Maybe it says a lot about Sydneysiders- the fact that they
know little of the man the city is named after.
Lord Sydney, Tommy
Townshend was the British Home Secretary when two fledgling towns were named in
his honour, Sydney in Nova Scotia in 1785 and the NSW colony’s capital Sydney Town
in 1788.
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| Viscount Sydney |
But its Thomas Townshend’s enlightened policies that the
country owes much to and which make today’s ‘law and order’ exponents look
decidedly narrow minded as Lord Sydney’s biographer, barrister and former
politician Andrew Tink admitted today.
On 702 ABC with Richard Glover Tink said many of the
policies he raged about when he was Opposition Attorney General for many years
were far to the right of Townshend’s ideals
Lord Sydney was determined that the convict colony should be
an example of penal reform and the first governor Arthur Phillip was ordered to
ensure once convicts had served their sentence they were to be re-admitted back
into society with the rights enjoyed by ordinary citizens and encouraged to pursue an honest
career. Where possible convicts could work
whilst serving their sentence and paid suitable wages. There
was to be no slave labour in the new colony. Such ideals survive now only in Scandinavian
countries.
When he declared the colony should have civil courts, much
to the chagrin of his cabinet colleagues in London who pondered who would
actually access them, Townshend declared prisoners of course. In fact the first
case was a serving convict who successfully sued the captain of the ship that
had transported him for losing his luggage.
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| Andrew Tink |
When Townshend was ennobled he took his title from a
favourite uncle Algernon Sidney (family squabbles forced the change in
spelling) who was executed by Charles II for treason for republican sympathies.
Lord Sydney has been
largely over looked by historians. Manning Clark claimed he was irrelevant and
mediocre but the truth is somewhat different.
While remaining loyal to the Crown Sydney sympathised with
the American colonialists during the War of Independence and it was he who
eventually negotiated peace with the new American republicans and managed to
retain the Canadian colonies for loyalists to settle in. His influence on all
three countries was substantial but largely forgotten, especially in the Australian
city named after him which has continued somewhat with Townsend’s egalitarian
ideals.
