Obituaries Australia

Tim Slater, c.1941

Those who mourned the death of Tim [Frederick Howard] Slater in Adelaide last week felt both the loss of a comrade and pride in having known him. It was not unexpected, as he had suffered a long illness, but he had expressed a hope that he would still be around for the Communist Party's sixtieth anniversary. It was not to be.

Tim, an ordinary working man, typified the best among Australian communists, having joined the party during the Depression in 1931 . Born at Broken Hill in 1907, he spent his childhood at Ceduna on South Australia's far west coast and began work on a farm. Returning to Broken Hill, he never had a regular job and, like many others of that time, humped his swag looking for work in outback South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. At Broken Hill he acted as an unpaid worker for the CPA, writing for the bulletin Plod addressed to the mine workers, while maintaining himself with the dole and jobs for short periods.

He joined the second AIF when the war against fascism began and as a member of the Ninth Division served in the Western Desert. When Australia's security was threatened by Japanese imperialism he was transferred to New Guinea, serving a total of three and a half years. In the army he joined with other communists in campaigns on behalf of the troops such as the "battle bonus", sold Tribunes and collected finance. In 1944 he married Dimps Gowland who had worked' at Holden's during the lean years before the war and who partnered his active political life.

From 1946 to 1948 Tim worked full-time for the CPA organisation in Adelaide and wrote for the South Australian Tribune. He then became a stoker in the retort houses at the Brompton gasworks while continuing shop-floor activities as a communist and unionist. As a communist candidate Tim opposed the Premier, Thomas Playford, in the state seat of Gumeracha and, in 1962, stood in Barossa, preparing the way for the Labor Party to win it at the following elections. After sixteen years as a gasworker, he was retrenched, one of the victims of technological change which replaced gas from coal with the byproduct of the oil refinery. He then worked as a Council laborer for a further six years.

Tim had many interests from Robert Burns to Russian ballet, a collector of stamps and match-box labels, a fancier of native wildflowers and an ardent fan of South Adelaide football. A fierce advocate of what he thought was right, he impressed with his sincerity. Typical of his independence was the allegiance he gave to the CPA when the Socialist Party split away in 1971, while he remained a committed member of the Australia-USSR Friendship Society.

Les Purkis from the Islington Railway workshops, in the address at his funeral, said that Tim's life was a model and inspiration for working people. Our sympathies go to Dimps and to other members of his family.