People Australia

William Gilbert (Gil) Bodsworth (1893-1974) wood machinist, trade union leader and Communist activist 

Birth: 8 May 1893 at Sandringham, Victoria, son of James Alexander Bodsworth, gardener and cartage contractor, and Sarah Anne, née Blencowe. Marriage: 1940 at St Kilda, Melbourne, to Gladys Olive Davis. They had a son and a daughter. Death: 30 August 1974 at Prahran, Victoria. Religion: nominally Methodist. 

• Apprenticed for five years with Love, Royle & Thurgood, at St Kilda.
• Enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 15 May 1917 and served in France, giving his religion as Methodist. Returned to Australia and was discharged in December 1919.
• Early member of Communist Party of Australia in Melbourne, joining about 1923. Communist on Melbourne Trades Hall Council.
• 1929 led timber workers’ strike. President of Timber Workers’ Union for fifteen years.
• Leader of Unemployed Workers’ Movement, Melbourne in early 1930s.
• Badly beaten by police in course of several demonstrations, was arrested and gaoled.
• Particular target of hostility from right wing Australian Labor Party, and Trades Hall Council elements.
• According to police was a ‘violent man who had acted against constituted authority’.
• Frequent CPA speaker on Yarra Bank, remaining active in Melbourne leftist circles.

Sources
Recorder, 72, Oct 1974, Tribune, 10 Sept 1974, p 11; Charles Fox, Fighting Back: the politics of the unemployed in Victoria in the Great Depression, (Carlton, 2000).