Political organisation and society in Victoria 1864-1883
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the relations in Victoria between society and politics, and especially political organisation, during the period between the democratic reforms of the 'fifties and the beginning of the Labour Party. Limitations of space and time, however, have made it necessary to con0entrate on 1864 to 1883. This period contains the three great constitutional battles which so marked Victorian politics, so far as can be ascertained, all major political organisations between the Land Convention of 1857-9 and the Labour Party. It divides conveniently into two cycles, each comprising three stages. The first was a personal ascendancy during the crises, when rigid divisions between radical and conservative parties appeared and political organisation flourished. The second was a brief interlude under an Irish Catholic Chief Secretary while the disintegrating parties of the ascendancy moved towards a great coalition which ruled for several years. There were thus two stable forms of parliamentary organisation between which Victoria alternated, in contrast with the model which Dr. Martin found in New South Wales of two political
groups divided on the basis of allegiance to two dominant leaders.
As this work necessarily deals largely with attitudes, the question frequently recurs, what was the connection between a group's experience and its politics? Was it simply one of economic interest? The conclusion here is that it was not. Even when Victorians sought to follow what they thought of as their interest, their assessment of what this required was based upon previous attitudes; a mass of fears, prejudices, assumptions and associations intervened between a situation and their reaction to it. Support for particular policies or individuals was the criterion for confidence; judgment went by association. This is not to deny the connection between a man's occupation and his politics, but simply to suggest that the connection is much more complicated than has often been assumed by writers on Australian history. Because of the variety of experience and problems among different groups, it is necessary to consider different sections of the community separately.
Three stand out in Victorian political organisation and structure: the Southern Irish, the rural community, especially the farmers of the northern wheatbelt which developed during the 'seventies,
and the higher ranges of the working classes, particularly in the Helbourne artisan suburb of Collingwood. There were also certain general problems of organisation which hampered its growth during this period: the isolation of many co munities, the mobility of much of the population, local and sectional feelings, the individualism which colonial conditions fostered and the political apathy to which the country rapidly returned after the brief crises. Although certain features of
the electoral system, particularly the registration machinery and the multi-member electorate, encouraged organisation, it was on a small scale and in the short term. As well as difficulties resulting from colonial conditions, organisation in Parliament end electorate was hampered by attitudes based on individualist assumptions. These limited the permissible forms to registration committees, election committees for individual candidates or a party, and promotional organisations agitating,
by normal election activities and by reasonable persuasion, for particular policies after the general model of the Anti-Corn Law League, Such attitudes prevailed as long as they did largely because the colonial situation fostered political disorganisation, but partly because the experience of the businessmen and professionals who dominated politics for most of the period made them especially willing to accept the conventional models, with which they have achieved it seemed, some success. Men of lower social status, however, had begun their po1itical careers not in Parliament but in agitation, and had not achieved great success in business. Finding themselves thwarted under the old system, they were ready to adopt different methods; seeing politics from the local rather than the parliamentary end, they were more concerned to control representatives than to maintain their independence In 1877 after one of them, Graham Berry, had been provoked into an especially successful agitation, these men at last entered Parliament in large numbers and obtained power. The parliamentary caucus came into much more regular use than before, and in the national Reform and Protection League, which combined the functions of a party election headquarters with those of a promotional body, the first party organisation appeared which showed signs of becoming really effective. Remaining powerful for three years, it began to encounter new organisational problems,
particularly in its relations with the parliamentary party and with the provincial branches; it therefore began to adapt the structure inherited from the earlier small promotional organisations, which had rarely spread beyond Melbourne, and whose life had rarely exceeded a year. It early made widespread use of pre-selection by ballot and other methods, developed the annual delegate conference and tried to set the relationship of Council and branches on a formal basis. Meanwhile, it provoked conservatives into creating political
forms and methods particularly suited to the
conventional view of politics. All these developments had been foreshadowed, some in the Land Convention, based on Irish models, some in the Loyal Liberal Reform Association of the 1868 Darling Grant crisis, when radicals had provided the merchants and professionals' political organisers. The Convention, however, had not been allied to a ministry with an overwhelming radical majority, and during the 'sixties the radical methods, regarded as emergency measures, were soon abandoned by the parliamentarian.
Even the Reform League soon disappeared, however. Not until society had grown together more, and ideas about the relationship of sectional organisations and politics altered enough to allow
an alliance between a permanent sectional organisation and a parliamentary party, was permanent party organisation possible. This, perhaps, was the most important innovation of the Labour Party. Until then, large scale organioation was possible only during those times of great political excitement, for which Victoria was noted. These resulted
from social conflicts which had parallels elsewhere, but which provoked much more powerful political reactions in Victoria than elsewhere. Partly, perhaps, the especially large number and percentage of the population which had arrived during the gold rushes gave Victoria a more powerful democracy.
At the same time, the forces of resistance v1ere also exceptionally powerful in the possession of a Legislative Council of remarkable strength and willingness to use this to the utmost. As it was the House exclusively of the rich, and particularly of the least popular or liberal group in Victoria, the great pastoralists, its clashes with the Assembly tended to unite all men of low status against it, temporarily polarising and exciting
the normally dull and fragmented political society. Consequently it was the institution and the section of the community which was the least fertile in political organisation which was largely responsible for producing conditions favourable to the development of organisation in other sections.
By the end of the period, however, with the
first significant reform of the Council achieved, with the decline of the goldfields and the increasing separation of farmers from the radical alliance, as they turned increasingly to sectional action, the basis of the radicalism of the goldfields generation was disappearing as the new generation began to assume control.