Alfred Foster

Who was Alfred Foster?

Alfred William Foster was an Australian judge.

Foster was born at Beechworth to tobacconist Alfred William Foster and Sarah, née Brown. He attended school locally and graduated from Beechworth College at the age of fourteen. Interested in spiritualism, around this time Foster rejected Christianity as lacking in scientific evidence. He moved to Melbourne to study law in 1906, where he joined the Victorian Rationalist Association; after a defeat in a debate on socialism against a Victorian Socialist Party team including John Curtin, Foster became a convert to socialism and joined the party himself. He was called to the Bar in June 1910 but struggled in his early legal career.

In 1914 Foster became a prominent opponent of Australia's involvement in World War I, and he was later a strident anti-conscriptionist, defending those charged under the War Precautions Act and risking conviction himself with some of his speeches. He was also opposed to the Hughes government's censorship laws, and joined the Labor Party during the war, becoming a member of the central executive and standing for the federal seat of Balaclava in 1917 following the party split.