The H.R. Nicholls Society was established to honour the man who spoke out publicily about the arbitration system.

Nicholls was a journalist and editor of the Hobart Mercury from 1883 until his death in 1912.

In 1911, Nicholls published an editorial in that paper in which he roundly criticised Henry Bournes Higgins, who at the time was a High Court judge and President of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. Higgins had trenchantly attacked a barrister, H.E. Starke QC, who was appearing before him, and Nicholls, in his turn, took Higgins to task for behaving in a politically partisan and nonjudicial manner.

H.B. Higgins was outraged by this editorial and persuaded the Attorney General to have Nicholls charged with contempt of Court. Proceedings were set in train, and it was only then that Higgins learned that the editorialist whom he sought imprisoned was 82 years of age and very highly respected in his hometown.

The case was duly heard and Nicholls was acquitted unanimously by a full bench of the High Court. The Court’s decision was written by Chief Justice Sir Samuel Griffith and is a damning indictment of Higgins’ behaviour.

When the judgment was announced the citizens of Hobart arranged for a celebration which took place in the Hobart Town Hall. Hundreds of people attended from every walk of life, and messages of congratulation from all over Australia were read out. Nicholls gave an extempore speech which was reprinted in full in the Mercury, and in this speech the learning, energy, and good humour of this remarkable octogenarian is delightfully displayed.

In 1986, The Society’s co-founder John Stone said:

“As the legal case which carries his name bears testimony, Nicholls was keenly aware of the need to avoid the pollution of the real law, and the real courts, by the insidious incursion into them either of politicized Judges or of the administrative writ of the political executive. There is no need, against that background, to ask what Nicholls would have thought of the Hancock Committee's proposal to establish a new so-called Labour Court, to transfer to that trumped-up body all cases in the industrial relations jurisdiction, and to staff it with members (formally, legally qualified) of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.

This proposal, which has been accepted in principle (sic) by our Government, would undoubtedly have drawn forth from Nicholls such withering scorn as would have made his words in his famous editorial of 7 April, 1911 look positively mild in comparison. It is instructive to remark that, at any rate to this time of writing, not one editorialist in any of our major capital city newspapers today has even seen fit to consider this proposal, subversive as it is of everything which goes to make up the role of (real) law in our society.”

(Photo: Tasmanian International Exhibition Association Ltd - Libraries Tasmania)