Jack Lang (politician, 1876)

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Jack Lang (in the 1930s)

John Thomas "Jack" Lang (born December 21, 1876 in Sydney in the area of ​​Brickfield Hill, New South Wales , Australia , † September 27, 1975 in Auburn , New South Wales) was an Australian politician .

From the age of 13, Lang worked as a newspaper deliverer and in other jobs; trained as an accountant at the age of 17 , became a real estate agent , trade unionist, politician and MP for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Australia. He was Prime Minister of New South Wales for two terms . He is the only Prime Minister in Australia to be removed from office by a British colonial governor . Jack Lang is also known for his three-time temporary splits in splinter parties of the ALP in Australia.

Early life

Jack Lang was the son of James Henry Lang, a watchmaker from Edinburgh, and his wife Mary, née Whelan, of Galway , Ireland . The family lived in Bairnsdale , Victoria , where he went to school. When he returned to Sydney , he worked as a newspaper deliverer and attended St Francis Marist Brothers School , Haymarket . In 1889 he worked on a poultry farm; later as a driver for a horse-drawn tram and in a bookstore. At the age of 17 he began training as an accountant. On March 14, 1896, he married 17-year-old Hilda Bredt, who gave birth to his first child in June. He had four daughters and three sons with her. In 1899, Lang was an accountant and business partner in a real estate company. In 1906 he became the secretary of the Starr-Bowkett Ballot and Sale Society , a workers 'cooperative that traded in workers' housing.

Political life

Political Office
Jack Lang
Member of Parliament for Granville in New South Wales 1920-1927
Member of Parliament for Parramatta in New South Wales 1920-1927
Member of Parliament for Auburn in New South Wales 1927-1946
New South Wales Colonial Treasury Secretary 1920-1922
1925-1927
1930-1932
Prime Minister of New South Wales 1925-1927
1930-1932
Australian Labor Party leader in New South Wales 1923-1939
Member of Parliament of Australia 1946-1949

Early political life

From 1903 to 1913 he held various positions in trade union bodies, was mayor of Auburn and was involved locally in the Catholic social and health services. In December 1913 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly .

He took part in the ALP conference in 1916, which dealt with political orientation in a socialist direction and trade union interests for which he had little understanding. However, he supported the rejection of general conscription in Australia . Lang was parliamentary group chairman of the ALP from 1916 to 1917 and from 1917 to 1918. When the left-wing Australian Workers' Union (AWU) gained strong influence over the ALP through John Bailey , Albert Charles Willis and John Garden , they failed to gain political influence to win the ALP faction in parliament, which won the national elections in 1920. Lang won a seat in the Parramatta constituency in 1920 and became Colonial Finance Minister in the ALP government.

At the ALP conference of 1923 he and Albert Charles Willis succeeded in pushing back the influence of the AWU, and in the same year Lang was again chairman of the parliamentary group. Lang knew that members of the Communist Party of Australia had been smuggled into the Labor Party; as an implacable opponent of communism, he was determined to remove her from the party. On the other hand, he was firmly convinced: "Capitalism must go" (German: "Capitalism must go"), which led conservative forces to constant attacks, in which the Labor Party was assumed to have revolutionary intentions - even after the Communists were expelled in the year 1924. Against the socialist-oriented forces, Lang succeeded in becoming party leader with a majority of one vote. Lang advocated the 44-hour week and advocated the socialization of industry. John Garden wanted to push back his influence, set a conference of all trade unions in Australia and intended to expel Lang. As a result, Lang began a campaign against left forces.

Lang was elected Prime Minister and Treasury Minister of New South Wales in 1925 and practiced government-funded welfare programs from 1925 to 1927, such as government guaranteed pensions for widows with children under 14 and welfare schemes for orphans, government compensation in the event of death, illness and injury to a worker during his working hours, a reduction in weekly working hours from 48 to 44 hours and exemption from tuition fees for students in high schools . He also launched government-funded road construction employment programs such as the construction of the Hume Highway and Great Western Highway .

Because of this socially oriented policy, Lang accused nationalist and right-wing conservative forces of socialist aspirations. Union and social forces supported his policy; nevertheless, he lost the 1927 election in New South Wales .

Party splits

Australian Labor Party (New South Wales)

Member of the Lang Laboratory

Two years after his election defeat, he won the 1929 election in New South Wales . After the beginning of the Great Depression in October 1929 and the Great Depression that followed, Lang pursued a different policy than the ALP government in Canberra. The latter was based on the concept of the British financial expert Otto Ernst Niemeyer from the Bank of England , which Niemeyer had developed for Australia and which provided for an austerity policy of lowering wages and social cuts. Lang countered this liberalist concept with a program with the key points: interest rate cut on Australian national debt, decoupling of the currency from the gold standard and coupling to a so-called goods standard , repayment of Australia's debts to other countries, expansion of public employment programs as well as public works financed by banks via controlled credit expansion. The differences of opinion in 1931 led Lang and his supporters to split off from the ALP. Under the name ALP New South Wales ( Lang Labor for short ), this group competed with the central ALP in elections. The immediate result was the overthrow of the ALP government in Canberra: In the elections at the end of 1931, the ALP lost its majority and power was passed to the conservative United Australia Party .

Lang Labor was represented in the central federal parliament ( House of Representatives ) in Canberra in the 1930s with a total of 10 members: These were John Albert Beasley , Joseph James Clark, John Chambers Eldridge, Joseph Herbert Gander, John Smith Garden, Rowland James, Herbert Peter Lazzarini, Daniel Mulcahy, John Solomon Rosevear and Edward John Ward.

In New South Wales, the fascist New Guard had formed under the leadership of Eric Campbell , which organized violent street actions against workers' organizations, was firmly against Jack Lang and even planned his kidnapping. A leading member of the New Guard Francis de Groot caused a protocol incident on March 19, 1932 on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbor Bridge when he rode through the crowd on a horse in a hussar uniform from the First World War, armed with a drawn cavalry saber broke the opening ribbon to officially clear the bridge in front of Jack Lang.

The dispute between Lang and the Australian federal government over the question of how to deal with the Australian national debt and the resulting - including international - obligations in the face of the economic crisis, culminated when the central government opposed the suspension or even cancellation that Lang advocated of payments, the Financial Agreement Enforcement Act of 1932 created a legal possibility - approved by the Supreme Court of Australia - to have direct access to the finances of the states in order to service these obligations. Lang responded by withdrawing millions in cash from government accounts and also issuing an order prohibiting all government officials from transferring funds to the Federal Treasury. Sir Philip Game , the British governor of New South Wales, pointed out to Lang that this was illegal; when Lang refused to withdraw the order, he was dismissed as head of government on May 13, 1932. New elections were scheduled in June 1932: Lang Labor only had 24 of the 55 seats left; the National Labor Party was unable to enter the Legislative Assembly with 4% of the vote ; the right-wing United Australia Party won the majority and has now become the ruling party in New South Wales .

At first, Lang still had great influence within his party. In 1933, together with John Garden, at the annual conference of the ALP New South Wales, he achieved the dissolution of the Socialization Units that fought for the socialization of industry. In February 1936 John Curtin succeeded in returning the state grouping of the ALP from New South Wales to the National-ALP. In 1936 Lang and Garden wanted to take over the Labor Council radio station 2KY , which failed. In February 1938 Lang sold the Labor Daily newspaper, which he edited, and in April he brought out the Century newspaper. At a conference of the ALP the rules for elections were to be revised and the conference decided that in future the parliamentary group would elect its group chairman from among its members. Lang's political decline continued, he continued to run for positions in the ALP from 1931 to 1938, lost three times in national and state elections and three times for the Sydney city ​​parliament .

Australia Labor Party (Non-Communist)

When an ALP conference called for “Hands off Russia” in 1940, Lang then formed the new Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist) , the supporters in the Australian and national parliaments would have. By splitting off from MPs from the state party of the ALP New South Wales , Lang was able to run for election. However, at this point in time - unlike in 1931 - he was in the minority, as several of his previous supporters were loyal to the ALP and Prime Minister John Curtin . Therefore, he received little support. In view of the upcoming Australian national election of 1941, he dissolved the Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist) and its members including Jack Lang rejoined the national ALP, which allowed Curtin to win the election in October 1941 with a united party.

In 1943, Lang published attacks on Curtin's government in his Century newspaper , whereupon he was expelled from the party in March 1943. He ran for national elections in Reid and lost, but then won a seat in the constituency of Auburn, New South Wales in October.

The following year he re-founded the Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist) . When Lang won a seat in the Reid constituency in 1946, he described parliament as "the right wing of the Conservative Party" and attacked Ben Chifley, the incumbent Prime Minister. In 1947 he opposed the government's immigration plan because it jeopardized the White Australia Policy , a racist policy he had always defended. He was against Chifley's plan to nationalize the banks and introduce a vote to control interest rates and prices. In 1948 he also criticized the government for having communists in its departments.

Lang became politically insignificant when he lost his seat in the next election and when he was not elected senator in 1951. Still, he made further statements. In 1951 he supported Herbert Vere Evatt (foreign minister in the Labor government of John Curtin in the 1940s), who opposed the attempt by the Menzies government ( Liberal Party ) to obtain a ban on the Communist Party of Australia through a referendum . In 1953 he opposed the regulation of compulsory membership in trade unions, in 1954 against the formation of trade unions according to industrial sectors and in 1958 against the expansion of legal gambling.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became a folklore hero in schools and universities. In 1967 a bank in Auburn put a plaque on its building with the following text: “Tribute to a distinguished man of the people” (German: “In recognition of an outstanding man of the people”).

In 1971 he was re-accepted as a member of the ALP with the support of Paul Keating , a former Prime Minister of Australia.

Jack Lang died in Auburn in 1974 at the age of 99 and was buried in the Rookwood Lawn Cemetery of St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral .

Publications by Jack Lang

The articles published under the name Jack Lang in the Century newspaper , edited by the newspaper , were written by AC Paddison, as were probably his publications:

  • Why I Fight (1934)
  • Communism in Australia: A Complete Exposure (1944),
  • I Remember (1956)
  • The Great Bust (1962)
  • The Turbulent Years (1970)

Web links

Commons : Jack Lang (New South Wales politician)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b parliament.nsw.au : The Hon. John Thomas LANG (1876-1975) , in English, accessed June 12, 2011
  2. a b c d e f g adbonline.de : Lang, John Thomas (Jack) (1876 - 1975) , in English, accessed on June 11, 2011
  3. sydneyharbourbridge.info : Jack Lang. Australian Nationalist , accessed June 8, 2011
  4. naa.gov.au : Fact sheet 96 - JT Lang and Lang Labor Jack Lang - New South Wales and Federal politician , in English, accessed June 12, 2011
  5. abc.net.au : Jack Lang , in English, accessed on June 12, 2011