George Pearce

George Pearce
Sir George Foster Pearce KCVO (14 January 1870 – 24 June 1952) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1901 to 1938. He began his career in the Labor Party but later joined the National Labor Party, the Nationalist Party, and the United Australia Party; he served as a cabinet minister under prime ministers from all four parties.
Pearce was born in Mount Barker, South Australia. He left school at the age of 11 and trained as a carpenter, later moving to Western Australia and becoming involved in the union movement. He helped establish the Labor Party there, and in 1901 – aged 31 – was elected to the new federal parliament. Pearce was elevated to cabinet in 1908, under Andrew Fisher, and served in each of Fisher's three governments. He continued on in cabinet when Billy Hughes became prime minister in 1915, and after the Labor Party split of 1916 followed Hughes to the National Labor Party and then to the Nationalists. Pearce also served in cabinet under Stanley Bruce and, after joining the UAP in 1931, Joseph Lyons. He was Minister for Defence from 1908 to 1909, 1910 to 1913, 1914 to 1921, and 1932 to 1934. His 24 years in cabinet and 37 years as a senator are both records.
Early life
Pearce was born on 14 January 1870 in Mount Barker, South Australia. He was the fifth of eleven children born to Jane (née Foster) and James Pearce. His father was a blacksmith of Cornish descent, born in the village of Altarnun, while his mother was born in London. An uncle, George Pearce, briefly served in the South Australian House of Assembly.
During Pearce's childhood his family lived in various locations in rural South Australia. His mother died when he was ten years old, and he left school the following year by which time the family was living in Redhill. His father briefly tried wheat farming on the Eyre Peninsula, then moved the family to Kilkerran on the Yorke Peninsula where he returned to blacksmithing. Pearce began working as a farm labourer at the age of twelve in nearby Maitland. He took up a carpentry apprenticeship in Maitland in 1885, where he also received free evening lessons from the local school headmaster. He moved to Adelaide after completing his apprenticeship, but lost his job in the early 1890s depression.
In 1892, Pearce moved to Western Australia where he found work as a carpenter in Perth. Following the discovery of gold at Coolgardie, he left Perth in March 1894 and went to the Eastern Goldfields where he joined thousands of others in prospecting for alluvial gold. While camped at Kurnalpi, Pearce and two others were attacked by Wangkatha men armed with spears, to which he responded by firing his revolver three times. He had little success in prospecting and returned to Perth in 1895.
After returning to Perth, Pearce resumed his work as a carpenter and his involvement in the labour movement, where he was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. In the late 1890s he "became one of Perth’s most prominent trade unionists". The local labour movement at the time largely consisted of small craft unions of skilled tradesmen, with an atmosphere less militant than in the other Australian colonies. In 1897 Pearce nonethless led a strike on building sites that led to him being blacklisted for several weeks. In the same year he purchased a home in the working-class suburb of Subiaco, working at the local Whittaker Bros. timber mill.
Early political career
In 1893, Pearce helped found the Progressive Political League, a precursor to the Western Australian branch of the ALP. He was elected to the Subiaco Municipal Council in 1898.
In the lead-up to Federation in 1901, Pearce joined the executive of the Western Australian Federal League and campaigned for the "Yes" vote at the referendum in July 1900 which approved Western Australia as an original state. A Trades and Labour Conference held in Perth in August 1900 agreed that labour candidates for the inaugural federal election would be subject to a preselection process for the House of Representatives and that the conference would endorse two candidates for the Senate – one from Perth and one from the Eastern Goldfields. Pearce was selected as the labour candidate from Perth and was elected to a six-year Senate term at the March 1901 federal election. He joined the parliamentary Australian Labor Party (ALP) on its formation in May 1901.
In Pearce's maiden speech to parliament, he outlined his views as a moderate socialist and looked forward to a time where "the representatives of labour and capital could join hands to the advantage of both". He also called for the nationalisation of natural monopolies, and in 1906 introduced an unsuccessful private member's bill to amend the constitution to that effect. Pearce was one of the few free traders in the Labor Party in his first years in parliament, believing high tariff policies made imports more expensive for Western Australia and had few benefits given the state's limited secondary industries. He narrowly missed out on being a member of the first Labor Party cabinet when Chris Watson became Prime Minister in 1904. He was later Chairman of Committees in the Senate from 1907 to 1908.
Fisher governments
In 1908, Pearce was elected to cabinet by the ALP caucus as a member of the first Fisher Ministry. He had long shown an interest in defence matters in the Senate and was chosen by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher to become Minister for Defence. He believed it was his duty as minister to accept "any reasonable expenditure on armament, ammunition, and accoutrements" recommended by his advisers and to resolve disagreements between sections of the military. During his first term as minister, Pearce ordered three River-class torpedo-boat destroyers for the what would become the Royal Australian Navy.
Pearce regained the defence portfolio in the second Fisher Ministry (1910–1913). During his second term as minister, he was responsible for the Naval Defence Act 1910, which created the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board and the Royal Australian Naval College. In 1911 he announced that orders had been placed for Australia's first two submarines, AE1 and AE2. Pearce attended the 1911 Imperial Conference in London where the relationship between the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy was determined. He oversaw the implementation of the Universal Service Scheme of compulsory military training scheme, and in 1912 approved the creation of the Central Flying School at Point Cook, Victoria, which became the "birthplace of Australian military aviation".
Defence minister, 1914–1921
World War I
In 1914, Australia entered World War I. Upon Billy Hughes' ascension as Prime Minister, Pearce was named Deputy Leader of the party.
Pearce served as acting prime minister from January to August 1916, while Hughes was in England and France. He was the first senator to hold the position, and the only senator to do so until Bill Spooner in 1962. Outside of the defence portfolio, Pearce oversaw the creation of Advisory Council of Science and Industry, the predecessor of the CSIRO, which Hughes had approved before his departure. In March 1916, he used the War Precautions Act 1914 to set price controls on bread and flour in metropolitan areas. On 6 July he extended this to all other foods, and on 20 July he created the Necessary Commodities Commission with the power to set prices on any item.
By the time of Hughes' return, Australia's prosecution of the war made the introduction of conscription an intensely divisive issue for the ALP. Pearce was convinced of the necessity of introducing conscription, but the majority of his party did not agree. Pearce, along with many other of the party's founding members, subsequently followed Hughes out of the party and into the new "National Labor Party." A few months later, the National Labor Party merged with the Commonwealth Liberal Party to form the Nationalist Party, with Hughes as its leader.
Aftermath
In December 1918, following the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 which ended World War I, it was announced that Pearce would be sent to London to oversee the demobilisation and repatriation of Australian troops, although a separation Repatriation Department had been established in 1917 headed by Edward Millen. The announcement received public criticism from those dissatisfied with his performance as defence minister, and a crowd gathered to boo and cat-call Pearce as his ship left Melbourne in January 1919. In London, Pearce faced a number of challenges, including conflict with British authorities over the availability of troop transport ships. In September 1919, he signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria on behalf of Australia. He returned to Australia the following month in time to campaign at the 1919 federal election.
In January 1920, Pearce and navy minister Joseph Cook approved the proposal of the Air Service Committee to establish the Australian Air Force as a standalone service arm, successfully lobbying cabinet for its independence from the army and navy. In the same month he convened the Senior Officers Conference to report on the size and structure of Australia's post-war military. He approved the report's recommendations around the reorganisation of the Citizen Military Force and retention of compulsory military training, but rejected a proposal to amend the Defence Act to allow Australian soldiers to serve overseas as part of British expeditionary forces. Pearce was the Australian representative at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921.
Post-war politics
Bruce–Page government
Most of the defectors to the Nationalists subsequently faded into obscurity, but Pearce went on to have a successful career in the party of his erstwhile opponents. After Hughes was deposed as Nationalist leader, Pearce accepted a position in the ministry of Hughes' successor and rival, Stanley Bruce. As Minister for Home and Territories he showed a particular interest in the Northern Territory and was "the driving force" behind its division in 1927 into separate territories of Central Australia and North Australia. It was reversed by the Scullin government in 1931. He became the first Father of the Senate in 1923. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1927.
Lyons government
In 1932, Pearce joined the newly formed United Australia Party, and served as a minister in the government of Joseph Lyons until his defeat at the 1937 election (his term ended in June 1938). Pearce campaigned for the "No" vote in the 1933 Western Australian secession referendum, touring the state with Lyons and Tom Brennan for two weeks. The "Yes" vote won almost a two-thirds majority, but ultimately secession did not occur. At the 1937 federal election, Pearce's candidacy was opposed by the Wheatgrowers' Union and the Dominion League of Western Australia, a leading secessionist organisation. The "Put Pearce Last" campaign was successful, and his term ended at the end of June 1938. He was a senator for 37 years and three months, a record term. His total service as a minister was 24 years and seven months, also a record in the Australian Parliament.
Later life
Pearce made no attempts to re-enter parliament after his defeat. He served on the Commonwealth Grants Commission from 1939 to 1944, and as chairman of the Defence Board of Business Administration from 1940 until it was abolished in 1947. Prime Minister John Curtin retained him in the latter position despite the opposition of some within the Labor Party, including Arthur Calwell and Eddie Ward. The board supervised all defence expenditure of over £10,000.
Pearce had lived mainly in Melbourne since entering the Senate, but co-owned a farm in Tenterden, Western Australia, with his son and visited regularly. He published an autobiography, Carpenter to Cabinet, in 1951, which had been written over a decade earlier. Pearce died at his home in Elwood on 24 June 1952, aged 82. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving member of the first Australian Senate elected at Federation in 1901; MHRs Billy Hughes and King O'Malley from the First Parliament would outlive him.
Personal life
In 1897, Pearce married Eliza Maud Barrett, a domestic servant, at Trinity Church, Perth. They had two sons and two daughters together. He was widowed in 1947. His great-granddaughter Jane Prentice was elected to federal parliament in 2010.
Legacy
Places named in Pearce's honour include RAAF Base Pearce and the electoral Division of Pearce in Western Australia, Pearce Peak in Antarctica, and the Canberra suburb of Pearce.
Australia's longest-serving prime minister Robert Menzies wrote the introduction to Peter Heydon's 1965 biography of Pearce, Quiet Decision, and recalled that he had "never sat with an abler man than George Pearce" in cabinet. Menzies praised Pearce's "profound and reflective mind", analytical way of thinking, and ability to express ideas and policy recommendations.
References
Further reading
External links
1870 births
1952 deaths
Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia
Australian ministers for Foreign Affairs
Australian people of Cornish descent
Nationalist Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Australia
United Australia Party members of the Parliament of Australia
Members of the Australian Senate for Western Australia
Members of the Australian Senate
Members of the Cabinet of Australia
Australian federationists
Australian Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Australian members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Officers of the Legion of Honour
Australian carpenters
National Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia
Defence ministers of Australia
20th-century Australian politicians
People from Mount Barker, South Australia