Labor's first PM: Chris Watson

120 years after the first Labor Government

Earlier this year we marked the 120^th anniversary of the first national Labor Government.

This was the first time anywhere in the world that a workers’ party governed in a national democratic system (Labor in Queensland had become the first workers party to govern for a brief two-week period in 1899).

This is the story of Chris Watson, the first Labor Prime Minister, and the epochal government he formed.

Watson was born in 1867 – the only Australian Prime Minister to have been born in Chile!

Watson was born Johan Cristian Tanck, the son of a German-Chilean merchant seamen father and his Irish-born mother, Martha. The young Chris was born onboard his father’s vessel in the Chilean port of Valparaiso.

It is unclear what happened to Watson’s father – if he died or separated from Martha. But in 1869 Martha married George Watson in New Zealand. The future Prime Minister became John Christian Watson.

Watson left school aged just 10 to join the world of work, starting as an assistant in the railways. By 13 he had been apprenticed as a compositor on a local newspaper, and joined the typographers’ union. He migrated to Australia aged 19, working for a stint as a stable hand at Government House in NSW, and as a compositor for the Sydney Morning Herald and other newspapers, becoming an active part of the Typographical Association (the union).

In 1890, he became the union’s delegate to the NSW Trades and Labor Council, and was a supporter of the labour movement’s intervention into parliamentary politics – a push that would lead to the creation of the Labor Party in the colony. At the 1891 election, the nascent Labor Party stunned political observers by winning 35 of 141 seats in the Legislative Assembly.

Watson was actively involved from the outset, helping to organise early party electoral campaigns. He played an integral role in holding together the fractious early Labor Party.

Watson’s growing renown aided his election in 1894 to the NSW Legislative Assembly.