John George Gough

John George Gough (5 November 1848 – 15 November 1907) was one of the founders of the New South Wales Labour Party, initially the Labour Electoral League, the first political Labour movement in Australia. He was also one of Labour's five-member leadership group when the party first made its appearance in the New South Wales parliament in 1891. Representing Young, he was first elected in 1889 to the parliament's lower house as a member of the Protectionist Party, which produced Australia's first two prime ministers, Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin. From 1891 to 1894 he represented Labour.[1] Proud that his mother was Australian-born, he was a strong nationalist and republican. John Gough's maternal grandmother was half-aboriginal. He is the only one of Labor's founding fathers who has been found to have had aboriginal ancestry.[2]

One of the pioneers of the Young-Grenfell district, he began his working life as a miner and also became a successful contract builder, leaving a fine legacy of public buildings across New South Wales. He was also a Methodist lay preacher – all but one of the 35 founding elected members of the New South Wales Labour Party were devout Methodists.[3]

Descended from transported convicts on both sides, and orphaned at the age of 13, he was a self-made man.

  1. ^ Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism: The Labor Movement in New South Wales 1870-1900, Canberra (ANU Press), 1973, chapter 6; Martin A.W., Members of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, 1856-1901: Biographical Notes, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1958; obituary in the Burrangong Argus 20/11/1907.
  2. ^ "Reference at www.theaustralian.com.au".
  3. ^ Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party, 1891-1901, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1992