South Australia has nation's only League of Empire from 1904; disappears in 1954

Chief justice and League of Empire president Samuel Way (wearing top hat) with state governor Henry Galway at Montefiore Hill in 1914 to present colours to the 9th Light Horse Regiment.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

 

South Australia from 1904 had possibly the only Australian branch of the League of the Empire. Its first president was chief justice Samuel Way, with Madeline Rees Ward as secretary and governor George Le Hunte as patron.

Meetings were initially held at the Advanced School for Girls in Grote Street where Ward, a staunch Anglican, was the long-time headmistress.

The patriotic League was prominent at the wreath laying ceremony at the statue of Queen Victoria on Victoria Square each Empire Day (May 24, celebrated as the Queen’s birthday prior to 1901). The league dwindled and disappeared in 1954.

Pre-World War I Adelaide also had the Victoria League was set up in 1911 in Austin Street, off Pulteney Street, 10 years after the one formed in England in 1901 in memory of Queen Victoria.

Lawyer and politician Josiah Symon was president of the Adelaide branch of the Royal Empire Society (formerly the Royal Colonial Institute) and the Anglo Saxon Club. He addressed the packed Adelaide Town Hall on Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee (1897) for two hours.

But Symon filled halls for his speeches for Australian federation, and in 1900 drew an unprecedented audience to the Democratic Club to hear him speak for abolishing legal appeals to the Privy Council in Britain.

Symon became president of the Australasian Federation League of South Australia in 1895, and later of the Commonwealth league. His vision was to combine Australian nationalism with British imperialism. His nationalism wasn’t limited by his insistence on maintaining certain state rights.

A one-time South Australian attorney-general and long-serving member of the Legislative Assembly, Symon was elected as senator for the state in 1904 and then federal attorney general. He kept up a fierce rivalry with Australia’s first chief justice Samuel Griffith.