People Australia

Daphne Gollan, by Mike Finn, 1977

ANU Archives, 1885/144862

Eileen Daphne (Daphne) Gollan, née Morris (1918-1999) librarian, university lecturer, Communist and feminist

Birth: 4 May 1918 at Birmingham, England, daughter of Montague Morris (1874-1943), a toolmaker, later munitions worker, born at Lewisham, London, and Marjorie Emmeline, née Gold (1879-1932), born at Mumbles, Glamorganshire, Wales. Marriage: 10 May 1941 at St Philip’s Anglican Church, Sydney, New South Wales to Robin Allenby (Bob) Gollan (1917-2007), a labour historian, born at Woodburn, NSW. They had one daughter and one son. The marriage ended in divorce in 1987. From the late 1980s she had a relationship with trade unionist Nick Origlass. Death: 4 October 1999 in her usual residence at Glebe, Sydney. 

• Arrived in Sydney with her family in the 1920s. Her father, a humanist socialist, was broken financially by the Depression; her mother died  in Marrickville in 1932.
• Radicalised by her experience of deprivation and by the anti-fascist tenor of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), Daphne joined the party, via New Theatre contacts, in 1937. While working as librarian at Mitchell Library, and studying at university part time, she was a member of the university CPA branch.
• When the CPA was declared illegal she chose 'Cleopatra Sweatfigure' as a revolutionary pseudonym, only to be told by a stern party leader: 'We are not joking. This is a serious matter'.
• In 1940 she was secretary of the NSW Youth Parliament, in 1942 she joined the people's army and in 1945 became librarian in the research department of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association. She later admitted that ballot rigging ('adjustment') occurred in union elections “because the rank and file were temporarily misled by the overwhelming barrage of lies from the reactionaries”. Left the union in 1947 with the birth of her son.
• Active in New Housewives' Association, she was secretary 1948. She attended the 1948 World Congress of Defenders of Peace Congress, in Paris.  Later she became a member of the Union of Australian Women. Increasingly she was disillusioned with Stalinism and patriarchy.
• From 1966 to 1983 Gollan was a tutor, then lecturer, at the Australian National University, specialising in Soviet history.
• She was an active feminist.
• Cause of death: myocardial infarction, hypertension, atrial fibrillation and carcinoma of right breast. 

Sources
Elizabeth Windschuttle, Women, Class and History: Feminist Perspectives on Australia 1788-1978 (Melbourne, 1980). Barbara Curthoys and Audrey McDonald, More than a hat and glove brigade: the story of the Union of Australian Women (Sydney, 1996).