People Australia

Arthur Alexander Rutherford (also known as Adam Alexander) (1890-1956) clerk, trade union official and watchman

Birth: 27 October 1890 at Edinburgh, Scotland, son of Adam James Rutherford, farmer, and Janet, née Brown. Marriages: (1) June 1913 at Waverley, Sydney, New South Wales, to Jeannie Wyllie Birnie. They had one daughter and one son. The marriage ended in divorce. (2) 1938 at Bankstown, Sydney, to Kelsie Mavis Brown (1906-1999). They had two daughters and one son. Death: 25 June 1956 in his usual residence at Stacey Street, Bankstown. Religion: Presbyterian. 

• Worked at trade in Canada, America and New Zealand. Settled in Australia in 1910.
• Secretary of the Saddlery Trades’ Section of the Leather Trades Federation, NSW, from about 1916 to about 1927.
• President of the Leather Trades Federation for three years.
• Took a leading role in establishing the Leather and Canvas Trades Federation. Secretary of the Leather Trades Federation.
• He was secretary of the Hospital and Asylum Employees Association, NSW, from 1928 until 1944.
• Rutherford had served on the central executive of the Australian Labor Party from 1916 to 1918, and was a member of the Industrial Vigilance Council. Notorious as the “secret junta”, this was a powerful group then including W. J. McKell, Sam Rosa and Albert Willis, that opposed conscription and the parliamentarians that supported it.
• Rutherford attended the first One Big Union conference in Melbourne in 1919 and represented NSW at interstate conferences in the early 1920s at least. Was a member of the International Socialist Party.
• He was sometime president of the Central Kensington branch of the ALP and of Botany State Electoral Council. Noted as a keen and capable speaker.
• Contested Phillip Ward for Labor 1924 and in October was one of the unsuccessful challengers to McKell for preselection for the seat of Botany.
• In the ALP leadership crisis of 1927 Rutherford again challenged McKell for pre-selection, this time for the seat of Redfern. Though he ran as a “the real Lang candidate”, he was again unsuccessful.
• Appointed justice of the peace.
• In August 1944 he was one of the three members Premier McKell appointed to the newly created Hospitals Commission, receiving a salary of £1265 per year; he retired in October 1950. His last occupation was “watchman”.
• Was a pensioner at his death. Cause of death: coronary occlusion (4 days) and arteriosclerosis (10 years).

Sources
Labor Year book 1934-35 p 235; Labor Daily (Sydney), 25 September 1924 p 4, 13 January 1927; Australian Worker, 17 November 1926 p 1.; C. Cunneen, William John McKell, (Sydney, 2000), pp 62, 79, 89, 94 & 95.