Joseph Lyons

Joseph Lyons

Joseph Aloysius Lyons , CH (born September 15, 1879 in Stanley (Tasmania) , † April 7, 1939 in Sydney , New South Wales ) was an Australian politician and the country's 10th Prime Minister . His term of office lasted from January 6, 1932 to April 7, 1939.

Life

Lyons was born in Circular Head, near Stanley, Tasmania, to Irish immigrants. His father, Michael Lyons, was a successful farmer who later also entered the butcher and bakery business. However, his success became worthless again due to his poor health, so that from then on he had to work as a worker. His mother tried very hard to look after the family and the eight children, but despite everything Lyons had to leave school at the age of nine to work as a messenger and in a printing company. With the help of two aunts, he managed to train as a teacher at Smith Teachers' Training College in Hobart . He became an active trade unionist and an early member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Tasmania.

State policy

In 1909 he was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament. From 1914 to 1916 he was Minister of Finance and Education in John Earle's State Labor Administration. As education minister, he initiated extensive reforms. He saw to it that fees for public schools and better salaries and working conditions for teachers were abolished. He also founded the first state high school in his Tasmanian homeland.

In 1913 he was introduced to her 15-year-old daughter, Enid Burnell , by Eliza Burnell, a participant in the laboratory panel discussion . They got married two years later. They later had eleven children together.

When the ALP split in 1916 due to differences within the party over general conscription during World War I , Earle, a proponent of conscription, followed Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes and left the Labor Party. However, since Lyons was influenced by an Irish Catholic background and was thus an opponent of conscription in Australia , he stayed in the party and became its chairman in Tasmania.

He led the Labor Opposition in Tasmania until he became the state's premier in 1923. He led a minority government and was Treasury Minister until his end in office in 1928. Although he succeeded in establishing good relations with the economy and the conservative government in the capital with his party, there were also critical voices from his party's trade union circles, so that in 1928 he narrowly lost the election to the nationalists.

Federal politics

During the 1929 federal election, Lyons entered national politics and won a seat for the Wilmot constituency. He became Postmaster General and Minister of Labor and Railways following the national election victory of James Scullin - his predecessor as Prime Minister.

When the Great Depression in 1930 and Australia reached, the Scullin government had no answer. Lyons was Treasury Secretary from August 1930 to January 1931, when Prime Minister Scullin was in the United Kingdom for the Imperial Conference to clarify the final questions about the country's independence. In October 1930, when he was acting treasurer, Lyons announced how he wanted to get the economic situation under control: on the one hand, public spending and salaries were to be reduced, and on the other, companies were to be supported with loans.

He received great approval from the economy for this plan, while his own party members were rather skeptical about the whole thing and relied on higher government spending to get the economy going again. From now on he received repeated calls from business circles and the Melbourne establishment to leave the government and take over the leadership of the conservative opposition.

Withdrawal from the Labor Party

When Scullin returned to Australia in January 1931, his rival Theodore was reinstated as treasury minister. Lyons saw this as a rejection of his policies and so he immediately left the cabinet and, in March, the Labor Party. Together with James Fenton, another minister, and three other members of the right wing of the party, he now sat on the benches of the opposition. The opposition Nationalist Party of Australia and the five former Labor MPs soon formed a new party, the United Australia Party . Actually, however, it was the continuation of the nationalist party under a different name.

Lyons replaced John Latham as party leader, as it was generally assumed that Lyons, as a family man and Irish Catholic, was more likely to find members and voters for the new party. Above all, the right, conservative wing of the Labor Party was hoped for growth.

Around the same time as Lyons, five MPs from the left Labor wing broke away from their main party and formed another opposition group. They were too radical for Lyons, not radical enough for their party comrades. At the end of the year, they voted with the United Australia Party on a no-confidence vote against the government, requiring early elections.

The elections were held in December 1931 and ended with a clear victory for the UAP under Lyons leadership, as he knew how to position his party across all classes and to create a feeling of unity among the people. His family background from the working class and his past in the conservative Labor Party also helped him. He was the country's third prime minister , initially in the Labor Party, but in a different party when he was elected.

prime minister

In its first term in office, the UAP was able to govern independently thanks to a clear majority. After the 1934 election, they merged with the National Party of Australia . Until 1935 Lyons was both Prime Minister and Treasury Minister. In his new office, Lyons continued to pursue his policy of keeping government spending to a minimum.

Lyons with his wife Enid

During his reign he initially benefited from the worldwide economic stabilization and recovery phase after 1932. His foreign policy was marked by great approval of the United Kingdom and the League of Nations . Although he relied on negotiations in relations with the dictatorships in Germany , Italy and Japan , he also had the Australian army built and several armaments factories built.

In 1934 Robert Menzies was first elected to parliament. He was widely viewed as Lyon's successor, even if he denied it himself. The government also won the 1937 elections, but as the political situation worsened internationally, the health of the pacifist Lyons also deteriorated. On April 7, 1939, he suddenly died of heart failure at the age of 59. He was the first Prime Minister of Australia to die during his tenure.

Lyons was a hugely popular politician across the country and his death caused deep sadness. In cartoons he was repeatedly portrayed as a calm, relaxed koala. After his direct predecessor Scullin, he was the second Roman Catholic Prime Minister and the first Catholic not to be a member of the Labor Party.

As the only person in Australian history, he was Prime Minister , Premier of an Australian state and opposition leader, both state and federal. He is also the only Tasmanian prime minister in the country. The Division of Lyons is named after him. As the only Australian premier, he experienced the terms of office of three British kings.

His widow, Enid Lyons , also went into politics and became the first woman in the House of Representatives in 1943. She was also the first woman to be cabinet minister during Menzie's Liberal administration. Two of her sons were later active in Tasmanian politics.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Percival Serle: Lyons, Joseph Aloysius (1879–1939). In: Dictionary of Australian Biography. Project Gutenberg Australia, accessed January 13, 2008 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} P. R. Hart, CJ Lloyd: Lyons, Joseph Aloysius (1879–1939) . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966-2012 (English). Retrieved January 13, 2008.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Joseph Lyons, before. In: Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia, accessed January 13, 2008 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Joseph Lyons, in office. In: Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia, accessed January 13, 2008 . 

Web links

• Newspaper article about Joseph Lyons in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .