People Australia

Amirah Inglis, by Alec Bolton, 1990

National Library of Australia, 14467994

Amirah Inglis (1926-2015) writer, teacher, feminist and Communist 

Birth: 7 December 1926 at Brussels, Belgium, daughter of Itzhak and Manka Gutstadt (Gust). Marriages: (1) 28 February 1948 to Ian Turner, historian. They had three children before being divorced. (2) 1965 to Kenneth Stanley (Ken) Inglis (1929-2017), historian. Death: 2 May 2015 at Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

• Arrived in Australia (Port Melbourne) aged two in 1929 with her Polish immigrant mother, reuniting with husband.
• Grew up in Brunswick and Elwood, Melbourne, educated at Princes Hill, Elwood Central 1936-1939, MacRobertson Girls High School, University of Melbourne, Australian National University.
• Her parents were prominent in Jewish left-wing Communist Party of Australia (CPA) circles. Amirah joined the CPA at the University of Melbourne in 1945; was also active in the Labour Club.
• First job as assistant librarian with the Commonwealth Department of Transport, then with the Guardian, 1948-1950. Active in Federated Clerks’ Union.
• Stalwart of CPA in Melbourne through Cold War campaigns of 1950s, resigned from party in Canberra in 1961.
• Worked as school teacher at Lyneham High School, Canberra, also in New Guinea.
• Significant as historian and activist in commemorating role of Australian volunteers to defend democracy in Spanish Civil War 1936, part of committee to raise funds for memorial in Canberra (1993+), visiting Spain for 1996 homenajes.
• Her publications included: Not a white woman safe (1974); An Un-Australian Childhood, (Melbourne, 1983); The Hammer & Sickle and the Washing Up, (Melbourne, 1995); and Australians in the Spanish Civil War (Sydney, 1987).

Sources
Papers held in National Library of Australia and Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU.