Chris Watson
John Christian Watson was an Australian politician who served as the third prime minister of Australia from April to August 1904. He held office as the inaugural federal leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1901 to 1907 and was the first member of the party to serve as prime minister.
Watson was born in Valparaíso, Chile, the son of a German Chilean seaman. He grew up on the South Island of New Zealand, taking the surname of his step-father when his Irish-born mother remarried. He left school at a young age, working in the printing industry as a compositor. Watson moved to Sydney in 1886 and became prominent in the local labour movement. He helped establish the Labor Electoral League of New South Wales and directed the party's campaign at the 1891 general election. Watson was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly at the 1894 election, aged 27, and quickly became a leading figure in the ALP. He and most party members opposed Federation on the grounds that the proposed constitution was undemocratic.
In 1901, Watson was elected to the House of Representatives at the inaugural federal election. He became a founding member of the ALP caucus in federal parliament and was elected as the party's inaugural leader. During the first term of parliament he supported the Liberal Protectionist governments of Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, and was a strong supporter of the White Australia policy. At the 1903 election, the ALP secured the balance of power in the House and a strong position in the Senate. Watson formed a minority government in April 1904, aged 37, after the ALP withdrew its support from Deakin. He was one of the first socialists to head a government in a parliamentary system, attracting international attention, and remains Australia's youngest prime minister.
After less than four months in office, the Watson government lost a confidence motion and Watson was succeeded as prime minister by anti-socialist George Reid. He was leader of the opposition until 1905, when he helped reinstall Deakin as prime minister. The ALP continued to offer its support to Deakin after the 1906 election, despite the opposition of some in the party. Watson resigned the party's leadership in 1907, citing family concerns, and left parliament at the 1910 election. He was expelled from the ALP during the 1916 split over conscription and became a Nationalist, although he never again stood for public office. He subsequently had a successful business career, including as president of the NRMA and chairman of Ampol.
While Watson did not succeed in passing legislation while in office, his term as prime minister is seen as significant as a demonstration that the ALP could form a competent government. His successor as party leader Andrew Fisher would lead the ALP to a majority government at the 1910 election, in which many of Watson's ministers played a key role.
Early life
Birth and family background
Watson was born Johan Cristian Tanck on 9 April 1867 in Valparaíso, Chile. He was the only child of Martha and Johan Cristian Tanck, senior. His father was also born in Valparaíso, a German Chilean whose ancestors had emigrated from the Kingdom of Hanover and established an import–export firm. He worked as a merchant seaman, possibly a ship's carpenter, on trade routes across the Pacific. He arrived in New Zealand aboard La Joven Julia on 24 December 1865 and married Martha Minchin in Port Chalmers less than a month later, on 19 January 1866. Their marriage was later registered at Valparaíso's Iglesia de la Matriz. Watson's mother was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and was 16 years old at the time of her marriage to Tanck. She joined him on board the Julia, which eventually returned to Chile and docked in Valparaíso a few days before Watson's birth. In the months after his birth the ship worked a regular route carrying timber between Valparaíso and Chiloé Island.In 1868, Watson moved to New Zealand with his mother, returning to her family on the South Island. The fate of his father is uncertain, as no records of his death have been found. On 15 February 1869, his mother married George Thomas Watson at the registry office in Waipori, describing herself as a widow. Her second husband was a 30-year-old miner born in Ballymoney, Ireland, who had come to New Zealand after several years working in Scotland. Watson came to have nine half-siblings from his mother's second marriage, born between 1869 and 1887. He was treated as the biological child of George Watson, adopting his step-father's surname; his given names were also anglicised.
As an adult, Watson gave incorrect and contradictory information about the circumstances of his birth and the identity of his parents. He allowed some biographical profiles to list him as born in New Zealand, while his second wife and daughter understood that he had been born to British parents in international waters outside Valparaíso. On legal documents he listed George Watson as his biological father and provided an incorrect maiden name for his mother. Watson's biographers have suggested he may have originally concealed his background for convenience, but later deliberately did so for political reasons, including concerns over parliamentary eligibility and possible xenophobia. Birth overseas to a non-British father would have made him an alien ineligible for election to federal parliament under section 44 of the constitution.
Childhood and move to Australia
Watson attended the state school in Oamaru, North Otago, New Zealand until ten years of age when he left to become a rail nipper. Then after a period of helping on the family farm, at thirteen years of age he was apprenticed as a compositor at The North Otago Times, a newspaper run by prominent reformist politician William Steward, with the public affairs exposure augmenting his minor formal schooling. Following the death of his mother and the loss of his job, he migrated to Sydney in 1886 at nineteen years of age. He worked for a month as a stablehand at Government House, then found employment as a compositor for a number of newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Star. Through this proximity to newspapers, books and writers he furthered his education and developed an interest in politics and became active in the printing union. He married Ada Jane Low, a British-born Sydney seamstress, at the Unitarian Church on Liverpool Street in Sydney on 27 November 1889.Colonial parliament
In the months prior to the 1891 New South Wales colonial election, Watson was a founding member of the Labour Electoral League of New South Wales which stemmed from the nascent Australian labour movement and would later develop into the Australian Labour Party. In the election, Labour won the balance of power and provided confidence and supply to the Protectionist Party minority government led by Premier George Dibbs which brought down the incumbent majority government of the Free Trade Party led by Premier Henry Parkes. Watson was an active trade unionist, and became vice-president of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council in January 1892. In June 1892, he settled a dispute between the Trades and Labour Council and the Labour Party and as a result became the president of the council and chairman of the party. In 1893 and 1894, he worked hard to resolve the debate over the solidarity pledge and established the Labour Party's basic practices, including the sovereignty of the party conference, caucus solidarity, the pledge required of parliamentarians and the powerful role of the extra-parliamentary executive. At the 1894 colonial election which saw the defeat of the Protectionist Party government, Watson was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for the country seat of Young.At the 1895 colonial election the incumbent Free Trade Party minority government led by Premier George Reid increased their support but remained several seats short of a majority. Labour at this time had a policy of "support in return for concessions", and Watson voted with his colleagues to strategically provide such legislative support to the incumbent government. Following the 1898 colonial election, despite a significant swing against the incumbent government, Watson and Labour leader James McGowen decided to allow the incumbent government to remain so that it could complete the work of establishing the Federation of Australia.
Federation
Watson was involved in shaping party policy regarding the movement for Federation from 1895, and was one of ten Labour candidates nominated for the Australasian Federal Convention on 4 March 1897, but none of these candidates managed to be elected. The party endorsed Federation, but nevertheless most leading party figures viewed the draft Commonwealth Constitution as undemocratic, and believed that the Senate as proposed was much too powerful, similar to the anti-reformist Colonial state upper houses and the UK House of Lords. When the draft was submitted to a referendum on 3 June 1898, Labour opposed it, with Watson prominent in the campaign, and saw the referendum rejected.Watson was devoted to the idea of the referendum as an ideal feature of democracy. To ensure that Reid might finally bring New South Wales into national union on an amended draft constitution, Watson helped to negotiate a deal, involving the party executive, that included the nomination of four Labour members to the New South Wales Legislative Council.
At the March 1899 annual party conference, Billy Hughes and Holman moved to have those arrangements nullified and party policy on Federation changed, thus thwarting Reid's plans. Although rarely known to resort to anger, on this occasion Watson 'jumped to his feet in a most excited manner and in heated tones... contended... that they should not interfere with the referendum'. The motion was lost and the four party men were nominated to the council on 4 April. The bill approving the second referendum, to be held on 20 June 1899, was passed on 20 April.
Labour leaders, including Watson opposed the final terms of the Commonwealth Constitution. Nonetheless, they could not stop it from going ahead, and Watson, unlike Holman and Hughes, believed that it should be submitted to the people. Nevertheless, Watson joined all but two of the Labour parliamentarians in campaigning against the 'Yes' vote at the referendum. When the Constitution was accepted, he agreed that 'the mandate of the majority will have to be obeyed'.