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When Andrew Fisher emigrated to Queensland in 1885 he was a tall, handsome, sandy-haired Scot, with hands calloused by 13 years in the coalmines. At 23, he had worked in the mines since childhood and had been a union activist since he was a teenager. A union secretary at 17, he became such a thorn in the side of the mine owners that, in 1881, they blacklisted him as a strike leader. Scottish miners, inspired by the socialist doctrines of Keir Hardie, were then in the vanguard of the union movement.

But Fisher's background as a union leader, even in the fearsome conditions of 19th-century coalmines, had not made him into an embittered rabblerouser. Every account portrays him as simple, modest and deeply sincere, sometimes seeming almost inarticulate. Self-educated, he developed a dedication to social justice and a concern for the underprivileged which most people saw as 'warm-hearted'.

In Queensland, he worked in the Gympie mines and soon gained executive posts in the miners' union. The turbulent years between 1886 and 1900, when Queensland unions struggled against an antagonistic government and powerful employers, provided him with a valuable political education. He worked on the creation of the colony's Labor Party and, in 1893, won the Gympie seat in the Queensland Parliament. Labor had a hard battle for survival and, although the party once gained power in Parliament, it survived for only a week. But Fisher was largely responsible for Australia's first Workmen's Compensation Bill, though it failed to reach the statute books, and a Factories and Shops Act.

Federation brought Fisher election to the first Commonwealth Parliament, to play his part in Labor's balancing act between Free Traders and Protectionists. He was a minister in Watson's government. When Watson resigned, he won the election for leader of the Parliamentary Party.

He first followed the original Labor tactics of supporting the Protectionists, in return for concessions to Labor demands. But Labor was eager for another taste of power and, in 1905, the party knocked out the props which supported Deakin. His collapse was a turning point in federal politics because it drew Free Traders and Protectionists into the alliance which was to become the Liberal Party.

Fisher's first government lasted only seven months before the alliance overwhelmed him. But the picture changed again in the 1910 elections. Labor won a resounding victory and Fisher became the first Labor Prime Minister to be actually voted into power. In 1913 he lost it again, by the single seat which made Joseph Cook the first Liberal Prime Minister.

A little over a year later, Cook forced a double dissolution in the hope of strengthening his position, only to see Labor sweep the polls. Fisher became the only Labor Prime Minister to win a third term until the days of Bob Hawke. But he served just 13 months before failing health and Cabinet squabbles prompted him to resign.

Fisher's modest demeanour and low-key speeches did much to reassure Australians who still feared that a ‘socialist’ government would tear down the pillars of their lifestyle and even establish a republic. But he was still a dedicated party man, committed to Solidarity and the discipline imposed by caucus inside and outside Parliament. His famous comment about the party, "We are all socialists now", left no doubt in anyone's mind about Labor philosophy of that era.

In his second term as Prime Minister he headed Australia's most reformist government until the 1940s. In three years, Labor put 113 new Acts on the statute books and moulded the future pattern of the Commonwealth. Fisher's reforms included liberalisation of the age pension, introduction of a maternity allowance, workmen's compensation for Commonwealth employees, uniform postal charges throughout Australia, strengthening the defence forces, moves to break up land monopolies and proposals for stricter regulation of working hours, wages and employment conditions.

When the First World War burst upon the world, patriotic fervour swept away Labor's anti-war philosophy. In October 1914, Fisher signed Labor's election manifesto which made the historic pledge " .. we will stand by the Mother Country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling" But, in 1916, he opposed the conscription movement which would have put 'the last man' at Britain's disposal.

Appointed High Commissioner in London, he still fretted for the hurly-burly of politics. In the early 1920s, he sought parliamentary nomination from both the British and Australian Labor parties. Both rejected him and, in 1928, he died in London, to some extent a disappointed and forgotten man. Even his grave and memorial, in a London cemetery, were neglected by Australians until they were rediscovered in 1987.

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