135 Facts About Billy Hughes

William Morris Hughes was an Australian politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923.

Billy Hughes led the nation during World War I, and his influence on national politics spanned several decades.

Billy Hughes was a member of the federal parliament from the Federation of Australia in 1901 until his death in 1952, and is the only person to have served as a parliamentarian for more than 50 years.

Billy Hughes represented six political parties during his career, leading five, outlasting four, and being expelled from three.

Billy Hughes emigrated to Australia at the age of 22, and became involved in the fledgling Australian labour movement.

Billy Hughes was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1894, as a member of the New South Wales Labor Party, and then transferred to the new federal parliament in 1901.

Billy Hughes combined his early political career with part-time legal studies, and was called to the bar in 1903.

Billy Hughes first entered cabinet in 1904, in the short-lived Watson government, and was later the Attorney-General of Australia in each of Andrew Fisher's governments.

Billy Hughes was elected deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party in 1914.

Billy Hughes became prime minister in October 1915, when Fisher retired due to ill health.

Billy Hughes's government was re-elected with large majorities at the 1917 and 1919 elections.

Billy Hughes established the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO during the war, and created a number of new state-owned enterprises to aid the post-war economy.

Billy Hughes made a significant impression on other world leaders at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he secured Australian control of the former German New Guinea.

Billy Hughes's resignation was the price for Country Party support, and he was succeeded as prime minister by Stanley Bruce.

Billy Hughes became one of Bruce's leading critics over time, and in 1928, following a dispute over industrial relations, he and his supporters crossed the floor on a confidence motion and brought down the government.

Billy Hughes returned to cabinet in 1934, and became known for his prescient warnings against Japanese imperialism.

Billy Hughes is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential Australian politicians of the 20th century.

Billy Hughes was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime, and his legacy continues to be debated by historians.

Billy Hughes's opponents accused him of engaging in authoritarianism and populism, as well as inflaming sectarianism; his use of the War Precautions Act 1914 was particularly controversial.

Billy Hughes was extremely popular among the general public, particularly ex-servicemen, who affectionately nicknamed him "the little digger".

Billy Hughes was born on 25 September 1862, at 7 Moreton Place, Pimlico, London, the son of William Billy Hughes and the former Jane Morris.

Billy Hughes's father, who worked as a carpenter and joiner at the Palace of Westminster, was from North Wales and was a fluent Welsh speaker.

Billy Hughes was an only child; at the time of their marriage, in June 1861, his parents were both 37 years old.

Billy Hughes's mother died in May 1869, when he was six years old.

Billy Hughes earned pocket money by doing chores for his aunt's tenants and singing in the choir at the local church.

Billy Hughes began his formal education in Llandudno, attending two small single-teacher schools.

Billy Hughes spent his holidays with his mother's family in Llansantffraid.

Billy Hughes regarded his early years in Wales as the happiest time of his life.

Billy Hughes was immensely proud of his Welsh identity, and he later became active in the Welsh Australian community, frequently speaking at Saint David's Day celebrations.

Billy Hughes called Welsh the "language of heaven", but his own grasp of it was patchy.

At the age of eleven, Billy Hughes was enrolled in St Stephen's School, Westminster, one of the many church schools established by the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

Billy Hughes won prizes in geometry and French, receiving the latter from Lord Harrowby.

At St Stephen's, Billy Hughes came into contact with the poet Matthew Arnold, who was an examiner and inspector for the local school district.

Billy Hughes had no interest in teaching as a career though, and declined Matthew Arnold's offer to secure him a clerkship at Coutts.

Billy Hughes joined a volunteer battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, which consisted mainly of artisans and white-collar workers.

In later life, Billy Hughes recalled London as "a place of romance, mystery and suggestion".

At the age of 22, finding his prospects in London dim, Billy Hughes decided to emigrate to Australia.

Billy Hughes attempted to find work with the Education Department, but was either not offered a position or found the terms of employment to be unsuitable.

Billy Hughes spent the next two years as an itinerant labourer, working various odd jobs.

Billy Hughes claimed to have served briefly in both the Queensland Defence Force and the Queensland Maritime Defence Force.

Billy Hughes moved to Sydney in about mid-1886, working his way there as a deckhand and galley cook aboard SS Maranoa.

Billy Hughes found occasional work as a line cook, but at one point supposedly had to resort to living in a cave on The Domain for a few days.

Billy Hughes eventually found a steady job at a forge, making hinges for colonial ovens.

In Balmain, Billy Hughes became a Georgist, a street-corner speaker, president of the Balmain Single Tax League, and joined the Australian Socialist League.

In 1894, Billy Hughes spent eight months in central New South Wales organising for the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia and then won the Electoral district of Sydney-Lang of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly by 105 votes.

In 1901 Billy Hughes was elected to the first federal Parliament as Labor MP for the Division of West Sydney.

Billy Hughes opposed the Barton government's proposals for a small professional army and instead advocated compulsory universal training.

Billy Hughes was Minister for External Affairs in Chris Watson's first Labor government.

In 1913, at the foundation ceremony of Canberra as the capital of Australia, Billy Hughes gave a speech proclaiming that the country was obtained via the elimination of the indigenous population.

Billy Hughes's on-going feud with King O'Malley, a fellow Labor minister, was a prominent example of his combative style.

Billy Hughes was the club patron for the Glebe Rugby League team in the debut year of Rugby League in Australia, in 1908.

Billy Hughes was one of a number of prominent Labor politicians who were aligned with the Rugby League movement in Sydney in 1908.

In social policy, Billy Hughes introduced an institutional pension for pensioners in benevolent asylums, equal to the difference between the 'act of grace' payment to the institution and the rate of IP.

From March to June 1916, Billy Hughes was in Britain, where he delivered a series of speeches calling for imperial co-operation and economic warfare against Germany.

In July 1916 Billy Hughes was a member of the British delegation at the Paris Economic Conference, which met to decide what economic measures to take against Germany.

Billy Hughes was a strong supporter of Australia's participation in World War I and, after the loss of 28,000 men as casualties in July and August 1916, Generals Birdwood and White of the First Australian Imperial Force persuaded Billy Hughes that conscription was necessary if Australia was to sustain its contribution to the war effort.

The narrow defeat did not deter Billy Hughes, who continued to argue vigorously in favour of conscription.

Billy Hughes was seeking via a referendum to change the wording in the act to include "overseas".

The predecessor Asquith government greatly disliked Billy Hughes considering him to be "a guest, rather than the representative of Australia".

That same evening Billy Hughes tendered his resignation to the Governor-General, received a commission to form a new Government, and had his recommendations accepted.

Billy Hughes was forced to conclude a confidence and supply agreement with the opposition Commonwealth Liberal Party to stay in office.

At this election Billy Hughes gave up his working-class Sydney seat and was elected for the Division of Bendigo, after he won the seat by defeating the sitting Labor MP Alfred Hampson, and both marks the only time that a sitting prime minister had challenged and ousted another sitting MP for his seat along with him becoming the first of only a handful of Members of the Australian Parliament who have represented more than one state or territory.

Billy Hughes had promised to resign if his Government did not win the power to conscript.

Queensland Premier T J Ryan was a key opponent to conscription, and violence almost broke out when Hughes ordered a raid on the Government Printing Office in Brisbane, with the aim of confiscating copies of Hansard that covered debates in the Queensland Parliament where anti-conscription sentiments had been aired.

Billy Hughes, after receiving a vote of confidence in his leadership by his party, resigned as prime minister.

In early 1916, Billy Hughes established the Advisory Council on Science and Industry, the first national body for scientific research and the first iteration of what is the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Billy Hughes seized it, put his own stamp on it, and pushed it through to the point of realization.

Billy Hughes achieved his aim of garnering world press attention for Australia, while Australia's first, and one of the world's earliest airlines, Qantas, was founded in 1920, commencing international passenger flights in 1935.

At a meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet on 30 December 1918, Billy Hughes warned that if they "were not very careful, we should find ourselves dragged quite unnecessarily behind the wheels of President Wilson's chariot".

Lloyd George described how, after Billy Hughes stated his case against subjecting the islands conquered by Australia to a mandate:.

Billy Hughes dwelt on the seriousness of defying world opinion on this subject.

Mr Billy Hughes, who listened intently, with his hand cupped around his ear so as not to miss a word, indicated at the end that he was still of the same opinion.

Billy Hughes was a member of the British delegation on the Reparations Committee, with Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe and John Hamilton, 1st Viscount Sumner.

Billy Hughes replied that "the Committee had been more concerned in considering the effects upon the working-class households in Great Britain, or in Australia, if the Germans did not pay an indemnity".

At the Treaty negotiations, Billy Hughes was the most prominent opponent of the inclusion of Japan's Racial Equality Proposal, which as a result of lobbying by him and others was not included in the final Treaty.

Billy Hughes had entered politics as a trade unionist, and like most of the Australian working class was very strongly opposed to Asian immigration to Australia.

Joan Beaumont said Billy Hughes became "something of a folk hero in later Australian historiography for his assertiveness at the Paris peace conference".

Unlike Smuts, Billy Hughes opposed the concept of the League of Nations, as in it he saw the flawed idealism of "collective security".

Billy Hughes declared in June 1919 that Australia would rely on the League "but we shall keep our powder dry".

Billy Hughes demanded that Australia have independent representation within the newly-formed League of Nations.

At the 1921 Imperial Conference, Billy Hughes argued unsuccessfully in favour of renewing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

At the 1922 Australian federal election, Billy Hughes gave up the seat of Bendigo and transferred to the upper-middle-class Division of North Sydney, thus giving up one of the last symbolic links to his working-class roots.

Under pressure from his party's right wing, Billy Hughes resigned in February 1923 and was succeeded by his Treasurer, Stanley Bruce.

Whilst the incumbent prime minister, Billy Hughes switched seats at both the 1917 and 1922 elections, the only prime minister to have done so not once but twice.

Billy Hughes played little part in parliament for the remainder of 1923.

Billy Hughes rented a house in Kirribilli, New South Wales in his new electorate and was recruited by The Daily Telegraph to write a series of articles on topics of his choosing.

In 1924, Billy Hughes embarked on a lecture tour of the United States.

Billy Hughes's health broke down midway through the tour, while he was in New York.

In 1925 Billy Hughes again had little involvement in parliamentary affairs, but began to portray himself as "champion of Australian industries struggling to get established against foreign competition and government indifference", with the aid of his friends James Hume Cook and Ambrose Pratt.

Billy Hughes was furious at being ousted by his own party and nursed his grievance on the back-benches until 1929, when he led a group of back-bench rebels who crossed the floor of the Parliament to bring down the Bruce government.

Billy Hughes was expelled from the Nationalist Party, and formed his own party, the Australian Party.

Billy Hughes had a falling-out with Scullin over financial matters, however.

Billy Hughes voted with the rest of the UAP to bring the Scullin government down.

Lyons sent Billy Hughes to represent Australia at the 1932 League of Nations Assembly in Geneva and in 1934 Billy Hughes became Minister for Health and Repatriation in the Lyons government.

Later Lyons appointed him Minister for External Affairs, but Billy Hughes was forced to resign in 1935 after his book Australia and the War Today exposed a lack of preparation in Australia for what Billy Hughes correctly supposed to be a coming war.

Billy Hughes wrote in Australia and the War Today that the League of Nations was broken and that it could have worked only if it had been backed by force.

Billy Hughes believed that every nation must look to its own defences and that, as Britain was preoccupied in European affairs, Australia would have to defend itself.

Billy Hughes believed that the British Empire was in danger because of its weakness in the Mediterranean.

Billy Hughes was brought back to Australia by Lyons as Minister for External Affairs in 1937.

In 1938 Germany requested the return of her Pacific colonies but Billy Hughes declared that Australia should hold onto New Guinea, and in April 1939 he said that if Germany wanted colonies she would have to fight for them.

Billy Hughes was Minister for the Navy, Minister for Industry and Attorney-General at various times under Lyons' successor, Robert Menzies.

Billy Hughes remained in the Fadden government, serving as Attorney-General and Minister for the Navy.

Billy Hughes believed that Britain and the Dominions should instead work together for a common foreign policy.

Billy Hughes led the UAP into the 1943 Australian federal election largely by refusing to hold any party meetings and by agreeing to let Fadden lead the Opposition as a whole.

Billy Hughes himself was nearly defeated in North Sydney on a swing of over 14 percent, seeing his majority dwindle from a comfortably safe 67 percent to a marginal 53 percent.

Billy Hughes was expelled from the UAP on 14 April 1944, and replaced as deputy leader by Eric Harrison.

Billy Hughes faced a preselection challenge for the first time since 1894, but defeated Harry Turner for Liberal Party endorsement and won a comfortable victory.

Billy Hughes was elected to the House of Representatives for the 20th and final time at the 1951 Australian federal election, with 79 percent of the vote.

Billy Hughes's last speech in parliament was an attack on the Menzies government's decision to sell its share in Commonwealth Oil Refineries, one of the state-owned enterprises his government had established over 30 years earlier.

Billy Hughes celebrated a number of milestones in his last years in parliament.

In June 1951, Billy Hughes was the guest of honour at a banquet marking the golden jubilee of the federal parliament.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies observed that Billy Hughes had been a member of every political party at one time or another, at which point Arthur Fadden interjected that he had never joined the Country Party.

Billy Hughes died on 28 October 1952, aged 90, at his home in Lindfield.

Billy Hughes was later buried at Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium with his daughter Helen; his widow Dame Mary joined them upon her death in 1958.

At the age of 90 years, one month and three days, Billy Hughes is the oldest person ever to have been a member of the Australian parliament.

Billy Hughes had been a member of the House of Representatives for 51 years and seven months, beginning his service in the reign of Queen Victoria and ending it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Billy Hughes was the last member of the original Australian Parliament elected in 1901 still serving in Parliament when he died.

Billy Hughes was the penultimate member of the First Parliament to die; King O'Malley outlived him by fourteen months.

Billy Hughes was the last surviving member of the Watson Cabinet, as well as the first and third Cabinets of Andrew Fisher.

Billy Hughes died of heart failure on 1 September 1906, aged 42, after a long period of ill health.

The only child from Billy Hughes's second marriage was Helen Myfanwy Billy Hughes, who was born in 1915.

Billy Hughes doted upon her, calling her the "joy and light of my life", and was devastated by her death in childbirth in 1937, aged 21.

Billy Hughes's son survived and was adopted by a friend of the family, with his grandfather contributing towards his upkeep.

Billy Hughes had a severe hearing loss that began when he was relatively young and worsened with age.

Billy Hughes relied on a primitive electronic hearing aid, which was so bulky that it could only be worn for short periods and had to be carried around in a box.

Billy Hughes had a "naturally weak constitution", suffering frequently from colds and other infections, and to compensate became a "fanatical devotee of physical fitness".

Billy Hughes suffered from chronic indigestion, on account of which he abstained from red meat and alcohol and rarely ate large meals.

Billy Hughes was prone to bouts of depression interspersed with periods of euphoria, and following a near nervous breakdown in 1924 was diagnosed with "psychasthenia".

Billy Hughes attended church schools as a boy, and knew the King James Bible "back to front".

All of Billy Hughes's biographers have regarded him as a sincere Christian, albeit with a rather idiosyncratic theology.

Fitzhardinge writes that Billy Hughes had "a generalised faith in the spiritual values of Christianity" combined with "a profound belief in the after-life and the all-pervasiveness of God".

Billy Hughes became stridently anti-Catholic during World War I, though this was due to political interference from the church hierarchy rather than on theological grounds.

Billy Hughes banned the use of German in Australian churches, though this affected Lutherans more than Catholics.

Billy Hughes was a supporter of the Glebe Dirty Reds in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership, and was their inaugural club Patron in 1908.

Billy Hughes is remembered for his outstanding political and diplomatic skills, for his many witty sayings, and for his irrepressible optimism and patriotism.