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Conscription in Australia During WWI
The conscription issue raged through Australia at the time of the First World War. Proposed to Australia in 1916, the referendum question of whether to forcibly send young Australians to fight overseas was asked by Prime Minister ‘Billy’ Hughes. Calls of both protest and support were heard all around the country. The whole debate about conscription in Australia concerned the young men who had already undertaken military training. In 1910 the Defence Act was passed which gave the government the power to force all males aged 12 to 25 to undertake military training. Many people were critical of this act but there was not enough support to influence the government. Two referendums regarding conscription for overseas service were held during the war, both of which were unsuccessful.

How and Why the Conscription Debate Divided Australian Society
Debates raged for several different reasons, one of which was due to the British Empire. At the time of the WWI there were major uprisings against British rule in Ireland and when the Australian Government was trying to get young men to volunteer, they used posters and advertisements that said that it was Australia’s duty to defend the British Empire. As you could imagine the large number of Irish Australians weren’t too fond of ‘defending the British Empire.’ Given that more than 50% of the population at the time were women (due to casualties suffered to men in combat) a lot of the propaganda was aimed at them. There were women both for and against conscription and they also voiced their opinion.

The Role of Women
The United Women’s No-Conscription Committee played a huge role in convincing the public to vote no. At one point the committee organised an anti-conscription rally that had a turnout of around 60,000 women that marched up the street and protested about what they thought was right. Even women’s groups totally opposed to the war, got behind the effort to stop conscription. A poem written by Eleanore M. Moore (An influential Anti-war campaigner) described her opposition to conscription. ‘Voting away other people’s liberty is not patriotism: it is persecution. Forcing other people to risk their lives for me is not courage: it is cowardice.’ She knew that the Great War wasn’t to be the war that ended all wars. ‘No war, however victorious has ever produced lasting peace.’ She implies in her poem that sending Australians overseas against their will was against the rights of Australians.

Eleanore’s views represented the views of many women across the country, but some disagreed with her and the United Women’s No-Conscription Committee. There were some women who saw it necessary for young men to serve overseas even if it was against their will. During the volunteer process, young men that didn’t enlist were abused and rejected by some women who undoubtedly were behind conscription.

The Referendum Process and Result
When the Australian forces were running out of new fresh young men to fight in the Great War, Prime Minister Billy Hughes thought that conscription was a good idea. Conscription could be enforced regardless of whether the Australian public thought it to be the right choice or not. Hughes knew that the majority of the Senate was for conscription but the House of Representatives was in favour of anti-conscription by just a few votes. He hoped that if the public voted for conscription it would sway the few required members of parliament to the pro-conscription side, as they represented the people even if they were personally opposed to conscription.

The first referendum on conscription was held in October 1916. The question was, ‘Are you in favour of the government having, in this grave emergency, the same compulsory power over its citizens in regard to requiring their military service, for the term of this war, outside the Commonwealth, as it now has in regard to military service within the Commonwealth?’ The referendum was narrowly defeated, the vote around 51% to 49%. A year later, having sustained heavy casualties in France, the vote was put to the Australian public once more. Although Hughes could force conscription as he now had majority in the House of Representatives, he wanted to hold another referendum to gain public support. The vote was defeated again by a slightly larger margin than before. In the first referendum the majority of troops serving overseas had voted for conscription, whereas in the second referendum the majority voted against.

Cardinal Mannix
Daniel Mannix was one of the most influential public figures of WWI and may have changed what Australia is today. Cardinal Mannix was a firm supporter of Anti-conscription and believed that it wasn’t our war. He once described the war as ‘a sordid trade war’ which basically meant that the war was an unethical war for trading purposes fought by the colonial powers. Given his stance on the war its is clear to see that he had no intention of letting young men be forced into giving their lives to a war that didn’t concern them.

During the war there was an uprising against British rule in Ireland and Mannix strongly opposed the violence. In Australia at the time a large number of Catholics were Irish and so weren’t fond of helping the British when they were brutally fighting their kinsmen back home. Mannix used his position as Archbishop of Melbourne to condemn conscription and many of his fellow Catholics soon followed suit.

When the Labor party split in two due to differences in opinion on conscription, Mannix took the opportunity and backed the Catholic-dominated side, opposed to conscription. Both during and after the war, Mannix was called a traitor and was hated by many, mainly Protestants. There was a great division between these two denominations. Protestants were mainly for conscription, Catholics against, but there were exceptions on both sides.

William Hughes
William Morris Hughes, known as Billy Hughes was the Prime Minister during the majority of the First World War. In December 1915, Hughes issued a call to arms, urging men aged 18 to 45 to join the fight, ‘If you love your country, if you love your freedom, then take your place along your fellow Australians at the front.’ Unfortunately for him, the message didn’t have the effect that he thought it would. After having sustained heavy losses on the Western front and having far fewer men volunteer to fight, Hughes was convinced that Australia was in need of a conscription program.

After losing the first referendum, Hughes was expelled from the Labor Party on 15 September 1916 after walking out with one of his finest political cries, ‘Let those who think like me, follow me.’ 24 of the most influential Labor members left the party with Hughes. Hughes and his 24 followers formed a new party, naming themselves the National Labor Party. Hughes made an agreement with the Commonwealth Liberal Party so he could continue being Prime Minister. Hughes and the Liberal Leader Joseph Cook called their new wartime party the Nationalist Party of Australia. In the federal election of 1917 the party was elected to power and with it, Hughes as the leader. He told the public that if the Australian people did not choose to conscript, then he would resign as Prime Minister. In December 1917, the referendum was once again defeated and so he resigned as Prime Minister. At the time there was nobody else to fill Hughes’ shoes so he was immediately recommissioned by the Governor-General. Hughes remained the Prime Minister of Australia until 1923 and remained in Parliament until his death in 1952.