People Australia

Jack Pratt, n.d.

Pratt, John William (Jack or 'Hellfire Jack') (1874-1968) settler, Labor and community activist and Communist 

Birth: 5 October 1877 at Reece, Swainby, Yorkshire, England son of William Pratt (1851-1902), ironstone labourer, and Margaret Ann, née Durham (1857-1885). Marriage: 1897 at West Hartlepool, Durham, England, to Louisa Robson (1876-1959). They had five daughters and six sons. Death: 1968 at Fremantle Hospital, Fremantle, Western Australia; usual residence Jago Street, Willagee, Perth, WA. Religion: officiating minister at burial P. L. Troy - “dialectical materialist”. 

• Father was a Chartist and was jailed for attempting to organise a trade union; grandfather was killed at Peterloo.
• Jack joined Independent Labor Party in Britain, about 1890. Foundation member of Communist Party in Britain in 1920. Knew George Bernard Shaw, William Morris, Keir Hardie. Shop steward in Durham iron and steel industry where he acquired his nickname. Boasted of having heard Lenin and Engels speak in London. Worked on docks at Hartlepool. Went on board Soviet ships to welcome Soviet sailors. Labour activities bought him into disrepute.
• “Faced with choice of either going to jail or emigrating” he arrived in Western Australia in 1925. Brought with him a letter from George Lansbury to Labor premier Phil Collier who agreed to place Pratt at Northcliffe settlement in south-west WA. Collier reputedly told one of his officers, 'Put him where there are no roads or railways'. Collier allegedly wanted Pratt to curtail 'agitation'.
• Northcliffe was a 'group settlement' scheme which directed British migrants to virgin lands to work as dairy farmers offering little government assistance and needing to take up capital debt.
• Pratt brought ten children, five boys and five girls, to Australia. Eldest daughter Hilda helped Pratt to put up poster about Lenin and the Soviet Union and she joined the (Communist?) group established by her father at Northcliffe.
• He organised settlers in a 'Settlers' Association' in the 1920s and 1930s to gain improved conitions. Organised a two-week strike in the 1930s when they refused to send their cream and instead poured the cream into gutters in Manjimup, which resulted in the winning a reduction in the debt.
• Chairman of rank-and-file committee which opposed the eviction of Fred Coulridge there in 1936, ninety-seven of one hundred and three settlers demonstrated outside of the Agricultural Bank at Manjimup.
• Was a pensioner late in life. Cause of death: myocardial infarction (1 day), atherosclerotic heart disease (20 years), contributory cause hypertension (20 years).

Sources
Tribune, 8 June 1960 p 6; Justina Williams, The First Furrow (Perth, 1976) pp 97, 112-113 [with photo]