People Australia

Doris McRae, n.d.

Doris Mary McRae (1893-1988) schoolteacher, trade unionist, headmistress and Communist

Birth: 25 January 1893 at Pakenham, Victoria, daughter of native-born Donald Gordon McRae (1853-1937), a  teamster, and Mary Jane, née Broad (1858-1924), born at Kingswood, Gloucestershire, England. Unmarried. Death: 9 October 1988 at East Brighton, Victoria; usual residence Union Street, East Brighton. 

• Spent her childhood at Pakenham. Won a scholarship to attend the Continuation High School, Melbourne, 1907.
• Student teacher at Pakenham State School, 1910. In 1912 she won a scholarship to University of Melbourne, where she joined the University Student Christian Movement and a student pacifist organisation. She completed her BA studies 1914 although degree not conferred until 1926.
• She was one of the first women in Victoria to train as a secondary teacher. After graduation, she was posted to the following High Schools: Echuca (1916), Williamstown (1917), Bairnsdale (1920), Castlemaine (1925), Hamilton (1927) and Horsham (1928).
• At Bairnsdale, she became involved in the Free Religious Fellowship, meeting Doris and Maurice Blackburn, Dick Long, Nettie and Vance Palmer and other socialist thinkers.
• She was an exchange teacher in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1929, travelling in Europe and visiting League of Nations.
• McCrae returned to Victoria in 1931 to teach at Horsham; then to Coburg High, 1934, and Frankston High, 1936.
• She was active in the Victorian Teachers Union (VTU) from 1935. That year she co-founded the VTU Social Questions Committee, campaigning, inter alia, against child malnutrition and for slum clearance and preschool education and child care. She also helped to form the Teachers Peace Group, 1936.
• As a delegate from the Australian Teachers Federation she led the Australian delegation to the first Pan Pacific Women's Peace Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 1937; subsequently she travelled to Britain and Soviet Union.
• She became a member of the Communist Party of Australia, teaching at Marx House and writing for the Guardian.
• Appointed principal of Flemington Girls High School in 1942, she was one of the few women to hold a principal's position at this time.
• Vice-president of the VTU during 1940s. In 1942 she helped form the Council for Women in War Work and the Committee for Co-ordinating Child Care in Wartime. Active campaigner for improved community services for women and children in Flemington/Kensington during and after World War II.
• Subjected to personal attack in Victorian parliament in 1943 for social activism, though cleared by subsequent departmental investigation; 1948 subjected to right-wing campaign in Flemington supported by the local Catholic church.
• She resigned from the Education Department in 1950 after being named in appendix to Victorian Royal Commission into communist activities.
• She remained active in the Campaign for International Co-operation and Disarmament until her nineties. Also was a foundation member of the Australian Union (AUW) of Women, 1950, assisting in the  association's subsequent growth and contributing to AUW policy on women's rights, equal pay, economic justice and peace.
• Cause of death: left ventricular failure (1 week), myocardial ischemia (years) and senile arteriosclerosis (years). 

Sources
Tribune, 2 November 1988; R. Crow, 'A Tribute to Doris McRae', unpublished typescript, 1988; F. Kelly, 'Tribute to Doris McRae', unpublished typescript, 1988; information from H. Weatherburn, 1992.