For many of us, the recent death of Gough Whitlam brought the 1975 constitutional crisis to mind once again. Strangely, though, I had already been thinking about 1975 because in my research for the Keepsakes exhibition, I had discovered a political cartoon about the 1914 Australian constitutional crisis. And in that constitutional crisis a governor-general had occupied centre stage as well.
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The cartoon was among the papers of Australia's First World War governor-general Sir Ronald Craufurd Munro Ferguson. In the cartoon the governor-general is making a choice. He is deciding who will be prime minister.
In June 1914 prime minister Joseph Cook, frustrated by the Labor opposition's control of the Senate, asked the governor-general for a double dissolution. The constitutional crisis occurred because Munro Ferguson did not immediately grant Cook's request. Instead, he took advice on the matter from various politicians and lawyers – as, he felt, was his right.
Munro Ferguson did ultimately agree to a double dissolution, so the crisis was resolved. An election was held in September 1914. Labor won decisively, with Andrew Fisher becoming prime minister and soon-to-be prime minister Billy Hughes becoming attorney-general. By then, however, the political landscape had been changed by the outbreak of war. Munro Ferguson was a former Guards officer and he embraced the challenges that the war would bring. The war, moreover, heightened his sense of the responsibilities and prerogatives of the governor-general.
Even before I had examined Munro Ferguson's papers, I had been struck by the extent of his influence. I began my Keepsakes research by looking at Hughes' papers, where I frequently came across hand-written letters from the governor-general to the prime minister. One of these letters especially stood out because it was so at odds with the conventions and expectations that surround the governor-general today. In the letter Munro Ferguson complains to Hughes about a 'most indiscrete' speech by the premier of NSW William Holman on the subject of conscription, and he urges the prime minister 'to apply...censorship' in such circumstances.
But was it so strange that the governor-general was involved in the conscription issue? We must remember that at the time governors-general of Australia were always British. They sought to advance the interests of Great Britain and the British Empire. Scottish-born Munro Ferguson felt that in order to maximise Australia's contribution to the British war effort he himself should supervise recruitment.
Munro Ferguson was dismayed by the defeat of the conscription referendums. In fact, he thought Hughes mishandled the situation by calling the referendums in the first place. For conscription, as he and others advised Hughes, might well have been introduced through Parliament. And in April 1918 he involved himself directly by convening a conference of politicians, businessmen, and unionists at Government House in order to heal the divisions caused by the conscription issue and to boost recruitment.
In attempting to understand Munro Ferguson's involvement with recruitment and conscription, we also need to remember that according to the Constitution, governors-general were – as they still are – the leaders of Australia's armed forces.
Historians know that getting into the head of someone from the past is a forlorn hope. But it is an ever-present temptation that can only be resisted by yielding to it. I myself can't help thinking that Munro Ferguson must at some stage have toyed with the idea of actually assuming control of Australia's military effort. Perhaps he did not press the matter because, although he had been a soldier, he felt that he did not have a sufficiently senior military rank. But if he had fulfilled this criterion, the Constitution might have been truly tested. And the idea of having a governor-general who is qualified by rank and experience to lead the Australian Defence Forces is hardly implausible.
* Keepsakes: Australians and the Great War runs at the National Library of Australia until July 19.
* As well as working as an historian, Dr Walter Kudrycz teaches history, philosophy, and Latin courses at the Australian National University's Centre for Continuing Education.
