The bitter divide in Australia during the Great War over the issue of conscription has largely faded as time passes. In the public and political mind it's been more savoury to focus on the fervour of salvation and heroism, on the individual achievements of VC winners and generals, a polishing of the memory of what happened as 'nation-building' and uniting.
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In truth, the First World War exacerbated an already-existing sectarian schism in colonial Australian society, fed by leaders of the churches and politicians desperate to align themselves to British imperial ideals. This dispute was as evident in Ballarat as in the capital cities - perhaps more so, as Ballarat had an openly anti-conscription newspaper.
The Evening Echo was 20-years-old when war broke out in 1914. Ballarat historian Anne Beggs Sunter says the daily, with a morning and evening edition, first came off the presses on February 12, 1895.
Its motto was 'Fearless, Truthful and Just'. Publisher Alfred Powell soon floated the paper with a consortium of Ballarat's business leaders. By the time of the war, the Australian Workers Union (AWU), guided by the Ballarat Trades and Labour Council, had taken control of the Echo as part of a strategy to gain political traction, and it began to advocate the interests of labour.
The AWU, born of the Shearers Union (founded in Ballarat in 1886) and the General Labourers Union, soon appointed a local as editor. James Scullin was a grocer, Catholic, and had already tried his hand at politics, unsuccessfully challenging Alfred Deakin at the 1906 federal election.
Through the influence of Echo directors ALP senator John Barnes and newly-elected member for Ballaarat David 'D.C.' McGrath (who had barely defeated the industrialist H.V. McKay for his seat), Scullin was editing the paper by 1913. The paper's reputation for quality and its wide circulation was unaffected by McKay suing it for defamation, a libel suit he dropped with costs soon after.
Anne Beggs Sunter says in later life Scullin mused he was appointed an editor without any journalistic experience, and a prime minister without ever having been a cabinet member.
The Labor Party led by Andrew Fisher had won a double dissolution election in September 1914. Fisher appointed the firebrand, dyspeptic, militaristic Billy Hughes as Attorney-General; 13 months later he was Prime Minister as Fisher felt the strain of war.
Recruitment levels dropped in the face of the (censored) horrors of the Western Front, and Hughes advocated compulsory military service - conscription - for the AIF. In this he was supported by almost every press outlet in the country, bar one.
The Evening Echo stood against conscription, the only daily newspaper in Victoria to do so. In this it was guided by the actions of D.C. McGrath who had permitted his 16-year-old son David, then a student at Ballarat Agricultural High, to enlist. McGrath then enlisted himself at the age of 43, and reported home to ALP colleagues such as Frank Anstey how Hughes was being pushed to consign more young men to the 'meat grinder'.
Hughes sought his first referendum for conscription in late 1916. The Evening Echo was highly critical of the prime minister, and unfailingly in support of the push for independence in Ireland. In this the paper found a champion in the soon-to-be Catholic archbishop of Melbourne Dr Daniel Mannix, who while opposed to violence overall and the Easter Uprising in Dublin, soon became a fellow traveller in the anti-conscription cause.
"Throughout September and October (1916), the paper advertises meetings organised in halls all over the district, with speakers from Ballarat Trades Hall, parliamentarians like...Barnes, and Scullin and local school teacher Tom Carey," Anne Beggs Sunter writes.
"Often these meetings would be outdoors, with the Galloway Monument in Sturt St a popular meeting place. Scullin's great oratorical skills, honed at the South Street debating competitions, would have been much appreciated. The attack on capitalists and profiteers came through strongly, as well as the theme that Australia had done more than its share in defending the Empire."
The seeds of liberty which were sown in the blood-stained soil of Eureka, has created an Australian environment which is responsible for bold, courageous, self-sacrificing characteristics... If you would preserve these freedom-loving aspirations, which is the very soul force of true patriotism, then fight to the last gasp against the introduction of conscription... (which) is the very foundation and cornerstone of a servile state.
The Evening Echo, August 1916.
The Echo was now sending 60,000 copies a day to Melbourne. In October the conscription referendum was defeated, albeit narrowly, with the strongly labour areas of Ballarat East and Sebastopol returning a resounding 'no' vote, - as did the Irish-Australian farmers of the Warrenheip division, the so-called 'savages of Bungaree', Ms Beggs Sunter notes.
Hughes was expelled from the ALP, joining with the Nationalists to form a new government in 1917, and tried again to win support for another conscription referendum to be held just before Christmas in 1917.
Again the Echo and Scullin went into battle, producing a number of 'No Conscription' special issues. The government harried the newspaper with strict War Precautions Regulations limiting what could be printed, and cutting the supply of newsprint. The paper was sometimes reduced to a single sheet.
Once more conscription was rejected, with Victoria voting 'NO' by a small majority. Ballarat again returned a strong 'NO' vote."
On 18 February 1922 James Scullin was elected to the safe Labor seat of Yarra. He was replaced as editor of The Echo by his brother-in-law John Kean.
The Evening Echo, always under-resourced, struggled on in debt until its liquidation in February 1929.
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