Stanley Bruce
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne was an Australian politician, statesman and businessman who served as the eighth prime minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929. He held office as the leader of the Nationalist Party, having previously served as the treasurer of Australia from 1921 to 1923.
Born into a briefly wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and played a leading role in his family's softgoods firm following the suicide of his father John Munro Bruce. He served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917, becoming a spokesman for government recruitment efforts. He gained the attention of the Nationalist Party and prime minister Billy Hughes, who encouraged a political career. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1918, becoming member of parliament for the seat of Flinders. He was appointed as treasurer in 1921, before replacing Hughes as prime minister in 1923. He established an anti-socialist coalition government with the agrarian Country Party, working closely with Country leader Earle Page in an arrangement that pioneered the modern Liberal–National coalition.
In office, Bruce pursued an energetic and diverse agenda. He comprehensively overhauled federal government administration and oversaw its transfer to the new capital city of Canberra. He implemented various reforms to the Australian federal system to strengthen the role of the Commonwealth, and helped develop the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO. Bruce's "men, money and markets" scheme was an ambitious attempt to rapidly expand Australia's population and economic potential through massive government investment and closer ties with Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire. However, his endeavours to overhaul Australia's industrial relations system brought his government into frequent conflict with the labour movement, and his radical proposal to abolish the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in 1929 prompted members of his own party into crossing the floor to defeat the government. In the resounding loss at the 1929 election, Bruce lost his own seat, making him the only sitting prime minister to lose his seat until John Howard's defeat at the 2007 election.
Although he returned to parliament in 1931, Bruce's service in the Lyons government was brief. Instead he pursued an international career, accepting appointment as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in 1933. Bruce became an influential figure in British government circles and at the League of Nations, emerging as a tireless advocate for international co-operation on economic and social problems, especially those facing the developing world. Particularly passionate on improving global nutrition, Bruce was one of the key figures in the establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization, serving as the first chairman of its governing council. He was the first Australian to sit in the House of Lords, as well as the first Chancellor of the Australian National University. Although his diplomatic career went largely unnoticed in Australia, he continued throughout his life in London to vociferously advocate for Australian interests and asked that his remains be scattered over Canberra when he died.
Early life
Stanley Melbourne Bruce was born on 15 April 1883 in St Kilda, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, and was the youngest of five children. He disliked his given name and throughout his life preferred to be known by his initials "S.M.", even among close friends. His wife called him simply "S". When he became prime minister he issued a note to the press asking newspapers to use his initials and not his given name.Bruce's father, John Munro Bruce, was born to Scottish parents in County Leitrim, Ireland, and had emigrated to Australia in 1858 at the age of 18. His mother, Mary Ann Henderson, was Irish and had married her cousin John after emigrating to Australia in 1872 at the age of 24. John Bruce became a talented businessman with "a flair for buying and selling", which would secure him a partnership in an established Melbourne importing firm that in 1868 became known as Paterson, Laing and Bruce. As his wealth grew, John Bruce became influential in colonial Victoria's social and political life. An avid golfer, he was one of the founders of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. He was prominent in the liberal protectionist political movement within the state and an early supporter of future prime minister Alfred Deakin. John Bruce's success ensured that Stanley Bruce, his sister Mary and his brothers Ernest, William and Robert were born into affluence. Shortly after Stanley Bruce's birth the family relocated to the stately Wombalano manor, built by John Bruce, in Toorak. However, John Bruce was an aloof and remote figure in the lives of his children, as his son Stanley later recounted. Despite their family's Presbyterian background, Stanley Bruce was sent to Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and subsequently Stanley Bruce would come to identify principally as Anglican. Bruce was an average student but extremely active in the sporting life of the school, captain of its Australian football team, and then of the school itself in 1901. Today, the school honours him with his own house, Bruce House, the colours of which are scarlet and white. The house's mascot is a lion, symbolising Bruce's bravery.
The economic depression of the 1880s and 1890s hit the Bruce family fortunes hard. John Bruce lost much of his fortune in the Victorian bank collapse of 1894 and incurred large debts to buy out his partners in the importing business in 1897. The family suffered a great deal more tragedy over the coming decades. Stanley's brother William committed suicide in 1899, shortly after seeking treatment for mental illness. Just two years later John Bruce took his own life during a business trip to Paris; he had suffered from depression as a result of the great pressures on his business and finances. His sister Mary endured a long illness before succumbing in 1908, and his mother died too in 1912. Finally, Bruce's beloved brother Ernest the recipient, like Stanley, of an MC for bravery, shot himself in 1919, suffering from physical and mental injuries sustained during his military service in World War I.
In the aftermath of his father's death in 1901, the family fortunes were at a low ebb and Bruce went into the family business after leaving high school. The young Bruce was ambitious and determined to get an education. With loaned money, he moved to the United Kingdom with his mother and sister and enrolled in Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1902. He was a popular if average student, heavily involved in the athletic life of the college, including as a member of the Cambridge rowing crew that won the Boat Race in 1904. Rowing remained one of his great passions, and he continued to coach crews and write on the subject for much of his life. Ernest Bruce had remained in Australia to take charge of the family's business interests. In 1906, he lobbied the directors of the company to have his brother Stanley take over the chairmanship of Paterson, Laing and Bruce, and was ultimately successful. Despite being just 23, he proved an able chairman, and with Stanley in London managing the exporting and financial interests, and Ernest managing the importation and sales operations in Melbourne, the financial fortunes of the business and the family rapidly recovered. During these years, Bruce also trained and worked as a solicitor and then as a barrister in the London with the firm of Ashurst, Morris, Crisp & Co. His work for the firm took him to Mexico in 1908 and Colombia in 1912, which fostered an interest in international affairs.
By 1912 Bruce was a businessman and a successful barrister, and it was in this year Ethel Dunlop Anderson travelled to England and was reacquainted with Bruce, whom she had known as a child. Aged 32, Ethel was of similar Scottish-Irish ancestry and hailed from a prominent squatter family of Victoria. She shared many of Bruce's interests, especially golf, and his political outlook. They married in July 1913 in a quiet ceremony. Theirs was a close-knit relationship they would have many acquaintances but a small circle of close friends, and their relationship was one of mutual devotion. But the death of all but one member of his immediate family in just over a decade, and the fact that the Bruces would bear no children of their own, deeply affected Bruce. His brother Ernest's daughter, Helen Bruce, came to play a large part in his life and was to become the main beneficiary of his Will but Bruce "was left with a sense of insecurity and melancholy".
Military service
Bruce returned briefly to Australia in 1914, swapping positions within the company with his brother Ernest. World War I broke out in August of that year. Bruce and his brothers sought to enlist in defence of the Empire, but all three of them would choose to serve in the British Army rather than the Australian Imperial Force. It was easier to obtain officer commissions in the British Army and the family had a close association with Great Britain. Bruce enlisted and received a commission as a lieutenant on 7 February 1915 and was attached to the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers in Egypt, which was then assigned to the British 29th Division. The 29th subsequently joined operations in Turkey along with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps troops that year under Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had devised a strategy of capturing the Dardanelles from Turkey to allow naval access to Allied Russia. However allied naval forces were unable to secure passage through the narrow straits, and the MEF under Hamilton devised a plan to wrest control through amphibious landings. This was the beginning of the now infamous Gallipoli Campaign.Bruce's regiment landed at Cape Helles in mid-1915, where he fully distinguished himself in the construction of trenches and as an able commander. His battalion suffered heavy casualties over the coming months, and Bruce himself was wounded on 3 June by a shot to the arm, though it was this injury that spared him from a major assault by his battalion on 4 June in which many of his peers perished. He later reflected that he must have been kept on earth for some purpose. He returned to the front lines and his division moved to the new front at Suvla Bay, where it was involved in particularly heavy fighting and sustained trench warfare throughout August and September. Bruce received the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre for his service during these months, and rose to the rank of captain on 5 August. He was wounded again on 26 September, this time by a shot to the knee, which left him crippled for several years and forced him to return to England to recuperate, while the rest of his regiment were transferred to France after the abandonment of the Gallipoli campaign.
Although it had been the agreement before the war that Ernest would stay and manage Paterson, Laing and Bruce while his brothers were serving, Ernest Bruce decided to enlist in the British Army in 1915. Hence, in September 1916 Bruce sought to resign his commission and return to Australia to resume management of the family business. The War Office refused his request but granted him leave to return to Australia while recuperating from his injuries. As a decorated soldier on crutches with a gift for public speaking, he was enlisted to become a spokesperson for government recruitment in Australia. His success and popularity in this role brought the attention of the Nationalist League and then Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who lobbied the British government on his behalf and succeeded in convincing the War Office to allow Bruce to relinquish his commission in June 1917.
Having served with many of his countrymen he returned to Australia with a renewed sense of pride and mission in the country of his birth. But having borne witness to the catastrophic loss of life in the Gallipoli Campaign and the death of most of his army comrades, as well as having suffered through the loss of most of his family, at age 34 Bruce was imbued with "a driving ambition to make something of a life which providence had spared".