The Warwick incident, Queensland 1917
(courtesy of the Queensland State Archives)

On track for a collision . . . .

A year after William Morris Hughes became Labor Prime Minister in 1915, he visited Britain and France for meetings with wartime leaders. When he returned to Australia in June 1916 he attempted to introduce compulsory military training. On 28 October 1916 a national referendum failed to endorse this policy, with a resounding 'No' vote from Queensland making Hughes and Labor Premier T J Ryan opponents.

The federal Labor Party, formed in 1901, split over this issue and on 17 February 1917 Hughes formed a Nationalist government after the resignations of Labor Ministers from his Cabinet. He moved to hold a second referendum to bring in conscription.

In August that year Hughes and Ryan clashed over the north Queensland rail strike and in the lead-up to the referendum Ryan gave a vigorous speech at an anti-conscription rally in Brisbane. When newspaper censors altered reports of the speech, Ryan repeated it in the Queensland Parliament, but the following day censors seized the Hansard copies at the Post Office. When Ryan gave the speech a third time he was summonsed, but a Queensland magistrate dismissed the charges.

While Ryan was challenging Commonwealth wartime laws, Hughes was also campaigning in Queensland, travelling by train and addressing conscription rallies at country railway stations. On 29 November while the Prime Minister was speaking at a rally at the railway station at Warwick, his hat was dislodged by an egg thrown from the crowd.

These two documents give opposite views of the famous 'Warwick incident' and reveal why historians' accounts also differ. Hughes' angry telegram to the Queensland Commissioner for Police was sent that evening from Wallangarra, the railway station on the New South Wales border. The Police Commissioner's report, sent on 3 December, was followed by this letter forwarding statements from witnesses.

On 7 December Hughes appointed the first Commissioner for a Commonwealth Police Force (in 1919 combined with the Special Intelligence Bureau to form the Investigation Branch of the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department).

At the referendum on Thursday 20 December, declared a public holiday in Queensland, the nation again rejected conscription, by a larger majority than the previous year.

Explore the Warwick incident documents.

These two items, the telegram from Prime Minister W M Hughes to the Commissioner of Police in Brisbane 29 November 1917 and the final report from the Commissioner of Police to the Home Secretary 6 December 1917, are from a lengthy file on the incident. Premier's Department Inletters; File top numbered to letter number 15010 of 1917; PRE/A576.

Queensland State Archives.

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