Person

Brown, Ron H., 1916-1980

1916-1980

Ron H. Brown (1916-1980) joined the Young Communist league in early 1933. In 1934, at 18 years of age, he joined the Clerks Union. The Brisbane Young Communist League held together until 1939 when World War Two broke out and the Communist Party of Australia was declared illegal. The Eureka Youth League (E.Y.L.) was established in 1941 and later Brown was one of its National Presidents. At a Clerks Union meeting in 1945 Ron met Clarice Tonkin and they married very quickly. Ron was on a very low wage doing publicity work and assisting Fred Paterson. Although Clarice worked for the left-wing Storemen and Packers' Union, she was sacked because the union opposed married women working. Soon after, Clarice went to work in the E.Y.L. office in the Trades Hall where Ron and her father also worked. Ron was Research Officer with the Trades and Labor Council of Queensland, when Mick Healy was the secretary, assisting with the publication of their Research Bulletin. In 1949 Ron and Clarice moved to Darwin where Ron became the editor of the Northern Standard, the newspaper of the North Australian Workers' Union (N.A.W.U.). In 1952, Ron was sacked from the Northern Standard for not writing what the Democratic Labor Party (D.L.P.) groupers wanted. Despite a "black ban" by the N.A.W.U. on employing Ron, he got a job as a gardener at the Darwin Botanical Gardens. They returned to Brisbane later in 1952 and continued to work and raise their family. In 1959, Ron went to the Soviet Union for fourteen months to study, mainly economics. Ron, regarded as great speaker, wrote and delivered many talks and lectures.

Revised, AM, 13-May-2020.