Jack Holloway
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The Right Honourable Jack Holloway |
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| Member of the Australian Parliament for Flinders |
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In office 12 October 1929 – 19 December 1931 |
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| Preceded by | Stanley Bruce |
| Succeeded by | Stanley Bruce |
| Member of the Australian Parliament for Melbourne Ports |
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In office 19 December 1931 – 19 March 1951 |
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| Preceded by | James Mathews |
| Succeeded by | Frank Crean |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
12 April 1875 Hobart, Tasmania |
| Died | 3 December 1967 (aged 92) St Kilda, Victoria |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Political party | Australian Labor Party |
| Occupation | Unionist |
Edward James "Jack" Holloway (12 April 1875 – 3 December 1967), Australian politician, was born in Hobart, the son of a stonemason. He had little formal education and was apprenticed at an early age as a bootmaker. When he was 15 he moved to Melbourne, and later spent some time as a gold prospector in Western Australia. He also worked for a time in Broken Hill. By 1910 he had returned to Melbourne and worked as a boot machinist. He became an official of the Boot Trade Employees Association, and was also active in the Australian Labor Party. He was secretary of the No Conscription Committee during World War I. In 1916 he became secretary of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, a position he held until 1929. He was a socialist and militant trade unionist, but opposed Communism and other revolutionary ideologies then current in the trade union movement.
At the 1928 federal election, Holloway stood as the Labor candidate against the Nationalist (conservative) Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, in his seat of Flinders south of Melbourne. He was roundly defeated, but sought a rematch in 1929. His candidacy was a protest against the Bruce government's plan to dismantle the arbitration system.
On paper, Holloway faced odds as daunting as he'd faced in 1928. Flinders appeared to be a fairly safe Nationalist seat; Labor needed a 10.7 percent swing to take the seat off the Coalition. However, the Bruce government was thrown from office after suffering a massive 18-seat swing. Bruce even lost his own seat to Holloway after an independent Liberal candidate's preferences flowed mostly to Holloway, which was enough to give Holloway the victory. This was the first of only two occasions on which a serving Australian Prime Minister has lost his own seat at a general election (the other being John Howard losing his seat to Maxine McKew in 2007).
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