(b. Pimlico, London, 25 Sept. 1862; d. Lindfield, NSW, 28 Oct. 1952) Australian; Prime Minister 1915 – 23 The son of a Welsh carpenter, Hughes was educated in Wales and London before migrating to Australia in 1884. After several years in a variety of itinerant jobs, he settled in Sydney and became involved in NSW labour politics and shearers' and then waterside unions.

Between 1901 and his becoming Prime Minister in 1915, Hughes established a reputation as a nationalist, an advocate of greater preparations for Australia's defence, and a compelling speaker. As Prime Minister during the First World War he tried twice to introduce conscription, but both referenda failed and his pro-conscription stance led to his expulsion from the Labor Party. This was also the catalyst for a major split which had been looming between industrial and political labour, and Hughes and his supporters joined conservatives to form the Nationalist Party, which Hughes then led as Prime Minister until 1923. In 1931 Hughes helped to form the new conservative party, the United Australia Party. He was narrowly beaten by Robert Menzies to the prime ministership in 1939, but stayed to join the next political incarnation of Australian conservatism, the Liberal Party. He died in 1952, the longest serving parliamentarian in Australia's history.

Standing only 5 ft 6 ins (167 cm), the diminutive Hughes is also remembered for his aggressive and raucous championing of Australia's interests in the First World War. In London in 1916 he outmanœuvred officialdom to buy fifteen frigates, which formed the core of the new Commonwealth Shipping Line. At the end of the war, in London and Paris, his strident nationalism ("I speak for the 60,000 dead") secured for Australia effective control over former German New Guinea, and earned him a reputation for standing up to greater powers. Hughes did not, however, challenge the imperial framework within which Australian overseas interests were expressed. His protection of Australian interests was founded on a then common vision of Australia's white racial destiny.

Hughes was an outspoken opponent of appeasement during the 1930s and played significant roles in government and then in the Advisory War Council during the Second World War. He retained a capacity both to charm and to launch violent attacks, and made strategic use of his deafness to ignore unwanted views.

A Dictionary of Political Biography. Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.