Audrey Blake - papers, 1935-1954, 1966, mainly concerning the Eureka Youth League (Australia)

MLMSS 5916

fonds

1935-1954, 1966

72855

2 boxes - 0.66 Meters
Textual Records
Textual Records - (typescript)
Textual Records - (typescript, carbon)
Textual Records - (typescript, photocopy)
Textual Records - (typescript, processed)
Textual Records - (printed)

Audrey Blake was the inaugural Secretary of the Victorian branch of the Eureka Youth League in 1941, established to create a united youth organisation of the Australian labour movement. A member and official of the EYL's predecessors, the Young Communist League and the League of Young Democrats, she was Secretary of its National Council from 1944 to 1952. The EYL's agenda comprised political and economic campaigns and an active programme of recreational, sporting and cultural activities. The League supported the war effort at home and abroad, and established close links with the Australian Communist Party following the lifting of the ban on the latter in December 1942. With the support of trade unions, the League contributed to an improvement in the wages and conditions of Australia's junior workforce, particularly apprentices, and conducted workers' education at factories.
In the spirit of internationalism the EYL affiliated with the World Federation of Democratic Youth in 1945. In 1947 the League sent a Reconstruction Brigade to work with volunteers from other countries in the rebuilding of the new Yugoslavia. In the same year League member Graeme Bell and his Dixieland Jazz Band attended the first World Youth Festival in Prague. A year earlier the League convened the first Australian Jazz Convention.
The advent of the Korean War in 1950 accelerated the EYL's work towards international peace and the struggle for democratic liberties. League delegates attended the Australian Peace Congress in Melbourne and elsewhere members petitioned widely to ban the Atom Bomb. The League campaigned vigorously against the Menzies Government's Communist Party Dissolution Bill and the conscription of young Australians for military training.
In 1946 the Victorian EYL published its monthly newspaper, Youth Voice, which became the League's national newspaper two years later. In 1951 the National Council transferred from Melbourne to Sydney, and the EYL's weekly newspaper, Challenge, edited by Harry Stein, was launched primarily to promote and organise the Youth Carnival for Peace and Friendship in 1952, the League's most successful mass event of the Cold War era. Stein had previously written The Story of the Eureka Youth League (1944) under the nom-de-plum, Richard Young.
Audrey Blake retired from office at the 8th National Congress of the EYL in Sydney in 1952.

1935-1954, 1966; Papers, being mainly publications of the Eureka Youth League and the World Federation of Democratic Youth, with copies of Declaration of Rights of Australian Youth (1935) by Alec Jolley, Melbourne University Labour Club, and circular concerning the Bush Music Club (Sydney, 1966) (Call No.: ML MSS 5916/1(2))
1946-1956; Issues of Challenge, 1951-1956, and Youth Voice, 1946-1951 (Call No.: ML MSS 5916/2X(2))