LAST Saturday, to herald state election week, we challenged readers with a trivia night question.
Who were the two Labor members who made it to the national stage – and big time indeed – and once lived in Hamilton as neighbours, separated by the local secretary of the Hamilton branch of their party?
Their names featured prominently in national public affairs for many decades during the 1900s.
One has the family name on a street sign here, the other’s pops up constantly in court proceedings usually representing the union movement.
The answer was Frank Crean and William Slater.
DEPUTY PM, FEDERAL TREASURER
HAMILTON’S Frank Crean was a senior minister in the Australian Labor Party Government of Gough Whitlam from 1972 to 1975 and was Deputy Prime Minister for the last six months of the government’s term.
In 1916 he was born Francis Daniel Crean in Hamilton, where his father was a bicycle-maker of Irish Catholic descent.
Crean, however, was a Presbyterian and changed his name from Francis Daniel to the less Irish-sounding Frank.
He graduated from the University of Melbourne with degrees in arts and commerce and a diploma in public administration and became an accountant and tax consultant.
In 1945, he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly, but was defeated in 1947.
He was re-elected in 1949. In 1951, Crean quit state politics to stand for the safe Labor seat of Melbourne Ports in the Australian House of Representatives.
In Canberra, Crean advanced rapidly, since he was one of the few Labor members with formal qualifications in economics.
In 1956, he was elected to the Opposition front-bench and became in effect shadow treasurer (although Labor did not have a formal shadow ministry until 1969), a position he held for 16 years.
Crean was Labor deputy leader and treasurer during the Whitlam era, found growing up in Hamilton during the Depression influenced his decision to move into politics.
“For a lot of people these days the Depression is just history,” Frank recalled when The Spectator interviewed him in 2002. “But in a country town like Hamilton you saw it all around you . . . it was a pretty sad sort of business.”
The Crean family lived next door to a Mr Wallace who was then secretary of the Hamilton branch of the State Labor Party.
A bit further down the road lived William Slater, who was Labor member for Dundas.
“I got to know him early on,” Frank said. “My mother’s people were in Melbourne then, so I came to Melbourne for holidays and Slater invited me to come and visit parliament.”
Frank went to Gray St Primary School and was invited by Graeme Holmes, the school’s then principal, to attend their 150th anniversary celebrations.
He went on to attend Hamilton High School, which Frank said the town was lucky to have.
He also said he was fortunate his father’s business (in which a young Reg Ansett used to take bookings for his fledgling Hamilton-Ballarat motor service), kept going long enough for him and his siblings to remain at school.
“In the early 1930s, a fee came in for attending high school after the age of 14,” Frank recalled. “It was six pounds a year”.
He remembered, also, the strength of the then Hamilton High technical wing.
“It was opposite the high school and it was great for farmers’ kids and others to do things like blacksmithing and other practical things.”
“One of the biggest mistakes in education has been the abolition of technical schools,” he said, “and confining students to universities.” “Some people are better with their hands than their heads and technical schools covered that. It’s a big loss.”
Frank Crean’s son, Simon, was leader of the Labor Party.
Another, Dr David Crean, became a minister in the state Labor Government in Tasmania.
The third son, Stephen Crean, became lost while skiing and died in a blizzard near Charlotte Pass in August, 1985.
A massive search failed to find him. His remains were found more than two years later.
Frank Crean died December 2, 2008, aged 92.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL, HOUSE SPEAKER
WILLIAM (Bill) Slater, Hamilton solicitor and MLA for Dundas, was born probably on 20 May, 1890, at Wangaratta, son of William Slater, a travelling salesman who was born in Ireland, and Marie Agatha O’Reilly (or Reilly).
About 1894 William abandoned Marie, leaving her to raise three children in extreme poverty at Prahran.
Young Bill learned to read and write, but was forced to leave school and work barefoot as a newsboy at South Yarra.
He decided to enter the law and educated himself at night in the Prahran Free Library where he met Maurice Blackburn.
Both became lifelong socialists and temperance advocates.
Slater regarded World War I as an inevitable outcome of capitalist imperialism and refused to join friends in volunteering for active service.
After the death toll at Gallipoli mounted, however, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 11 December, 1915, and was posted to the 10th Field Ambulance.
By November, 1916, he was serving in France.
Sent to hospital in England, Slater agreed by cable to stand as a Labor candidate in the forthcoming Victorian general elections.
The polls were held on 15 November, 1917.
Eleven days later he was stunned to learn that he had won the seat of Dundas in the Legislative Assembly.
Blackburn appointed Slater an articled clerk in his legal firm’s branch office in Hamilton.
The young man rode his bicycle around the district to visit clients and the electors who had voted for him sight unseen.
When he was admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor on 1 March, 1922, Blackburn made him junior partner and named the firm Blackburn & Slater.
In 1924 Slater became attorney-general and solicitor-general in the short-lived (July-November) Prendergast Labor government.
Slater pushed through Victoria’s first Adoption of Children Act (1928) and attempted (1931) to establish a solicitors’ guarantee fund (eventually introduced in 1948).
In May, 1940, Slater was named Speaker of the Legislative Assembly to widespread acclaim.
Curtin’s Federal Labor government announced his appointment as the first Australian minister to the Soviet Union in October, 1942.
Resigning the Speakership but not from parliament, he flew to Russia and took office on 13 January, 1943.
He reported on the magnificent struggle of the Russian people against the German invaders but, falling seriously ill, relinquished his post on 15 April and returned home in June.
After Labor regained power in Victoria, Slater’s close friend, John Cain, appointed him chief secretary, attorney-general and solicitor-general on 21 November, 1945.
A massive campaign in the Dundas electorate allegedly financed by Wren contributed to Slater’s defeat in the election in November, 1947.
The Labor Party found him a safer seat – Doutta Galla, in the Legislative Council – which he retained from 1949 until his death.
In 1952-55 he was again attorney-general, with the extra portfolios of immigration and prices.
Slater had taken his brother-in-law, Hugh Gordon, into partnership in 1935; he retained the name Slater & Gordon.
The firm specialized in cases involving trade unions and workers’ compensation.
Some of the junior partners and employees were overtly or secretly members of the Communist Party of Australia; a number of them figured prominently in the Petrov affair.
Suffering from cancer, Slater died of a coronary occlusion on 19 June, 1960, in South Melbourne.
