Tribute to Julia Ryan (29 September 1937 – 3 May 2023)
Julia Ryan came from a family of political activists. She was the daughter of early Communists, Jack and Edna. Her mother, Edna, was a campaigner for Equal Pay and her sister, Lyndall Ryan, was a researcher on ‘an eight-year long project to map the massacres of people on the Australian frontier‘. This was a sustained effort by Lyndall “to break the code of silence” on the violence of colonisation. Her niece, Christina, is a third generation feminist and delegate to the United Nations.
Anti-war Activist
“In January 1967 in preparing for Canberra protests against the Hitler-loving Air Vice-Marshall Ky, she realised that the police would not let us get near enough for him to hear our chants or read our placards. Her solution was to make Viet Cong Flags – to be seen at a long way off and with unmistakable message. Those flags travelled to Sydney and then to Melbourne” – Humphrey McQueen.
Teacher and political activist
Julia was a lifelong teacher and union activist in three States, NSW, Queensland and South Australia and the ACT.
She was Secretary of the Council of Civil Liberties in the ACT in the late 1960s, a foundation member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) and a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights.
Vale Julia
With thanks to Humphrey McQueen, who had known Julia from Brisbane in 1960s with her then husband Bruce McFarlane, ‘the only Marxist to ever hold a chair in an economics department in an Australian university‘ H.
My condolences to Julia’s family, her sister Lyndall, friends and comrades in the women’s movement.
Ian Curr
5 May 2023
Reference
Australian Women’s Register @ https://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0002b.htm
JULIA RYAN, 193 – 2023.
When Lyndall asked me to speak this morning, I was honoured, and taken aback.
Manning used to hum ‘I’m forever writing Prefaces.’ I’m beginning to feel as if I’m forever writing obituaries. As I recall the people who have shaped my life, I realise that I am drafting my own.
Julia had been the person whom I had known longest and with whom I was still in touch, having met in Brisbane in 1960.
Her ALP branch was in the same Federal electorate.
I baby-sat for Keir, named for the leader of the Independent Labour Party, Keir Hardie.
Julia had come to Brisbane with her then husband, Bruce McFarlane, who was one of a clutch of radicals appointed that year.
They included Helen Hughes, Ingrid Palmer and Merle Thornton.
At the time, there was a Staff Room for Ladies.
That didn’t last the first week of their arrival.
Merle later chained herself to the bar in one of the four University watering holes, the Regatta.
Julia’s second son, Neil, is named after Merle’s husband.
Julia got a job in a State High School, then something of a novelty, and not only in Queensland.
Up there, married women teachers had to resign on the last day of the year and were not paid again until the first of term next year.
It was around then that I met Julia’s mother, Edna, renowned for her on-going struggle for equal pay. Edna has been recognised as the godmother of the women’s movement.
Knowing her was an education in itself.
During the 1962 visit by King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Edna called them
King Bum and Queen Shit.
Republicanism ran wide and deep in the Ryan clan.
At Julia’s parties, I imbibed revolutionary songs from her.
We’ll all hear her fine voice as I recite snatches from a few of them.
Kevin Barry
Shoot me like an Irish soldier
Do not hang me like a dog
For I fought for Ireland’s freedom
In that cold September fog.
The Internationale’
So it’s comrades come rally
And the last fight let us face,
For the Internationale unites the human race.
Inevitably, Joe Hill
Where working folk defend their rights,
That’s where you find Joe Hill.
Julia and Biff came to the Woden Tradies for the concert on the centenary of his murder in 1916.
And a local one from the Wobbies’
Bump Me Into Parliament
Yes I am a Labor man
And believe in Revolution,
The quickest way to bring it on
Is talking constitution.
And, of course, Spain. They might have won the war, but we had all the best songs.
There was a rat,
Big and fat,
A rat by the name of Franco.
So much history brought to life to inspire a teenage radical.
Julia came to the annual gathering in honour of the Australians who had volunteered to fight fascism.
This year will the 30th anniversary of its installation, organised by two of Julia’s friends,
Neta Burns and Amirah Inglis.
We hope to see you all there, a bit before noon on the second Sunday in December.
The Spanish memorial is one stop on a tour of radical Canberra and district which Peter and I guide friends and visitors around.
Earlier this year, I went with Julia, Pam and Lyndall.
The tour includes the Peace Park overlooking Queanbeyan where two high school teachers, Shirley and Harry Hesse, organised a gathering on the hour when the bomb flattened Hiroshima.
Laying flowers at both sites. Red, purple and gold for the Republic. White chrysanthemums for the Japanese.
Over lunch, they said that the Peace Park had carried the most significance.
That was the last time Julia and I shared our thoughts.
As a historian, Julia never accepted the view from government House veranda.
She welcomed history from below.
Women and workers, women as paid workers.
But there is a lower depth where the personal is political in a sense other to the usual one.
Connections before, beneath and yet throughout our activism.
It was of them that Marx said:
How well we know our friend, old mole, who burrows underground, to appear The Revolution.
One such break-out came in the late 1960s when friendships and social contacts underpinned the Women’s Electoral Lobby and second-wave feminism.
Those connections with Julia were are tied at May Days, refugee rallies, anti-war protests, against Worst Choices.
And also in education.
She asked me to speak at the History Teachers’ national conference for the centenary of Federation.
She invited me to sit in on discussions at SWOW.
And again in the Women’s Studies Course she helped to establish at the ANU.
And to make a presentation at the 1975 Women’s Year Conference, when I spoke about Margaret Preston, who was then as great a surprise to the audience as she had been to me a few months earlier.
The Women’s Art Movement that year boosted by Janine Burke’s Exhibition at the NGV.
Now go back a few years to January 1967 and the visit by the Hitler-loving Air vice-Marshall Ky.
The organising committee knew that the NSW wallopers would never let us get close enough for him to hear our insults or to read our placards.
Julia pointed out the solution. The flag of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was of a different order.
Ky had to get only a glimpse of one of them to know what we thought of him and his kind.
So the cutting and stitching began.
From here, the flags were taken to Sydney for the rally around Kirribilli on the Saturday, and overnight to Melbourne.
`One side right!
One side wrong!
Victory to the Viet Cong!’
That victory came more than eight years later at a price which is still being inflicted on the peoples of Indochina from the ecocide of the US corporate warfare state.
During the anti-Ky demo, the NSW wallopers arrested Bruce,
which led to defence campaign.
At a fund raiser, Bob Brissenden sang his ‘Ballad of Muscles McFarlane,’
with the chorus
All in blue, all in blue,
Each word I saw is true.
I’m a NSW copper
And can’t tell a lie.
Julia had been active in the Council of Civil Liberties.
The police had arrested a man for wanking inside a locked cubicle, by himself, at the public toilets in Garema Place.
Kep Enderby won more than an acquittal.
The verdick ended the use of young coppers for entrapment.
That in turn was a step towards decriminalisation in the ACT in 1976, the first Territory or State to follow the Commonwealth’s lead. Enderby was Whitlam Attorney-General.
One more instance of how little things grow.
In Eureka The Musical a chorus of women recurs
They sew the Flag
‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other.’
Their chorus has a refrain:
That’s what women do.
As the story unfolds, we see how many, many different things ‘women do.’
I trust I’ve been able to convey something of that multiplicity about Julia and her comrades.
Lyrics from revolutionary songbooks and the fabric from flags, melded in a life.
So that
While traitors flinch
And cowards sneer
Julia’s seven decades of activism inspires us to
keep the Red Flag flying here.
.
Humphrey McQueen
Old Parliament House
June 17, 2023.
Julia and I shared a staff room for 3 years at Lake Ginninderra College, Belconnen, ACT. She was a formidable colleague and we had many extensive discussions about teaching and other trivial things. As a Master Teacher her experiences were invaluable to me and with her encouragement I achieved the same accolade. She also introduced me to the Avocado – something she enjoyed for lunch everyday! As another connection it turns out that I had taught her son Neil at Lyneham High in my early years. Unfortunately I cannot attend the Memorial service on Saturday but I am blessed with wonderful memories of my good friend and colleague. RIP my friend.