People Australia

John Kellock

Newcastle Sun (NSW), 4 January 1935, p 9

John (Jock) Kellock (1894-1959) coalminer and trade union official

Birth: 12 March 1894 at Auchtertool, Fifeshire, Scotland, son of James Kellock (1865-1910), blacksmith, and Louisa Robina Sangster, née Emslie (1870-1963). Marriage: 5 March 1921 at Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, to Isabella McLean Neill (b.1896). They had one daughter. Death: 26 December 1959 in hospital at Kurri Kurri, New South Wales; usual residence Millfield Street, Spion Kop, NSW. 

• Was described as a coalminer from Hill of Beath, Fifeshire, when he and his wife departed London for Australia aboard the P. & O. steamship SS Beltana on 27 April 1922.
• Worked as a coalminer at South Maitland. Chairman Pelaw Main lodge. Vice-president Northern District Australasian Coal & Shale Employees' Federation from about 1931. In November 1934 was arrested with other prominent Trades Hall officials at a meeting in the heart of Newcastle and charged with loitering. In 1936 was defeated for the vice-presidency by Henry Scanlon. Elected president of the Northern District 1940-1941.
• With Federation general president Charles Nelson, advocated policy of industrial peace in support of war effort at onset of World War II.
• Defeated for position of president by the “leftist” Scanlon in January 1942.
• Member of the Australian Labor Party.
• Cause of death: pulmonary oedema and carcinoma of lung.

Sources
Edgar Ross, A history of the Miners' Federation of Australia ([Sydney] 1970); Andrew William Metcalfe, For freedom and dignity: Historical agency and class structures in the coalfields of NSW (Sydney, 1988).