Letter from Daphne Gollan to Tom Brislan, 15 April 1972

MLMSS 10252

fonds

15 April 1972

9638031

0.01 metres of textual material (1 folder) - manuscript

Daphne Gollan (1918-1999) was a feminist and labour historian. She was born in England and came to Sydney with her parents in 1922. She was educated at Sydney Girls’ High School and Sydney University, where as an evening student she graduated in Arts in 1941. Having joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1938, she worked as a library assistant in the Mitchell Library before joining the Research Department of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association in 1945. After settling in Canberra, Gollan became a cataloguer at the ANU Library, 1954-1959, then archives assistant at the university, 1958-1960. She was appointed tutor in the History Department at ANU, 1966-1969, and then lecturer in History in 1970. Her research interests included 19th and 20th century Russian history, Australian labour history and the history of women. Gollan was actively engaged with Libertarian Socialism and Feminism throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She campaigned as a candidate for the Greens in the Federal elections of 1984 and 1987. Daphne Gollan died on 4 October 1999 at the age of 81.

William Patrick Brislan, known as Tom Brislan (1906-1973), was involved in a wide range of occupations and unions, both urban and rural, in Queensland and New South Wales. In the 1940s he was a prominent member of the Australian Communist Party. He was the secretary of the Balmain Branch of the Federated Ironworkers' Association during the unsettled period leading up to the 1945 strike. Until 1943 the Balmain Branch had been the only branch led by the rank-and-file opposition rather than the Communist Party of Australia. The unrest amongst the rank and file members of the union in Balmain finally led to a major strike by the ironworkers against the national union leadership in 1945. Brislan eventually resigned from the union and became an organiser with the Communist Party of Australia in 1946. He withdrew from the Australian Communist Party after being dropped from the Central Committee in 1951.

References:
Mitchell Library correspondence file.
Australian National University Archives. http://archivescollection.anu.edu.au/index.php/gollan-daphne-eileen (Accessed June 26, 2019)
Australian National University Archives. http://archivescollection.anu.edu.au/index.php/tom-brislan-maverick-amongst-marxists (Accessed June 26, 2019)

By descent from Tom Brislan to son Patrick Brislan.

Handwritten letter from Daphne Gollan to Tom Brislan, 15 April 1972. Four pages of lined paper. The letter seeks a response from Brislan regarding the disputed election result on the Balmain waterfront involving the Federated Ironworkers' Association and the Communist Party in the 1940s. In May and November 1972, Gollan published a two part article about the Balmain Ironworkers’ strike of 1945 in Labour History, the journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. The letter was written while the article for Labour History was going to print and Gollan references the article in the letter.

Copyright status:: In copyright – life of author(s) plus 70 years
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

On verso of page 3 in pencil: '"Little Jack" = Jack McPhillips?'
Includes typed transcript of letter prepared by Collection Liaison Librarian.