Stan Taylor

Who is Stan Taylor?

Stanley Cassin "Stan" Taylor was an Australian barrister and judge.

He was born at Rylstone to farmer John Orchard Taylor and Helen Russell, née Clarke. He attended Burwood Superior Public School before becoming a junior clerk with the State Department of the Attorney-General and of Justice in November 1912. He joined the Australian Labor Party at the age of seventeen and was active in the anti-conscription campaigns of 1916–17. He ran unsuccessfully for Ryde at the 1925 state election, but was expelled from 1927 to 1930. On his readmittance he was part of the Lang Labor faction, running for North Sydney as a Lang Labor candidate at the 1934 federal election. He was called to the Bar on 25 May 1934. He ran for the reunited Labor Party as the candidate for Martin in 1937.

Taylor married shorthand writer Gwendoline Heather Cansdell on 16 June 1934 at Windsor. He continued to rise in Labor politics, partly through his connection to William McKell. He was appointed deputy director of the wartime Commonwealth security service in 1942 by the Curtin Labor government, for which he was barely qualified; McKell, as Premier, appointed him president of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales later the same year, again over the heads of more qualified candidates. He worked primarily through networking and bargaining, and his greatest success was the mutually satisfactory industrial relations for the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme. His pragmatism saw him well respected by the time he retired in 1966, enough to be employed as an independent arbitrator.