Obituaries Australia

Vic Workman, n.d.

Vic [Victor Robert] Workman will be remembered by socialist activists, unionists and the labor movement, but not by them alone. The people among whom he lived, in the Narrabeen area, remember him for his selfless community work.

Senior citizens remember him for his years of activity in the NSW Pensioners Association, working to secure a degree of economic security and wider human dignity in their lives.

Vic Workman's public life spanned more than 50 years, during which he was active in many of the great issues affecting humanity. He was treasurer of the Movement against Fascism and War formed in 1934 to alert Australians to the danger of world war from nazism, Italian and Japanese fascism.

Vic and his colleagues, then in a small minority, clearly saw the menace when rich and powerful Australians ignored, and even deliberately falsified, the issues to support Hitler.

His deep hatred of war sustained him through his whole life. He worked actively against the threat of nuclear war. He was a longtime conservationist who quickly recognised the global problems arising from the frenzied pursuit of profit which undermines the quality of life and may even threaten human survival.

Vic was one of the generation which lived through the Great Depression, the Second World War and the long years of Cold War under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

He came of a long line of working people, originating in the Flemish lands and settling in Ireland's County Derry over three centuries ago. Born in 1907, Vic emigrated to Australia under the Dreadnought Scheme when 17, to work on a western NSW farm.

His early working life was spent in the bush. He worked on farms, the roads, in a timber mill and on the construction of the Wyangala Dam in the late 20s and early 30s, often interrupted by lengthy spells of unemployment. Like countless others, he knew the miseries of the dole.

He joined the Communist Party in 1930 and remained an active and enthusiastic member until the day he died. I saw him little more than a month ago when I took his new party card to him.

We sat and talked about the past, people we had known and struggles we'd been through, the present political situation and the likely developments. His eyes filled with tears as he accepted the card which meant much to him all his life.

Even under the shadow of death, which he had known was coming for months, Vic was vitally interested in what was happening and in the future. He worked almost to the end to leave his experiences and ideas on tape and in writing.

Through the years, Vic accumulated an enormous amount of material about events and struggles, an unrivalled source of research into his life and times. He was a working class intellectual, self-taught, learning in the university of struggle.

Vic was an active communist, talented yet willing to do the most mundane work. A great Tribune supporter, Vic helped produce the Daily Tribune during 1975, staying on for years helping to dispatch the paper every week, come rain or shine.

Vic Workman will be remembered most for his industrial activity, first as a rank and file worker and then an official of the Hotel Club and Restaurant Union and later of the Liquor Trades for 30 years from 1941.

Hit by the depression, Vic finally found a job at the Hotel Australia which was then Sydney's elite hotel. Life at the Australia was smoothly luxurious for the wealthy guests. But it was hell for the workers who waited on them hand and foot or toiled in the dungeons below to prepare the gourmet meals.

The union was weak, the officials hopeless, the workers among the most oppressed and exploited. These included a large number of women in this traditionally female industry.

Vic and a small group of militants, most but not all communists, worked for years to strengthen the union and develop the consciousness and confidence of the workers in their ability to change their shocking conditions.

Working with a grand team of activists including the legendary Flo Davis, alongside whom he worked later in the Pensioners Association, Vic helped transform the union and build it into a fighting force.

As a union official, Vic played a leading part in campaigning for the Sydney Food School to train catering workers and lift their professional standing.

Vic Workman's great strength was his faith in people and his deep feeling for them. A strong personality with firm convictions and wide knowledge, he was modest, unpretentious and sincere, not pushing himself, incapable of boasting.

This feeling was lavished on his wife and daughters and their families, but there was plenty left for the rest of humanity. He told me not long ago that the two great events in his life were, in chronological order, "joining the Communist Party and marrying Hilda".

Vic will long be remembered by his family and friends, his comrades and colleagues in many fields. More, he will live on in the wider movement of which he was part. In the words of his favorite song Joe Hill, played at his funeral service:

The part of me they couldn't kill
Goes on to organise.