Preceded by New seat Nationality Welsh Australian Spouse(s) Edith Hartshorn | Succeeded by Victor Kearney Political party Australian Labor Party Name Billy Davies | |
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Died 17 February 1956 (aged 71–72)
New South Wales | ||
William Davies (1884 – 17 February 1956) was an Australian politician, born in Abertillery in Wales to the coalminer William Davies and his wife Mary, nee Williams. As a child he worked in the coalmines, but won a miners' scholarship to a summer school at the University of Oxford, where he became a Methodist lay preacher. He married Edith Hartshorn on 4 August 1903 and the couple moved to New South Wales in 1912, when Davies became a miner in the Wollongong area, soon rising to become an official of the Australasian Coal and Shale Employees' (Miners') Federation.
Davies won the seat of Wollongong in 1917, representing the Labor Party, having defeated the sitting Nationalist, John Nicholson. He went on to dominate Labor politics in the area for the next forty years, and became a loyal supporter of New South Wales Premier Jack Lang, who made Davies minister for public instruction in 1927, and minister for education 1930-32.
In 1949 Davies resigned from the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in order to contest the federal seat of Cunningham, which he held until his death on 17 February 1956, survived by his wife, son and daughter. He was remembered by H. V. Evatt as "a great orator who had helped to inspire coalminers during industrial troubles". He was the first ever member for Cunningham.