H. B. Higgins - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

For the fictional character Henry Higgins, see Pygmalion
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...

or My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

.

Henry Bournes Higgins (30 June 1851 – 13 January 1929), Australian politician and judge, always known in his lifetime as H. B. Higgins, was a highly influential figure in Australian politics and law.

Career

He was born in County Mayo

County Mayo

County Mayo is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the village of Mayo, which is now generally known as Mayo Abbey. Mayo County Council is the local authority for the county. The population of the county is 130,552...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, the son of The Rev.

The Reverend

The Reverend is a style most often used as a prefix to the names of Christian clergy and ministers. There are sometimes differences in the way the style is used in different countries and church traditions. The Reverend is correctly called a style but is often and in some dictionaries called a...

John Higgins, a Methodist

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

minister, and Anne Bournes, daughter of Henry Bournes of Crossmolina

Crossmolina

Crossmolina or Crosmolina is a town in the Barony of Tyrawley in County Mayo, Ireland, as well as the name of the parish in which Crossmolina is situated. The town sits on the River Deel near the northern shore of Lough Conn...

. The Rev. Higgins and his family emigrated to Australia in 1870.

H. B. Higgins was educated at Wesley College

Wesley College, Dublin

This article is about Wesley College in Dublin, Ireland. See Wesley College for articles on other institutions named "Wesley College"....

in central Dublin, Ireland, and at Melbourne University, where he graduated in law. He practised at the Melbourne bar from 1876, eventually becoming one of the city's leading barristers (a QC

Queen's Counsel

Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...

in 1903) and a wealthy man. He was active in liberal, radical and Irish nationalist politics, as well as in many civic organisations. He was also a noted classical scholar

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

.

In 1894, Higgins was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly

Victorian Legislative Assembly

The Victorian Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the Parliament of Victoria in Australia. Together with the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house, it sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Melbourne.-History:...

as MLA for Geelong. He was a supporter of George Turner

George Turner (Australian politician)

Sir George Turner, KCMG, PC , Australian politician, was the 18th Premier of Victoria and the first Treasurer of Australia in the federal Barton Ministry....

's liberal government, but frequently criticised it from a left-wing point of view. He supported advanced liberal positions, such as greater protection for workers, government investment in industry, and votes for women. In 1897, he was elected as one of Victoria's delegates to the constitutional convention

Constitutional convention (political meeting)

A constitutional convention is now a gathering for the purpose of writing a new constitution or revising an existing constitution. A general constitutional convention is called to create the first constitution of a political unit or to entirely replace an existing constitution...

, which drew up the Australian Constitution. At the convention, he successfully argued that the constitution should contain a guarantee of religious freedom, and also a provision giving the Commonwealth the power to arbitrate industrial disputes.

Despite these successes, he opposed the draft constitution produced by the convention as too conservative, and in 1899 he campaigned unsuccessfully to have it defeated at the referendum

Referendum

A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...

in Victoria, which was necessary before the constitution could be ratified. This alienated him most of his liberal colleagues, and also from the influential Melbourne newspaper, The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

. Higgins also opposed Australian involvement in the Second Boer War

Second Boer War

The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...

, a very unpopular stand at the time, and as a result, he lost his seat at the 1900 Victorian election.

In 1901, when federation under the new constitution came into effect, Higgins was elected to the first House of Representatives

Australian House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....

for the working-class electorate of Northern Melbourne

Division of Northern Melbourne

The Division of Northern Melbourne was an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria. It was located in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, and was named accordingly. It included parts of the suburbs of Carlton, North Melbourne and Fitzroy...

. He stood as a Protectionist

Protectionist Party

The Protectionist Party was an Australian political party, formally organised from 1889 until 1909, with policies centred on protectionism. It argued that Australia needed protective tariffs to allow Australian industry to grow and provide employment. It had its greatest strength in Victoria and in...

, but the Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

did not oppose him, regarding him as a supporter of the labour movement. The Labor Party's confidence in him was shown in 1904, when Chris Watson

Chris Watson

John Christian Watson , commonly known as Chris Watson, Australian politician, was the third Prime Minister of Australia...

formed the first federal Labor government. Since the party did not have a suitably qualified lawyer, Watson offered the post of Attorney-General to Higgins. He is the only person to have held office in a Federal Labor government without being a member of the Labor Party.

Higgins was an awkward colleague for the Protectionist leadership, and in 1906 Deakin appointed him as a Justice of the High Court of Australia

High Court of Australia

The High Court of Australia is the supreme court in the Australian court hierarchy and the final court of appeal in Australia. It has both original and appellate jurisdiction, has the power of judicial review over laws passed by the Parliament of Australia and the parliaments of the States, and...

as a means of getting him out of politics, although he was undoubtedly qualified for the post. In 1907, he was also appointed President of the newly created Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration

Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration

The Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration is a defunct Australian court, which had jurisdiction to arbitrate interstate industrial disputes....

, created to arbitrate disputes between trades unions

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

and employers, something Higgins had long advocated. In this role, he continued to support the labour movement, although he was strongly opposed to militant unions who abused the strike weapon and ignored his rulings.

Higgins was one of only eight justices of the High Court to have served in the Parliament of Australia

Parliament of Australia

The Parliament of Australia, also known as the Commonwealth Parliament or Federal Parliament, is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It is bicameral, largely modelled in the Westminster tradition, but with some influences from the United States Congress...

prior to his appointment to the Court; the others were Edmund Barton

Edmund Barton

Sir Edmund Barton, GCMG, KC , Australian politician and judge, was the first Prime Minister of Australia and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia....

, Richard O'Connor, Isaac Isaacs

Isaac Isaacs

Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs GCB GCMG KC was an Australian judge and politician, was the third Chief Justice of Australia, ninth Governor-General of Australia and the first born in Australia to occupy that post. He is the only person ever to have held both positions of Chief Justice of Australia and...

, Edward McTiernan

Edward McTiernan

Sir Edward Aloysius McTiernan, KBE , was an Australian jurist, lawyer and politician. He served as an Australian Labor Party member of both the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and federal House of Representatives before being appointed to the High Court of Australia in 1930...

, John Latham, Garfield Barwick

Garfield Barwick

Sir Garfield Edward John Barwick, was the Attorney-General of Australia , Minister for External Affairs and the seventh and longest serving Chief Justice of Australia...

, and Lionel Murphy

Lionel Murphy

Lionel Keith Murphy, QC was an Australian politician and jurist who served as Attorney-General in the government of Gough Whitlam and as a Justice of the High Court of Australia from 1975 until his death.- Personal life :...

. He was also one of two justices to have served in the Parliament of Victoria

Parliament of Victoria

The Parliament of Victoria is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of Victoria. It follows a Westminster-derived parliamentary system and consists of The Queen, represented by the Governor of Victoria; the Legislative Council ; and the Legislative Assembly...

, along with Isaac Isaacs

Isaac Isaacs

.

In 1907, Higgins delivered a judgement which became famous in Australian history, known as the "Harvester Judgement". The case involved one of Australia's largest employers, Hugh McKay

Hugh Victor McKay

Hugh Victor McKay CBE, was an Australian inventor of the Sunshine Harvester and industrialist.-Early life:...

, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery. Higgins ruled that McKay was obliged to pay his employees a wage that guaranteed them a standard of living that was reasonable for "a human being in a civilised community," regardless of his capacity to pay. This gave rise to the legal requirement for a basic wage, which dominated Australian economic life for the next 80 years.

During World War I, Higgins increasingly came into conflict with the Nationalist

Nationalist Party of Australia

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...

Prime Minister Billy Hughes

Billy Hughes

William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC, MHR , Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923....

, whom he saw as using the wartime emergency to erode civil liberties

Civil liberties

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

. Although Higgins initially supported the war, he opposed the extension of government power that came with it, and also opposed Hughes' attempt to introduce conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

for the war. In 1916, his only son Mervyn was killed in action in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, a tragedy which made Higgins turn increasingly against the war.

The postwar years saw a series of bitter industrial confrontations, some of them fomented by militant unions influenced by the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

or the Communist Party of Australia

Communist Party of Australia

The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...

. Higgins defended the principles of arbitration against both the Hughes Government and militant unions, although he found this his increasingly difficult. Postwar governments appointed conservative justices to the High Court, leaving Higgins increasingly more isolated. In 1920, he resigned from the Arbitration Court in frustration, but remained on the High Court bench until his death in 1929. In 1922, he published A New Province for Law and Order, a defence of his views and record on arbitration.

After his son Mervyn's death, Higgins effectively adopted his nephew Esmonde Higgins and his niece Nettie Palmer

Vance and Nettie Palmer

Vance and Nettie Palmer were two of Australia's best-known literary figures from the 1920s to the 1950s. Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer was a novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer was a poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic...

, paying for their education at universities in Europe. He was pained by Esmonde's conversion to Communism in 1920 and his rejection of the liberal values associated with the Higgins name.

Higgins was remembered for many years as a great friend of the labour movement, of the Irish-Australian community and of liberal and progressive causes generally. He was well-served by his first biographer, his niece Nettie Palmer, whose Henry Bournes Higgins: A Memoir (1931) created an enduring Higgins mythology. John Rickard's 1984 H. B. Higgins: The Rebel as Judge partly demolished this myth, but was a generally sympathetic biography. The H.B. Higgins Chambers in Sydney, founded by radical industrial lawyers, is named for him.

Aside from politics, he was president of the Carlton Football Club

Carlton Football Club

The Carlton Football Club is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club competes in the Australian Football League, and was one of the eight founding members of that competition in 1897...

in 1904.

Legacy

Higgins is commemorated by the federal electorate of Higgins

Division of Higgins

The Division of Higgins is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria.The division was created in 1949 and is named after Justice H. B. Higgins , who was a Victorian Member of the legislative assembly , president of the Carlton Football Club , Australian Member of Parliament , and justice of the...

in Melbourne, and by the Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

suburb of Higgins, Australian Capital Territory

Higgins, Australian Capital Territory

Higgins is a suburb in the Canberra district of Belconnen. The postcode is 2615. The suburb is named after politician and judge Henry Bournes Higgins . It was gazetted on 6 June 1968...

Career

Legacy

Further reading