People Australia

Jim Cope, Australian News and Information Bureau, c.1970

National Archives of Australia, A1200:L83655

James Francis (Jim) Cope (1907-1999) glass worker, trade union official and parliamentarian

Birth: 26 November 1907 at Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales, son of George Eugene Cope (1861-1928), a compositor of Irish descent, born at Melbourne, Victoria, and Martha Allingham, née Ellem, born at Mangrove Creek, NSW. Marriage: 19 November 1932, at St Michael’s Anglican Church, Surry Hills, to Myrtle Irene Hurst (1908-2002), a machinist, born at Willoughby, Sydney. They had one daughter. Death: 3 September 1999 at Hurstville, Sydney.

• Educated at Crown Street Public School. Worked as a glass tube fabricator.
• Jim was honorary treasurer and federal treasurer of the NSW branch of Australian Glass Workers. He was unemployed for three years during the Depression.
• He joined the Australian Labor Party’s Redfern branch in 1930, became vice-president of the municipal committees and was an alderman on Redfern Council in 1947-1948. Secretary of the Redfern branch ALP, he was also returning officer for Redfern State Electoral Council. He was president of the Cook Federal Electoral Council with 2600 members.
• Cope was elected member for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Cook at a by-election in 1955. When the seat of Cook was abolished, he became member for Watson from 1955 to 1969 and member for Sydney from 1969 until he retired in 1975.
• In parliament he was member of the public accounts committee from 1956 to 1973 at least and deputy chairman of Committee from 1967. He was Speaker of the House from 1972 to 1975 when he resigned after a clash with Clyde Cameron and Gough Whitlam leading to a majority of Labor members voting against him as Speaker.
• Member of NSW ALP executive from 1968. He was interested in welfare of the aged and supported protection for Australian secondary industries to maintain full employment. In office, he declined to wear a wig as Speaker.
• After retirement he defied ALP convention and accepted an imperial honour in 1978, being appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG).
• He was made a life member of the ALP NSW branch in 1980, nominated by Ramsgate branch.
• Cope lived in Redfern and later Sans Souci. He was patron of Paddington-Woollahra Returned Services League.
• He suffered from congestive cardiac failure in later life and was incapacitated by a stroke. 

Sources
Labor Year Book 1973; Joan Rydon (ed), A biographical register of the Commonwealth Parliament 1901-1972 (ANU Press, 1975); Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 1999, 5 February 1999. (Information in alphabetical list attached to paper files in Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University).