The Hughes clan is too big. Billy Hughes: Prime Minister and Controversial Founding Father of the Australian Labor Party is written by Aneurin Hughes: not a close relation, I believe. He is a former British and European Community diplomat, who has spent a number of years in Canberra. His well-researched and nicely written book has added a new dimension to the understanding of Billy Hughes, giving us a better picture of a man, ‘much more complex and perhaps more interesting than the rather stilted and cardboard caricature often described’.
Historian Geoffrey Bolton, in an essay on Billy Hughes, tells of a committee appointed to advise the Bicentennial Authority on the names of 200 Australians who’d made a distinct contribution to our history. In the first list of names Billy was omitted. Later a wise public servant pointed out that his old adversary Archbishop Mannix had been added to the list and that Billy would therefore have to be included. And so he was.
Why was Billy a late entry? After all, at the time of his death he’d been Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, and an apparently successful minister in several other governments. He’d punched above Australia’s weight in international negotiations, been remarkably prescient about the future role of Japan in the Pacific, and stood up to US President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference. And for the troops who served in France he’d become an iconic figure, popularly known as ‘the little digger’.
Billy Hughes was quick-witted, and a forceful orator. He read widely and qualified as a barrister. Dr Evatt thought him a man of ‘matchless courage’. His political skills were widely acclaimed. But nobody seemed to like him very much. At the peak of his career he was a brave mascot, at the end an irascible eccentric.
The problem was that he was seen as a divisive character. He’d split the Labor Party—and, indeed, the nation—over conscription for service in World War I. In his long parliamentary career he’d changed allegiances a number of times and been a member of five different political parties.
There have been several biographies of Billy Hughes, mainly concentrating on his political career. They are generally fair if incomplete accounts of his life. About Billy they use adjectives such as secretive, slippery, authoritarian, volatile, stubborn, bullying, ruthless, shrewd, artful and distrusted. He’s rarely accused of kindness, fairness, honesty or generosity of spirit. It