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Studio portrait of Billy Hughes as an MP in 1907. Photo by G. Russell & Sons- Wikimedia commons

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Billy Hughes

Very little known about Hughes’ ancestors. On October 20, 1791, his father, John Hewitt, of Greek Street, Soho, married the daughter of William Hughes of Clapham, a rich and powerful real estate owner and urban landlord.  Their first child, William Hughes Hewitt, was baptized in the church of St. Anne just under a year later. Around 1793 to 1810, they had about three more sons and five daughters.

His father worked as a carpenter in the House of Lords. His mother, from a farming family near the Welsh border, had come to London to work as a maid. William’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was left in the trust of an aunt in Llandudno, Wales, where he lived for five years, he joined the local grammar school and going for regular visits to London.

Hughes was assigned a pupil-teacher at St Stephen’s School in Westminster in 1874, where he stayed as an assistant after wrapping up his internship, occupying his free time in a volunteer battalion of a British Army infantry regiment, the Royal Fusiliers.

1.Hughes very first introduction to politics in Australia

William Morris Hughes was an Australian politician who worked as the country’s seventh prime minister from 1915 to 1923. He is widely regarded for leading the nation during World War I, however, his impact on federal politics lasted decades.

Hughes was the only person to have worked in the federal parliament for over 50 years, beginning with Federation in 1901 and ending with his death. Throughout his career, he represented six political parties, leading five, outlasting four, and being expelled from three.

Hughes was born to Welsh parents in London. At the age of 22, he immigrated to Australia and became engaged in the newly formed Australian labor movement. In 1894, he was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as a member of the New South Wales Labor Party, and in 1901, he was assigned to the new federal parliament.

Hughes combined his early career in politics with part-time law school before being accepted to the bar in 1903. He first served in cabinet in 1904, as Attorney-General of Australia in each of Andrew Fisher’s governments. In 1914, he was appointed deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party.

2.His first reaction to the Australian lifestyle and how it persuaded him to make a change

Hughes emigrated to Queensland on the Duke of Westminster on October 8, 1884, arriving in a struggling colony. Drought was setting in, and underemployment was rising. He decided to go bush and worked his way through Queensland and New South Wales, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the town of Orange.

He enrolled to the Queensland Navy at one point, when the colony was gripped by fear of an impending Russian invasion. He later worked as a ship’s cook all along the Queensland coast.

Hughes’ first years in Australia gave him crucial input into the nation and the men and women who were constructing the country he would someday lead. He personally witnessed the struggle to survive of a diverse group of individuals; he not only witnessed it, but also lived it, and came to comprehend individual’s issues and perspective.

3.In 1915 he finally got what he dreamed of since he first got to Australia

Naval officers standing with William Morris Hughes. Photo by Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons –Wikimedia commons

Hughes took over as Prime Minister in October 1915, after Fisher stepped down due to illness. The war was the significant problem at the time, and his aid for forcibly recruited troops being sent abroad created a schism within the Labor Party.

Hughes and his allies were banned from the party in November 1916, however, he was able to maintain authority as the leader of the new National Labor Party, which united with the Liberals within a few months to form the Nationalist Party of Australia.

In the 1917 and 1919 elections, his government was re-appointed with pluralities. During the war, Hughes founded the origins of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO, as well as a slew of new state-owned businesses to assist the post-war economical growth. 

At the 1919 Â鶹APP Peace Conference, where he managed to secure Australian influence of former German New Guinea, he made an indelible impression on certain international political figures.

4.Hughes was always a private person but here’s a bit of inside information found on him

He met Elizabeth Cutts, the daughter of his landlady, at a housing complex in Moore Park in Sydney. He and Elizabeth had seven children, however, the phenomenon of their relationship is unknown, and it is unknown whether they ever married. In 1890, the family relocated to Balmain and opened a mixed shop.

Elizabeth did housework and William did odd jobs to supplement their income. The shop sold a variety of goods, such as books and political brochures, and its back room quickly became a gathering place for the exchange of the new political ideologies that were infusing Sydney’s working class.

5.Billy was not loved by many Australian citizens as he started crumbling while in power due to many circumstances

Hughes gradually lost power over his government after coming back from Â鶹APP. His Nationalist Party lost its major share in the national election in December 1919 and was forced to depend on the recently created Country Party (CP), which was hostile to Hughes.

Public strife was tearing the Nationalists apart, with much of it stemming from frustration with Hughes’ leadership. Hughes transferred back to the New South Wales seat of North Sydney in a national election on December 16, 1922. (and held it through the next 10 general elections).

Five Victorian and South Australian Nationalists fought on the ‘Hughes Must Go’ platform during this campaign, and the party lost ground.

Over the next two months, as the Nationalists and the CP sought to strike a deal, the CP made it very clear that any alliance arrangement would be contingent on Hughes’ resignation as Nationalist leader.

Hughes stepped down as Prime Minister on February 9, 1923, and recommended to the Governor-General that Stanley Melbourne Bruce be appointed as his suitable alternative. That day, Bruce was appointed.

6.He remarried after Elizabeth Cutts passed away

Billy Hughes with daughter Helen Hughes at Sydney Cricket Ground. Photo by National Library of Australia –Wikimedia commons

Hughes’s oldest daughter Ethel kept house for him and looked after the younger children after his first wife died. After a brief courtship, he remarried Mary Ethel Campbell, the daughter of a wealthy pastoralist, on June 26, 1911.

He was 48 and she was 37 at the time of their marriage. Mary was politically and socially aware, and her husband frequently sought her suggestions on political issues.

He stressed on accompanying her on all of his trips abroad, even those during wartime, which was unusual for the time. Hughes became the brother-in-law of John Haynes, one of The Bulletin’s founders, through his second marriage.

7.One of Hughes’s most important policy while Prime Minister was the ‘White Australia’

The ‘White Australia’ legislation became a cornerstone of the Labor forum and was widely accepted all over the political compass for more than a half-century. Hughes was one of its most vocal promoters.

Even if White Australia was primarily a financial as opposed to a racial strategy, as some have claimed, its supporters frequently used racist language. Hughes told parliament that Australians

“must not only fear the ruination of living conditions that would come with cheap labor; these colored people should also be turned down because of their character flaws, moral depravity, and a thousand other things that could only be alluded to.”

Nonetheless, he added, ‘We want to exclude these aliens on industrial grounds, not on the basis of their color and religion, as that would be ridiculous.’

8.He had the longest run as a member of the parliament in Australia till this day

Hughes had been a member of parliament for over 58 years when he died in 1952, nearly 51 of them in federal parliament. He was the last politically active member of parliament to be elected in 1901.

His tenure as a member is still a record in Australia. He is the only Prime Minister who has served on both the Labor and non-Labor sides of politics.

9.His incredible impact as a leader to Australia and the world

Prime Minister Billy Hughes of Australia in Birmingham, England, in 1916. Photo by National Library of Australia- Wikimedia commons

Hughes, a tiny, wiry man with a raspy voice and a progressively wizened face, was an improbable national leader, however, during World War I, he established himself as a war leader—the troops dubbed him “Little Digger”—that would last the rest of his life.

He is honored for his exceptional political and diplomatic abilities, his numerous humorous sayings, and his unwavering enthusiasm and national pride. In addition, the Australian labor movement never forgiven him for switching sides to the conservatives, and he is still regarded as a “rat.”

10.Billy’s death as a member of parliament and how significant his farewell was to the Australian nation

Hughes died on October 28, 1952, in Lindfield, New South Wales. His state funeral in Sydney was one of the biggest ever held in Australia. 450,000 people lined the streets to watch a flag-draped coffin on a gun carriage pass by, followed by a three-kilometer-long procession of mourners.