People Australia

Thorburn, James Alexander (Jim) (1924-2015) coppersmith, bookseller and socialist 

Birth: 16 April 1924 at Bells Hill, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, son of James Thorburn, process worker, and Sarah, née Foster. Marriage: 2 June 1958 at the Registrar General’s Office, Sydney, New South Wales, to Hildgarde Emilie (Hilda) Havlik (1917-2012), a clerk, born at Zittau in Saxony, Germany, of Czechoslovakian heritage. They had one daughter. Death: 15 January 2015 at Sydney. 

• Apprenticed coppersmith in Glasgow shipyards. Member of Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), Speaker in Hyde Park and other places in United Kingdom including Mall in Glasgow and Bull Pit in Birmingham.
• Emigrated to New Zealand in 1950s. Travelled to Australia in 1955. Intended to work his way back to the United Kingdom, via Australia, as coppersmith working on ships, but decided to stay in Sydney with its harbour and fine weather.
• At his marriage in 1958 he was working as a gardener.
• Soon after arriving in Sydney he became a weekly speaker at Sydney Domain with a reputation of having been a SPGB speaker and gaining a regular audience. Continued in this role for ten years until 1965, speaking on a wide range of topics from a socialist perspective.
• He was a member of the Australian Labor Party and in 1965 was ALP candidate for a vacancy on the Sutherland Shire Council.
• Was a well-known bookseller in Sydney and managed three bookshops at one stage. Lecturer with the University of the Third Age.
• In 1972 Tribune reported that at a public rally in Martin Plaza, Sydney, protesting the conviction for obscenity and imprisonment of two students, Wendy Bacon and John Cox, involved in publishing the journal Thorunka, Thorburn was one of “an impressive array of speakers” which included the leader of the Australia Party Gordon Barton, novelist Tom Kenneally and university lecturers Tony Blackshield and Jill Roe.

Sources
Steve Maxwell, The History of Soapbox Oratory (privately published, Sydney, 1994); death notice, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 January 2015.