Obituaries Australia

Bertha Walker, a talented veteran of the Australian Labor movement, died recently. She was in her early sixties.

At her funeral last week, warm tributes were paid by Noel Counihan, Ralph Gibson, Brian McKinlay, Jim Garvey, and John Arrowsmith.

Bertha Walker was active in the Labor movement from her early years. Although born in Australia, she was involved in organisations of the unemployed in Britain during the depression of the thirties, and helped organise the great hunger marches. After 1939, during the period of the "phoney war", she was expelled from New Zealand for her leftwing propaganda activities.

Later in the war, she served in the Air Force.

She was a member of the Communist Party of Australia for many years, and gained large votes in parliamentary elections in the early forties. Her membership later lapsed, but she never ceased to be a marxist, involved in many leftwing causes.

She was a prominent activist in the working class movement at a time when women were rare in such roles. At the time of her death she was writing the histories of five outstanding women in the working class movement.

Bertha Walker was an outstanding Labor historian. During the Vietnam war, she wrote a history of the anti-conscription movement. Her major work was "Solidarity Forever", a biography of her father Percy Laidler, which encompassed working class struggles over many decades. Lacking academic qualifications, she was nevertheless painstaking and meticulous in her researches.

A diminutive and self-effacing person, Bertha had the ability to inspire people, to help others to develop latent talents. For example, with her assistance and guidance, many workers were able to write of their experiences in the depression — an ability which they did not think they possessed.

Hardworking and persistent, she influenced many people into becoming active in the workers' movement.

Tribune expresses its sympathies to her relatives and friends.