Maurice Blackburn played a significant role within the ALP to ensure that the party remained opposed to Prime Minister Hughes’ policy of conscription. Without the work of Blackburn, it is possible that conscription could have been introduced without a referendum.

Maurice Blackburn, like Curtin and Hyett, had been active in the Victorian Socialist Party as well as the ALP. In 1914, Blackburn was elected to the Victorian State parliament to represent the division of Essendon, which at the time included parts of what is now Coburg, although he lost this seat in 1917.

While Blackburn took an active public role in the anti-conscription campaign, it was his activity within the Labor Party that was even more significant. Blackburn proposed, successfully, a motion to the state conference calling on Labor members of parliament to pledge themeselves against conscription. This was then done at the NSW Labor conference as well, and by the time Prime Minister Billy Hughes returned to Australia in July 1916, having decided to introduce conscription while visiting the United Kingdom, a majority of the parliamentary party had pledged themselves against the policy.

Nonetheless Hughes travelled around the country attempting to persuade each state to support conscription. After the Victorian and New South Wales state conferences, Blackburn and Senator Myles Ferricks from Queensland went to South Australia to argue the case against conscription. Although they were not allowed to speak at the meeting, their influence behind the scenes was instrumental in the Adelaide Labor Conference joining Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland in opposing conscription. With only the Western Australian and Tasmanian branches supporting him, Hughes was unable to change his party’s policy and was forced to put conscription to a referendum.

Blackburn remained a lifelong opponent of conscription. In 1934, he succeeded Frank Anstey as the member for Bourke, the federal seat covering Brunswick and parts of Coburg. When conscription for overseas service during World War Two was proposed in 1943 by the ALP government, Blackburn was the only member of parliament to vote against it. As a result of opposing the Labor government he was disendorsed, and lost his seat at the election later in the year. He died shortly afterwards in 1944.

In 1946, Blackburn’s widow Doris won the seat as an Independent Labor Member, and held it for a single term. Doris had been initially a member of Vida Goldstein’s Womens’ Political Association but grew estranged from it in 1915. Instead she put her energies into the Sisterhood for International Peace. Doris was a vigorous lifelong activist for peace, international and Indigenous Australian causes. Doris Blackburn died in 1970.