People Australia

Ivor Lancaster, n.d.

from Education (NSW), 21 May 1975, p 151

Ivor Gilbert Lancaster (1914-2004) school teacher, trade union official and community activist

Birth: 22 December 1914 at Lithgow, New South Wales, son of English-born parents Richard Lancaster (1884-1954), a fitter and turner, from Kendall, Lancashire, and Isabel, née Curphey (1880-1973), from Workington, Cumberland. Marriage: 21 December 1946 at the Wesley Methodist chapel, Sydney, to Temple Muriel Perrett (1922-2017), a school teacher, born at Woodstock, NSW. They had three children. Death: 24 July 2004 in NSW; usual residence at Terrigal, NSW. 

• Grew up in Lithgow. Educated at State high school, Lithgow, and Sydney Teachers’ College.
• Before his teaching appointment he worked as a subsidised teacher in the Peak Hill district. Began teaching appointment in Lithgow in 1935 and moved to teacher-in-charge at Eribung Public School (Western Division) in the same year, 1935, until about 1939 when he returned to teaching in Lithgow until 1947.
• Secretary of Lithgow War Loan Committee and Divisional Warden, during war years. Secretary of National Fitness, Lithgow branch. Chairman of Central-Western Conference on Post-War Reconstruction. Secretary of Lithgow Housing Committee. Treasurer, assistant secretary and secretary of Lithgow Teachers’ Association. Moved motion to have Lithgow Association affiliated with NSW Labor Council and the Australian Council of Trade Unions at the annual conference 1943.
• Vice-president and honorary secretary of Hartley Trades and Labor Council. Organiser for NSW Teachers’ Federation from 1947 to 1957. Organised several conferences including a regionally-based New Deal for Education Conference at Lithgow in 1946. With the secretary of the Australian Teachers' Federation (ATF), William D. Dobell, he assisted in organising the ATF Commonwealth New Deal for Education Conference at Canberra in 1948, which lobbied for federal funding for education.
• Organised public meetings on educational needs and was active in developing cooperation between the Federation of Parents’ and Citizens’ Associations and the Federation of Infants’ School Clubs in the 1950s.
• Foundation secretary of the Parent-Teacher Educational Council. Secretary of the Advance of Education Conference 1954 and of the Advance of Education Council.
• Was made honorary life member of the NSW Teachers’ Federation in 1957. Assistant general secretary of the NSW Teachers' Federation from 1957 to 1963.
• Lancaster was general secretary of the NSW Teachers’ Federation from 1963 until he retired in 1975. Organised the National Education Conference in Sydney in 1960, attended by 3200 delegates, and a similar conference in Melbourne in 1963 which was attended by 3000 delegates.
• At Teachers’ College had won his Rugby Union ‘blue’ and 220 yards swimming championship, and later was a champion swimmer of Lithgow District and Blue Mountain District. 

Sources
Labor Year Book, 1973; Education, 25 June 1948 p 179, 21 April 1950, 25 April 1956, 12 June 1957 p.3, 23 October 1957, 17 October 1962, 26 February 1975 p 47, 21 May 1975 p 151, 30 July 1975.