Obituaries Australia

The recent death of Jack Williams breaks a living link with Newcastle's working class history going back over many years of turbulent struggle. Jack was born in 1916, son of a militant miner who participated in the miners' struggle before World War I and was a founding member of the Communist Party in Newcastle.

Jack joined the Young Communist League in 1930 and remained a staunch communist until his death, working with unflagging energy until stricken by incapacitating illness three years ago.

His energy and moral conviction won him wide respect in many sections of the community. A painter and decorator by trade, Jack was an active unionist and president of the Newcastle branch of the union for many years. A life member of the union, he was a longtime delegate to the Newcastle Trades Hall Council and well known in the city's wider industrial circles.

He painted signs for Newcastle May Day for many years and made CPA slogans on hoardings and streets famous for their neatness and skill. Fearless in this work as in all his other activity, Jack is remembered for painting a huge Communist Party sign on a hoarding outside District Park in Broadmeadow — in broad daylight, dressed in white overalls with scaffolding and all! The slogan, taking hours to paint, finally read: Nationalise BHP, Make the Rich Pay, Demand Higher Wages NOW.

Naturally enough, this, and his militancy, didn't endear him to BHP, who put him on their notorious black list. When he somehow got a job at the steelworks in 1964, he lasted exactly four hours and then was given a week in lieu and escorted off the premises!

Jack Williams was no stranger to such victimisation, from both employers and the state. He was arrested and bashed by police in 1949 for painting a slogan during the election campaign that year. He was bashed again in 1971 during the Battle of Sydney Cricket Ground in the anti-apartheid demonstration against the South African rugby team. Jack was an expert in unmasking political police spying on the CPA and the workers' movement, highly developed in Newcastle where the political police maintained a special office for many years.

He recalled having exposed a police agent sent into the CPA during the 1950s who bought books to "send to contacts in the country". But this one went a bit far — he bought 20 copies of Marx's Capital for this purpose and finally admitted he was working for ASIO.

Jack Williams made many sacrifices to work fulltime for the CPA for 14 years and won his comrades' admiration and affection for his energy and devotion. But he was no narrow party political worker, taking a prominent part in the New Lambton Progress Association and in resident activism in recent years.

Devoted to the cause of world peace, he threw himself into the peace movement from the onset of the Cold War, working for banning of nuclear weapons long before this became the popular issue it now is.

Jack Williams will long be remembered by the many people who admired his incorruptible integrity, his selfless energy and devotion. They join with his wife Kath, herself a tireless political activist, his daughter Janice and son Jack, in their grief at his passing.