George Pearce

Sir George Foster Pearce KCVO (14 January 1870 – 24 June 1952) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1901 to 1938. He began his career in the Labor Party but later joined the National Labor Party, the Nationalist Party, and the United Australia Party; he served as a cabinet minister under prime ministers from all four parties.

Pearce was born in Mount Barker, South Australia. He left school at the age of 11 and trained as a carpenter, later moving to Western Australia and becoming involved in the union movement. He helped establish the Labor Party there, and in 1901 – aged 31 – was elected to the new federal parliament. Pearce was elevated to cabinet in 1908, under Andrew Fisher, and served in each of Fisher's three governments. He continued on in cabinet when Billy Hughes became prime minister in 1915, and after the Labor Party split of 1916 followed Hughes to the National Labor Party and then to the Nationalists. Pearce also served in cabinet under Stanley Bruce and, after joining the UAP in 1931, Joseph Lyons. He was Minister for Defence from 1908 to 1909, 1910 to 1913, 1914 to 1921, and 1932 to 1934. His 24 years in cabinet and 37 years as a senator are both records.

Pearce was born on 14 January 1870 in Mount Barker, South Australia. He was the fifth of eleven children born to Jane (née Foster) and James Pearce. His father was a blacksmith of Cornish descent, born in the village of Altarnun, while his mother was born in London. An uncle, George Pearce, briefly served in the South Australian House of Assembly.

During Pearce's childhood his family lived in various locations in rural South Australia. His mother died when he was ten years old, and he left school the following year by which time the family was living in Redhill. His father briefly tried wheat farming on the Eyre Peninsula, then moved the family to Kilkerran on the Yorke Peninsula where he returned to blacksmithing. Pearce began working as a farm labourer at the age of twelve in nearby Maitland. He took up a carpentry apprenticeship in Maitland in 1885, where he also received free evening lessons from the local school headmaster. He moved to Adelaide after completing his apprenticeship, but lost his job in the early 1890s depression.

In 1892, Pearce moved to Western Australia where he found work as a carpenter in Perth. Following the discovery of gold at Coolgardie, he left Perth in March 1894 and went to the Eastern Goldfields where he joined thousands of others in prospecting for alluvial gold. While camped at Kurnalpi, Pearce and two others were attacked by Wangkatha men armed with spears, to which he responded by firing his revolver three times. He had little success in prospecting and returned to Perth in 1895.

After returning to Perth, Pearce resumed his work as a carpenter and his involvement in the labour movement, where he was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. In the late 1890s he "became one of Perth's most prominent trade unionists". The local labour movement at the time largely consisted of small craft unions of skilled tradesmen, with an atmosphere less militant than in the other Australian colonies. In 1897 Pearce nonetheless led a strike on building sites that led to him being blacklisted for several weeks. In the same year he purchased a home in the working-class suburb of Subiaco, working at the local Whittaker Bros. timber mill.

In 1893, Pearce helped found the Progressive Political League, a precursor to the Western Australian branch of the ALP. He was elected to the Subiaco Municipal Council in 1898.

In the lead-up to Federation in 1901, Pearce joined the executive of the Western Australian Federal League and campaigned for the "Yes" vote at the referendum in July 1900 which approved Western Australia as an original state. A Trades and Labour Conference held in Perth in August 1900 agreed that labour candidates for the inaugural federal election would be subject to a preselection process for the House of Representatives and that the conference would endorse two candidates for the Senate – one from Perth and one from the Eastern Goldfields. Pearce was selected as the labour candidate from Perth and was elected to a six-year Senate term at the March 1901 federal election. He joined the parliamentary Australian Labor Party (ALP) on its formation in May 1901.