When Jack Holloway took the Prime Minister's seat
Do you know the story of the first PM to lose their seat?
In 1929, Jack Holloway defeated the sitting Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, for his seat of Flinders at the federal election.
It was the first time a sitting PM lost their seat at an election – a feat not to be repeated until 2007 when John Howard lost the seat of Bennelong.
Jack Holloway was born in April of 1875, and was at one point among the most influential union leaders in Australia before going on to be a cabinet minister in the Curtin and Chifley Governments.
His story and contribution should be better known – so, to mark his birthday, here is the story of Jack Holloway.
Holloway was born in Tasmania in 1875 into a working-class family, and given the name Edward by his parents. Like most working-class kids at the time, his schooling ended in his early teens, so he went out to find a trade.
He started out in a boot factory where his boss, who couldn’t be bothered to learn his name, would disdainfully summon the boy by yelling out: “Hey, Jack!”
He answered to Jack for the rest of his life.
Jack Holloway moved to Melbourne aged 15 and joined the cause of labour, becoming a member of the Boot Makers Union.
From the factory floor he worked his way through the movement due to his persistent and passionate union activity. Soon, he represented his union to the Trades Hall Council.
He read voraciously, spending countless hours at the public library, and reading in the aisles of the Coles Arcade bookshop.
Holloway was politically active, joining both the Labor Party and the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP) founded by the famed British radical Tom Mann. In its first years the VSP was an avowedly non-sectarian organisation (this changed in 1908 when the small socialist group was gripped by a factional civil war). This meant that Holloway was simultaneously a member of both the ALP and the VSP.
From 1906 to 1908, Mann organised a substantial number of young labour activists into the VSP where they learnt skills in political agitation, and gained an extensive education in labour economics and politics – Holloway among them.
It was in this period that Holloway formed a close friendship with another young VSP member – John Curtin (also known as Jack at the time), who was a fellow participant in the party’s Economics Class.
Holloway left the VSP as it plunged into factional bickering, dedicating his energies to supporting the workers’ cause through union and Labor activism.
It was a wise choice. Holloway was a fierce and brilliant advocate of the labour cause – still a socialist, but one who endorsed the parliamentary path to building a better future.
Soon, Holloway was the most influential left-wing union leader in the state, and arguably in the country. By 1914 he was leading his union, while serving as Victorian Labor’s President, and President of the Trades Hall Council – something he referred to as labour’s ‘triple crown.’
During the First World War, Holloway became a prominent leader of the union opposition to compulsory overseas military service.
He later recounted:
[in the] early years of my leadership of the industrial and political wings of the Victorian Labour Movement, I was thrust into the leadership of the greatest and most bitter battle of its history. This was the fight to prevent the evil thing from the Old World, conscription of human life for wars far beyond one’s own frontiers.
After Labor PM Andrew Fisher’s resignation from his post in 1915, he was succeeded in office by the belligerent Billy Hughes. Hughes planned the introduction of conscription in 1916. This was opposed by the overwhelming majority of the labour movement, which argued that no one should be forced to fight in Europe against their will – conscription should only ever be for home defence.
Holloway was originally elected to lead the campaign against conscription as its national secretary. But with his regular union activity proving too much work he enlisted a close friend to take up this post in his stead – John Curtin.
This was a turning point in Curtin’s life and career, and his first position of national prominence.
Holloway remained a significant leader in the Victorian movement. In the early 1920s he was a prominent advocate of Labor adopting what became the ‘socialisation’ objective.
In the 1920s the union movement came under attack by the conservative government of Stanley Melbourne Bruce. The 1920s was a period of economic growth in Australia, but this growth covered over significant fault lines in the economy. Australia’s manufacturing was overly dependent on the small domestic market, productivity was low, and national development was being funded by excessive debt – loans taken out on the London money markets that would have to eventually be repaid. Attacking the unions provided Bruce with a convenient scapegoat for these economic troubles.
Bruce sought to simply blame unions for the country’s economic woes, introducing new anti-union laws. He also sought to radically shake up the industrial relations system – at first trying to persuade states to cede their arbitral powers to the Commonwealth, and when that failed, trying to jettison federal responsibility.
Unions campaigned against Bruce and his unpopular proposed changes – including at the 1929 election.
Bruce held his seat of Flinders with a 10.7% margin. Holloway had challenged Bruce for the seat in 1928, but had been roundly defeated.
Benefiting immensely from the preferences of a third candidate, Holloway was triumphant – by just 327 votes.
Scullin’s government received a swing in excess of 8%. Within weeks, however, the great depression had hit. Holloway was often critical in caucus over measures taken by the government to combat the Depression, including opposing the infamous ‘Premier’s Plan’.
At the 1931 election Holloway switched from the conservative Flinders to the more working-class Melbourne Ports (now Macnamara).
He was pivotal in 1935 to convincing John Curtin to contest for the Labor leadership, and served during the Second World War as Minister for Social Services, Health, and later for Labour. For a brief period in 1949 he served as Acting Prime Minister.
He had come along way since he had been beckoned from across the factory floor: ‘Hey, Jack!’
He retired from parliament in 1951, 2 years after Chifley lost office.
Before his death in 1967, Holloway penned a draft autobiography. In part, it read:
‘Sixty years ago I worked for nine hours a day, and I hated and feared the coming of holidays, because it meant short rations for my family and getting behind with the rent. Now when I run through the great list of reforms gained with great sacrifices during those years I find it constitutes quite a little revolution, and it makes me certain that if the children of today are given freedom from another war, the present day Labour Party … will see to it that the Light on the Hill will continue to burn brightly, and much more of the programme of that historic 1921 Conference [where the socialisation objective was adopted] will be made part of their everyday lives.’