Paddy Brosnan And The Prime Minister

24/7/2019        

 

    I love a good story, and you just never know where you’re going to bump into one. And considering that a plaque’s been put up to commemorate this, I’m surprised I haven’t heard it before. But it took a passing conversation – and I do mean passing, it lasted no more than a minute! - with a bloke in deepest Co Kerry a few trips ago, to enlighten me.

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Jan 28th 2017 - Ireland

     We’re walking up Plunkett St in Killarney, Herself and me, dodging showers and heading for the car. They’re currently digging up the entire roadway, kerb to kerb, to lay deep drainage pipes, and only the footpaths are open, with those high temporary building site fences each side, leaving about three and a half feet of slightly uphill pedestrian access between it and the shopfronts.
 

     Just ahead of us is a bloke going our way, but further up there’s two more with a hand pallet truck with a very large keg on it and the whole thing is rolling down in our direction, barely under control. Our fellow walker turns to us and in a rich Kerry twang says -

     “Jaysus I hope he’s goin’ off somewhere before he gets to us or we’ll be over t’ fence!”

     “Geez yeah, not gunna be enough room for all of us”, I add and he grins and says –

     “Australians eh”, but not really a question, while the keg and pallet thankfully roll off into a pub archway. So we walk along together, and without breaking stride, he launches into –

    “Me great uncle name a Brosnan, he once egged Billy Hughes y’know. It was in Queensland and he’d got a letter from Hughes sayin’ he was goin’ t’ have t’ go off ta war an fight for King an’ Country an’ me uncle took offence an’ he fronted the man an’ had words an’ the two a them got into fisticoofs but me great uncle didn’t know Billy Hughes used t’ be a boxer and he got floored.”

    Okay, it has that ring of truth about it, but hey we’re talking about the Australian Prime Minister from back in World War One.

     “What, so he egged him?!”

     “Yes he did, egged him f’ sure!” and us and the bloke have a good old chuckle together as he branches off into a shop and is gone.

    Being a compulsive history buff, genealogist, and all round stickybeak, AND I’m also fascinated by the way oral history gets the “Chinese whisper” treatment in the re-telling, I couldn’t wait to check this out, a story surely passed down in his family, and had to be at least third hand for him.

    There’s about five versions of what happened - plus our Kerryman’s passing condensed slant on it - but best I can make out, “The Day The Prime Minister Got Egged By Paddy Brosnan” went something like this.

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     William Morris “Billy” Hughes was born in London of Welsh parents, emigrated to Australia in 1884 when he was 22, worked as a labourer, station hand and cook, spent time in the New South Wales bush organising for the Amalgamated Shearers' Union, studied law, became a barrister in 1903, and went into politics, scrabbled his way up to Prime Minister.
 

     There’s nothing that says he was a boxer, but he had an “abrasive manner and chronic dyspepsia that was thought to contribute to his volatile temperament”, and while there wasn’t much of him, he was a wiry bugger and sorting out shearers and wharfies would surely have demanded a certain amount of ability in the punching department.

     Hughes was a fiery advocate for Australia's support of the British Empire in the war, and after 28,000 diggers were lost on the Western Front in July and August 1916, the Generals persuaded him that Conscription was the answer. But his party included Irish Catholics, union representatives, and Socialists, all bitterly opposed to it, especially by many Irish Australians still shocked by Britain's response to the recent Easter Rising. Not to mention the very public stance of Catholic Archbishop Mannix, an Irishman not known to take crap from too many.

     A Referendum saw Conscription defeated, but the old firebrand wouldn’t leave it alone, eventually got chucked out of his Party, formed a new one, kept going as PM, and set up for another Referendum in Dec 1917 - which incidentally was also knocked back, by an even bigger margin. But it was while he was hitting the hustings in the lead up to it that IT happened.

     Everyone can agree that on 29th November, 1917, Hughes stopped off to harangue the people of Warwick in Queensland, at their local railway station, the crowd milling and hurling “hoots groans and vile epithets”, but with Queensland police at hand, as there was “a degree of violence unusual in Australian politics” in those days.

     Amongst the mob were brothers Paddy and Barty Brosnan, and what happened next went (variously) like this –
 

     An egg (or possibly two, or three, or even a “fusillade” of eggs) came flying out of the crowd and one at least knocked Billy’s hat off (or hit him in the gob), and the PM went berko and jumped into the mob, maybe or maybe not reaching for a revolver that thankfully wasn’t there, or possibly just to exchange a few well placed whacks with one Paddy Brosnan, who may or may not have thrown the egg, and Paddy’s brother Barty may or may not have got stuck in, along with some or maybe half the crowd, but definitely “blows were exchanged and blood spilled.”

     Coming back to the platform with blood on his hand, PM Billy ordered police Sergeant Kenny to arrest Paddy Brosnan for a breach of Commonwealth law, but Sgt Kenny more or less told Hughes to get stuffed as here in Qld he didn’t have the authority. Which got RIGHT up Billy’s nose (and some say eventually led to the formation of the Aust Federal Police Force!)

     But Paddy and Barty were eventually arrested, although were fined only for disturbing the peace. But the newspapers had a field day, one of the more left-leaning reporting –

    “Because a man named W. M. Hughes was greeted at Warwick with a couple of ancient eggs, one of which landed on his hat, the whole Tory jingo press of Australia developed hysterics, and desperately sought to lead the public to believe that Warwick had become a nest of brigands who had in a body set upon this poor little man from Melbourne and attempted to slay him.”

     And that’s more or less the story of “The Warwick Egg Incident”.

     But there’s a postscript.

     When Billy Hughes died in 1952, Paddy Brosnan sent a telegram of condolences to Dame Mary Hughes, and in the press it was reported -

     WARWICK EGG THROWER NOW SORRY.

     Mr. Patrick Matthew (Paddy) Brosnan, 77, a grey-haired, 6ft 4in tall, and 14-stone retired horse-trainer of Sandgate, said “Billy was a great old feller... I hit him fair and square on the mouth as he arrived at Warwick railway station. He just kept on going. He was campaigning for conscription at that time. He may have been right, but I didn't want to be conscripted. I forgot all about the incident 30 years ago. Poor old Billy, slipping away like that,” he added.

     Paddy himself died at his home in Queensland just two years after Billy Hughes.

    So there you go – never know where or when a good story will cross your path.

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