People Australia

Vic Williams, c.1941

National Archives of Australia, B883, WX31175

Victor Robert (Vic) Williams (1914-2011) waterside worker, writer, trade unionist and Communist 

Birth: 28 June 1914 at Perth, Western Australia, son of Michael James Williams (1867-1927), a gold miner and farmer born at Mt Erin Station, near Northampton Western Australia, and Ethel, née Millington (1878-1946), born at Clare, South Australia. Marriage: 21 April 1948 in the District Registrar’s office, Perth, to native-born Marjorie Georgina Joan (Justina), née Allen, late Thomas (1916-2008), a divorcée and political activist. They had one daughter and one son. Death: 2011 at Nedlands, Western Australia. 

• The family had migrated from Ireland after the potato famine and, as a young boy, his grandfather contributed to political socialisation by singing Irish rebel songs.
• His father, who died of miner’s phthisis, possessed a large library and brought his son Vic into touch with Australian national feeling and poetry”. 
• Educated at Northham High School, Vic worked in an accountant’s office and as an apprentice teacher. His left-wing trajectory was encouraged by the Spanish Civil War and attending Workers Arts Guild, Perth. He joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1938.
• The author of pamphlets for the Wheatgrowers Union and Workers Star, he developed the role of leftist poet and set himself the task of writing poetry of the working class, their experience in industry and the class struggle.
• He served with Field Intelligence Corps. Second AIF, in Rabaul during WWII.
• After the war he worked as a builder’s labourer and on the waterfront from 1952 to 1972 where he was ‘proletarianised’. Became a militant rank and file member of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) in major strikes in 1954 and 1956, seeking to develop CPA influence on the waterfront. He was editor of the wharfies’ newspaper Smoko from 1953 to 1970. Elected treasurer of the Fremantle branch of the WWF in 1967-1968.
• In 1952 he attended the congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He supported Russia’s crushing of Prague Spring and joined the Socialist Party of Australia in 1968.
• Received Literature Board Grant to write ‘The Years of Big Jim’ in 1973.
• A sportsmen-cricketer, he was opening batsman for WWF; organised WWF Australian Rules team to play Midland Railway Workshops.
• His wife Justina Williams, a fellow Communist, was a notable writer, feminist and peace activist. 

Sources
Maritime Worker, 16 December 1975; Papers in Labour History (Perth) 2 1988; Justina Williams, Anger & Love, (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle 1993).