People Australia

George Winter (1888-1926) accountant, Communist

Birth: 6 May 1888 at Tekaka, Wellington, New Zealand, son of Joseph Rodgers Winter (1849-1913) and Jessie, née Houlson (1850-1912), small landholders, both born in Wales, United Kingdom. Unmarried. Death: 8 March 1926 at the Coast Hospital, Sydney, New South Wales.

• After working on the land, he found employment in “counting houses” and became a qualified accountant. Was an accountant in the Ministry of Agriculture. Started a Marxist discussion group which in Easter 1921 evolved into the Communist Party of New Zealand, of which he became secretary.
• Moved to Australia in 1922. Was associated with the Clerical Association. Succeeded Esmonde M. Higgins as director-secretary of the NSW Labor Council’s Research and Information Bureau in August 1925. Was identified prominently with the Workers’ Educational Association.
• Member of Plebs League. Member of deputation to Communist Party of Australia (CPA) Annual Conference. From 1923 was a a tutor in economic classes in the CPA study circles.
• Good speaker. Published articles in the Australian Worker (Sydney) and the Communist (Sydney). A study in 2020 drew attention to Winter’s ethnological series of articles on Australian Aborigines and on Pacific Island societies, though for him “Aboriginal people were anthropological specimens, with no political agency”.
• Winter also wrote satirical verse. An obituary commented that, “with many physical hindrances he had great mental alertness”. He died from tuberculosis while still employed by the NSW Labor council.

Sources
Westralian Worker (Perth), 19 March 1926 p 11; Malcolm Henry Ellis, The red road: the story of the capture of the Lang party by Communists, instructed from Moscow (Sydney [1932]); Jean Devanny, Point of departure; the autobiography of Jean Devanny (St Lucia, 1986); Normington Rawling, Communism Comes to Australia, p 231; Padraic John Gibson, ‘Stop the War on Aborigines’: The Communist Party of Australia and the Fight for Aboriginal Rights 1920-1934, PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, October 1920, pp 45, and 70-74.