and Fremantle from the late 1880s. Above all he possessed a great warmth and love of life and combined these with a restless desire to change the world. The combination led him inexorably into the political arena. Ill

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His chance came in 1894 when he stood successfully for the working-class Legislative Assembly seat of East Perth. The parliament he entered resembled a gentleman's club. Because members needed a private income to sustain them in their unpaid political duties, they came mainly from established Westralian families. Thus they knew one another socially as well as politically. Partly because of this, debates were low key and, in the main, consensus reigned. A handful of men sat on the Opposition benches, but they lacked cohesion and were in no way committed to deposing the government. James himself moved onto a cross-bench. It was not so much that he felt at odds with the government of Sir John Forrest; but in the manner of a nineteenth century British liberal, he wanted to maintain an independent stance and to judge issues rather than men. Development was the central question of the day. The colony was intoxicated with the gold rush and the government was under pressure to provide the multitude of services essential to the mushrooming mining centres. James added a minor voice to the chorus of support for the government's decision to borrow overseas to provide these services. In addition, he supported Forrest's grand scheme to use the opportunity afforded by the influx of population to settle men on the land. Hence he backed the measures to make this possible: cheap land; rural railways; ready credit through the Agricultural Bank; and advice to farmers from the Bureau of Agriculture.' Into this political setting, preoccupied as it was with material progress, James brought a new element—the demand that laws be passed to benefit the weak in society to protect them from the excesses of capitalism. 'Roads and bridges are not enough', he thundered, in speeches wide ranging and erudite and delivered with a great rapidity which reflected his volatile temperament. The conservatives doubted his sincerity but his efforts were appreciated by the working class. His contacts with the trade unions were close and he occasionally attended meetings of the political committee of the Trades and Labor Council to discuss legislation before the house. Throughout the closing years of the 1890s, he remained pretty well undisputed spokesman for the working class in parliament. The origins of his liberal views are obscure. It is true that the weak in society were hard pressed, particularly when adversity struck. Further, the population of Perth, where James had spent most of his life, was small enough to ensure that individuals were well aware of conditions of life across the social spectrum. But few wanted to change the system. James was different in that, although of the middle class, he appreciated the difficulties experienced by the working class, perhaps because of three hard years in his youth spent on an outback sheep-station. In addition, in Perth he had played Australian Rules football, the working-class sport, and identified closely with the football fraternity. But these experiences were not unique. Perhaps his mother's influence had been dominant. Certainly she had struggled to support her family and her son appreciated her efforts. Whatever the reasons, James grew up with an empathy with the underprivileged battlers in society. He determined to break the power of the dominant landed class and to have laws passed to improve the lot of the common man.

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James was not a doctrinaire socialist, although a firm advocate of state enterprise in banking, insurance, the liquor trade and coal-mining. Rather, he was eclectic in his views and prepared to quote authorities as disparate as the governor of Colorado and the Victorian liberal, Alfred Deakin, in advancing arguments for the correction of specific ills he perceived in the community. The truth was that, for a variety of reasons—its extreme isolation, its slow growth, and its delayed progress to responsible government—Western Australia had fallen behind the other Australian colonies in the promotion of social welfare. As an example, the provision of free, secular and compulsory state education was delayed in the West until 1895. When advanced, the measure had James's whole-hearted support, but was endorsed by the government only after considerable debate and despite the misgivings of Premier Forrest. The unstructured nature of colonial politics, unhampered by party discipline, gave opportunities for initiatives to be taken in social reform. It was relatively easy for a free lance like James to have his motions placed on the notice paper, although somewhat more difficult to have them accepted. He moved for the construction of all public works by day labour on the basis of an eight-hour day, when those hours were by no means the norm. When this failed, he called for the insertion in all government contracts of clauses securing minimum wages for workers, again without success. The string of failures confirmed the pattern of the first bill he introduced into parliament, the Chinese Immigration Amendment Bill, which sought to protect workers' living standards by excluding cheap labour. If successful, the bill would have excluded virtually all coloured labour from Western Australia. The idea was one central to Australian liberalism in the period but, as applied by James, was radical in tone and close to the violently anti-Chinese sentiments of the great New Zealand reformer, William Pember Reeves, whose views were often quoted by James. There were occasional successes to encourage the would-be reformer. James was quick to seize an opportunity presented by the Employer's Liability Bill introduced by Forrest's attorney-general, Septimus Burt. The bill was intended to make it possible for an injured worker to obtain damages from his employer, provided the negligence of the employer could be proved. It was a significant measure but far from the great liberal advance claimed of it by Burt. By moving eleven new clauses, James converted it into something approaching New Zealand legislation in this field; prompting an exasperated Burt to dub his tormentor the 'member for New Zealand' as he saw his draft mutilated. The most important of James's amendments made it illegal for an employer to induce a worker to contract himself out of his rights as a condition of employment. It was an outstanding achievement by an inexperienced back-bench member. If anything James spoke too frequently during his first years in parliament and dissipated his impact. From 1897 his contributions were less frequent but more weighty. The change was forced on him by the necessity to concentrate on his lawpractice to support his family, for in 1892 he had married a Welsh girl, Eleanora Marie Gwenyfred Hearder, and the first of their four children was born in 1897.

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From that year, when he was re-elected for East Perth, he tended to confine his attention to federation 2 and the major constitutional and social questions of the day. He was assisted by the return of other liberal members who took up their own particular interests and left James to concentrate on his. From 1897 an organized Opposition under the leadership of George Leake emerged in Western Australian politics. Its numbers increased over the next four years due to the defection of government members to its ranks. Despite the trend, James maintained his position on the cross-benches. He refused to join Leake's opposition, partly because of its free-trade views, and declined also Forrest's offer of the attorney-generalship in both 1897 and 1900 for fear of being reduced to a 'ministerial dummy' in a cabinet dominated by the premier. James's position on the cross-benches was symptomatic of his strengths and weaknesses as a politician. He was determined to be independent and to judge measures on principle rather than by the dictates of party. But the doubt remained whether he was committed to politics—a doubt fed by his reluctance to participate fully in debate but rather to desert the chamber impatiently after delivering his own fiery lectures. Yet he became a member with considerable influence and by 1898 had drawn about him a personal faction of four or five members prepared to follow him on most issues. Social reform remained uppermost in James's thoughts. Time and again he demanded of Forrest that he tackle reform at the same time as he promoted development. Forrest answered that it was 'time to do something for the working man when the necessity arises'. But James wanted legislation in advance of expressed demand so that injustice might be forestalled. It was not enough, for example, that the premier should pass the Truck Act when it became obvious that timber workers had long been exploited by having their wages paid in credits at company stores. James wanted legislation in advance of such abuses. The member for East Perth had long been concerned about the very long hours worked by shop assistants in Western Australia and determined to secure legislative endorsement of shorter hours. His Early Closing Bill of 1897 had few precedents in the Australasian colonies. When finally passed in 1898 the Act required all shops, save those exempted, such as chemists and food outlets, to close at 6.00 P.M. except on one day of extended trading per week. Women and children were limited by the Act to fifty hours of work per week and inspectors were provided to supervise the regulations. James took great pride in the fact that Western Australia was the first Australian colony to provide for the early closing of shops. It was a significant achievement and perhaps the only instance of Western Australia leading the other colonies in an area of social reform. Next, James took up the question of the female franchise. 'The friend of the women of the colony', as Forrest called him, had by 1897 become chief spokesman in parliament for the female suffrage movement. Each year his wide-ranging, erudite arguments supporting the extension of the franchise confounded conservative opponents but left them unmoved. Forrest himself, while unenthusiastic, was prepared to concede the vote to women but had difficulty carrying his supporters with him, particularly those in the conservative Upper House. This opposi-

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tion forced him to vote against the motion in 1898 even though he had told James that he would support it. The motion was finally passed in 1899 when its opponents switched their vote for quite cynical motives. The principle was adopted into the constitution in the following year. The political manoeuvring over female suffrage illustrates the manner in which liberal members like James were able to secure progressive legislation while Forrest was premier. Sir John did not promote social reforms: he left that to the liberals. But he was easily convinced on measures just in principle and widely supported in the community. His difficulty lay in his supporters, to many of whom reform was anathema. As a consensus politican Forrest's tactics were to await unity before committing himself publicly to change. These tactics of delay annoyed James but were politically expedient and, in a period of considerable political fluidity, enabled significant reforms to be attained. By contrast James, and after 1897 the more radical goldfields representatives, raised many issues which polarized members. In so doing, James asked that the matters be dealt with on non-party lines, hoping to achieve the same kind of consensus that existed on developmental questions. He never quite realized the long-term implication of his actions—that in raising these social issues he was in fact heralding the dawn of party politics in Western Australia. The new century dawned with Western Australia, about to enter the Australian Federation and with a state election due. James declined to seek the reward of his active participation in the federation campaign by entering federal parliament, mainly because he could not afford to live more or less full time in Melbourne. Instead, he stayed in Perth and was again returned for East Perth in the 1901 elections which produced an indecisive result marked by the return of the first Labor members to the Assembly. The Upper House, dominated by rural seats and elected on a property qualification, remained securely in conservative hands. A period of political instability followed, culminating in the emergence of a minority liberal government late in 1901 under the leadership of George Leake. James refused a portfolio but accepted the premier's suggestion that he serve as minister-without-portfolio, with special responsibility for social legislation. Despite the difficult circumstances, James was in his element. He steered through parliament the Trade Unions Regulation Act, which legalized the establishment of trade unions in Western Australia and thus protected unionists whose organizations had, in fact, been in existence for many years. He quickly followed this by a Workers' Compensation Act designed to extend the protection available to injured workers. Under the new Act the negligence of the employer was no longer an essential element as it had been under the Employers' Liability Act. In effect it established a system of compulsory insurance and cast the burden of compensation not upon the employer but upon the industry and, in the final analysis, on the community. Henceforth incapacitated workers might claim 50 per cent of their average weekly earnings as compensation for injuries sustained in their employment. The member once dismissed by critics as an airy theorist added to his solid record by next introducing an Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Bill to replace the unworkable measure passed by Forrest in the previous parliament. The new bill pro-

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vided conciliation machinery as well as the legal procedures of the Arbitration Court. It obliged all unions to register, thus overcoming the deficiency in the previous Act under which many unions chose to remain outside the jurisdiction of the court. James had discussed the form of this bill with unions in an attempt to ensure its acceptability, but did not win universal approval. In particular, radical unionists were concerned when the government felt it expedient to accept an Upper House amendment deleting a preference-to-unionists clause, which would have given trade unionists a prior right of employment in industry over non-unionists. One of the more radical Labor members precipitated a crisis within his own party on this issue and switched to an Opposition cross-bench when his views were not accepted. The presence of a Labor member in opposition to a liberal government was an ominous presage of events during James's term as premier. At this stage James's political future was uncertain. His ability to influence legislation from a cross-bench was restricted and his future seemed to depend on Leake's willingness to invite him into the ministry at a later date; but all this was changed by the premier's fatal illness on the eve of the 1902 parliamentary session. Leake's death forced James's hand. He vetoed efforts by two of the former premier's ministers to form governments and took the reins himself. It was a measure of his status in the liberal camp and the loyalty he commanded that his refusal to serve in any ministry save as premier was enough to ensure his success. So it was that James came into the premiership from the cross-benches and without previous formal ministerial experience. Despite his inexperience, James proved a hard-working and successful administrator, assiduous in his attention to his duties as premier and attorney-general and careful to give no cause for criticism in his attendance at the House. He was prepared to use his executive powers to promote government policy likely to be rejected by the Upper House. Notable in this area were decisions to place the government on the road to establishing a state insurance office by withdrawing all government, general and workers' compensation insurance from private insurers. More significantly he involved the state in the liquor trade by establishing a state hotel at Gwalia—the first of what was to become a string of government hotels in the state. His aims were to correct abuses in the liquor trade, but more importantly to promote state enterprise in competition with the private trade. The James government was not innovative in the developmental sphere but pushed ahead with Forrest's policies designed to settle newcomers in the wheat belt. Land was surveyed and agricultural railways constructed. The Department of Agriculture stepped up its advisory work and the Agricultural Bank Act was amended to increase loans available to farmers. Like Forrest before him, James wanted to use the opportunity afforded by the gold rush to settle a 'bold yeomanry' on the soil. A disappointment for James was his inability to extend free primary education into the secondary sphere before his term expired. He had a grand dream of providing education for all who could benefit, through state responsibility for education from the kindergarten to university. He made a personal crusade of establishing

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a free, secondary school in Perth with a 'modern' as against a classical curriculum, but his plans had to await implementation by a Labor government in 1911. He had more success in establishing schools of mines at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie and in passing the University Endowment Act 1904, which empowered the government to grant land to a future university. Surprisingly, the James government introduced only three significant pieces of social legislation during its two years in office. The first, the Lunacy Act of 1903, reformed mental health care in the state.' The second, the Prisons Act of 1903, sought to humanize conditions within prisons and the treatment of prisoners. The third was a far-reaching but ill-fated Shops and Factories Bill first introduced in 1902. In it James reverted to his favourite theme—early closing—and linked it with the registration and inspection of factories to maintain safety and health standards. To James's chagrin the bill was emasculated by the Legislative Council to the point where it had to be dropped by the government. The paucity of social legislation brought forward by James in 1902 can be explained partly by the very short notice he had before forming a government. But the more important reason lay in his decision to limit social legislation to measures of pressing importance and to concentrate on amending the constitution and electoral Acts so as to secure control of both houses of parliament by the democratic majority of the state's citizens. The primary aim was to shear the Upper House of its power to obstruct indefinitely the wishes of the democratically elected Lower House through the exercise of its coordinate powers. Once that end had been achieved, James proposed to proceed with a comprehensive programme of reform. He reasoned correctly that social progress in Western Australia would always be hindered while the Council remained unfettered. Nevertheless the decision to attack the Council head on was that of an idealist rather than a politician, for the risks were great. If the Legislative Council blocked the few social measures and also rejected the constitutional and electoral bills, James would be left with little to show for the session. He would have the added difficulty of explaining constitutional details to an undiscerning electorate looking for achievements in another direction. The new measures were far reaching in intention, but far from radical in their detail. The electoral bill sought to terminate plural voting under which landowners were entitled to vote in all electorates in which they owned property. It extended the franchise for the Lower House to all citizens resident six months in the state. Another bill sought to redistribute electorates, principally so as to increase, relatively, the representation of the populous mining and metropolitan areas as against the sparsely populated rural districts. Of far-reaching importance was the constitution bill designed to overcome deadlocks-between the two houses of parliament in the event of the Upper House repeatedly refusing to pass legislation emanating from the popular house. The deadlock machinery was more conservative than the double dissolution requirements provided in the federal constitution. James's bill required the Lower House to go to the people twice—the second time in a double dissolution—before a joint sitting of the two Houses, requiring a three-fifths majority, could be used to break a deadlock. But if James adopted a moderate stance to

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placate legislative councillors, it was to no avail. The Upper House unceremoniously threw out all his bills. At the beginning of the 1903 session James sought to improve his image by developing attractive social policies but the long session was again dominated by the electoral and constitutional bills which led to endless wranglings widely reported in the press. In the end James salvaged nothing except a redistribution Act, which did little beyond giving extra seats to the mining districts. So it was that James was forced to face the electors in 1904 with an undistinguished record. His problems were compounded by the reluctance of many of his nominal supporters to back progressive legislation and by the disaffection of Labor members who felt he had not moved quickly enough on social reform. In the lead-up to the election James threw down the gauntlet to Labor, which was already manoeuvring to go into direct opposition to his government. Electors were asked to choose clearly between James's broadly based progressive government and the more sectional Labor Party. The election produced the worst possible result from James's point of view—a Legislative Assembly divided between 22 Labor members, 18 of James's party and 10 highly conservative survivors of Forrest's old party. When parliament resumed the independents, fearing Labor less than the liberal government, combined with Labor to defeat the James government. James himself was utterly disillusioned, 'particularly as his old friends in the labour movement had turned against him. He felt his own position as party leader was untenable because he led a party now in opposition to Labor and whose members were increasingly unwilling to support progressive legislation. He was anxious to escape from politics and accepted with alacrity the Labor premier's offer of the agent-generalship for Western Australia in London. He resigned from parliament on 4 October 1904 at the age of forty-one years, and never returned to active politics. James was forced out of Westralian politics by the rapidly emerging two-party system, which he considered unacceptably restrictive in its operation. In any case there was no place for him in the anti-labour camp which became increasingly conservative in its views. Nor could he see himself bound by the discipline and narrow sectionalism of the Labor Party. He lived for another forty years, devoting his life to law and the University of Western Australia, which he served as senator and chancellor. His political views did not change very much as affluence merged him into the establishment. He remained wary of the extreme left and barely tolerant of the right. As late as the mid-1930s, when invited to chair the Nationalist Party, he accepted with great reluctance because of his basic opposition to the party system. His reputation as the most important social reformer to arise in Western Australia was built on a public life that spanned barely a decade. His monuments were the innovations in early closing, female suffrage, workers' compensation, industrial arbitration and state enterprise, and the democratization of the electoral process. In the field of social and democratic reform, Walter James was the outstanding figure to emerge in Western Australia in the first 150 years of its history. The paradox in his life was not that as an old man he accepted the embellishments of society, but that as

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a man still in his thirties he emerged as premier of a state not given to selecting idealists as its leaders. ENDNOTES

1. This article is based on the writer's, 'A Political Biography of Walter Hartwell James 1894-1904' (M.A. thesis, University of Western Australia, 1974). Detailed references for statements in the text may be found in that thesis. 2. See Lyall Hunt, 'Walter James and the Campaign for Federation', Studies in Western Australian History II (March 1978). 3. Roger Virtue, 'Lunacy and Social Reform in Western Australia 1886-1903', Studies in Western Australian History I (June 1977), pp. 51-9. FURTHER READING

deGaris,B. 'Western Australia'. I n P . Loveday et at. (eds). The Emergence of the Australian Party system. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1977. Gibbney, H. J. 'Western Australia'. In D. J. Murphy (ed.) Labor in Politics. St Lucia: Univ. of Queensland Press, 1975.