Politics
In 1901 he was elected a member of the first Senate of Australia from Western Australia as a Free Trader sitting until the experation the three-year term to which he had been elected.
Harney stood as the Liberal Party candidate at the 1922 general election in South Shields. The sitting MP was Havelock Wilson who had had a chequered political career having been elected as an Independent Labour candidate and then aligning himself with the Lib-Labs before becoming a founder member of the National Democratic Party and later getting back into Parliament in 1918 as a Coalition Liberal – that is a supporter of the Liberal-Conservative coalition government led by David Lloyd George. In a three cornered contest with Havelock Wilson standing as a National Liberal and a Labour candidate, Harney scraped home by just 25 votes over Labour with Havelock Wilson bottom of the poll.
In the general election of 1923 and again in 1924, Harney held his seat, this time in straight fights with Labour but with majorities of 7,195 and 6,319. Harney died just before the 1929 general election so no by-election was needed but this time Labour candidate James Chuter Ede gained the seat.
Read more about this topic: Edward Harney
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“The word “revolution” itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the “revolution” of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the “revolving door” of a politics which has “liberated” women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I have come to the conclusion that the closer people are to what may be called the front lines of government ... the easier it is to see the immediate underbrush, the individual tree trunks of the moment, and to forget the nobility the usefulness and the wide extent of the forest itself.... They forget that politics after all is only an instrument through which to achieve Government.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)