People Australia

Schmella, John Matthew Michael de Crespigny (Jack), né Sciarmella (1908-1960) mining employee, trade union official and Labor Party secretary

Birth: 24 February 1908 at Charters Towers, Queensland, son of John Mattao Sciarmella (1861-1916), a miner born in Lombardy, Italy, and Mary, née Brahan (1870-1940), born in Tipperary, Ireland. Marriage: 20 August 1929 at St Mary’s Catholic Church, Townsville, to native-born Gladys Mary Parsons (1910-1982), a nurse. They had two daughters. Death: 18 July 1960 at his home in St Lucia, Brisbane. Religion: Catholic. 

• Jack was educated at Mt Carmel Christian Brothers College, Charters Towers. He was an amateur boxer, contesting championships in North Queensland.
• In 1924 he became a school teacher in north-west Queensland, employed by the Education Department. In 1930 as John Matthew de Crespigny Sciarmella, he was a teacher at Townsville.
• By 1931, now known as John Matthew Schmella, he was working in a copper mine at Mt Isa. He held positions as a construction foreman, shift foreman and general foreman. Gaining an interest in mineralogy, he went prospecting and qualified as a metallurgist.
• He was proprietor and editor of the Mt Isa Weekly News in 1939. From 1941 to 1945 he was clerical and research officer in the Australian Workers’ Union Brisbane office and in 1946 industrial officer, for the Australian Workers’ Union’s State branch.
• He was a member of the State central executive of the Australian Labor Party from 1947. “During his control of the Qld Central Executive he played a major part in rewelding the ALP after the Gair split, establishing the Labor College, Labor Youth Movement and Labor Women’s Auxiliary”. He was secretary of the Qld Branch of the ALP from 1952 to 1960 and recruited new members and built “dozens of” new branches.
• Schmella was federal secretary of the ALP from 1954 to 1960. A “strong anti-communist”, “he was a “power behind the throne” during the historic federal biennial conference of the ALP at Hobart in 1955 when the party finally broke with the then ALP industrial groups. He was again a leader of the State party at the historic Labor-in-Politics convention which produced the three weeks’ annual leave crisis and final expulsion from the ALP of the then premier, Vincent Gair.
• He was associated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions on the Joint Commonwealth Labor Advisory Committee, a member of the University of Queensland Senate in 1950-1956 and a member of Australian Broadcasting Commission advisory committee in 1952-1954.
• Cause of death: hypertensive renal disease. 

Sources
Herald (Melbourne), 15 July 1954; ETU News, August 1960, Sun 19 July 1960, 22 July 1960; Age, 9 April 1955, 19 July 1960; Labor, August 1960.