Sir William McKell and Labor History

Abstract

Vince Kelly has written a valuable account of the career of W. J. McKell (A Man of the People in Alpha Books, Sydney, 1971). The book is attractively presented, wrell-bound and evocatively illustrated: illustrations remain understandably popular and essential to a work of this type, they help to sell a book. But a recent feature of the book trade in Australia is surely not helping to sell books. I refer to the practice of publishers who, under pressure, it seems, from the sellers, often do not print a price on their product. In the cases where they do show a price, it is by no means uncommon for the sellers to make an attempt, not always successful, to obliterate it and replace it with a higher price. The Labor History Society has recently had some experience of this: 'The Great Depression in Australia', journal No. 17, had a fixed retail price of $2.50, but at least one bookseller raised it to $3. I am not moralising about this situation: and many of its general implications, of the facts of life type, are relevant to the observations I am going to make about W. J. McKell and his role in labor history: for the art and practice of bookselling are subject to change, like anything else, and what wras appropriate for William Moffitt and the Teggs in the 1830s (see Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 2) is clearly not suitable for booksellers in the 1970s. Many of them occupy prime sites in the capital cities that are now capable of earning higher incomes from such activities as selling office space, or accommodation, if not beer, rather than books, reflecting changes of pace and style, deeply rooted in the life of the people. As a result much of bookselling as at present organised is finding it difficult to pay for itself, it is uneconomic. And the contemporary confusion about retail prices reflects the fact, hard as it may be for many, that the days of leisurely and satisfying browsing and selection from a wide range of books are probably about to go forever, like trams and steam trains. So there is no price shown on Kelly's book on McKell. Its retail price is the one that will confront the buyer wherever he may examine it. I hope, for many reasons, that there will be many buyers of it. Sir William McKell was born on 26 September 1891 at Pambula, Newr South Wales, in the year in which the Australian Labor Party was founded and about the time the first Labor Party w7as having its first split, both in parliament and outside. He came from a family that was close to being impoverished; when he came to Sydney as a boy he lived in Redfern, then, as now, an underprivileged area, however vital and cheerful. Educated at Surry Hills State School, he left w7hen thirteen to become an apprentice to boilermaking. He became an active trade unionist and as a youth joined the Labor Party. Elected to the New7 South Wales Parliament in 1917 at the age of 25 he was a minister before he was thirty. In his spare time he studied law and became a barrister in 1925 (K.C., 1945) . He was elected leader of the party in 1939, and became premier in 1941, the forerunner of five consecutive Labor premiers of New South Wales until 1965. In 1947 he resigned to 60