People Australia

Grace Peebles (?-?) social activist, trade unionist and Communist

Birth: details unknown. Marriage: (1) reputedly to Nick Peebles details unknown. (2) publicly ‘married’ fellow comrade Robert Shayler in a “Red wedding” before Communist general secretary Herbert Moxon on 12 January 1930. Death: details unknown. 

• Lived at Balmain. Worked as waitress, cook, and general domestic.
• Communist Party of Australia member and activist from late 1920s. From 1928 wrote letters regularly to CPA's Workers Weekly and Working Woman.
• Active in Militant Women's Group, Sydney, during 1929 timber workers strike. Sacked from domestic job for refusing to accept a delivery of black timber. Arrested on picket line and successfully defended herself against charge of offensive behaviour.
• Also lobbied unemployed men at Sydney Free Labour Exchange against taking jobs of striking miners on Northern coalfields.
• In 1930 was delegate to Unemployed Workers Movement's (UWM) State conference. One of two women elected to the UWM executive.
• Disrupted meeting of Advisory Committee of Unemployed Relief Fund attended by Governor at Sydney Town Hall.
• With Joy Barrington, Jean and Patricia Devanny and others, was arrested during mass demonstration in Macquarie Street. Convicted and imprisoned in Long Bay jail, where she undertook a hunger strike.
• Subsequently was active in Hotel, Club and Restaurant Employees Union, with husband (?). Was on union's executive by mid-1930s.