Regrets…I’ve had a few!

Last night an unholy alliance of Conservative MPs with very different views about the EU were defeated in a free vote by 277 to 131 on a proposed amendment to the Queen’s Speech that ‘expressed regret’ that a bill paving the way for a referendum in 2017 was not being brought forward this year.  It was backed by 116 Tory MPs representing half of the party’s backbenchers.  It is no coincidence that many who supported the amendment have ‘safe’ seats while those in marginals were less enthusiastic.  Attention now turns to the 20 MPs who will be drawn in the ballot for private member’s bills; the hope is that one of the 4 MPs selected who voted for the amendment will adopt the draft referendum bill.  Even if it became law, and private member’s bills occasionally do, you cannot pass legislation binding a future parliament.  So if the Conservatives won in 2015, given the Prime Minister’s commitment to a referendum in 2017, it is unnecessary and if Labour won they currently have no commitment to a referendum anyway so it would be set aside.  Either way, it looks like a fruitless exercise.

Is David Cameron going down the same road that John Major trod in the 1990s?  Despite the rhetoric from supporters of yesterday’s amendment saying that it shows the strength rather than weakness of the Prime Minister, that is not how it looks outside the Westminster village.  Whatever your view about the EU and the need for a referendum, the Conservatives do appear to be banging on about it when they should be focussing on the economic recovery…and it that respect the Labour Party are right, a view I’m certain the Prime Minister would agree with.  The vote yesterday does give the impression of a party divided over Europe…so nothing new there for those of us who remember the debates after Maastricht…but what many Conservatives appear to have forgotten is that they lost disastrously in 1997 and the impression of division played a significant role in that defeat.  When governing in a coalition, political parties are not able to do everything they would like and, given Lib-Dem opposition to a referendum in this parliament, David Cameron’s commitment to renegotiation and a referendum if (and it’s a big ‘if’) he wins the next election is probably about as far as he can go. 

There is no doubt that having a referendum on Europe would be popular with the public and there is a question of ‘trust’ in politicians over the issue.  In the last twenty years, the three main political parties have all given a commitment to hold one and then reneged on the deal most noticeably on the Lisbon treaty.  The critical question is whether public attitudes on this issue will be sufficient to determine the outcome of the 2015 election.  The key issues for voters in past elections have been the economy, the NHS and law and order with membership of the EU not a key determinant of voting intentions.  None of the elections since 1975 have been what may be called ‘euro elections’ so will 2015 be any different?  Well possibly.  The strong showing of UKIP in the local government elections and the euro elections in 2014 in which it is likely they will also do well has pushed the referendum up the political agenda.  The Conservatives will include it in their election manifesto and this may persuade many UKIP voters to vote Conservative since UKIP will not win the election while the Conservatives might.  This is a problem for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats as a failure to include a commitment to hold a referendum could well lose them votes.  Both could argue that there is already legislation that triggers a referendum if there is a ‘significant’ transfer of powers to Brussels (who decides when this has taken place?) and that such a commitment is therefore unnecessary but this is unlikely to assuage those for whom a referendum has become a matter of faith. 

With a more promising report on the state of the British economy yesterday from the Bank of England and the continued recession in the euro-zone, it appears that the question of the referendum is not going away.  At no time since the 1970s is it more likely to take place. 

Gold in Victoria: immigrants arrive

Word that gold had been found in NSW and Victoria spread quickly as it had done in California. [1] The result was a massive movement of people from Britain, Europe, China and America but also within Australia and Victoria’s ports bustled with new arrivals. In just four months in 1852, 619 ships arrived in Hobson’s Bay carrying 55,057 passengers; 1853 saw the arrival of 2,594 ships. In March 1851, Victoria’s population was 80,000, not including its indigenous population; by 1854, it had tripled to 237,000 and doubled again to 540,000 by 1861. [2] The population of the Victorian gold fields was 20,000 in 1851; 34,000 the following year; 100,000 in 1855 reaching its peak of 150,000 in 1858. The majority of migrants came from the United Kingdom; [3] between 1852 and 1860, 290,000 people came to Victoria from the British Isles. [4] Of the other migrants, less than 15,000 came from other European countries and 6,000 migrated from America. The NSW gold fields were poorer but the state’s population increased from 200,000 in 1851 to 357,000 ten years later. By 1861, 29% of the population was Australian born, 60% were from the United Kingdom and 11% were from other parts of the world. [5]

Reaching the goldfields

A comparatively small number of Americans made their way to the Victorian diggings in the 1850s. Nevertheless, this group of migrants had a major impact on the goldfields, like the Cornish diggers, because of their mining heritage. Many Americans quickly recognised the potential of fast-growing markets in Victoria in expanding trade between Australia and the United States. In early 1853, an editorial in the New York Herald maintained that Australia’s ‘social, commercial and political’ importance would ‘advance with rapid strides,’ as would trade between the two continents.

Arriving at Melbourne c1856

The American visitor George Francis Train [6] recorded his impressions of the country in his letters from Victoria that appeared in the Boston Post between 1853 and 1855[7] and in his An American Merchant in Europe, Asia and Australia, published in 1857.[8] Only 26 when he finally left Australia in November 1855, Train soon became an important part of the Melbourne business scene and actively involved in its Chamber of Commerce. The Argus commented that Train’s

....energy, spirit, and restless activity have had an effect, not fully appreciated we believe, in stirring up a spirit of emulation amongst his brother merchants...it would be difficult to trace the full effect of his example in vitalising our whole commercial system. [9]

In Train’s impressions of Melbourne, his American cultural background is always evident: Melbourne was seen through American eyes as he stated in a letter home, on 23 June 1853,

Collins street is the Broadway and Flinders lane is Wall street’ and that ‘Melbourne, though situated so far out of the way, cannot fail to be a great city...We must introduce a sprinkling of Yankeeism here and teach the residents the meaning of despatch!

His letters provided detailed, if not always reflective, analysis of Victorian politics that reflected the views of the local business community. On 1 January 1855, he declared that:

Politics have grown twenty years in a single month...the miners of Ballaarat raise an independent flag and the country thrills with the purport of expected change. The love of liberty that is convulsing the shaking thrones of the old world has touched the giant chieftain of the Australias, and the ‘southern cross’, three-fourths of the people say, must be the flag of the southern El Dorado.

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[1] Moch, L.P., Moving Europeans: migration in Western Europe since 1650, (Indiana University Press), 1992 is a useful general work on migration.

[2] Potts, E. Daniel, and Potts, A., Young America and Australian Gold: Americans and the Gold Rush of the 1850s, (University of Queensland Press), 1974; Knott, J. W., ‘Arrival and Settlement 1851-1880’, in Jupp, James, (ed.), The Australian people: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, 2^nd ed., (Cambridge University Press), 2001, pp. 367-370; Broome, R., The Victorians: arriving, (Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates), 1984, and Goodman, D., Gold seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s, (Allen & Unwin), 1994, focus on Australia.

[3] Ibid, Jupp, James, The English in Australia, pp. 52-86, especially pp. 71-74.

[4] Clarke, F. G., The Land of Contrarieties: British Attitudes to the Australian Colonies 1828-1855, (Melbourne University Press), 1977, pp. 142-154, provides a useful summary of changing attitudes in Britain to the discovery of gold.

[5] Beever, A., ‘From a Place of “Horrible Destitution” to a Paradise of the Working class: The Transformation of British Working class Attitudes to Australia 1841-1851’, Labour History, Vol. 40, (1981), pp. 1-15, examines how and why Australia became the place where British workers wanted to emigrate.

[6] Potts, E. Daniel, ‘George Francis Train (1829-1904)’, ADB, Vol. 6, 1976, pp. 299-300, and Thornton, W., The Nine Lives of Citizen Train, (Greenberg), 1948.

[7] Potts, E. Daniel and Annette, (eds.), A Yankee merchant in Goldrush Australia: the letters of George Francis Train 1853-55, (Heinemann), 1970. In his review of Train’s letters, The Business History Review, Vol. 46, (1972), pp. 272-274, Sydney Butlin exposed their limitations: ‘his comments were the commonplaces of contemporary newspapers, to be found in almost every traveller’s book of the period’.

[8] Train, G.F., An American Merchant in Europe, Asia and Australia, (G.P. Putman), 1857, especially pp. 369-401.

[9] Argus, 6 November 1855.