William Hughes, Prime Minister

On the 27th October, 1915, William Hughes became the seventh Prime Minister of Australia.  Andrew Fisher was forced to retire as Prime Minister due to ill health, the result of the strain of the war.

Before Federation, Hughes had been a Labor member of the New South Wales parliament from 1894 to 1901. In March 1901 he won a seat in the first House of Representatives. He served in the Labor Cabinets of J.C. Watson and Andrew Fisher. He then replaced Andrew Fisher as Prime Minister in 1915, and he led Australia during the rest of World War I.  He was Prime Minister until 1923, and remained in parliament until the 1950s.

Hughes had a controversial career as PM, splitting the Labor Party on the issue of Conscription in 1916. 

The Australian Dictionary of Biography has a lengthy entry for "Billy" Hughes if you wish to read more about his long life and career.  He was controversial: to some he was a great statesmen while to others he was a renegade.  However the biographer notes that his broad objectives were always consistent:  "these were 'to fight for the under-dog' and to defend the right of Australia to develop its own form of democratic society, combining the best of British traditions and institutions with the maximum of freedom and equality."*

 

*L. F. Fitzhardinge, 'Hughes, William Morris (Billy) (1862–1952)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hughes-william-morris-billy-6761/text11689, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 24 October 2015.

William Dunstan VC

Ballarat man awarded the Victoria Cross!

Wonderful news in 1915!

We've written about Corporal Dunstan VC in previous posts.  His actions - his conspicuous bravery - on August 9th, 1915 during the battle of Lone Pine, earned him this award.

It was October 15, 1915, when the news was made official and listed in the London Gazette.  The news reached Ballarat by Saturday 16th October, and was reported - heartily - by the Ballarat newspapers on Monday 18th October.  You can view the newspapers' full reports on TROVE, but here is an article indicating the shyness of Corporal Dunstan and his humility.

Ballarat Courier 18 Octoner 1915

Sir Ian Hamilton's Recall to London

One of the key events in the later stages of the Dardanelles campaign was the relieving of Sir Ian Hamilton as the Commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 14 October 1915 to be replaced  by Sir Charles Monro. The fact that Hamilton was replaced was not surprising following Keith Murdoch's letter and British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett's critique of the Gallipoli  campaign in the Sunday Times.  More importantly Captain Guy Dawnay travelled from the Dardanelles to London to brief British High Command as well as the British Prime Minister and King George V on the true situation of the campaign. Dawnay believed that Hamilton was was not up to the task and that the camapign should be shut down. He arrived back at the Dardenelles just a few days before Hamilton received the news he was to be recalled.

Monro took up his post on 28 October 1915 and immediately two things became very obvious to him. Firstly an advance on Constantinople was out of the question and secondly it served no useful purpose to remain in the Dardanelles and as a result he recommended that the Gallipoli peninsula should be evacuated. Despite this recommendation it would take the British Cabinet back in London another two month's to finally give the order to evacuate.

Despite the issues with British High Command local newspapers still encouraged readers to believe that everything was going well with the campaign as this article from The Ballarat Courier shows while at the same time letting it readers know of Hamilton's recall.

Ballarat Courier 21 October 1915