People Australia

Jim McClelland, by John Lewis, 1988

National Museum of Australia, 2000.0041.0083

James Robert (Jim) McClelland (1915-1999) barrister, parliamentarian and judge

Birth: 3 June 1915 at East Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria, son of native-born parents Robert William McClelland (1883-1959), painter in the Victorian railways, and Florence Ruby, née O'Connor (1890-1964). Marriages: (1) 4 July 1947 at the district registrar’s office, Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales, to Nora Fitzer, later Fenbow (1925-2009), an articled law clerk, later solicitor, born at Harbin, Manchuria, Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. They had two adopted children (a son and a daughter) and divorced in 1968. (2) 20 December 1968 at the Registrar General’s Office, Sydney, to a divorcée Freda Minnie, née Squire, late Watson (1926-1976), a physiotherapist, born at Cowra, NSW. (3) a widower, on 10 July 1978 in a civil ceremony at his home at Woollahra, Sydney, to Gillian Patricia Appleton (b. 1942), a writer, editor and media consultant. Death: 16 January 1999 at his usual residence Blaxland road, Wentworth Falls, NSW. Religion: Catholic in early years and later an atheist. 

• Educated St Kevin's College, Melbourne, where he was a school mate and rival of Bob Santamaria.
• BA, University of Melbourne, LLB, University of Sydney.
• Employed as a clerk Victorian Railways for five years, becoming actively engaged in studying Marxist theory; strongly influenced by Guido Baracchi and practising Trotskyist politics after 1939. Became colleague and friend of Laurie Short, their careers following similar trajectory.
• Joined Australian Labor Party in 1940 on Trotskyist 'entrist' premise, 'proletarianised' by working at Australian Iron and Steel, Melbourne, as ironworker, union delegate active in Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia (FIA), expelled from union by Communist Party of Australia union leaders. Active Yarra Bank orator and pamphleteer and was Melbourne's leading Trotskyist during World War II.
• Served with RAAF 1943-1946, in New Guinea, being perhaps “only member of the armed forces in World War 2 who carried in his kit bag the three volumes of Karl Marx's Capital” which he claimed to have read in its entirety. 
• Moved to Sydney after the war, studying law, and developing an extensive industrial compensation and union practice. Representation included right-wing union interests in actions against communist groups.
• 1948 renounced Trotskyism after quarrels with Nick Origlass whose 'crude manners' he deplored.
• Ally and counsel for Short in FIA takeover, 1951-52.
• Dapper dresser who earned sobriquet, 'Diamond Jim'.
• Joined ALP. Elected to Senate 1971; became Minister for Manufacturing Industry and later Minister for Labor and Immigration in Whitlam government, 1975.
• 1978 resigned from Senate and became judge of the NSW Industrial Commission and in 1980 Chief judge of NSW Land and Environment Court.
• President of Royal Commission into British Nuclear Weapons Test in the 1986-1998 columnist for SMH.
• Posthumously incriminated Lionel Murphy over Morgan Ryan affair. Book publications include: Stirring the Possum, Penguin, Melbourne 1988 and An Angel bit the Bride.
• Cause of death: cerebro vascular accident (12 hours), chronic airways disease and renal failure. 

Sources
Labor Year Book, 1970; Joan Rydon ed), A biographical register of the Commonwealth Parliament 1901-1972 (ANU Press, 1975); Secular Who's Who; Hall Greenland, Red Hot/ The Life and Times of Nick Origlass 1908–1996 (Sydney, 1998), p 303; Australian, 18 January 1999, pp 6, 14.