Arthur Lynch (politician)

Lynch was born at Smythesdale near Ballarat, Victoria, the fourth of 14 children. His father, John Lynch, was an Irish Catholic surveyor and civil engineer and his mother Isabella (née MacGregor) was Scottish.^[1] John Lynch was a founder and first president of the Ballarat School of Mines, and a captain of Peter Lalor at the Eureka Stockade rebellion (1854) and John Lynch wrote a book, Austral Light (1893–94), about it – later republished as The Story of the Eureka Stockade.^[1]

Lynch left Australia and went to Berlin, where he studied physics, physiology and psychology at the University of Berlin in 1888–1889. He had a particular respect for Hermann von Helmholtz.

Lynch met Annie Powell (daughter of John D. Powell) in Berlin and they were married in 1895. They were to have no children. In Lynch's words, the marriage "never lost its happiness" (My Life Story, p. 85).

When the Second Boer War broke out, Lynch was sympathetic to the Boers and decided to go to South Africa as a war correspondent. In Pretoria, he met General Louis Botha, and decided to join the Boer side. Lynch raised the Second Irish Brigade, which consisted of peoples opposed to the British. He was given the rank of Colonel and saw limited active service.^[1] In his comprehensive history on the Australia's Boer War, Craig Wilcox said,^[2] it was misleading to call the 70 or so men in the Irish unit raised by Lynch "a brigade", rather he suggested that "the publicity that comes from spectacular gestures..." made Lynch appear "a romantic warrior" and that his actions "flattered many Irishmen and women...".^[3] In contrast, Antony O'Brien's fictional Bye-Bye Dolly Gray, is kinder to Lynch's showy South African exploits and his uitlanders. Michael Davitt who travelled to South Africa has photos of Lynch with his brigade on the veldt in The Boer Fight for Freedom.

After South Africa, Lynch travelled to the United States, and then returned to Paris, from where he again stood for Galway Borough in November 1901 and was elected in his absence as MP.^[4] On going to London, Lynch was arrested for his pro-Boer activities and on remand for eight months.

In July 1907, Lynch was pardoned, and in 1909 he was again elected Member of Parliament, this time for West Clare, in Ireland.^[5]

During World War I, Lynch volunteered for the New British Army. He raised a private 10th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and was given the rank of colonel, although he and his unit never saw active front service. At the end of the war, Lynch chose to stand as a Labour candidate in newly created Battersea South for the 1918 General election. He finished second to the Conservative candidate.

Lynch wrote many publications including: