Enid Lyons - Biography

Biography

Lyons was born Enid Muriel Burnell in Smithton, Tasmania, and educated at the Teacher's Training College, Hobart and later became a school teacher. In 1915, when she was 17, she married Joseph Lyons, then a young Labor politician aged 35. They had twelve children, one of whom died in infancy.

In 1929 Joseph, who had been Labor Premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928, entered federal politics as member for the Division of Wilmot. In 1931 he left the Labor Party and became leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) and at the beginning of 1932 became Prime Minister. Enid and her children moved into The Lodge in Canberra, and she became an extremely popular political spouse.

She was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the Coronation Honours of 1936. Joseph died in 1939, aged 59, the first Australian Prime Minister to die in office, and Dame Enid returned to Tasmania. She bitterly resented Joseph Lyons's successor as leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, who had, she believed, betrayed her husband by resigning from the Cabinet, shortly before Joseph's death.

At the 1943 election Dame Enid Lyons narrowly won the Division of Darwin in north-western Tasmania for the UAP, becoming the first woman in the House of Representatives. Her Labor opponent, who received more primary votes than she did, was the future Tasmanian Premier Eric Reece. At the same election, Dorothy Tangney (later Dame Dorothy) was elected as a Labor Senator for Western Australia, the nation's first woman Senator. In 1945 the UAP became the Liberal Party of Australia.

Enid Lyons came from an interesting political background. Her mother, Eliza Burnell (born Tagget) was an activist in Labor and community groups in Tasmania. She was one of the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace in Tasmania. Eliza Burnell apparently introduced her daughter to Joseph Lyons, then a rising Tasmanian Labor politician and they married 2 years later. Enid had been brought up a Methodist but became a Roman Catholic before marrying the Catholic Joseph Lyons. From early on Catholics and Methodists had been powerful joint forces in the Australian Labour movement, though with some competition between the two. By the time she was elected to Parliament in her own right, there was very little left of her Labor ties. Her speeches in Parliament generally espoused traditional views on the family and other social issues.

In 1949 the Liberals came to power under Menzies' leadership. The frosty personal relations between Menzies and Dame Enid thawed very slightly when Menzies gave her the role of Vice-President of the Executive Council. This was a largely honorary post which gave her a seat in Cabinet but no departmental duties. Nevertheless her health declined under the strain of regular travel between Canberra and Tasmania, and she retired from parliament prior to the 1951 election.

In retirement, Dame Enid's health recovered. She was a newspaper columnist (1951–54), a commissioner of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1951–62), and remained active in public life promoting family and women's issues. She published two volumes of memoirs, which embarrassed the Liberal Party by reviving her complaints about Menzies' 1939 behaviour towards her husband.

She was nevertheless made a Dame of the Order of Australia (AD) on Australia Day 1980, the second of only two women to receive this honour. The following year she died, and was accorded a state funeral in Devonport, before being buried next to her husband at the Mersey Vale Lawn Cemetery.

An informal political faction of the Liberal/National opposition parties called the Lyons Forum was formed in 1992. The group's name alluded to Lyons' maiden speech to the House of Representatives. The faction was considered to be defunct in 2004.