was critical to Labor maintaining its support for the adoption of measures to implement Federation, even though the party remained opposed to the adopted Constitution, which it saw as biased in favour of business interests. The 1904 state election saw Labor become the second largest party and the official opposition for the first time. First government in New South Wales and internal divisions At the 1910 election, the Labor Party first won government in NSW with a slim majority of 46 of 90 seats; as a result, McGowen was premier from 1910 to 1913. But increasing success was accompanied by increasing tensions within the labour movement: from the 1890s the Australian Workers' Union attempted to assert its influence on the NSW parliamentary party, with little success for many years. Divisions also opened up between state and federal Labor after Andrew Fisher took office as Prime Minister of the first federal Labor government in 1908: William Holman, the NSW party's main parliamentary strategist at the time, presented a policy agenda at state party conferences which differed from that approved by the federal party, in particular in its opposition to the transfer of responsibilities for finance and industrial relations from the state to the Commonwealth government, a dispute in which the AWU sided with the ALP. Tensions continued to rise during McGowen's premiership, as McGowen and Holman refused to support the holding of the 1911 trade and commerce referendum favoured by the ALP: in addition Holman alienated extra-parliamentary Labor members and some of the NSW caucus by appointing a number of new members to the state's Legislative Council, including some who were not Labor members. This ran counter to the state party's platform, which advocated for the abolition of the Council, something which was not attempted by the state Labor governments of the 1910s, and which was a divisive issue in the party at the time. McGowen was deposed by his deputy Holman after McGowen attempted to break a gas workers' strike by threatening to replace strikers with non-union labour. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Holman announced a truce with the state Commonwealth Liberal Party which would take industrial reform off the agenda for the remainder of the war. In addition, the prospect of putting the economy on a war footing increased fears regarding job losses. These developments increased disillusion with Labor among unions and encouraged thinking about new political