People Australia

Edward or Edmund (Ted) Moyle (c.1877-1965) carpenter, gaoled IWW activist, trade union official and Communist 

Birth: c.1877 in England, probably at Chester, Cheshire, son of Edmund Moyle (1842-1916), carpenter, and Elizabeth, née Speakman (1844-1892). Marriage: details unknown. Death: 4 January 1965 in Milford, New Zealand. 

• Joined Carpenters' Union in England aged 20. Held many positions in union, including presidency. Active in, and sometime secretary of, the Lancashire branch of the Independent Labour Party.
• To Australia about 1910. President of Adelaide Local of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1911. IWW national secretary. Active anti-conscriptionist.
• Imprisoned for three months under the War Precautions Act in 1916. Later served eight months and held for deportation during the war.
• SA Police Gazette, February 13, 1918, reported: “Prisoners to be discharged from Yatala Labor Prison . . . Edward Moyle, tried at Police Court, Adelaide, on November 24th, 1917, for a breach of the Unlawful Associations Act (continue to be a member of an unlawful association known as I. W. W.); sentenced to four months’ hard labor; native of England, carpenter, 42 years of age, 5ft 4 ¼ in. [160 cm] high, swarthy complexion, dark hair, grey eyes, long nose (thin), medium mouth, round chin, long scar on right forearm, mole on right cheek, mole on inside of right shoulder blade. Freedom due February 16th, 1918.”
• Carpenters' Union president, executive member and delegate to Labour Council, Adelaide. Chairperson for three years of combined building trades unions.
• Joined Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in Adelaide in 1923. Joined revived SA Branch of CPA 1930. Active in Adelaide's unemployed movement in 1930s. Imprisoned twice.
• First CPA Senate candidate for SA (1934). Remained active member of CPA.
• Retired to New Zealand to be with his family.
• He was probably the Edmund Moyle, 88, retired cabinet maker, born in Chester, England, son of Edmund Moyle and Elizabeth, née Speakman, who died, unmarried, in Milford, New Zealand on 4 January 1965, having been in New Zealand for five years; his cause of death was hypostatic pneumonia (1 week), right heart failure (6 months) and generalised and marked arteriosclerosis (2 years).

Sources
Workers' Weekly, 29 June 1934; Tribune, 10 February 1965; John Playford, History of the left-wing of the South Australian Labor Movement, 1908-36, BA honours thesis University of Adelaide, 1958, p. 141; information from F. Cain, 1992.