People Australia

Jack Ryan, sketch

Smith's Weekly (Sydney), 20 October 1928, p 12

John Francis Edwin (Jack) Ryan (1902-1958) butcher, trade union official, Communist, Labor party activist, and poultry farmer

Birth: 1902 at Melbourne, Victoria, son of native-born parents John Francis Frederick Ryan (1881-1951), master butcher, and Nellie, née Ashbee (1882-1910). Marriage: 1943 at Woollahra, New South Wales, to Sydney-born Edna Minna, née Nelson, late Jones (1904-1997), feminist and political activist. They had two daughters and one son. Death: 5 March 1958 in the state hospital, Liverpool; usual residence Canley Vale Road, Canley Heights, NSW. Religion: Catholic. 

• Reputedly a choir boy in the Catholic Church at Brunswick, Victoria.
• Apprenticed in his father’s butcher’s business, Brunswick, then worked in the trade in NSW Northern Rivers district.
• Moved to Sydney, NSW. Member of the executive of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, represented the union on the NSW Labor Council until late 1928.
• Member of Communist Party of Australia. Contributed to CPA’s Workers’ Weekly and sold the paper in The Domain.
• Protege of Jock Garden. Appointed secretary-director of NSW Labor Council’s Labour Information Bureau on the death of George Winter, 1927; at Council’s request, undertook 18-month course in accountancy to sharpen his skills in researching company finances.
• Joined Clerks’ Union. Edited Bureau’s Labor Monthly. Delegate to Hands Off China Conference. Member of International Class War Prisoners’ Aid; prominent in the formation of the Pan-Pacific Workers’ Movement in Australia; assistant editor of Pan-Pacific Worker.
• Australian Council of Trade Union delegate to Pan-Pacific secretariat in Shanghai, 1928. Subsequently attempted to visit Japan but was arrested and expelled, returning to China and travelling to USSR, attending conference of Red International of Labour Unions in Moscow as accredited Australian delegate.
• Member of the RIUL executive; represented Pan-Pacific Secretariat at conference in India in October 1928. Returned to Australia in July 1929. Persuaded ACTU to reaffirm its association with RILU.
• Met Edna Nelson in 1929 and their first child was born the following year — she had separated from her former husband but they were not divorced until 1935.
• With Edna, Jack was an active supporter of 1929 timber-workers’ strike. In 1930 he was appointed to the ACTU central strike committee.
• Expelled from CPA in 1930, he and his wife joined the Australian Labor Party. He was on the staff of Henry Lawson Labor College in the mid-1940s. Operated a butcher’s shop in Woollahra, Sydney.
• After suffering a stroke in 1952, he moved with his family to Canley Vale, purchasing a poultry farm.
• Cause of death: cardiac infarction, coronary occlusion and congestive cardiac failure.
• Professor Lyndall Ryan (1943-2024), historian, was his daughter.

Sources
Barbara Curthoys, ‘The Comintern, the CPA, and the Impact of Harry Wicks’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, April 1993, pp 23-36; Labor Daily, 13 January 1927; Smith’s Weekly, 20 October 1928; Barrier Daily Truth, 6 July 1929.