By Phil Griffiths, Canberra, Australia. Back to my home page: Australian history: Towards a Marxist analysis
This is a short thesis which looks at the rise of two-party politics in Australia in the decade after Federation, and the victory of protectionism over free trade. It is the thesis I wrote for my Honours year in Australian History at Macquarie University in 1998.
At Federation in 1901, there were three major parties: the Protectionists, the Free Trade party, and Labor. Most historians have written off the Free Traders as badly led, devoid of viable policies and inherently "doomed" once Australia federated, thus avoiding the need to explain their demise. I argue that the Free Trade party was powerful and successful (its leader, George Reid, was even Prime Minister from August 1904 to July 1905); but that it collapsed itself into the protectionist party led by Alfred Deakin because its leaders, and its ruling class backers in NSW, were so concerned at the rise of working class militancy and the Labor party in the years 1906-9. I plan to write a short article correcting a few exaggerations, flaws etc some time, so criticsm that would help me do a better job of that would be welcome.
This work consists of nine rtf files:
Introduction Page 1
Chapter 1: Federation and the free trade
alternative Page 7
Chapter 2: Reid's anti-socialist gamble
Page 15
Chapter 3: Nationalism, immigration
and defence: the Freetrade world view Page 26
Chapter 4: Defeat and surrender Page
37
Chapter 5: The Labor party, free trade
and fiscal policy Page 47
Conclusion Page 58
Appendix: Tables illustrating economic
structure and growth Page 61
Bibliography Page 64
Labor's tortured path to protectionism is a paper presented to the sixth biennial national Labour History conference, Wollongong, October 1999. It builds on chapter 5 of my thesis. It was published in the conference proceedings: Robert Hood and Ray Markey (eds), labour and community: Proceedings of the sixth national Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, The Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Illawarra Branch, Wollongong, 1999, pp 91-95