People Australia

Alfred Clint, n.d.

Tranby Aboriginal College Archives, Glebe, NSW

Clint, William Alfred (Alf) (1906- 1980) Anglican priest and activist for indigenous rights

Birth :8 January 1906 at Wellington, New Zealand, son of English-born parents John William Clint (1878-1938), commercial traveller, and Lilian Lancaster, née Cawdery (1883-1952).  Unmarried. Death: 21 April 1980 at Sydney Homeopathic Hospital, Glebe; usual residence Narrabeen Park Parade, Warriewood, Sydney. Religion: Anglican. 

• Alf arrived in Australia about 1910, grew up in Balmain and was involved with working-class co-operatives. Saw these as offering support to poor, working class families.
• He became a Christian Socialist, mentored by Reverend John Hope. As a ‘Bush Brother’ he actively supported strikes of pastoral workers around Bourke and Brewarrina in the 1930s.
• Experiences of the plight of Aborigines in far western NSW triggered life-long support for Aboriginal people. In 1947 he successfully established cooperatives in cocoa and coconut industries in PNG. Persuaded the Australian Board of Missions to adopt cooperatives as a strategy for work among Aboriginal people.
• Radical politics — including activism the during 1956 shearers’ strike — caused him to be harassed by security and banned from entering Queensland reserves in 1961 as cooperatives proposal gained strength from union movement. Board of Missions worried about political leanings of cooperative movement and distanced itself from Clint — not before he founded Tranby Co-operative for Aborigines in a house at Glebe. He devoted the rest of his life to this enterprise.
• Friend of many trade unionists and left-wing intellectuals including L. C. Rodd and Kylie Tennant who wrote Speak You So Gently about Clint and cooperative movements.
• “Only remaining link between the Church of England and the working class”.
• Cause of death: carcinoma of stomach (8 months) and carcinoma of the caecum (operated upon August 1978). 

Sources
Heather Goodall, Invasion to embassy, (Sydney) 1996; Kylie Tennant, The Missing Heir (Melbourne, 1986); Kylie Tennant, Speak You so Gently (London, 1959); information from Dr Meredith Burgmann.