People Australia

Paddy Kenna, n.d.

Patrick William (Paddy) Kenna (1879-1948) labourer, political activist and trade union official

Birth: 9 December 1879 at Gunnedah, New South Wales, son of Irish-born parents Martin McKenna (1836-1916), a cooper from Kilkenny, and Anna Maria, née O’Connor (1855-1902), from Dublin. Marriage: 11 February 1928 at St Michael's Catholic Church, Mittagong, NSW, to Lena Mary Carlon. They had two sons and one daughter. Death: 22 April 1948 at Warragamba Dam, NSW; usual residence Regent Street, Mittagong, NSW. Religion: Anti-clerical Catholic. 

• Parents’ farm Thagominda in Queensland, was ruined by 1890s depression.
• Paddy worked shearing, fencing and labouring at Cunnamulla, in Queensland in the 1900s. Was a navvy on railway construction (Southern line duplication about 1914). District Secretary of the Railway Workers and General Labourers’ Association, Mittagong branch, in 1915.
• Rural organiser for union and its successor, Railway Workers’ Industry branch of the Australian Workers’ Union from 1915 to the late 1920s, mostly on South Coast and highlands.
• Contested seat of Wollondilly in 1916. Chairman, Belmore Ward, City Council elections c. 1924.
• Opened small real estate agency in Sydney about 1928. The 1930s depression caused family to split: Paddy remained in Sydney while the family returned to Mittagong.
• Contested Macquarie ward in City Council elections for the Australian Labor Party in May 1930. Supported Lang in early years but contested Wollondilly in 1932 NSW election as ‘Federal Labor’ and in 1944 as ‘Independent Labor’. Independent Labor nominee for the seat of Woollahra in 1937.
• He was employed at Lithgow Small Arms Factory from 1942 until injured at work.
• Was a Water Board dam navvy at Nepean Dam, Bargo, in 1943 and Warragamba Dam from 1945 to 1948. Wrote and published the anti-Tory monthly, ‘Warragamba Advocate’ while labouring at dam.
• Active in local Water Board union activities at Nepean and Warragamba Dams. Fell to his death at Warragamba Dam in 1948.
• Paddy was the model for ‘Martin’ (poetic licence taken) in his nephew Peter Kenna’s play, A Hard God.

Sources
Interviews with his son, Father Patrick Kenna at Kiama 28 November 1984 and on phone 24 December 1992. Ray Greentree and John Palmer interview 1 April 1985 at Bargo; Navvy, 1914-1916; Australian Worker, 1916-23; Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board minutes 2 June 1948; Metropolitan Supply and Sewerage Employees’ Association minutes; Metropolitan Supply and Sewerage Employees’ Association, Warragamba Dam branch, minutes; Labor Daily (Sydney), 18 December 1924, p 1.