People Australia

Frederick Albert ('Frank' or 'Dido') Miller (1903-1976) miner and Communist organiser

Birth: 5 March 1903 at South Melbourne, Victoria, son of native-born Henry Charles Miller (1866-1914), labourer, and Mary, née Glynn (1868-1936), born at Galway, Ireland. Unmarried. Death: 31 July 1976 in hospital at Kew, Victoria. 

• Moved to New Zealand. Worked as a miner. Played a part in the Waihi miners’ strike. Possibly went to Fiji.
• Returned to Australia. Member of the central executive of the Communist Party of Australia. CPA organiser in Broken Hill. Nominated for position of secretary of the Workers’ Industrial Union in Broken Hill in November 1930. Protesting against unemployment was arrested with others for trespass in Broken Hill in October 1932.
• Was a CPA candidate for Yass and Sturt electorates in New South Wales elections in 1930 and June 1932, respectively. Travelled to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1936, worked on the Moscow underground railway. Later that year toured New Zealand at the same time as J. B. King.
• Served in Australian and Canadian Merchant Navy from 1942 to 1949.
• To South Australia in 1950. Worked as a miner, for the Department of Mines at Radium Hill, South Australia, for six weeks.
• To Darwin, Northern Territory. Was a miner for Northern Driller Ltd in Rum Jungle Uranium field in 1951 at least. Left in 1952.
• When working in Rum Jungle Uranium field was suspected of disloyalty and subversive activity with ASIO report stating “he has spent a lot of his time typing on a new typewriter.”
• Cause of death: cardiac arrest, bronchopneumonia and chronic alcoholism.

Sources
Frank Miller - ASIO file, series A6119, item, 2396, pp. 3, 6-8, 10, 12-13, 16, 20 (National Archives of Australia).