Isaac Isaacs
Sir
Isaac Alfred Isaacs (
6 August 1855 -
12 February,
1948)
Australian judge and politician, was the ninth
Governor-General of Australia, the first
Jew, and the first Australian to occupy that post.
Isaacs was born in
Melbourne, the son of a
Jewish tailor who had arrived in
Victoria from
Britain the previous year: his family was originally of Polish-Jewish origin. When he was four he moved with his family to
Yackandandah in northern Victoria, and then to nearby Beechworth. He went to the local state school, where he displayed his academic ability by becoming dux of his class. After finishing high school he stayed in Beechworth as a pupil-teacher.
In
1875 he moved to
Melbourne and found work at the Prothonotary's Office of the Law Department. In 1876, while still working full-time, he started studying law part-time at the
University of Melbourne. He graduated in
1880 and became a Master of Laws in
1883. In
1888 he married Deborah Jacobs, with whom he had two daughters.
In
1892 Isaacs was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a radical liberal. In
1893 he became Solicitor-General, and in
1894 Attorney-General, a position he held until
1901. In
1897 he was elected to the
Convention which drafted the
Australian Constitution, where he supported those arguing for a more democratic draft.
Isaacs was elected to the first
federal Parliament in
1901, as a critical supporter of
Edmund Barton and his
Protectionist government. He was one of a group of backbenchers pushing for more radical policies, and he earned the dislike of many of his colleagues through what they saw as his aloofness and rather self-righteous attitude to politics.
Alfred Deakin appointed Isaacs Attorney-General in
1905, but he was a difficult colleague and in
1906 Deakin was keen to get him out of politics by appointing him to the
High Court bench. Here he joined H B Higgins as a radical minority on the Court, in opposition to the Chief Justice,
Sir Samuel Griffith. He served on the Court for 24 years, acquiring a reputation as a learned, radical, but uncollegial justice.
In
1930 the
Labor Prime Minister,
James Scullin, appointed Isaacs, aged by this time 75, as Chief Justice. Shortly afterwards, however, Scullin decided to appoint an Australian as Governor-General, and offered the post to Isaacs. This sparked a storm of protest from the
Nationalist Opposition and the conservative press.
Critics of the appointment were careful to say that they had no opposition to Isaacs personally, and the fact that he was Jewish was never mentioned, but there is no doubt that currents of personal dislike of Isaacs and of
anti-Semitism ran beneath the debate. Scullin had to travel to
London to personally advise
King George V to make the appointment, which the King reluctantly agreed to.
With Australia in the depths of the
Great Depression, Isaacs agreed to a reduction in salary, and conducted the office with great frugality. He gave up his official residences in
Sydney and Melbourne and most official entertaining. He was the first Governor-General to live permanently at
Government House, Canberra. This was well-received with the public, as was Isaacs's image of rather austere dignity.
Although Isaacs was seen as a Labor appointment, the Scullin government fell at the end of
1931 and the rest of Isaacs's term was spent under the
United Australia Party government of
Joseph Lyons. There was some initial chill between Isaacs and the politicians who had opposed his appointment, but Lyons treated him with courtesy and he behaved with scrupulous propriety.
Isaacs was 81 when his term ended in
1936, but his public life was far from over. He remained active in various causes for another decade, and wrote frequently on matters of constitutional law. In the 1940s he became embroiled in controversy with the Jewish community both in Australia and internationally through his outspoken opposition to
Zionism. Isaacs was not particularly religious, but he insisted that Jewishness was a religious identity and not a national or ethnic one, and he opposed the notion of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine.
Isaacs opposed Zionism partly because he disliked nationalism of all kinds, and saw Zionism as a form of Jewish national chauvinism, and partly because he saw the Zionist agitation in Palestine as disloyalty to the
British Empire, to which he was devoted. When Zionist terrorists blew up the
King David Hotel in
1946, he wrote that "the honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism." He died in February
1948 and thus did not live to see the creation of the State of
Israel.
External links
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