A political as well as a propagandist movement cultural politics and the rise of Fisher Labor

'A political ... as well as a propagandist movement': cultural politics and the rise of Fisher Labor. '[N]ever ... in the history of the world had a greater victory been achieved'. 1 So declared Ernest Farrar, Vice-President of the NSW Political Labor League, addressing a euphoric Sydney gathering  in the aftermath of the April 1910 federal election. In simple electoral terms, Farrar was correct. Following its defeat of Alfred Deakin's 'Fusion', the Andrew Fisher-led Australian Labor Party ALP  became the first party of its type to hold national office in its own  right anywhere on earth. Federal Labor previously enjoyed three months of minority government under Chris Watson's leadership during mid-1904; in 1899  Anderson Dawson's Queensland Labor party formed a seven day  colonial administration, each representing world firsts. By 1913, the ALP had held office in every state, albeit for farcically short periods  in both Tasmania 1909 and Victoria 1913. Whereas British Labour was little more than a parliamentary rump and socialist parties in France and Germany extremely weak, during  Fisher Labor's three year term 1910-13 the planks of Labor's  platform were made law. No 'Labor' party existed in comparable nations such as New Zealand or would ever seriously exist in the United  States. 2 These comparisons invite this article's central question: why did Labor enjoy such precocious success? Labor's emergence during the late nineteenth century has been a well-documented, if narrowly concerned subject. There are institutional accounts of the origins and emergence of Labor's  federal and state incarnations, numerous biographies of its leading  lights, as well as more wide ranging survey histories of the broader  labour movement. Narrative histories of controversial episodes such as the party's split over conscription during World War I are  historiographical staples. More recently the early movement's populist ideological trajectory and racial and gender exclusivity have  been scrutinised, and approaches emphasising locality as well as  transnational and comparative frameworks deployed. Central to this historiography is the concept of 'labourism'. For many scholars, labourism is an ideological marker, or lack thereof, describing the practices of Labor in  government. For others, the concept denotes a somewhat esoteric reformist spirit that prefers pragmatism to ideological purity. 3 This longstanding debate scarcely requires explication. Suffice to say, by the early 1990s, labourism, whether celebratory or pejorative, had won  the historiographical day. 4 However, many of these analyses relied upon a vision of what the party 'should be' or 'could  become'. 5 Furthermore, according to Terry Irving, the dichotomous model of socialism and we might add social democracy  versus labourism downplayed Labor's complex relationship with  socialism meaning 'it was difficult to draw out in any precise way  the actual ideas and practices of labourism'. 6   This article possesses two major aims. Firstly, it seeks to develop a more historically sensitive and methodologically satisfactory model of  labourism that moves us beyond the dead-end labourism/socialism debates  indeed elsewhere I argue that labourism must be seen as the  Australianist version of social democracy. 7 This is not to argue that historians should jettison the concept. As Frank Bongiorno notes, labourism 'remains useful as a label for a particular set of  political attitudes, centring on support for an independent Labor Party  committed to constitutional methods and the modification of market  outcomes to the advantage of the working class and other productive but  disadvantaged members of society'. 8   Yet few histories systemically examine why Labor governments  emerged at all and cultivated constituencies to, allegedly, betray. Even fewer explore labourism's powerful cultural basis. Most assume its existence, rather than understanding it to be a crucial aspect of early  Labor politics. By contrast, I will argue that the distinctive language, iconography and narrative tools wielded by early Laborites--what I term  the party's cultural politics or cultural labourism--drove much of  their precocious success, culminating in Fisher's majority  government. The paper's second aim reasserts the political and intellectual agency of Fisherera Labor and the pre-World War I labour  movement more generally. Standard accounts provide a narrative description of Labor's growing parliamentary strength often from a  critical Left perspective that highlights Fisher's continuities  with Deakinite Liberalism, 9 or stress the socio-economic forces that  fostered a dichotomous class-based politics. 10 Other studies summarised the legislative achievements of the Fisher Labor governments  of 1908-09 and 1910-13, 11 and in recent times belatedly provided  biographical treatments of Fisher. 12 Even historians sympathetic to Labor have downplay  Find out more on  instant pay day loans