Black Wednesday (8 January 1878)

On a single day, 8 January 1878, the colonial government in Victoria sacked several dozen public employees. It was the latest salvo in an ongoing political struggle between liberal and conservative factions in Government. The architect of the mass firing, known as Black Wednesday, was Graham Berry, who as Premier did the sacking. A long-time advocate of liberal causes, he cast a long shadow over the class struggle within Parliament, which eventually reformed itself.

Background

Europeans had come to Australia first in the late 18th century, with visits by Captain James Cook and explorers. The first British settlement in Australia was a penal colony, and the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in 1778.

As convicts served out their sentences and stayed on, they were joined by others from Britain and elsewhere in Europe, and the “civilisation” of the land that Cook had called New South Wales grew, in stature and in land claimed.

The first Europeans visited what is now Melbourne in 1803. It was in 1835 that the city of Melbourne was founded. The discovery of gold nearby led to strong growth in Melbourne and in the surrounding area, Victoria. That was in 1851, the same year that Victoria became a separate colony, independent from the overall British protectorate of New South Wales. Victoria soon had its own government.

After a few years of provisional government, Victoria had a constitution. Official in 1856, the constitution provided for two houses of Parliament, the Legislative Assembly (the lower house) and the Victorian Legislative Council (the upper house). Bills passed by the lower house went then to the upper house; bills by both houses then went to the Governor, who was the Crown’s legal representative, to sign in the name of the monarch, who for the entirety of 19th century Australia was Queen Victoria.

The Governor of Victoria had a largely ceremonial role. The Premier was the real head of Government in Victoria. As was the case in other Australian colonies, the Premier was the leader of the political party that formed a majority in the lower house of Parliament, the Legislative Assembly. As was also the case in Great Britain, the upper house of the Victoria Parliament was populated largely by wealthy landowners; the lower house had more of a mix of professions and net worth. The desire for more equal representation was soon voiced in the lower house.

Passing the Assembly Pay Bill

One champion of the pursuit of a more equal representation was Graham Berry, who had come to Australia from London in 1852 and had found work in general trades before riding the gold rush wave to substantial personal wealth. Berry was elected to the Legislative Assembly and remained liberal in his views on Government, even after being selected Premier in 1875.

In the 1877 election, Berry rode a wave of liberal voting to a large majority in the lower house. In particular, Berry had in mind to reduce the power of the upper house and its landowning “check”, which it exercised on bills that Berry wanted his lower house to pass. As part of his power-limiting agenda, Berry committed to passing a bill to provide for the payment of members of the Legislative Assembly. No member of either house of Parliament was compensated monetarily for their efforts. That was all well and good for the upper house, whose members could afford to give up time to spend in legislative session. Members of the working class, however, could not afford to do so. If members were paid, Berry reasoned, then the lower house would be more likely to be made up of people from the middle and lower end of social and economic classes.

The upper house refused to consider the pay-the-Assembly-members bill. The crisis for Government was very real because Berry, as Premier, had coupled the Assembly pay bill with the overall annual Appropriations Bill; if the upper house did not pass the bill, then none of the government’s programs would be funded. Still, the upper house did nothing.

Berry, after consulting with Governor George Bowen, fired several dozen public servants, arguing that the government had no money to pay them. He started with judges and members of the police force, then moved on to coroners and other government employees. This took place on 8 January and came to be known as Black Wednesday.

Berry next tried to bypass the upper house entirely, first introducing a bill to strip the Council of its powers; the upper house, which still had to approve such bills, naturally voted it down. With public opinion on the side of the liberals, Berry turned out more public servants on 24 January (totalling nearly 400 in all), and the constitutional crisis dragged on. Berry next introduced a bill that eliminated the need of the upper house to approve appropriations bills, then bypassed the upper house and took the bill directly to the Governor, who signed it into law.

The response from London was swift: Bowen was removed as Governor and the two houses of Parliament were told to work things out. The Assembly pay bill was passed and the public servants who had been sacked were reinstated. However, the underlying conflict dragged on for many months, during which time public opinion began to go in favour of the Council. Berry resigned in 1879.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Geoffrey. “Sir Graham Berry (1822–1904).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 3, 1969, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berry-sir-graham-2984/text4355. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

Quick, John. The Legislative Powers of the Commonwealth and the States of Australia, with Proposed Amendments. C. G. Maxwell, 1919, p. 58.

Strangio, Paul. “Black Wednesday.” eMelbourne. www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00200b.htm. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.

Strangio, Paul, and Brian J. Costar. The Victorian Premiers, 1856–2006. Federation Press, 2006, pp. 60–66.

Morrison, Elizabeth. Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840–1890. Melbourne University Press, 2005, pp. 222–237.