People Australia

William Seale, Fairfax Corporation, c.1930

National Library of Australia, 51894033

William Henry (Bill or ‘Bull’) Seale (1883-1930), trade union official 

Birth: 25 December 1882 at Pyrmont, Sydney, New South Wales, son of Sydney-born parents William Henry Seales or Seale (1854-1919), butcher, and Mary, née Caulfield (1858-1943). Never married. Death: 18 March 1930, in ambulance on way to hospital, Randwick, Sydney. Religion: Catholic. 

• Joined Waterside Workers Federation c.1902; Prominent in union; Member of executive;
• Secretary, WWF 1920 to 1927 at least;
• Led Trades Hall faction in 1926 ALP split;
• President ALP NSW Branch 1926? or 1927? to 1929 (resigned). Australian Worker reported that: “It was during his occupancy of the presidential chair that the Communists and other extremists were allowed to carry on their white-anting tactics within the ranks of the ALP. Other incidents associated with his rule as President were the declaration of a dictatorship of the Movement, the adoption of the Red Rules, and the hounding out of the Movement of all and sundry who did not see eye-to-eye with the peculiar methods of the Lang-Seale-Willis faction. It was the action of the faction that assisted very materially to bring about the defeat of the Labor Government. (p.14)”;
• Vice-Chairman of Trades Union Communist Conference.
• Cause of death: arteriosclerosis.

Sources
Labor Daily, 13 Jan. 1927; Australian Worker, 9 Nov. p.14; Malcolm Henry Ellis, The Garden Path (Sydney, 1949); H. J. Gibbney and Ann G. Smith (compilers and eds), A Biographical Register 1788-1939: notes from the name index of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra, 1987), p.248