People Australia

Irene May (Rene) Orr née Russell (1902-1983) textile worker, trade union supporter and Communist 

Birth: 10 May 1902 at Waterloo, Sydney, New South Wales, daughter of native-born parents John Thomas Russell (1870-1934), railwayman and unionist, and Eliza Ann, née Regan (1877-1945). Marriages: (1) 23 December 1931 at Newtown, Sydney to William Orr (1900-1954), born at Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, a miner, trade unionist and Communist. They had one son. (2) 1956 at Sydney, to John (Jock) Graham (d.1982). Death: 21 October 1983 at Fairfield District Hospital, Fairfield, Sydney, usual residence: Second Avenue, Canley Vale, Sydney. 

• Her father, an Australian Labor Party supporter, had taken part in the 1917 NSW general strike.
• Rene worked in textile mills from the age of 14. Joined the Australian Labor Party.
• Met both Mary Wright and Bill Orr at an unemployed people’s conference, Sydney, in early 1931. Addressed the conference on unemployment in the textile industry. Batoned by police whilst marching in unemployed demonstration.
• Joined the Communist Party of Australia in the 1930s, active in the same branch as Mary Wright.
• Immediately after their marriage Bill Orr went to Russia for training. During his absence, Rene worked to unionise fellow textile workers. Blacklisted, she went to work at the Australian Woollen Mills under an assumed name.
• In 1933 she was involved in an unsuccessful Militant Minority Movement-supported strike by NSW women textile workers.
• Moved with her husband to the northern coalfields after he won secretaryship of Miners’ Federation in late 1933.
• Was founder and first national secretary of the Miners’ Federation Women’s Auxiliaries.
• Cause of death: small and large bowel obstruction (weeks), uraemia and heart failure (months).

Sources
Audrey Johnson, Bread and Roses; a personal history of three militant women and their friends 1902-1988 (Sydney, 1990).