People Australia

Perry, Alice Violet Emma (also known as Violet Alice, Eileen or ‘Comrade Clare’), née McKenna (1899-1971) community activist and Communist 

Birth: 1899 [possibly on 5 April] at Wagin, Western Australia, daughter of native-born parents Walter McKenna (1871-1930), farmer, and Augusta Emma, née Spencer (1873-1917). Marriage: 16 August 1921 at Subiaco, Perth, WA, to native-born George Sylvester Perry (1891-1960), a watchmaker, and a widower with two children. They had four more sons. Death: 3 February 1971 in her residence at Esplanade, Perth, WA. Religion: buried with the forms of the International Four Square Gospel Church. 

• Brought up on a farm in the Wagin district. Was a Communist Party of Australia (CPA) activist, in WA. In 1925 electoral roll was described as a confectioner, living at Bunbury. Organised Perth unemployed during the late 1930s.
• With Bertie Lake founded the Council Against Unemployment in 1938.
• Tall, rangy and loquacious, she defeated an attempt to expel her from the Australian Labor Party in 1938, despite her well-known Communist sympathies.
• Metropolitan organiser for CPA, Perth, during World War II. In 1941 Eileen Violet Perry, “mother of six, tall bespectacled”, was fined £50 under the provisions of the National Security (Subversive Associations) Regulations, which she appealed to the High Court unsuccessfully.
• Frequent contributor to the CPA paper, Workers Star. During World War II she also put Communist view of war effort in radio sessions called ‘Communist Speaks’ and ‘Omen for Freedom’.
• For many years she worked for the Children’s Hospital, the Infant Health Association and the Parkerville Home and was closely connected with musical interests in Bunbury and later in Perth.
• In 1949 electoral roll she was a manageress living at West Perth. In her later years her occupation on electoral rolls was “secretary”.
• “In spite of her many interests and activities, she has brought up a family of six children and is a skilled engraver as well”.
• Cause of death: coronary occlusion (2 minutes) due to coronary sclerosis (years).

Sources
Labour History, no. 49, November 1985, 76; Justina Williams, The First Furrow (Perth, 1976), pp 150-51, 156, 170 and 179.