At the height of the Land War in late 1881 the government rounded up hundreds of Land League activists, most notably Charles Stewart Parnell. Among the lesser known was a Wexford journalist, Hugh Mahon, who would later rise to high political office in Australia and become one of the new Commonwealth’s most controversial politicians.
In Australia, Mahon is best known for having been expelled from the Australian parliament, the only person to have suffered that fate. This happened in 1920 after he made a speech critical of British rule in Ireland following the death on hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the Sinn Féin mayor of Cork. In the speech at the Richmond Reserve in Melbourne, Mahon described the British Empire as “this bloody and accursed empire”, leading the prime minister Billy Hughes to accuse him of “seditious and disloyal utterances”.
But there is much more to this intriguing Irish-Australian than that singular, spectacular event.
In Australia Mahon was both revered and reviled. One contemporary wrote, “He may be acclaimed as one among the best newspapermen in the Commonwealth”. Another described him as “a democrat whose snobbish coldness of demeanour would make a snake shudder”.
Born in Offaly in 1857, Hugh was the 13th of 14 children of James and Anna Mahon. In 1869 James, Anna and eight of their children, including young Hugh, gave up their farm and emigrated to America, first to Ontario, Canada and then to Albany, the capital of New York state, where Hugh trained as a printer and newspaperman.
Unfortunately their American dream failed and in 1880 the family returned to Ireland, where Hugh’s brother Patrick had retained a small remnant of the family farm.
For goodness sake, don't become a slave to these Yankee bloodsuckers. Having suffered from them myself I am qualified to sympathise with you
For Hugh, the American experience had not been pleasant. In 1929 he wrote to a niece who had moved to America, “For goodness sake, don’t become a slave to these Yankee bloodsuckers. Having suffered from them myself I am qualified to sympathise with you. They worked me – a child of 13 – 59 hours a week, from 7am to 6pm & I had to walk 3 miles each way from home to the printing office”.
But the newspaper trade was not all Hugh learnt in America. At the time, Albany was the country’s most Irish city. It had an Irish Catholic mayor years before Boston or New York. It was also a Fenian stronghold.
On Hugh’s return he soon found employment as editor of the New Ross Standard and a reporter for the Wexford People. Both newspapers were owned by Edward Walsh, a prominent Wexford nationalist, who in the late 1880s served three prison terms for his newspapers’ outspoken opposition to landlords.
Like his employer, Hugh was an activist as well as a journalist, using the newspapers to support the tenants during the Land War. He also used the Standard’s printing press to print leaflets calling for boycotts of landlords. These activities brought him under police notice. Sub-Inspector Wilson reported to the government, “Mahon is by occupation a reporter and by inclination a rebel”.
When a landlord’s son, Charles Boyd, was murdered in an ambush at Shanbogh, across the river from New Ross, Mahon organised a defence fund to help the two Phelan brothers, Walter and John, who were charged with the crime, and used his newspaper to criticise the police and prosecution authorities, whom he accused of intimidation and sharp practices. He was also an important witness at the trial, providing an alibi for one of the accused, both of whom were acquitted.
In September 1880 Mahon helped organise a meeting at Irishtown, where, according to the Wexford People, 30,000-40,000 turned up to hear Parnell speak about the Land League. Soon thereafter, a branch of the league was established in the town, with Mahon as assistant secretary and later secretary.
In October 1881 Mahon was arrested and interned without trial during the government’s crackdown on the league. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol with Parnell. After two months he was released on health grounds following a diagnosis of tuberculosis.
Mahon immediately returned to his Land League activities in and around New Ross, but after being threatened with re-arrest he took his doctor’s advice and emigrated to Australia.
On arriving in Melbourne in May 1882 Mahon was employed by the local branch of the Land League and travelled extensively, collecting money to send back to the league in Ireland. When John and William Redmond visited Australia in 1883 to promote and raise funds for the new Irish National League, Mahon helped organise their tour.
He then resumed his calling in journalism as a reporter, editor and ultimately newspaper owner. In 1886 Mahon joined Sydney’s Daily Telegraph as a political reporter, rising to become chief of the Telegraph’s parliamentary staff.
Through his political contacts Mahon was appointed secretary of the Rabbit Royal Commission, set up in 1888 to conduct a world-wide competition to find a cure for the rabbit plague then sweeping Australia and threatening its sheep industry. This put him at the centre of an international political storm as supporters of the German bio-chemist Robert Koch attempted to undermine the entry put forward on behalf of the Frenchman Louis Pasteur.
That same year Mahon married Mary Alice L’Estrange of Melbourne. They had four children.
In 1891 Mahon attempted to enter the New South Wales parliament, but his ambition was thwarted by the skulduggery of his Free Trade faction which led to another candidate being nominated in his place.
Following his disappointment he moved to Melbourne with his family, where he took a job with the Australian Mining Standard, a newspaper providing news and comment concerning mining. There he met James MacCallum Smith, with whom he formed an investment syndicate after Smith moved to the newly-discovered goldfields of Western Australia.
In 1895 the fortunes of the Mining Standard turned for the worse and Mahon left for Western Australia at the invitation of Smith who had acquired newspapers in the goldfields.
In partnership with Smith, Mahon established the Menzies Miner in the boom town of Menzies, two days’ ride from Kalgoorlie in the arid outback of the colony. During his time in Menzies Mahon was elected to the inaugural town council and in 1897 unsuccessfully stood for election to the WA parliament. But he also became embroiled in a libel action in which Henry Gregory, the popular Mayor of Menzies, sued him for £5,000.
In 1898, Mahon was appointed editor of the Kalgoorlie Sun. It was a Sunday newspaper which aimed to reach the masses, to be critical of society, to expose social abuses and to promote contemporary literature by publishing reading matter of a high literary standard.
Mahon quickly fitted into the role, often criticising the government of Sir John Forrest. With headlines such as “In the Clutches of Corruption/Land of Forrests, Fakes and Frauds/Some Instances of Robbery and Jobbery”, he soon gained a reputation amongst his fellow journalists as a pugnacious and racy editor.
A contemporary later wrote, “Mahon could put more venom into a stick of type than any man I ever knew. Mahon’s headlines were masterpieces of alliteration and venom”. During Mahon’s 20 months as editor of the Sun he successfully defended five libel actions, four of them prosecutions for criminal libel. But he also exposed corruption in the government railways.
Mahon’s career as a journalist effectively ended in 1901 when he was elected to the first parliament of the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia. Initially representing the seat of Coolgardie, he became the member for Kalgoorlie in 1913 following a redistribution of electoral boundaries.
During his time in parliament Mahon was an early advocate of Aboriginal rights. He served as a minister in four Labor governments, including Postmaster-General in the first Labor ministry in 1904 and Minister for External Affairs during the first World War. After the war his passionate campaigning in support of Irish self-determination during the War of Independence led to his expulsion from parliament.
In 1922 Hugh visited Ireland for the first and last time since his exile 40 years before. On returning to Australia, he saw out the rest of his life as managing director of the Catholic Church Property Insurance Co., which he had established in 1911 at the request of the Australian bishops. He died in 1931 and is buried in Melbourne.
During the traditional condolence motion in parliament following Mahon’s death, one member, recalling Mahon’s Richmond Reserve speech more than a decade before, refused to support the motion, declaring, “The late gentleman … ultimately fell foul of Australian sentiment”.
Many in predominantly British Protestant Australia thought he had a point. Mahon’s speech had been made four days before the second anniversary of the armistice which ended the war in which 60,000 Australians had died fighting for that “bloody and accursed empire”.
Even so, Billy Hughes, who as prime minister had moved Mahon’s expulsion, was perhaps closer to the mark when he described Mahon as “A man of high ideals and great capacity … of strong convictions, and with him love of country was an all-absorbing passion”.
Hugh Mahon: Patriot, Pressman, Politician (Volume 1: the years from 1857 to 1901) by Australian historian Dr Jeff Kildea is to be launched at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, at 6pm on Wednesday, April 26th, by Richard Andrews, Australian Ambassador to Ireland. There will also be launches at the Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore, Co Offaly, on Thursday April 27th, at 8pm, and New Ross Historical Society, Boat Club, Rosbercon, New Ross, Co Wexford, on Friday, April 28th, at 8pm. Contact: anchorbooksaustralia@gmail.com
