Douglas Henry Bardolph (18 February 1893 – 2 February 1951) was an Australian journalist, trade unionist and politician.
History
Henry Bardolph (ca.1854 – 22 June 1933) and Mary Bardolph (née Taggart) had five sons, and lived at
Manly, New South Wales
Manly is a beach-side suburb of northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is north-east of the Sydney central business district and is currently one of the three administrative centres of the local government area of ...
, where they ran a refreshment room or wine bar. They moved to Victoria, where two sons (Donald Francis Bardolph and Harold Travers Bardolph) died of pneumonic influenza within a few days of each other in the
epidemic of 1919, aged 31 and 28 respectively. The family moved to Adelaide around 1919; Henry set up in business as building contractor, notably responsible for the
Unley Oval
Unley Oval (also known as Wigan Oval under a naming rights agreement), is a multi-use stadium in Unley, an inner southern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It is used for lower-grade South Australian Grade Cricket League matches, but its ma ...
grandstand. Their youngest son, (Clement Patrick) Charles Bardolph, died in Adelaide in September 1926 aged 29 years.
Doug worked as a journalist and proprietor of the ''Unley News''. He edited and published the ''South Australian Worker'' from 1930 to 1933; his brother
Ken Bardolph published the ''Labor Weekly'' from 1931 to 1934. Both were members of the
Labor Party and high-profile operators in the Union movement.
After a series of unsworn allegations of collusion and
vote buying Vote buying (also referred to as electoral clientelism and patronage politics) occurs when a political party or candidate distributes money or resources to a voter in an upcoming election with the expectation that the voter votes for the actor handi ...
at a preselection ballot, a three-man committee of enquiry (Sampson, Burgess and Grealy) had both brothers sacked from the A.L.P. They, with other disaffected unionists, founded a
South Australian chapter of the Lang Labor Party, with Doug as President. At a time of high and rising unemployment among the working classes, and dissatisfaction with both established political parties, the Lang message found ready acceptance. At the
1933 election, Lang Labor candidates Doug Bardolph,
Bob Dale (who joined Lang Labor while a member for
Sturt) and
Tom Howard won all three seats in the multi-member
Adelaide electorate. Other seats they contested were
Port Adelaide,
West Torrens and
Legislative Council District No. 1. The A.L.P. applied to the
Court of Disputed Returns
The Court of Disputed Returns is a court, tribunal, or some other body that determines disputes about elections in some common law countries. The court may be known by another name such as the Court of Disputed Elections. In countries that derive ...
to have the Adelaide election results overturned on various grounds, but failed.
In June 1934 the three South Australian Labor parties (A.L.P., Parliamentary Labor Party and Lang Labor) achieved a degree of unity, one of the prices of which was the re-admission of all expelled members, and Doug rejoined, but was disenfranchised in August 1935 when he refused to pay the amount of "sustentation fee" (a levy on A.L.P. parliamentarians) demanded of him. At the
1938 election, Doug, as a "Labor" candidate, independent of the A.L.P., contested and won the seat of
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...
, which had become a single-member electorate.
He was one of 14 of 39 lower house MPs at the election to be elected as an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
, which as a grouping won 40 percent of the primary vote, more than either of the major parties.
Tom Stott
Tom Cleave Stott Order of the British Empire, CBE (6 June 1899 – 21 October 1976) spent 37 years as an independent member of the South Australian House of Assembly, from 1933 to 1970. He served as Speaker of the South Australian House of Asse ...
was the de facto leader of the independent caucus within parliament.
At the
1944 election he, again as an independent "Labor" candidate, received the largest number of primary votes on 43.5 percent, but the A.L.P. candidate
R. A. Dale on 37.2 percent won after
Communist Alf Watt's preferences were distributed from their 19.4 percent vote, a South Australian Communist record. He stood for the same seat at the
1947 and
1950 elections
The following elections occurred in the year 1950.
Africa
* 1950 South-West African legislative election
Asia
* 1950 Iranian legislative election
Australia
* 1950 New South Wales state election
* 1950 Queensland state election
* 1950 South ...
, but received progressively lower support. He died of cancer in
Croydon
Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...
the following year. He never married.
His brother Ken had rejoined the A.L.P. and served in the
Legislative Council from 1941 to 1964, the year he died.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bardolph, Douglas Henry
Members of the South Australian House of Assembly
Australian trade unionists
Australian newspaper editors
1893 births
1951 deaths
Independent members of the Parliament of South Australia
20th-century Australian politicians
20th-century Australian journalists