People Australia

Denis (Dinny) Lovegrove (1904-1979) brass foundry worker, trade union official, expelled Communist and parliamentarian

Birth: 25 September 1904 at Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, son of Violet Aleith Lovegrove (1882-?), a waitress, born at Hobart, Tasmania. On his second marriage certificate he gave his parents as Denis Lovegrove, farmer, and Violet, née Robinson.  Marriages: (1) 28 January 1928 at the Baptist Manse, Collingwood, to Melbourne-born Irene Francis Chinn (1904-1946). They had one daughter and one son. (2) 27 February 1951 at the Collins Street Baptist Church, Melbourne to a divorcée Eileen, née Collins, late Delaney (1910-2001), born at Gormanston, Tasmania. Death: 25 January 1979 at East Melbourne. 

• Educated at Faraday State School, Carlton. In the 1914 electoral roll his mother was a waitress living at South Melbourne
• Dinny was employed as a brass foundry worker, shipping office clerk, and biscuit factory and bakery employee. A plasterer in 1928, he lost his job in the Depression.
• He joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1930. Prominent in unemployment demonstrations, he was expelled from the CPA and bashed after criticising the party in 1933.
• He was secretary of the Fibrous Plaster Workers’ Union in 1935-1947, president in 1955-1978; president of Trades Hall Council 1938 and sometime delegate to the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
• From 1942 to 1945 Lovegrove was chief industrial inspector (Victoria) with the Allied Works Council. He was a member of the State Executive of the Australian Labor Party from 1938 to 1955; president 1943-1944; and Federal President 1953-1954. A Grouper until 1954, he was organising secretary of the Victorian ALP in 1947-1950 and secretary from 1950 to 1955.
• He was elected member of the Legislative Assembly for Carlton in 1955-1958, for Fitzroy in 1958-1967 and for Sunshine in 1967-1973. Deputy Opposition leader in 1958-1967. Member, statute law revision committee in 1955-1958 and 1967-1973. Left parliament in May 1973.
• Director, Industrial Printing and Publicity Co. Ltd. in 1951-1979. Member of University of Melbourne Council 1964-1968.
• He was a competent violinist.
• Cause of death: carcinoma of lung with metastases to liver and bones (12 months). 

Sources
Geoff Browne, Biographical register of the Victorian Parliament, 1900-84 (Melbourne, 1985); Normington Rawling, Communism Comes to Australia, p 10 [unpublished, held at Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU].