Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, CH, MC, PC, FRS was the 8th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1923 to 1929. Born into a briefly wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and spent his early life tending to the importing and exporting business of his late father. He served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917. He was elected to parliament in 1918, becoming treasurer in 1921 and then prime minister in 1923, at the head of a coalition with the Country Party. Bruce later pursued a long and influential diplomatic career as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and chairman of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
About Stanley Bruce in brief
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, CH, MC, PC, FRS was the 8th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1923 to 1929. Born into a briefly wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and spent his early life tending to the importing and exporting business of his late father. He served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917, becoming a spokesperson for government recruitment efforts. He was elected to parliament in 1918, becoming treasurer in 1921 and then prime minister in 1923, at the head of a coalition with the Country Party. In office Bruce pursued an energetic and diverse agenda. He comprehensively overhauled federal government administration and oversaw its transfer to the new capital city of Canberra. He implemented various reforms to the Australian federal system to strengthen the role of the Commonwealth, and helped develop the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO. His controversial handling of industrial relations led to a dramatic defeat at the polls in 1929. Bruce later pursued a long and influential diplomatic career as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and chairman of the Food and Agriculture Organization. Although his diplomatic career went largely unnoticed in Australia, he continued throughout his life in London to vociferously advocate for Australian interests. Bruce was the first Australian to sit in the House of Lords, as well as the first Chancellor of Australian National University.
He disliked his given name and throughout hisLife preferred to be known by his initials \”S. M. \”, even among close friends. His wife called him simply \”S\”. When he became prime minister he issued a note to the press asking newspapers to use his initials and not hisgiven name. Bruce’s father, John Munro Bruce, was born to Scottish parents in County Leitrim, Ireland, and had emigrated to Australia in 1858 at the age of 18. His mother, Mary Ann Henderson, was Irish and had married her cousin John after emigrating to Australia in 1872 at the aged of 24. John Bruce became a talented businessman with a flair for buying and selling goods, which would secure him a partnership in an established Melbourne importing firm that in 1868 became known as Paterson, Laing and Bruce. As his wealth grew, John Bruce was influential in colonial Victoria’s social and political life. His son Stanley would come to identify with his own sporting life and was captain of the school football team in 1901, then the school’s football team itself in 1901. However, as his son Stanley later recounted, his son was an aloof and remote figure in the lives of his own children, with his back-ground school. Stanley would go on to become the Anglican Church of England Grammar School and subsequently the headmaster of Melbourne Grammar. He would also become a prominent supporter of the liberal protectionist political movement within the state and an early supporter of future prime minister Alfred Deakin.
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