Contrasting Irish-Australian Responses to Empire Danny Cusack
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Contrasting Irish-Australian Responses to Empire Hugh Mahon M.H.R. and Senator Paddy Lynch Danny Cusack On 11 November 1920 Hugh Mahon, then Federal Labor M.P. for Kalgoorlie, was expelled from the House of Representatives on a motion by Prime Minister W. M. ('Billy') Hughes. He was the first and only person to be so expelled from the Federal Parliament. The pretence for Hughes' action was a speech Mahon had made a few days earlier at Richmond Reserve in Melbourne. At a public meeting to protest against the death in London's Brixton Prison ofhunger-strikerTerence McSwiney on 25 October, Mahon had proclaimed: We have met here today to express sympathy with the widow and the family of the late Lord Mayor of Cork-a man irreproachable in domestic and private life, trusted and beloved by his fellow citizens, and the chief magistrate ofan ancient and important city. What sort of a government is it that has only a felon's cell for a man of his attainments and intellectual gifts, his self-sacrifice and his patriotism? Why there never was in Russian history during the time of the most bloody and cruel Czars a government of more infamous character-to subject to a lingering and a painful death a man of the type of Terence McSweeney [sic). When we read in the papers that his poor widow sobbed over his coffin, I said: 'If there is a just God in heaven, these sobs will reach Him, and will one day swell into a volume that will shake the foundations of this bloody and infamous despotisrn.' At a Loyalty League rally in Perth some eighteen months later, Nationalist (by then ex-Labor) senator Paddy Lynch uttered these words to a very different kind of audience to the one which Mahon had addressed at Richmond: As a pure-bred Irishman, whose pedigree [goes] back to the misty realms of unrecorded things, in the days of[my] boyhood [I] had no special admiration either for the British empire or its flag.[I] went abroad in the world. [I] sampled this form of government and that, and lived under one flag and then another. When I came to this country I realised that the Union Jack, which in my boyhood I considered the symbol of servitude for me and mine, was the title of security for me and mine in this glorious Commonwealth, which forms part ofthe British Ernpire.i 19 The Australian Journal ofIrish Studies The contrast between the sentiments expressed by the two man could not be more striking, yet in many significant respects Mahon and Lynch shared similar backgrounds. Both had been born in the rural Irish midlands in the late nineteenth century-Mahon in 1857 and Lynch in 1867. Both were members of large established farming families Mahon the second youngest of fourteen children and Lynch the youngest ofeight. Both were, broadly speaking, of Catholic nationalist background. Both had arrived in the Western Australian Goldfields in the mid-1890s via the eastern states. Both had begun their political careers in the Goldfields in the very early years of the 1900s and both had represented Labor in the Federal Parliament. How then do we explain their radically different attitudes to Empire? Here the two men provide interesting Hugh Mahon (1857-1931). case studies. Although both were Irish Undated photograph, Swiss Studios, nationalists who supported the Empire Melbourne. and Australia's contribution to the war By courtesy, National Library of Australia, effort, they followed different paths PIC PIC/7574 LOC Box PIC/7574. during the conscription controversy and Labor Split of1916-17. Whereas Lynch was an avowed pro-conscriptionist, Mahon eventually declared against conscription (although his original stance was, to say the least, ambiguous).While Lynch belonged to the minority which followed Prime Minister Billy Hughes out of the Federal Labor Caucus in November 1916, Mahon was one ofthe majority who stayed. And, during the years immediately following this great cataclysm, Lynch associated with the breakaway National Labor Party but Mahon remained loyal tothe Official Labor Party. It is useful to examine each oftheir backgrounds in a little more detail. Hugh Mahon Hugh Mahon was born on 6January 1857 at Killurin, Offaly(then Queen's County), the thirteenth child ofJames Mahon McEvoy). James Mahon was an established and extensive farmer. educated by the Christian Brothers, Hugh spent six years in North [LUiCil\..a learnll1g printing trade. Upon his return to Ireland in 1879, he became New Ross Standard in Co. VVexford and soon took over the 1881 he was arrested and imprisoned-together with Dublin's 20 Contrastmg Insn-Austrauan Kesponses to Lmptre Kilmainham Gaol for his activities with the Land League.3 Released two months later for health reasons, he fled via London to Australia. Arriving in New South Wales in 1882, he resumed his career as a journalist and worked for various newspapers in that colony over the following decade. In 1883 he published a short history of the Land League4 and helped organise a fund raising tour by the Redmond brothers, John and William, leading figures in the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster. In 1888 he married Mary L'Estrange of Melbourne and together the couple had three sons and two daughters. In 1895 Mahon moved to the Western Australian Goldfields where he edited several newspapers and became politically active in both the labour movement and the Separation for Federation movement.' In 1901 he was elected to the first Federal Parliament as the Labor M.H.R. for Coolgardie. For the next nineteen years he served almost continuously as an M.P.-first for Coolgardie, then for Kalgoorlie. He was a member of several Labor ministries-first as Postmaster-General, then as Minister for Home Affairs and finally, in 1914-16, as Minister for External Affairs. Following the Caucus split ofNovember 1916 he served out the rest ofhis parliamentary career on the opposition benches with his Official Labor colleagues. After his expulsion from the House ofRepresentatives in November 1920 and defeat in the subsequent by-election the following month, Mahon retired permanently from active politics. He then ran an orchard and continued as Managing Director of the Catholic Church Property Insurance Company, a position he had held since 1912. He died at his home at Ringwood, Melbourne, in August 1931, aged 74 years. Paddy Lynch6 Patrick Joseph Lynch was born on 24 May 1867 (Queen Victoria's birthday) at Skearke, Moynalty, Co. Meath to Michael Lynch and wife Bridget (nee Cahill). The family had farmed in this locality for several generations. Paddy grew up in this close-knit rural community about five miles north-west of Kells. He attended a couple ofthe local National Schools but was then privileged to spend two years at the Bailieboro Model School, which gave him a formal education superior to that ofmost ofhis contemporaries. At the age ofeighteen he followed three of his elder brothers who had already emigrated to the United States. He spent only a briefperiod in that ir country, however, before venturing on to Australia, arriving in Queensland some time in 1886. From then until his election to the Western Australian State Parliament some eighteen years later, Lynch enjoyed a well-travelled, varied and eventful career which took him to most states in Australia as well as many places in the Pacific. He served n stints as a railway construction worker, shearer and miner in outback Queensland and ). New South Wales; seven years at sea as a stoker and marine engineer on coastal and Ie island ships"; a spell as an engineer on a Fijian sugar plantation; and seven years as a mine engine-driver and trade union official on the Western Australian Goldfields. As ISS a young seaman, he was involved in the great maritime strikes of 1890 and 1893 and first became a committed member ofthe labour movement at his time. By 1897 he had taken up residence on the \"lestern Australian Goldfields at Boulder, 21 The Australian Journal ofIrish Studies some 375 miles east of Perth. He was a founding member of the Amalgamated Certificated Engine-Drivers Association (ACEDA), which he served as Goldfields general secretary for five years. With the foundation of the Western Australian Arbitration Court in 1901, he became a forceful advocate ofworkers' interests in that arena. He also served for two and a halfyears as a member ofthe Boulder Municipal Council. In 1901 Lynch married Ann Cleary, a native of Co. Clare, at Boulder and they had two daughters and a son. In 1904 Lynch was returned unopposed as the Labor member for the newly-created seat of Mount Leonora in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly and served briefly (June-August 1905) as Minister for \l'i/orks in the Daglish administration, the first Labor government in Western Australia. Lynch's election as a Labor senator for Western Australia in 1906 brought to an end his short career in state politics. He was a senator for thirty-two years, the first ten as a Labor man. Having been expelled from the party in 1916, he served out the remaining 22 years of his parliamentary career in the Nationalist ranks. Meanwhile Lynch had severed his immediate links with the Goldfields: in 1909 he purchased 3,500 acres of land at Three Springs outside Geraldton with his brother Philip, recently arrived from Ireland. The senator eventually became a prosperous wheat-farmer. Immediately following the Labor Caucus split of November 1916, Lynch served briefly-for three months-as Minister for Works and Railways in the first Hughes led National Government. His political career after 1917 was something of an anti climax.