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Abstract
John Christian Watson (known as Chris Watson) was the first Federal Parliamentary Labor Party (FPLP) leader and from May 1901 to October 1907. During this time, while sitting on the cross benches between Alfred Deakin’s Protectionists and George Reid’s Free Traders, Labor regularly held the balance of power. For a short stint between April and August 1904, Watson was (the first world Labor and Australia’s youngest) prime minister and treasurer. Watson resigned as FPLP leader on 23 October 1907. By choosing not to contest his seat, Watson left parliament on 29 April 1910. It is Watson’s resignation as FPLP leader that is the focus of this paper. By drawing on a repository of newspaper clippings once owned by Watson and now held by the National Library of Australia along with Trove Digitised Newspapers, this article analyses the reporting of the week surrounding Watson’s resignation including the question if Watson’s retained articles favoured a particular stance. The paper concludes that newspapers were of the opinion that the stress of the job and subsequent ill health it induced, led to Watson’s resignation. Hence, this paper’s focus is contained to Watson’s resignation, a period of newspaper reporting and collections.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Labor and Labour are used interchangeably in this paper. Before 1912, the national party was referred to as the Australia Labour Party. As Labor historians use the two spellings interchangeably so will this paper. See, for example, McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty, and Grassby and Ordonez, The Man Time Forgot.
2 In this paper, resignation is interchangeably used with the term retirement, as found in the newspaper reporting.
3 Andrew Fisher formally replaced Watson on 30 October 1907.
4 And when the third parliament concluded.
5 Of particular note, see Grassby and Ordonez, Man Time Forgot; McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty.
6 National Library of Australia; McMullin, Light on the Hill, 62.
7 Grassby and Ordonez, Man Time Forgot, 109.
8 Not born in Australia or the British Isles, rather Chile (or as the family legend suggests, international waters off Chile), Watson’s Australian citizenship is questionable in terms of Section 34 of the Australian Constitution that requires a member of the House of Representatives to be a British subject: natural born or for at least five years, naturalised as such, including in Australia. No evidence exists of Watson meeting the criteria. McMullin thinks Watson’s adoption of his stepfather’s British surname ‘not only simplified his origins; it prevented any awkward questions being asked, once he developed parliamentary aspirations, about his eligibility.’ McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty, 2.
9 Of New South Wales.
10 Grassby and Ordonez, Man Time Forgot; McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty.
11 Museum of Australian Democracy Australian Federal Election Speeches, 1906, George Reid.
12 “Mr. Watson and Socialism” (Ovens and Murray Advertiser, August 13, 1904, 6).
13 “Socialism and Labor Politics” (Leader, May 14, 1904, 20).
14 “The New Government” The Daily Telegraph, April 27, 1904, 6.
15 “The Labor Cabinet, English Press Views, What is Expected” (The Age, April 28, 1904, 5).
16 McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty, 32–49.
17 McMullin, “Chris Watson and the World’s First National Labour Government”; “Mr. Watson’s Criticisms” (Wagga Wagga Advertiser, August 25, 1904, 2); “Mr. Reid and the Watson Ministry” (The Advertiser, June 16, 1904, 6).
18 Nairn, Civilising Capitalism.
19 For instance, the introduction of the old age pension and reducing poor working conditions.
20 For instance, The Argus (Melbourne) and ‘The Sydney Morning Herald [that] has traditionally endorsed conservative parties in its editorials and did not back the Labor party at any election until 1984.’ Election editorials overwhelmingly endorse “Malcolm Turnbull and Coalition,” The Guardian.
21 For example, “The Policy of The Watson Government” (The Daily Telegraph, April 29, 1904, 6), stated that ‘Mr Watson would lay before the House no “chimerical schemes”’ and ‘The first Labor Government of the Commonwealth is an accomplished … the victory scored by the new Prime Minister and his party is a tribute in the first place to the organisation and self-sacrifice of the Labor candidates at the recent election’ (The Gippsland Times, April 28, 1904, 2), and ‘avowed opponents admit[the Watson Government’s] honest and tenacity of purpose … .the Labor party have won their way to recognition and the responsibilities of office,’ ‘Pencil Points’ (Western Champion, May 6, 1904, 3), and, ‘the Watson Government ..will have a wonderful effect in concentrating the scattered strength of the horny-handed sons of toil to retain this absolute power they have been endowed with.’ ‘Labor Party in Power’ (Wellington Times, May 5, 1904, 3).
22 McMullin, So Monstrous a Travesty, 32.
23 “The Proud History at the Forefront of Australian Journalism,” 34–43.
24 Mayer, The Press in Australia, 10–31; Walker, Press in New South Wales; Issacs and Kirkpatrick, Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers.
25 For example, before Federation, the Shearers’ Record, General Labourers’ Record and the Australasian Typographical Journal, and around the time of Federation, the Tocsin, and its successor the Labor Call, the People’s Daily and the Ballarat Evening Echo. See Bongiorno, The Radical Press, 70–82.
26 ‘What was implicit in the [traditional] … press was the notion that people from genuine working class backgrounds couldn’t run the country. And they did have genuine working class backgrounds. Watson the compositor, McGregor the blind ex-labourer, Fisher and Dawson both formerly miners, Billy Hughes the umbrella mender and odd-job-man.’ ‘Parliament of Australia,’ Ross McMullin, First in the World.
27 Defined as ‘appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect,’ Merriam Webster, ‘ad hominin.’
28 Grassby and Ordonez, The Man Time Forgot, 69, refers to Northcote’s overall approach as ‘casting around to see who could best command a Parliamentary majority’ as a way of controlling Parliament.
29 For a more detailed discussion, see Mayer, The Press in Australia and Walker, Press in New South Wales.
30 Woodward, “Quantitative Newspaper Analysis,” 526.
31 Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy.
32 McCombs and Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” 176–87.
33 Ibid.,184.
34 Shakespeare, After Fifty Years, 13, 17.
35 Osborne and Lewis, Communication Traditions in 20th Century Australia, 17.
36 Ibid.,16–7.
37 Fenton, Freedman, and Witschge, Protecting the News: Civil Society and the Media, 40.
38 Isaacs and Kirkpatrick, Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers, 5–11.
39 Harding-Smith, “Media Ownership and Regulation in Australia,” 6.
40 Scheufele and Tewksbury, “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming,” 4.
41 McCombs and Shaw, “Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media”; Carroll and McCombs, “Agenda Setting Effects of Business”; Craft and Wanta, “Women in the Newsroom”; Wanta and Alkazemi, Journalism as Agenda Setting; McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver, “New Directions in Agenda-Setting Theory and Research,” Walker, “The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920”.
42 ‘It means making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences. An increase in salience enhances the probability that receivers will perceive the information, discern meaning and thus process it, and store it in memory.’ Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, 53.
43 Weaver, “Agenda Setting, Framing, and Priming,” 140–7.
44 See Cobb and Elder, Participation in American Politics.
45 Young, Paper Emperors. And as found in large newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and Brisbane Daily Mail and piqued publications like The Bulletin, Melbourne Punch and Truth.
46 McCombs, “A Look at Agenda-setting,” 543–57; McCombs, “Building Consensus,” 433–43; Wanta and Alkazemi, Journalism as Agenda Setting; Shoemaker and Vos, Understanding Gatekeeping; Vos and Finneman, “Journalism’s gatekeeping role,” 265–80; Grey, “Agonised Weeping,” 468–80; and Jackson, George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain.
47 That ‘deal with factual information about an object’s background or personality.’ Wanta and Alkazemi, 195.
48 Like ‘positive, neutral, or negative depictions,’ Wanta and Alkazemi, 195.
49 Pan and Kosicki, “Framing Analysis,” 60.
50 Ibid. For a more detailed discussion on this, see Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm”.
51 Or put another way, warranted or not.
52 Pan and Kosicki, “Framing Analysis,” 60–1.
53 The National Library of Australia has a collection of 163 newspaper clippings on Watson’s resignation, see National Library of Australia. The clippings are drawn from across the nation, especially New South Wales and Victoria including a variety of newspapers: metropolitan and country and across the political spectrum as well as syndicated and independent. In sum, the collection reflects a multifarious body of reporting on Watson’s resignation.
54 Julian Fitzgerald, On Message, 55–6, highlights that ‘at the same time as Watson and his staff were reading, monitoring and clipping newspapers to discern what was being published about the government, an Australian Press Cutting Agency was established in Melbourne.’ The Agency clipped articles from Australian and international newspapers for distribution to clients like politicians and governments. This effectively enhances the credibility of The National Library of Australia Series 5, as it suggests that it reflects a body of good, bad and indifferent articles on Watson’s resignation.
55 For example, article in Naomi Independent on October 21, 1907; “Rumored Retirement of Mr. Watson” (Burrangong Argus, October 19, 1907, 2); and article in The Braidwood Express and People’s Advocate on October 22, 1907. And the like, article in Bathurst Advocate on October 24, 1907; “Mr. Watson Resigns. Future Intentions” (Maitland Daily Mercury, October 24, 1907, 3); and “A Tribute to Mr. Watson” (Young Chronicle, October 26, 1907, 8).
56 Garfrerick, “Syndicates Attempt to Sway Public Opinion,” 29.
57 Perhaps the collection was that of the Party’ s/Caucus’.
58 Weller, Caucus Minutes, 201.
59 Such as, “Melbourne, Tuesday 22 October” (The Age, October 22, 1907, 6); “Castlemaine. October 21, 1907” (Mount Alexandra Mail, October 21, 1907, 2); “The New Protection” (The Cumberland Argue and Fruitgrowers Advocate, October 26, 1907, 4); “Evening Penny Post” (Goulburn Evening Penny Post, October 22, 1907, 2); “Mr. Watson’s Retirement” (The Warnabool Standard, October 25, 1907); “Mr. Watson Retires” (The Tamworth Observer, October 26, 1907).
60 For instance, “The Man in the Street” (Labor Call, October 24, 1907, 9); “The Dirty Sneer” (Sydney Worker, October 24, 1907, 12); “Topical Echoes” (Labor Call, October 24, 1907, 3); “Socialism and Human Nature” (Labor Call, October 24, 1907, 7).
61 The Catholic Weekly still operates today. It claims that it is ‘proudly Catholic … [and] proudly counter-cultural.’ The Catholic Weekly, “About Us: The Catholic Weekly.” The counter-cultural claim links back to its start when:
In November 1895, a new Catholic newspaper — The Catholic Press — began, arising from a meeting some months earlier of Sydney clergy who desired to take up the call of Pope Leo XIII for Catholic newspapers to ‘counteract the appalling efforts of torrents of infidel filth that deluge the homes of our people, that desecrate the sacred sanctuary of family life, that poison the fountain-springs of society.’ The Press promised in its first editorial to offer a ‘sound healthy Catholic opinion on the great questions of the day.’ The Catholic Weekly, “About Us: History of The Catholic Weekly.”
62 “Life in the Federal House” (The Catholic Press, October 24, 1907, 14); “Watson, Why He Is Retiring” (The Catholic Press, October 24, 1907, 20).
63 For example, ‘If Mr Watson’s secret thoughts were known it probably would be found’, ‘an attempt is being made, we believe’, ‘Watson would have eventually’, ‘there is a suspicious lull’ and ‘might have’.
64 Resignation is interchanged with retirement to reflect sources’ use of the terms.
65 “Federal Politics, Dealing with the Tariff. The Federal Capital. Financial Problems of The Future” (The Sydney Morning Herald, October 29, 1907, 6).
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Notes on contributors
Belinda Beattie
Belinda Beattie, School of HASS, University of New England, Madgwick Drive, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia.