BARNES, John (1868–1938)
Senator for Victoria, 1913–20, 1923–35 (Australian Labor Party)
‘The story of John Barnes’, said Albert Monk, ACTU president in 1938, ‘is also the history of the Australian Labor movement’. Barnes was born on 17 July 1868 at Hamilton, near Kapunda, South Australia, son of John Thomas Barnes, a labourer from Somerset, England, and his wife Mary, née Cummeford, from County Clare, Ireland. He acquired the basic elements of a primary education and