People Australia

Alf Warton, by Talma Studios, 1908

Sydney Mail, 29 July 1908, p 282

Alfred Charles (Alf) Warton (1872-1931) tramway employee, trade union official and political activist 

Birth: 8 November 1872 at Grenfell, New South Wales, son of native-born parents Edwin Lewis Warton (1845-1917), carpenter, and Clara Slattery Enscoe, née Matthews (1848-1907). Marriage: 22 October 1903 at Redfern, Sydney, to Emmeline Marie Kennedy (1882-1960), born at Emerald Hill, Victoria. They had one daughter and three sons. Death: 14 June 1931 in his home at White Street, Manly, NSW. Religion: buried with Anglican rites. 

• Active in political labour movement from 1891. Resided at Young in the 1890s. Was country organiser for the Australian Labor Federation in conjunction with candidature of W. M. Hughes, R. Sleath and W. J. Ferguson.
• Honorary auditor to Australian Workers’ Union head office. In 1900 he worked in NSW tramway service. In 1901 he called the first meeting of tramway employees, Newtown, and was founder and secretary for thirty years of the Australian Tramway Employees’ Union (ATEU), NSW branch. Supported tramway strikes in 1908 and 1917. Following the latter strike, the ATEU was refused re-registration and his former colleague Harry Lawton successfully registered a rival union, the Tramways Traffic Association. The Warton-led NSW Government Tramway Employees’ union was re-registered in January 1921.
• He was his union’s delegate to the Eight-hour Committee, NSW Trades and Labor Council, Trades Hall Management Committee, Australian Labor Party executive and the ALP conference. Editor of Railway and Tramway Record from 1904.
• A skilled advocate described by Mr Justice Heydon as ‘very able man, and one of the best specimens representing the union organisations’, though within his union at times he was vigorously opposed and was accused of incompetence and dishonesty. Struggled to revive the union after the 1917 general strike.
• Member of the board of directors of Paddington, Waverley and Woollahra Starr-Bowkett Building Society. Director of Labor Daily, 1927.
• Active member of the ALP. Pre-selected for the seat of Cowra NSW Legislative Assembly in 1898, he withdrew in favour of Hector Lamond. He was an unsuccessful ALP candidate for the Australian Senate (1911 and 1924), and for the State seats of Waverley (1904), North Shore (1920), Eastern Suburbs (1922), and Parramatta (1927). He contested preselection for other seats on several occasions.
• A freemason, he was a member of the Sir Thomas Mort lodge. Keen gardener.
• Obituaries gave his age as 52, his death certificate as 56, in fact he was 58. Cause of death: “heart (coronary) disease” [Coroner’s report].

Sources
Tramway Record, 9 July 1931, 6 August 1931; Australian Worker, 17 June 1931; Railway and Tramway Record, 16 January 1905, 1 May 1917, 30 October 1917, 10 December 1917, 11 December 1917, 27 May 1919, 11 November 1919, 21 November 1919, 16 March 1920; H. J. Gibbney and Ann G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987); Labor Daily, 5 December 1924, 13 January 1927.