Joseph Cook
Sir Joseph Cook was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the sixth prime minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party, having previously been leader of the Anti-Socialist Party from 1908 to 1909. His victory at the 1913 election marked the first time that a centre-right party had won a majority at an Australian federal election.
Cook was born in Silverdale, Staffordshire, England, and began working in the local coal mines at the age of nine. He emigrated to Australia in 1885, settling in Lithgow, New South Wales. He continued to work as a miner, becoming involved with the local labour movement as a union official. In 1891, Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as a representative of the Labor Party, becoming one of its first members of parliament. He was elected party leader in 1893, but the following year left Labor due to a disagreement over party discipline. He was then invited to become a government minister under George Reid, and joined Reid's Free Trade Party.
In 1901, Cook was elected to the new Federal Parliament representing the Division of Parramatta. He became deputy leader of the federal Free Trade Party, again under George Reid, and in 1908 replaced Reid as party leader and Leader of the Opposition. In what became known as "the fusion", Cook agreed to merge his party with Alfred Deakin's Protectionist Party in 1909, forming a unified anti-Labor party for the first time. He became deputy leader of the new Liberal Party, allowing Deakin to become prime minister again, and was Minister for Defence until the government's defeat at the 1910 election.
Cook replaced Deakin as leader of the Liberals in January 1913, and a few months later won a one-seat majority over Andrew Fisher's Labor Party at the 1913 election. His party failed to secure a majority in the Australian Senate, making governing difficult, and as a result he engineered the first double dissolution. A new election was called for September 1914, at which the Liberals lost their majority; Fisher returned as prime minister. Cook was unable to pass much legislation during his time in office, but did oversee the early stages of Australia's involvement in World War I. He subsequently became Leader of the Opposition for a third time.
In 1917, Cook was involved in a second party merger, joining the Liberals with Billy Hughes's National Labor Party to form the Nationalist Party. He became the de facto deputy prime minister under Hughes, serving as Minister for the Navy and Treasurer. He was a delegate to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he was a member of the committee that determined the borders of Czechoslovakia, and along with Hughes was one of two Australians to sign the Treaty of Versailles. After leaving politics, Cook was High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1921 to 1927. He died at the age of 86 as one of the last survivors of the first federal parliament.
Early years
Cook was born on 7 December 1860 in a small cottage in Silverdale, Staffordshire, England. He was the second of seven children born to Margaret and William Cooke. His older sister Sarah died in 1865, but his three younger sisters and two younger brothers lived to adulthood. Cook's parents moved to a one-up-one-down a few months after his birth, before eventually settling in a terraced house on Newcastle Street. The children shared a single room and two beds, and the family could rarely afford meat. Cook's father was a coal miner under the butty system at the nearby Hollywood pit. He was killed in a mining accident in April 1873, forcing his oldest son to become the family's primary source of income.Cook's only formal education was at the school attached to St Luke's, the local Anglican church. He left school and began working in the coal mines at the age of nine, earning one shilling per day for ten to twelve hours of work. Beginning at four o'clock in the morning, his tasks were to attend to the horses and clean and oil the mining equipment. After the passage of the Elementary Education Act 1870, Cook was allowed to return to school until he reached the legal leaving age. He left school a second time after his father's death and returned to his former employment at the local colliery. However, as a result of his teacher's attention, together with that of his parents, an exceptionally strong ambition to improve his position became implanted in him. This ambition was to become one of his most prominent characteristics, revealed first in a drive for self-improvement and, later on in life, his determination to succeed in politics. During his teenage years, he embraced Primitive Methodism, and marked his conversion by dropping the "e" from his surname. On 8 August 1885, he married Mary Turner at Wolstanton, Staffordshire, and the couple eventually had five sons and three daughters.
Shortly after their marriage, the couple emigrated to New South Wales and settled in Lithgow, joining Cook's brother-in-law and a number of other former miners from Silverdale. Cook worked in the coal mines, becoming General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887. In 1888, he participated in demonstrations against Chinese immigration. He was also active in the Land Nationalisation League, which was influenced by the ideas of Henry George and strongly supported free trade, and was a founding member of the Labor Party in 1891.
Early political career
Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as MP for the coalfields seat of Hartley in 1891, in Labor's first big breakthrough in Australian politics. It was the first time Labor had won a seat in any parliament in Australia.In 1894, however, Cook was the leader of those parliamentarians who refused to accept the Labor Party's decision to make all members sign a "pledge" to be bound by decisions of the Parliamentary Labor Party. Cook's protest was based on Labor's attitude to the tariff question in particular, with his preference for free trade being increasingly at odds with his party. It was also based on his religious beliefs, which valued independence of conscience as a necessary moral imperative. By the end of the year, he had become a follower of George Reid's Free Trade Party, and for years afterwards he was seen as a 'class traitor' by Labor. Cook for his part maintained that the original Labor Party of 1891 was an entirely separate entity from the pledged party, hence that he had never been a member of what became the Labor Party. He became an invaluable ally of Reid, despite the fact that the two men had distinctly different characters, and remained colleagues only at a distance.
Cook was appointed Postmaster-General of New South Wales when Reid formed a government in August 1894. He chaired two intercolonial post and telegraph conferences in 1896, at which the Australian colonies agreed to fund a Pacific Cable linking Australia to North America. In opening the first conference, he spoke of the "federal spirit animating most of our Australasian national endeavours at the present time". It was eventually resolved that the colonies would contribute equally to funding the cable rather than on a simple per-capita basis, an agreement which "marked a turning point in the achievement of 'practical Federation'" and foreshadowed the development of a Senate with equal representation for each state. According to Kevin Livingston, who wrote a history of pre-Federation telecommunications in Australia, he "deserves to be recognised as having played an influential, mediating role in leading the Australian colonies towards technological federalism in the mid-1890s".
Federal Parliament
Despite supporting federation in principle, Cook campaigned for a no vote at the first referendum on federation in 1898. He believed that a Senate which gave equal representation to each state regardless of population was undemocratic, and he was also a strong believer in the liberal concept of subsidiarity, the idea that political decisions are best made at the most local level. For the same reason, he would strongly oppose the 1911 and 1913 referendums seeking to enlarge the powers of the federal government.Cook initially had no plans to enter federal politics, hoping instead to succeed Reid as premier of New South Wales. However, the party wanted a high-profile candidate to stand against William Sandford in the Division of Parramatta, a large electorate spanning from Parramatta on the outskirts of Sydney across the Blue Mountains to Lithgow. Reid offered the position of Postmaster-General in a future government as an inducement, but Cook did not agree to stand until a few weeks before the election. He was elected with a substantial majority, following a bitter campaign in which he accused Sandford of adopting political positions for self-benefit. The Free Traders failed to win government from the Protectionists, with Reid becoming Leader of the Opposition.
In the first term of federal parliament, Cook developed a reputation as a master of parliamentary procedure and tactics, "always ready to speak, as often and as long as required". He spoke in favour of nationalising the iron industry and introducing compulsory conciliation and arbitration, views in line with his previous political affiliation. Opposing tariffs because they increased the price of goods needed for working families, in 1902 he would suggest that "no man ought be in the position of Minister for Trade and Customs unless he had at least ten children". In June 1901 he moved from Lithgow to a larger house in Marrickville, in Sydney's Inner West. Cook was re-elected with an increased majority at the 1903 election. He stood for the deputy leadership of the opposition when parliament resumed, but was defeated by Dugald Thomson, and was overlooked for ministerial office when Reid formed a government in August 1904. This was arguably because he had suffered a severe bout of illness that had kept him absent from Parliament for two months.
By 1904, Cook had become stridently anti-socialist, in line with Reid's decision to reposition the Free Traders as the party of anti-socialism. Some of his previous political positions were abandoned, possibly to gain the trust of party colleagues who had been suspicious of his links with the labour movement. He instead came to espouse liberalism, regarding its views about personal freedom as closely aligned with Methodism's understanding of the role of the individual in developing morality. He believed that his own story proved that Australia was a land of great social mobility, and that the nation should continue to support individual opportunity rather than risking a socialist revolution in which the state would be empowered to control individuals. In 1905 he accepted the position of deputy chairman of the Australian Liberal League, an organisation formed to support the anti-socialists in the lead-up to the next election.
During the Reid government, Cook filled a role similar to the later position of Leader of the House, assisting Reid with parliamentary tactics without being burdened by a ministerial portfolio. Reid had hoped to call an early election and entrusted Cook with organising the anti-socialist campaign. However, in June 1905 Protectionist leader Alfred Deakin withdrew his support from the government and formed a new administration, with Labor support.
Cook was unanimously elected deputy leader of the Anti-Socialists on 28 July 1905, following Thomson's resignation. He "started a political vendetta against Deakin", which "perfectly suited the mood of the party". The Anti-Socialists ran a negative campaign with few policy specifics at the 1906 election, and the Protectionist–ALP alliance continued. He was re-elected unopposed, following a redistribution which saw Parramatta lose much of its working-class areas. In 1908 he moved to Baulkham Hills.
When Reid resigned as party leader on 16 November 1908, Cook succeeded him the following day, and agreed to merge the Anti-Socialist Party with Alfred Deakin's Protectionists, in an effort to counter Labor's popularity. Cook became deputy leader of the new Commonwealth Liberal Party, also known as "the Fusion." Cook was Defence Minister in Deakin's 1909–1910 ministry, then succeeded Deakin as Liberal leader when the government was defeated by Labor in the 1910 elections. Cook had, by this time, become completely philosophically opposed to socialism.