Australian Women's National League

Last updated

The Australian Women's National League (AWNL) was an Australian political lobby group federation first established in 1904. It acted in many ways like a political party, with an extensive branch network and the capability to run its own candidates. It was a conservative organisation with four key declared objectives:

Contents

Foundation

The AWNL was supported in its foundation by the Victorian Employers' Federation and by employer bodies in other states, but it quickly became independent from those male-dominated groups, and formed an anti-socialist alliance with the Farmer's League in 1905. The group aimed to espouse anti-socialist ideas to Australian women who had been given the right to vote in Australian federal elections in 1902.

Lady Clarke, who played a key role in establishing the organisation. Lady Janet Clarke circa 1880.jpg
Lady Clarke, who played a key role in establishing the organisation.

Leading Melbourne establishment figure, Janet, Lady Clarke, held a meeting at her home in August 1903 to discuss the formation of such a conservative women's movement. Months later, in March 1904, Lady Clarke's sister, Eva Hughes, organised a meeting at the Melbourne Town Hall. It chose a provisional committee and elected Lady Clarke as its inaugural president.

On 25 October 1907, the League conducted the first Pan-Australian Conference of Anti-Socialist Women's Organisations. The League played an important role in achieving women's suffrage (right to vote) throughout Australia. By 1908, it had 10,000 members in Victoria alone, and helped convince the male conservative members of parliament that women voters would not necessarily be left-wing in disposition. In 1909, Lady Clarke died and was succeeded as president by her sister Eva who stayed in charge until 1922.

In 1912, the Liberal prime minister Alfred Deakin described the lobby group as "fierce and unceasing" in their political demands. He continued "So far – singlehanded – I have beat them and kept them at bay, but how long can this last?" [1]

The ANWL was a very active organisation, with many suburban and rural branches. It published a monthly journal The Woman. It ran many campaigns, including one for greater education in "domestic science". The League organised Empire Day festivities in Melbourne for forty years and, during World War I, organised thousands of women to contribute to the war effort. In 1918, it launched "Baby Week" as an education campaign for families. It also conducted political education and training courses for its members, to make them more effective campaigners.

Peak of power

At its peak in World War I, the AWNL had 500 registered branches and more than 54,000 members across Australia. Using its massive membership base as a platform for achieving its objectives, it was very active in electoral politics, initially supporting male candidates and forming an important part of conservative political efforts across Australia. They employed women as paid political organisers, raised large amounts of money, and actively supported candidates, who sometimes had to go through a preselection process to attract the League's support.

Some years after women had obtained the right to vote and to run for office, most of the first women candidates in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria were members of the League. While they generally worked with conservative political parties, on occasion they did not. In one instance, when one of their favoured candidates in Queensland was not endorsed as they had demanded, they ran their own candidate, Irene Longman, who became the first female member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1929.

Actions such as these, the vast size of the League, and its highly skilled political operatives, made it one of the most effective and feared political organisations in Australian politics at the time. Male journalists complained at the time about the power of the group: "Political godmothers rule UAP (United Australia Party) with haughty mien ... the political fate of the electorate was controlled by women." [1]

Merger with the Liberals

In 1944, the AWNL actively supported the newly created Liberal Party of Australia and merged with it in 1945. The League's leaders at the time – including Dame Elizabeth Couchman and future senator Ivy Wedgwood – negotiated a tough deal with Sir Robert Menzies which ensured that women were equally represented throughout the structures of the Liberal Party, long before the era of affirmative action. It was agreed that the Liberal Party would reserve certain positions for women, that there would be a Woman Vice-president of the party, and also a Federal Women's Committee, the president of which would also sit on the party's Federal Executive. [2]

Menzies regarded Couchman very highly and observed: "She would have been the best cabinet minister I could have wished for". [1]

Some argue that the League had a major impact on the Liberal Party's direction leading up to the election in 1949, which the party won convincingly. In a highly unusual move at the time, Liberal advertising specifically made reference to women and women's issues. Images of men and women (and in some cases of women alone) were used in political advertising for the first time on a major scale. Their opponents in the Australian Labor Party were largely silent on women's issues. [1]

Although the organisation had formally resolved to merge with the Liberal Party, some preferred to retain an autonomous group, which continued for a time with considerably reduced members and activity.

In 2004, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, spoke at a function commemorating the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the League, and paid tribute to its important role in the history of the Liberal Party and Australia.

Notable members

Related Research Articles

The Liberal Party was a parliamentary party in Australian federal politics between 1909 and 1917. The party was founded under Alfred Deakin's leadership as a merger of the Protectionist Party and Anti-Socialist Party, an event known as the Fusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doris Blackburn</span> Australian political activist, legislator

Doris Amelia Blackburn was an Australian social reformer and politician. She served in the House of Representatives from 1946 to 1949, the second woman after Enid Lyons to do so. Blackburn was a prominent socialist and originally a member of the Labor Party. She was married to Maurice Blackburn, a Labor MP, but he was expelled from the party in 1937 and she resigned from the party in solidarity. Her husband died in 1944, and she was elected to his former seat at the 1946 federal election – the first woman elected to parliament as an independent. However, Blackburn served only a single term before being defeated. She later served as president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivy Wedgwood</span> Australian politician

Dame Ivy Evelyn Annie Wedgwood, was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Victoria from 1950 to 1971, representing the Liberal Party. She was the first woman to represent Victoria in the Senate and the first woman to chair a select committee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnes Robertson (politician)</span> Australian politician

Agnes Robertson Robertson was an Australian schoolteacher, community worker and politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1950 to 1962. She was originally elected to parliament as a member of the Liberal Party at the 1949 federal election. In 1955, she was dropped from her party's ticket due to her age, but instead won the endorsement of the Country Party and was re-elected to a second term at the 1955 election; her final term ended a month before her 80th birthday. She was the first woman to represent the Country Party in federal parliament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Breen</span> Australian politician (1902–1993)

Dame Marie Freda BreenDBE was an Australian politician who, following her election in 1961, became the second woman in the Australian Senate to represent the state of Victoria and the sixth female senator in Australia overall. In 1965, she became the first woman to chair an Australian Senate committee. She was noted for her commitment to improving the wellbeing of Australian women, children, and family units, as well as her commitment to community service. She worked towards greater inclusion of women in official positions and was a major advocate for the strengthening of Australia–Asia relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Peacock</span> Australian politician (1861–1933)

Sir Alexander James Peacock was an Australian politician who served as the 20th Premier of Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Council of Women of Australia</span>

The National Council of Women of Australia (NWA) is an Australian organisation founded in 1931. The council is an umbrella organisation with which are affiliated seven State and Territory National Councils of Women. It is non-party political, non-sectarian, volunteer organisation and open to all women. It first affiliated with the International Council of Women in 1896, through the New South Wales NCW. That NSW organisation was created on 26 August 1896 in Sydney Town Hall by eleven women-related organisations.

The Country and Progressive National Party was a short-lived conservative political party in the Australian state of Queensland. Formed in 1925, it combined the state's conservative forces in a single party and held office between 1929 and 1932 under the leadership of Arthur Edward Moore. Following repeated election defeat it split into separate rural and urban wings in 1936.

Dame Elizabeth May Ramsay Couchman DBE was an Australian political activist. She served as president of the Australian Women's National League from 1927 to 1945 and oversaw its merger into the new Liberal Party of Australia. She was also the first woman appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), serving from 1932 to 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sir William Clarke, 1st Baronet</span> Australian politician

Sir William John Clarke, 1st Baronet, was an Australian businessman and philanthropist in the Colony of Victoria. He was raised to the baronetage in 1882, the first Victorian to be granted a hereditary honour.

The Victorian Farmers' Union (VFU) was an association of farmers and primary producers formed in 1914 in the Australian state of Victoria. Although initially formed as an "absolutely non-political" entity, the VFU became a political party in 1916, and nominated candidates for the 1917 state election and subsequent elections. In later years it used the names Victorian Country Party, then United Country Party and is now the National Party of Australia – Victoria. At the 1917 election, because the support for the VFU was concentrated in rural seats, it won four of the 11 seats in the Victorian Legislative Assembly it contested, gaining about 6% of the vote state-wide. In 1918 it also won its first seat in the federal parliament, after preferential voting was introduced. At the 1920 state election the VFU vote increased to 8% and the number of seats to 13, giving the VFU the balance of power in the state Legislative Assembly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor Glencross</span> Australian feminist (1876–1950)

Eleanor Glencross was an Australian feminist and housewives' advocate. She led the Housewives' Association of New South Wales and she was the first chair of the Federated Association of Australian Housewives. She expelled members from the association and she was bankrupted by a successful defamation suit that followed. Canberra named a street after her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Daley</span>

Jane "Jean" Daley was an Australian political organiser.

Ministerialists and Oppositionists were political groupings in the political systems of several Australian colonies and states, used to describe supporters or opponents of the government of the day. The terminology had earlier been used in the same way in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Clarke</span>

Janet Marion Clarke was an Australian socialite and philanthropist. She was known to the general public as Lady Clarke, a title which she assumed after her husband's elevation to the baronetage in 1882.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivy Brookes</span> Australian community worker and activist

Ivy Deakin Brookes was an Australian community worker and activist. She held leadership positions across a wide range of organisations in Victoria. She was president of the National Council of Women of Australia from 1948 to 1953.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victorian Liberal Party</span> Political party in Australia

The Victorian Liberal Party, officially known as the Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian Division) and branded as Liberal Victoria, is the state division of the Liberal Party of Australia in Victoria. It was formed in 1944. It became the Liberal and Country Party (LCP) in 1949, and simplified its name to the Liberal Party in 1965. The party sits on the centre-right to right-wing of the Australian political spectrum.

The People's Party was a political organisation in the Australian state of Victoria. It was established in 1910 by farmers opposed to the Australian Labor Party (ALP). It co-ordinated political campaigns with other anti-Labor organisations, supporting the parliamentary Liberals and later the Nationalists after 1917. It merged into the National Federation in 1917, after an earlier abortive merger with the Commonwealth Liberal Party.

Julia Rapke OBE was an Australian, Jewish women's rights activist and Justice of the Peace, who held numerous roles in women's organisations regionally, nationally and internationally, including presidency of the Australian chapter of the Women's International Zionist Organization.

Judith Smart is an Australian social historian and feminist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Fitzherbert, Margaret (2004). Liberal Women, Federation to 1949. The Federation Press. ISBN   978-1-86287-460-2.
  2. ↑ Melbourne, National Foundation for Australian Women and The University of. "Couchman, Elizabeth May Ramsay - Woman - The Australian Women's Register". www.womenaustralia.info. Retrieved 18 September 2017.
  3. ↑ Tyrrell, Ian. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  4. ↑ Smart, Judith. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  5. ↑ Morrissey, Sylvia. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  6. ↑ Smart, Judith. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  7. ↑ Foley, Meredith. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  8. ↑ Smart, Judith. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  9. ↑ Norris, Ada M. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  10. ↑ Scobie, Doug. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 18 September 2017– via Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.