People Australia

Charlie Young, 1940

Maritime Worker (Melbourne), 10 March 1940, p 8

Charles Gordon (Charlie) Young (1897-1965), wharf labourer, trade union official, Communist and peace activist

Birth: 2 June 1897 at Clifton Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, son of William John Dionysius (John) Young (1869-1956), a clerk, later waterside worker, born at West Hackney, Middlesex, England, and native-born Rachel, née Clare (1871-1931). Marriage: 8 December 1919 at Collingwood, Melbourne, to native-born Thelma Josephine Annie Young (1899-1977). They had one son, who died in infancy, and two daughters. Death: 9 September 1965 at Fitzroy, Melbourne; usual residence Langston Street, Northcote, Melbourne. 

• His brother William John Young (1892-1973) enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 28 January 1915, was seriously wounded in action at Gallipoli in August 1915, was again wounded in action (gassed) in France in August 1918, and was discharged in Melbourne on 30 November 1919.
• Charlie worked as a waterside worker and joined the Melbourne branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) in about 1915. His father had also been a WWF member.
• About 1938 Charlie joined the Communist Party of Australia.
• A member of the federal committee of management and federal council of the WWF and federal representative on Stevedoring Industry Commission, he was elected secretary of the Melbourne branch of WWF in March 1954, supported by the CPA, and held office until 1965.
• Was active in the peace movement.
• Cause of death: cardiac respiratory failure (5 hours), carcinoma of kidney (months) and chronic bronchitis (years).

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, p 435; Maritime Worker, 29 September 1965, p 3, 10 May 1977, p 14; Rupert Lockwood, Ship to shore: a history of Melbourne's waterfront and its union struggles, (Sydney, 1990).