History of the New England newspaper press 18 - Candidate pulled no punches in 1920

The young David Drummond when he was first establishing himself. Every effort was made to block has endorsement as a Progressive Party candidate for the Northern Tablelands seat. This is the eighteenth in a series on the history of the media and especially the newspaper press in New England, the eleventh column on the emergence of the NSW Country Party.

The Glen Innes Progressive Party Electorate Council meeting held to consider the Party’s nominations for the March 1920 NSW State elections had seen a deliberate attempt to exclude Drummond as a candidate. 

Drummond recognized that the events at the meeting might be used to discredit him. There was to be a Farmers’ and Settlers’ (FSA) District Council meeting at Inverell next day. Drummond decided to return from Arding to Inverell in the morning to get the Council's endorsement for his action. 

Waiting at Uralla railway for the northbound train, Drummond met a farmer who casually remarked "All the other candidates are going down to meet Central Council tomorrow. I suppose you will be going". In a flash Drummond replied, just as casually, "Yes I will be going" although it was the first he knew of it. 

In some ways this deliberate attempt to exclude Drummond from the field is not surprising.

To party officials he would not have appeared a good candidate, despite the organising abilities he had already displayed. He was young, turning thirty the next month; very deaf (and adequate hearing aids were still some years off); relatively unknown outside his own district and a non-smoker and non-drinker lacking in easy social graces. Equally, Drummond's stubbornness at Glen Innes would not have endeared him to the other candidates or their supporters.

This stubbornness now came to his aid. Drummond calculated that he just had time to travel to Inverell as planned: north by train to Glen Innes then sixty-eight kilometres across country, get a letter from his District Council stating that they still regarded him as a properly endorsed candidate, then get back to Glen Innes to catch the 5 pm south-bound train.

Next morning Drummond presented himself at the FSA's Sydney headquarters where the Party's Central Council was to meet. The Party's General Secretary (J.J. Price, also General Secretary of the FSA) tried hard to convince Drummond that he should withdraw. Drummond refused, produced the Inverell District Council letter, and was asked to wait.

At that moment one of the chosen four at the Glen Innes meeting stepped from the lift. “I have often heard the expression ‘So & So was so surprised he literally tripped over his own feet’”, Drummond later recalled. “This was the only occasion on which I have ever seen it.” 

“I had been deliberately barred ... and here I was calmly sitting outside the Council room when I was supposed to be 400 miles away in the peaceful countryside.”

 Drummond decided to “pull no punches”. 

“You claim to be a Farmer's Party”, he told Central Council, “yet every attempt has been made to prevent the one bona-fide farmer from being endorsed as a candidate.” Your present team consists of two graziers, a store keeper and a money lender. “If you think with this team you are going to beat the Labor Party which has one if not two genuine Farmers in its team, then I believe you will find yourself badly mistaken.” 

This appeal was successful. Next day it was announced that Bruxner, Crapp, Little and Drummond were the endorsed Progressive candidates.

Note to readers: This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020