People Australia

James (Jim) Stewart (1921-1990) ironworker and trade union official

Birth: 7 October 1921 at Molong, New South Wales, son of James McFarlane Stewart (1890-1934), station manager, born at Adelaide, South Australia, and Harriett Maria, née Wright (1901-1981), born at Waddington, Lincolnshire, England. Marriage: 22 June 1944 at Nanango, Queensland, to Patricia Agnes Bishop (1924-2022), who had been born at Nanango. They had four daughters and two sons. Death: 2 January 1990 in Bulli District Hospital at Bulli, Wollongong, NSW; usual residence Bond Street, Bellambi, NSW. Religion: Anglican [on Service Record] buried in Corrimal Catholic cemetery. 

• His father, a station overseer at Kilkee, Koorawatha, NSW, had served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I from January 1915 until March 1917 when he was discharged in England on being commissioned in the Royal Flying Corps ([Royal Air Force), in which he served until August 1919; in February 1934, back at Koorawatha, NSW, he committed suicide by strychnine poisoning.
• Jim grew up in Molong, NSW. Attended Cowra and Young high schools. Worked as a labourer around Young.
• Enlisted in the Australian Military Forces on 3 August 1940 and served in the Light Horse and as a wireless operator in New Guinea and Bougainville. Discharged in Queensland on 20 October 1944.
• After discharge worked in stations around the southern part of Queensland in 1944. Moved to Wollongong, NSW, in 1945 where he had lived for a short time in 1941.
• Worked at the Commonwealth Rolling Mills, Port Kembla, in 1945 and joined the Federated Ironworkers’ Association (FIA). Was FIA delegate in ‘pickling’ department in 1950.
• Elected assistant secretary of the Port Kembla branch of the FIA in December 1952. An Australian Labor Party Industrial Group member and an anti-Communist, he was one of two non-Communist full-time officials from about 1953.
• Secretary of the Port Kembla branch of the FIA from 1967 until he was narrowly defeated in 1970. National organiser for the FIA from 1971 until he retired in 1981.
• Cause of death: carcinoma of lung (large cell).

Sources
Labor News, December 1957, December 1981-January 1982