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Frank Anstey
Francis George Anstey (18 August 1865 – 31 October 1940) was an Australian politician and writer. He served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1910 to 1934, representing the Labour Party. He was Minister for Health and Minister for Repatriation in the Scullin government from 1929 to 1931.
Anstey was born in London, England, the son of an iron-miner who died five months before his son was born, and he had little formal education. He stowed away on a passenger ship when he was 11 and arrived in Melbourne in 1877. He then spent ten years working on ships to the South Pacific islands. After spending a period as an itinerant worker (a "swaggie" in Australian slang), he moved to Sale, where he met Katherine Mary Bell McColl. They married in 1887 and had two sons. He became a cleaner in Melbourne, where he soon became involved in politics. He worked on the Melbourne tramways and became President of the Tramways Employees Union. Self-educated, he wrote extensively for Labor newspapers such as The Tocsin and Labor Call.
In 1898, Anstey co-founded the Victorian Labour Federation (VLF) with George Elmslie and Tom Tunnecliffe. The VLF was intended to challenge the existing labour institutions in Victoria, which its founders believed had failed to advance the goals of the movement. The federation was modelled on the Belgian Workers' Party and sought to combine the functions of a syndicated union, a co-operative, a friendly society, and a political party. Anstey gained prominence as the lead speaker at meetings of the VLF, which collapsed in 1900 "amid political bickering and personal recriminations". He subsequently focused his efforts on the mainstream United Labor Party.
In 1902 Anstey was elected as a Labor member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for East Bourke Boroughs, and from 1904 he was member for Brunswick, both electorates being in the working-class suburbs of Melbourne. He switched to federal politics at the 1910 election, winning the seat of Bourke in the House of Representatives.
Despite his English birth, Anstey was an Australian nationalist. He saw Australia as an economic colony of the finance houses of the City of London, which, like many in the labour movement at this time, he described as the "money power". His views are typified by this passage from a 1907 editorial in the newspaper of the Australian Workers' Union:
The Money Power! It is the greatest power on Earth; and it is arrayed against Labour. No other power that is or ever was can be named with it.... It attacks us through the press – a monster with a thousand lying tongues, a beast surpassing in foulness any conceived by the mythology that invented dragons, wehr wolves, harpies, ghouls and vampires. It thunders against us from innumerable platforms and pulpits. The mystic machinery of the churches it turns into an engine of wrath for our destruction.
— The Brisbane Worker
In 1914 Australia, under the Labor government of Andrew Fisher, entered the First World War on the side of Britain. Anstey was one of the few Labor members who opposed the war from the start, and as a result he was highly unpopular for a time. By 1917, however, anti-war sentiment was growing and Anstey became one of the leaders of the movement against conscription for the war.
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Frank Anstey
Francis George Anstey (18 August 1865 – 31 October 1940) was an Australian politician and writer. He served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1910 to 1934, representing the Labour Party. He was Minister for Health and Minister for Repatriation in the Scullin government from 1929 to 1931.
Anstey was born in London, England, the son of an iron-miner who died five months before his son was born, and he had little formal education. He stowed away on a passenger ship when he was 11 and arrived in Melbourne in 1877. He then spent ten years working on ships to the South Pacific islands. After spending a period as an itinerant worker (a "swaggie" in Australian slang), he moved to Sale, where he met Katherine Mary Bell McColl. They married in 1887 and had two sons. He became a cleaner in Melbourne, where he soon became involved in politics. He worked on the Melbourne tramways and became President of the Tramways Employees Union. Self-educated, he wrote extensively for Labor newspapers such as The Tocsin and Labor Call.
In 1898, Anstey co-founded the Victorian Labour Federation (VLF) with George Elmslie and Tom Tunnecliffe. The VLF was intended to challenge the existing labour institutions in Victoria, which its founders believed had failed to advance the goals of the movement. The federation was modelled on the Belgian Workers' Party and sought to combine the functions of a syndicated union, a co-operative, a friendly society, and a political party. Anstey gained prominence as the lead speaker at meetings of the VLF, which collapsed in 1900 "amid political bickering and personal recriminations". He subsequently focused his efforts on the mainstream United Labor Party.
In 1902 Anstey was elected as a Labor member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for East Bourke Boroughs, and from 1904 he was member for Brunswick, both electorates being in the working-class suburbs of Melbourne. He switched to federal politics at the 1910 election, winning the seat of Bourke in the House of Representatives.
Despite his English birth, Anstey was an Australian nationalist. He saw Australia as an economic colony of the finance houses of the City of London, which, like many in the labour movement at this time, he described as the "money power". His views are typified by this passage from a 1907 editorial in the newspaper of the Australian Workers' Union:
The Money Power! It is the greatest power on Earth; and it is arrayed against Labour. No other power that is or ever was can be named with it.... It attacks us through the press – a monster with a thousand lying tongues, a beast surpassing in foulness any conceived by the mythology that invented dragons, wehr wolves, harpies, ghouls and vampires. It thunders against us from innumerable platforms and pulpits. The mystic machinery of the churches it turns into an engine of wrath for our destruction.
— The Brisbane Worker
In 1914 Australia, under the Labor government of Andrew Fisher, entered the First World War on the side of Britain. Anstey was one of the few Labor members who opposed the war from the start, and as a result he was highly unpopular for a time. By 1917, however, anti-war sentiment was growing and Anstey became one of the leaders of the movement against conscription for the war.