to win; this applies even to an incumbent prime minister, as was evident when
Mrs Thatcher was successfully challenged in 1990.
Subsequently, the Conservative Party followed Labour in involving the
party membership in leadership elections, although thefield is settled by
the parliamentary party. Leaders of the Labour Party were elected by the
parliamentary party throughout the twentieth century until 1980, when
voting was turned over to the membership.
Canadian political parties have used party conventions to elect party leaders
since the end of the Great War. The initial rationale, in the case of the
succession following the death of Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1919, the Liberal
leader, was that the party in the House of Commons was too small for the
task; American methods of choosing presidential candidates presumably pro-
vided something of a model. On a number of occasions, the Progressive
Conservative Party has elected leaders who did not have a seat in the House
of Commons. Two Liberal leaders who became prime minister were not in the
House of Commons when they won the party leadership, John Turner in 1984
and Jean Chrétien in 1990, but they soon entered the House (in both cases, as
Leader of the Opposition).
Party solidarity is very marked in Australia. Lord Norton of Louth has been
able to write two substantial volumes about party dissent in the UK House
of Commons. There has even been a certain latitude in the Canadian House of
Commons, if not especially in recent decades. But in Australia, unless a party
split is involved, party dissent could be exhaustively disposed of in a very brief
research note.
Perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of the party essence of the Aus-
tralian parliament is the speakership of the House of Representatives. Thefirst
Speaker, Frederick Holder, a former premier of South Australia, was elected
unanimously to what Deakin described as‘one of the highest appointments in
the gift of the new Government’(cited in Nethercote 2015). A protectionist,
he was the Barton government’s choice for the post because another
former premier of South Australia, Charles Cameron Kingston, had joined
the ministry. When Holder died whilst presiding over vigorous debate in the
House, a long and even more vigorous debate marked the contested choice of
a successor.
The Labor Party supported one of its own, the chairman of committees. But
Deakin, the prime minister, preferred one of his own supporters and used the
majority of the Fusion government to secure the election. His argument was
that a member of the Labor Party, used to caucus practice, where the will of the
majority bound the whole, could not shed such loyalties simply by ascending
the Speaker’s chair. The Labor leader, Andrew Fisher, unsuccessfully con-
tended that loyalty to the party platform did not affect impartiality in the
chair (Reid 1987, ch. 2).
J. R. Nethercote