People Australia

Ken Miller, c.1941

National Archives of Australia, B883, VX70491

Kenneth Craig (Ken) Miller (1913-1963) solicitor’s clerk and Communist 

Birth: 2 April 1913 at Ballarat, Victoria, son of Dougald Forbes Stalker Miller (1874-1932), dentist, and Winifred Maude, née Coutts (1866-1952). Both parents were born in Ballarat. Marriages: (1) 1939 in Victoria to Dulcie Aileen Hillman (1916-1998). The marriage ended in divorce about 1946. (2) 1947 in Victoria, to Patricia Isabel Lyttle (1914-1995). They had three children. Death: 28 June 1963 in Melbourne, Victoria; usual residence, Coppin Street, Richmond, Melbourne. 

• Educated to Leaving Certificate standard. Joined Communist Party of Australia in 1934. Member of the Victorian State committee of the party from 1935 to April 1963.
• Enlisted in the Australian Military Forces on 18 December 1941. Served in the Australian Imperial Force from 2 January 1942, including service in New Guinea in July 1943 and from September 1943 to May 1945. Discharged on 10 December 1945.
• CPA candidate for the municipal council in Richmond, for the State seat of Clifton Hill in July 1945 and for the Federal seats of Melbourne in 1943 and of Yarra in 1955 and 1958.
• Member of Central Committee of the Communist Party. Publisher and leading worker on the newspaper Guardian for thirteen years.
• Associated with the Ted Hill group, he had “differences with the Party” and was expelled in June 1963, but remained a close friend of Ralph Gibson’s.
• Cause of death: myocardial infarction, coronary arteriosclerosis and general arteriosclerosis.

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, p 426.