People Australia

Stephen Murray-Smith, by Alec Bolton, 1986

National Library of Australia, 14474924

Stephen Muray-Smith (1922-1988) teacher, editor, Communist

Birth: 9 September 1922 at Toorak, Melbourne, Victoria, son of William David Murray-Smith (1888-1961), indentor, born at Perth, Scotland, and native-born Alice Maud, née Margrett (1894-1980). Marriage: 6 February 1948 in a civil ceremony at Melbourne, to Nita Bluthal (1927-2013), a fellow Communist, born in Galicia, Poland. They had two daughters and one son. Death: 31 July 1988 in his home at Mount Eliza, Victoria. 

• Educated at Geelong Grammar School, Melbourne University (BA. 1947; Dip. Ed. 1948). Served in World War II.
• Joined Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1945; secretary and president of Melbourne University Labor Club 1946-1947; ASLF 1947; Journalist in Czechoslovakia 1949-1951.
• School teacher, 1952-1953. National organising secretary of the Australian Peace Council; organising secretary of the Victorian Peace Council 1953-58; editor, Realist Writer; editor, Victorian Teachers' Union journal.
• From 1954 he was founding editor, Overland which was a literary, cultural and political journal and campaigned for causes including the abolition of censorship and capital punishment and for the preservation of the environment and the maintenance of tended lighthouses. Continued ownership of journal during his CPA membership and after.
• Left CPA in 1958 and joined the Australian Labor Party in the same year.
• Engaged in research with Faculty of Education at Melbourne University from the early 1960s. Member, Melbourne branch of Labour History Society.
• Retired 1988. Cause of death: acute myocardial infarction. 

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis ANU, 1962, p 427; Recorder, October 1988 pp 6-7.