People Australia

Isadore Lewis (Issy) Wyner (1916-2008) painter and docker, trade union official, environmentalist and mayor

Birth: 30 July 1916, at Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales, son of Samuel Wyner (b. 1889), born in Estonia, a cabinet-maker and a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and Rachel (Rae or Ray), née Welling (1889-1957), born in Russia. His parents were Jewish migrants and had married in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1913. Marriage: April 1942 at Newtown, Sydney, to Ruby Thelma Bundy (1921-2000). They had one son. Death: 14 August 2008 in Sydney. Religion: of Jewish ancestry. 

• Family relocated in 1920 to Balmain, where — except for three years in Newcastle — he lived thereafter. Was educated at Rozelle Junior Technical School, Drummoyne Intermediate Commercial High School, and Fort Street Boys.
• Secured a public service job distributing dole rations in Balmain and became the main family breadwinner at the age of 16, after his father deserted the family.
• Joined Young Communist League and was expelled in 1933. Member of the Unemployed Workers Movement. After participation in Glebe Dole Riot in October 1932, and receiving “a kick up the backside with a size 10 Boot”, his political trajectory followed Jack Sylvester into the Trotskyist cause, but also into the Australian Labor Party, which he joined in 1946.
• In 1954 he was a member of the steering committee to eject Catholic Action from the NSW branch of the ALP.
• In the 1950s he became a loyal lieutenant of Nick Origlass in revolutionary politics and local government: the "Nick'n'Issy" pairing being described as “an irresistible local duo”. He was relatively unambitious, an effective public speaker and prolific pamphleteer, with a strong interest in labour history.
• Served as an alderman on Leichhardt Municipal Council from 1960 to the 1990s (except for two terms); mayor in 1989-90. Partnership with Origlass and environmental activism led to his expulsion from the ALP in 1968.
• Worked at Mort's Dock and Cockatoo Island as a painter and docker/rigger in 1940s and early 1950s. 1946, as shop steward, sacked for writing article in ALP journal Standard on working conditions at Cockatoo.
• Elected organiser of Balmain-based Ship Painters and Dockers Union (NSW Branch) November 1953, retiring as secretary in December 1983 after ten years in position. Edited union journal, delegate to NSW Labour Council and ALP; federal president and life member of union whose cause was to stand 'with those reaching for the sun against the darkness of imperialism'.
• In 1998 received C.H. Currey history fellowship for research into Balmain working-class politics. Author of With Banners Unfurled, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1983.

Sources
Hall Greenland, Red Hot: The Life & Times of Nick Origlass 1908–1996 (Sydney, 1998); information from I. Wyner, 13 July 1990; Painter & Docker, November 1983; Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1985, 26 March 1994, 18 August 2008, p 16; photo and obituary, Larry Wyner, ‘Balmain Legend, “Issy” Wyner (1916-2008)’, Labour History (Sydney), No 96, May 2009, pp 229-231.