People Australia

Lloyd Edmonds, 1939

Workers Star (Perth), 17 March 1939, p 1

Frederick John Lloyd (Lloyd) Edmonds (1906-1994) teacher trade, union official and public servant and Spanish civil war anti-Fascist volunteer

Birth: on 3 July 1906 at Belgravia, London, son of Frederick John Edmonds (1880-1954), printer and socialist, born at Crekerne, Somerset, England, and Mary (Mollie), née Lloyd (1880-1933), born in Wales. Marriage: 20 April 1940 at the Register Office at Mentone, Victoria, to Jean Campbell Good (1907-1999), born in South Australia. They had one daughter and one son. Death: 18 September 1994 at Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria; usual residence Robert Street, Essendon, Melbourne. 

• Immigrated to Melbourne from England with his family in 1912. Growing up in family with strong socialist (Victorian Socialist Party) leanings, he attended Socialist Sunday School, Sandringham, Victoria, 1917.
• In 1928 he was a student teacher in Gippsland. In 1932 he returned to Melbourne to complete an Arts degree at the University of Melbourne (BA 1934), joining the university Labor Club.
• Edmonds was secretary of the Sandringham branch of the Australian Labor Party and, with his brother, Phillip Martin Gould Edmonds (1908-1988), he founded the Teachers’ Industrial Union; in 1935 he was a delegate to the Melbourne Trades Hall Council.
• In 1936 he studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science under Harold Laski, but joined the International Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War, serving with distinction as a ‘spearcarrier’ transport driver in 1937-1938.
• Returned to Australia in 1939.
• After World War II he worked as a public servant, personnel officer, responsible for industrial welfare.
• He was the doyen of the Melbourne branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
• Cause of death: raised intercranial pressure (12 hours) and intracerebral hemorrhage (1 hours).
• A collection of his Letters from Spain was published in 1985. 

Sources
Amirah Inglis, Australians in the Spanish Civil War (Sydney, 1987); Sixty Years of Struggle, vol. 2.