Guide to the Papers of Verity Burgmann
MS 10650
National Library of Australia View Catalogue Record
Created: January 2024
Online Items
Class 1. Consignment received 2022, c.1956-2010
This consignment comprises recordings compiled by political scientist Verity Burgmann. The recordings are of interviews (1970-1994), speeches, meetings and protests of far-left wing activists (1981-2019), conducted by Burgmann and others. Prominent activists interviewed include Frank Hardy, Tom Payne, Lloyd Ross and Mary Wright as well as with less well known individuals active in the various movements they represented. Other recordings in this consignment were made of activists' meetings, protests and on radio, along with music from various groups including Australian Industrial Workers of the World and the People for Nuclear Disarmament (1980's). There are a series of lectures presented by Burgmann on Modern Political thought at the University of Melbourne (2003-2004) and some and family recordings (1956 to 2000).
Series. Political: Verity Burgmann interviews with left-wing activists, 1984-1994
P3-P4 - Interview with Fred Farrall (born 1897), Melbourne, 1 June 1984 (File P3-P4)
Fred Farrall was born in Cobram on the Murray River. In 1904 his father secured land in a ballot and moved to the Riverina about fifty miles west of Wagga Wagga. He describes his life growing up on this farm; his interactions with the Industrial Workers of the World, especially his cousin Roly Farrell's involvement in distributing the fake £5 notes printed by some IWW members late in 1916 and his subsequent imprisonment. He describes his membership years in the Communist Party of Australia in the inter-war and early post-war period, in the breakaway Moscow-line Socialist Party of Australia after 1970, and his period as Mayor of Prahran in inner Melbourne...
P5-P6 - Interview with Jim Garvey (born late C19th), Melbourne, 11 June 1984 (File P5-P6)
Jim Garvey was a left activist in Melbourne during the First World War and interwar period. He talks about the anti-conscription campaign and the activities of people he knew such as Frank Anstey, Chummy Fleming, Frank Hyett, Tom Tunnecliffe, Percy Laidler and Bernard O'Dowd. He was not a member of the IWW but describes their performances at outdoor meetings, such as the Yarra Bank and South Melbourne Market. He reflects on their strength and influence and the slow process in the 1930s of the Communist Party becoming stronger than the IWW. He talks about the Workers' Education Association and his disillusionment with the Labor Party...
P8 - Interview with Frank Hardy (born 1917), Melbourne, 18 January 1994 (File P8)
This interview with well-known novelist, raconteur and left-wing political activist Frank Hardy was conducted only 10 days before his death. However, Hardy is in fine spirits and forthcoming about his extraordinary life and interesting times, including the influence upon him and his writing of the Industrial Workers of the World. Biographies are available at https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hardy-francis-joseph-frank-19531 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hardy. His papers are in the NLA...
P10 - Interview with Bill Ivey, Melbourne, 27 August 1986 (File P10)
Bill Ivey was involved with the IWW and recalls their activities and influence. In his declining years he organised protests to force his local council to preserve a children's playground...
P11 - Interview with Leo Kelly, Melbourne, 20 January 1986 (File P11)
Leo Kelly grew up in Goulburn, NSW. In the 1930s he frequented Sydney's left-wing milieu, bohemian intellectual scene and homosexual sub-culture. In this interview he describes the predicament of Charlie Reeve as a homosexual man and a leading member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He describes Charlie's death in the arms of his partner, a Danish seaman who worked as a labourer on White Bay power station...
P12 - Interview with Bill Laidler, Melbourne, 28 May 1986 (File P12)
Bill Laidler was the son of well-known left-wing personality, Percy Laidler. Bill recalls his father's activities, his left-wing bookshop and popular conjuring and magic shop. The other voice in the tape is that of Dick Curlewis, another old activist, who facilitated the interview...
P13 - Interview with Pat Mackie, Melbourne, 21 July 1988 (File P13)
Pat Mackie was an American merchant seaman, who joined the Industrial Workers of the World on the North American coast in 1934, and, at the time of interview, was still the accredited Delegate for the IWW in Australia. Mackie achieved notoriety as Chairman of the Mount Isa Section of the Australian Workers' Union during the infamous lockout of 1964-65, which divided both the nation and the labour movement. Despite, or perhaps because of, constant criticism of Mackie in the mainstream media, he retained the support of the workers of Mount Isa, who appreciated his militant and determined leadership of their resistance to the imposition of contract work and the abolition of hourly wage rates...
P14-15 - Interview with Tom Payne, Sydney, 28 October 1985 (File P14-15)
Tom Payne, born in the 1890s, grew up in Clunes in Victoria and worked there as a cobbler. He was influenced politically by Mark Anthony, a Broken Hill miner from Clunes who frequently returned to visit. Payne became an early member of the Communist Party of Australia. In 1922, he was one of its two delegates to the Comintern Conference in Moscow. He relates how he travelled to there as a stowaway, aided by sympathetic maritime workers, and heard Lenin speak and met Trotsky, who had confused Payne's fellow delegate W.P. Earsman with the much more important American delegate Max Eastmann. Payne joined the breakaway Socialist Party of Australia in 1970-71 and remained a loyal defender of the Soviet Union until his death late last century, still revered in CPA and SPA circles as 'the man who met Lenin', when in fact he had only met the hated Trotsky...