John Cain (senior)
John Cain (19 January 1882 – 4 August 1957) was an Australian politician, who became the 34th premier of Victoria, and was the first Australian Labor Party leader to win a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He is the only premier of Victoria to date whose son has also served as premier.
Early life
Cain was born, one of 18 siblings, in Greendale, Victoria, near Bacchus Marsh. His father, Patrick Kane, was an Irish-born Roman Catholic who worked as a small farmer and contractor.
As a young man John Kane changed the spelling of his surname and converted to Anglicanism. He left no personal papers and very little is known about his youth (so little, indeed, that reference works published during his lifetime, and shortly after his death, continued to give the year of his birth as 1887). He had little education, and worked from an early age as a farm labourer. By 1907 he had moved to Melbourne, where he worked as a fruiterer in Northcote.
Political career
Around 1910 Cain joined the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP), a Marxist party to the left of the Australian Labor Party (although like most VSP members Cain was probably also an ALP member at the time). In 1915 he became an organiser with the Theatrical Employees' Union, and in 1916 he became a clerk in the Defence Department. He was sacked from this job because of his opposition to conscription for World War I, and became an organiser with the Clothing Trades Union. From 1915 to 1927 he was a Labor member of the Northcote City Council. In 1921 when many VSP members joined the new Communist Party of Australia, Cain broke his connections with the left and became a mainstream Labor politician.
John Cain
John Cain may refer to:
See also
John Cain (junior)
John Cain (born 26 April 1931), Australian Labor Party politician, was the 41st Premier of Victoria, holding office from 1982 to 1990. During his time as Premier, changes were enforced to the practices of various institutions in Melbourne which discriminated against women, while other reforms were introduced such as liberalized shop trading hours and liquor laws, equal opportunity initiatives, and occupational health and safety legislation.
Biography
Cain was born in Melbourne, the son of John Cain, leader of the Labor Party in Victoria from 1937 to 1957 and three times Premier. He was educated at Bell Primary School, Northcote High School, Scotch College, Melbourne and at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated in law. He practised law in suburban Melbourne, and was Chairman of the Victorian Law Institute in 1971–72. He was also a member of the Law Council of Australia and a member of the Australian Law Reform Commission.
Cain was 24 at the time of the 1955 split in the Labor Party that brought down his father's last government. He lost a preselection battle with Frank Wilkes for his late father's seat of Northcote in 1957.
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