People Australia

Bertha May Walker, née Laidler (1912-1975) political activist 

Birth: 8 July 1912 at Richmond, Melbourne, daughter of native-born parents Thomas Percival (Percy) Laidler (1884-1958), socialist and bookseller, and Christiane Alicia, née Gross (1889-1949), tailoress and unionist. Marriages: (1) 1928 began a relationship with Russian (Ukraine)-born Judah Waten (1911-1985), Communist author. (2) 17 December 1946 with Presbyterian forms at the Melville, Church, Darwin, to Joseph (‘Yorky’) Walker (1910-1971), a waterside-worker and trade unionist, born at Harewood, Yorkshire, England. They had one son. Death: 24 May 1975 at Melbourne. Religion: none - was a Rationalist. 

• Member of the Communist Party of Australia. Partner of Judah Waten from early 1930s until early 1940s. They moved to Europe in 1931.
• Active in unemployed organisations in Britain during the 1930s, helping to organise hunger marches. She was also active in the peace movement.
• Returned to Melbourne in 1933. She was secretary of the anti-war committee of the Victorian branch of the Shop Assistants’ Union; also prominent in Free Speech campaigns.
• Worked for the Federated Ironworkers’ Association in Newcastle, NSW, in the late 1930s.
• With Noel Counihan she was active in the New Zealand anti-Fascist movement at the outbreak of World War II. She was expelled from New Zealand in about 1940.
• She was a CPA electoral candidate in the early 1940s. Towards the end of World War II she served in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force.
• Moved to the Northern Territory in 1946. Returned to Melbourne with her husband the following year. She remained committed to Marxism though her membership of the CPA lapsed after the war.
• Wrote labour history during the 1960s; foundation member of Melbourne Branch, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
• Cause of death: liver disease. She was buried after a secular service. 

Sources
Solidarity Forever (1972, biography of her father); Tribune, 3 June 1975; Recorder, no. 76, June 1975, and  no.77, August 1975.