Andrew Hughes

Who was Andrew Hughes?

Andrew Arthur Hughes was an Australian politician.

Born in South Yarra to brickmaker George Alfred Hughes and Eliza Smartt, Hughes attended Brighton State School and then the College of the Bible in Glen Iris, becoming a minister of religion. He spent the years from 1926 to 1933 as a missionary for the Church of Christ in India, and on his return became a probation officer with the Children's Courts. In 1939 he became minister of a church in Swanston Street. In 1943 he was elected to the seat of Caulfield in the Victorian Legislative Assembly as an Independent Socialist, serving until his defeat in 1945. He joined the Australian Labor Party in 1946 and was preselected to contest the federal seat of Flinders in 1949, but the state executive refused to endorse his candidature and expelled him after he stood as an Independent Labor candidate. He was readmitted to the party in 1955 and contested Higgins. On 15 July 1926 he had married Eleanor Wynne Morris, with whom he had two children. He moved to Japan in 1957 to teach and worked for Japan Council against A & H Bombs from 1958, becoming highly active in the Japanese anti-war movement. He married Tomoko Matsuda on 20 April 1963.