People Australia

Len Fox, 1923

from Scotch College Archives

Leonard Phillips (Len) Fox (1905-2004) teacher, journalist, Communist and author

Birth: 28 August 1905 in Melbourne, Victoria, son of native-born parents David Henry (Dave) Fox (1860-1950), gas company employee, and Irene Helen (Rene), née Stubbs (1880-1969), and nephew of the artist Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915). Marriages: (1) 10 November 1943 at the Registrar General's Office in Sydney, New South Wales, to native-born Glennie Millicent Mills (1905-1976), a journalist. The marriage ended in divorce. (2) 26 September 1955 at the Registrar General's Office to Mona Alexis Brand (1915-2007), playwright. Death: 3 January 2004 in Sydney. Religion: Congregationalist in his youth. 

• His father was for many years official scorer for the Victorian Cricket Association and represented the Victorian Junior Cricket Union on the sub-district association.
• Len was educated at Scotch College and the University of Melbourne (B.Sc, 1927, Dip Ed, 1928) where he was member of Melbourne University Rifles with R. G. Menzies.
• Taught at Scotch College. Joined Communist Party of Australia in 1935.
• Visited Soviet Union in 1936. Victorian State Secretary of the Movement against War and Fascism in the 1930s.
• To Sydney in 1940. Journalist with Progress during World War II.
• Spent 1956-57 in North Vietnam with wife Mona Brand.
• Reviews editor for Tribune and journalist with Common Cause of which he was editor from 1965-70.
• Retired and left CPA in 1970 to continue as prolific journalist, pamphleteer, poet and author, producing over forty books on economics, history, poetry, and autobiography. Highly significant Labor intellectual and historian.
• Some of his books include: Guilty Men (c.1943); Guilty Men Again (1950); May Day in Australia (1966); Australian Taken Over (1974); Multinationals Take Over Australia (1981); Broad Left Narrow Left (1982); Dream at a graveside: the history of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, 1928-1988 (1989), edited by Len Fox.

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962; Malcolm Henry Ellis, The Garden path (Sydney, 1949); Jean Devanny, , Point of departure; the autobiography of Jean Devanny (St Lucia, 1986); Len Fox, Broad Left / Narrow Left (Potts Point, 1982) and Australians on the Left (Potts Point, 1996).