People Australia

Clara Irene Grace McGowan [known as ‘Irene’] (1882-1964) trade union leader and labour activist

Birth: 30 December 1883 at Macdonald River, Wiseman’s Ferry, New South Wales, daughter of Robert Alexander Books, farmer, and his second wife Mary Ann, née Douglas. Marriage: 1908 at Boomi, Moree, NSW, to John Joseph McGowan, storekeeper (d. by 1937). They had two sons and one daughter. Death: 10 August 1964 at Balmain hospital, Sydney. Religion: Presbyterian. 

• Federated Clerks union (member?). Executive member of Caterers’ and Waitresses’ Union for 3 years; sometime vice-president. Delegate to Labor Council. Campaign director for seat of Martin in the Federal by-election in 1928. President of Martin Federal Council in 1929. Member of the Drummoyne branch of the ALP.
• Appointed justice of the peace in January 1924. Was an occasional contributor to the Labor Daily in the 1920s and 1930s.
• Member of the Women’s Strike Relief Committee and regular attendant at sittings of the Deportation Board in 1925. Organised and conducted the Five Dock relief depot during the timber-workers’ dispute in 1929.
• Delegate to Australian Labor Party conferences for four years in succession representing the Cumberland electorate (1923-1925), then the Caterers’ and Waitresses’ Union in 1926. Central executive member of ALP for four years. Retired in 1932.
• One of six delegates representing NSW ALP at Commonwealth Conference in Canberra in 1930. That year she was fined with others including Donald Grant for delivering a public address in Hyde Park without permission.
• Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage, hypertension, congestive cardiac failure.

Sources
Labor Year Book, 1933 p 173.