People Australia

Claude Hamilton Anlezark. Birth: 23 December 1886, Armidale, NSW. Marriage: Elizabeth Burke, 1908 Death: 10 October 1978, Paxton, NSW.

Pit worker and journalist. Worked at Hetton colliery, Newcastle, aged 13 as trapper boy and at Stockton, Old Farley and Pelaw mines in Hunter. Unemployed and moved to Sydney, 1912, where he led procession of 2000 unemployed in Sydney with Tom Flynn and Donald Grant. 1916, member, Brisbane Labor Council opposing conscription. Victimised in Brisbane for organising stop work meetings protesting against shooting of James Connolly and other Irish workers that had resolved ‘That we, the workers of Brisbane, protest against the wholesale butchery of the Irish working class by English capitalism’. 1916, delegate to assist J. Wright and G. Dale to put case for Barrier miners. 1917, delegate to Strike Defence Committee, Newcastle and Treasurer, Newcastle Anti-conscription Committee. 1919, delegate to first OBU (One Big Union) conference, Sydney. 1921, started first weekly Labor newspaper in Newcastle, which failed ‘due to lack of working class support’. Returned to work as coal miner, employed at Abermain pit. Member, NSW ALP executive ?-?. 1934, Secretary, Abermain No. 2 Lodge, Australasian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation (AC &SEF0; 1943 ran unsuccessfully as Lang team candidate against Harold Wells in election for general presidency of AC &SEF.

LYB 1934/5; E.Ross 1970; Common Cause, 25 April 1942, 30 Oct 1943.