People Australia

Francis Edward (Joe) Chamberlain (1900-1984) labourer, farmer trade union official, Labor Party general secretary 

Birth: 13 May 1900 at East Barnett, London, England, son of Frank Chamberlain (1876-1952), army sergeant, and Sarah Ann, née Willis (1867-1916). Marriage: 26 December 1927 at the Congregational Church, Busselton, Western Australia, to native-born Gladys Lilian Burke (1909-1986). They had one daughter and two sons. Death: 20 October 1984 in hospital at Graylands, Perth; usual residence Cleveland Street, Dianella.  

• Left school aged 14, apprenticed to copperplate printer and conscripted into army. Served in British army of occupation in Germany.
• Migrated to Australia under terms of Empire Settlement Act, arriving at Albany on 28 June 1923. Worked as farm labourer at Mukinbudin and road builder near Busselton.
• Became dairy farmer and secretary of the South West Dairy Farmers’ Union. Suffered grinding poverty during Depression, joined the Australian Labor Party and moved to Perth in 1935. Worked in numerous jobs.
• Founded Acton Park branch of ALP and elected president of Government Tramways, Motor Omnibus and River Ferries Union of Employees in 1942.
• He was a moderate leader, who counselled against strike action and used arbitration to secure improvements to working conditions. From 1949 to 1974 he was general secretary of WA, ALP, achieving great power and prominence. He became a national figure during the 1954-55 split in the party, when he became ALP president, directing State branches to withdraw recognition of Industrial Groups.
• Described by some journalists as the ‘strong man’ of the left and reviled by B. A. Santamaria, Chamberlain was ALP Federal secretary in 1961-1963 and Federal president in 1955-1963.
• In 1953 he attended ILO conference, Geneva, WCTU conference, Stockholm.
• He was an antagonist of Gough Whitlam.
• Chamberlain remained general secretary of party in WA until his retirement in 1974.
• Cause of death: hypostatic pneumonia (coroner’s report). 

Sources
Voice, September 1955; Douglas Mitchell ‘F. E. Chamberlain’ in Lyall Hunt (ed) Westralian Portraits, (Nedlands, 1979); F. E. Chamberlain, My Life and Times, privately published, (Perth, 1998).