Date of Award
2024
Degree Name
Master of Philosophy (School of Arts and Sciences)
Schools and Centres
Arts & Sciences
First Supervisor
Dr Leigh Straw
Second Supervisor
Dr Shane Burke
Abstract
The controversial conscription referendums of 1916 and 1917 in Australia saw a resurgence of religious sectarianism and a perceived entanglement with the aftermath of political violence in Ireland. Examining the voting outcomes in all the Australian states for the referendums may suggest that Western Australia stood against the nationwide trend of rejecting Prime Minister William Hughes’s proposals for compulsory military service. Analysis over the last thirty years has challenged this idea, which is that Western Australia showed a unique, widespread consensus during the Great War period. A greater understanding has developed with the increasing digital accessibility of wartime primary sources, notably newspapers. The primary objective of this thesis is to address a gap in the historiography of the Great War as it relates to Irish Australians in Western Australia, namely in examining prominent voices during the conscription referendums of 1916 and 1917, primarily through the lens of the Irish-centric Perth newspaper, The W.A. Record. It also studies three Irish Western Australian public figures, Archbishop Patrick Clune and the politicians Patrick Lynch and Hugh Mahon. The work further challenges ideas of so-called consensus in Western Australia and its experience of the Great War by providing evidence that Australia’s Irish diaspora was not united in this critical war period and towards Irish national aspirations.
Publication Details
McClure, A. (2024). Challenging the Myth of Consensus: Irish Australian Voices in Perth during the Great War Conscription Referendums [Master of Philosophy (School of Arts and Sciences)]. The University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/453