People Australia

Charles Williams, n.d.

Williams, Charles Bennett (Charlie) (1890-1952) miner, trade union official and parliamentarian

Birth: 9 February 1890 at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Victoria, son of Thomas Bennett Williams (1836-1902), a blacksmith and miner, born in Cornwall, England, and Margaret, née Jones (1862-1917), born at Castlemaine, Victoria. Marriage: 29 September 1915 at St George’s Presbyterian Church, Boulder, Western Australia, to Ella Mary Stockdale (1895-1954), born at Orange, New South Wales. They had four daughters and one son. Death: 1 December 1952, at his usual address in Guildford Road, Mt Lawley, Perth. Religion: Churches of Christ. 

• Started his working life at the New Red White and Blue mine, Bendigo, at 16 years of age.
• Moved to Western Australia about 1912. Worked on the Ivanhoe Mine for nine years. Became union delegate for the mine shortly after his arrival. Attended several State and inter-State conferences of his union. Was organiser for the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU); president of the mining section of the AWU from 1920 to 1928. AWU Kalgoorlie delegate to All Australian Trade Union Conference in 1921 at Melbourne.
• Secretary of the Goldfields Association. Elected to Boulder Municipal Council in 23 November 1921; held office to November 1924.
• A member of the Australian Labor Party, he contested election to the Australian Senate in 1922. He was elected member of the WA Legislative Council for South Province in May 1928 and held the seat until May 1948.
• He was a member of the select committees inquiring into the distribution of funds provided by the Commonwealth to aid wheatgrowers in 1935 and into the Industrial Arbitration Act Amendment Bill in 1937 and of the Royal Commission inquiring into the Care and Reform of Youthful Delinquents in 1943.
• Secretary of the Goldfields Football Association, Williams was a senior football umpire for several years.
• Cause of death: coronary occlusion (20 minutes) and coronary sclerosis (3 years). 

Sources
David Black and Geoffrey Bolton, Biographical Register of members of the parliament of Western Australia, vol 1, 1870-1930, (Perth, 1990), p 203; Westralian Worker, 15 April 1921, p 8.