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Person
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McDonald, Geoff
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Dates of existence
1930 - 2003
History
Geoff McDonald was born in Yarraville, Victoria on 19 May 1930 and joined the Eureka Youth League at the age of eighteen. In 1948 he became a member of the Communist Party of Australia but was later expelled in 1961 for his Trotskyist beliefs. He then joined the Australian Labor Party becoming the founding president of the Diamond Creek Branch. From 1950-1967 he was an organizer with the Building Workers' Industrial Union. In 1967 he was the Victorian Branch secretary of the Federated Fodder & Fuel Trades Union of Australia. From 1967-1970 he was an industrial officer for the Australian Association of Social Workers, the Roof Tilers' Union, the Bricklayers' Society, the Solid Plasterers' Society, the Brick Tile and Pottery Union, the Deep Sea Divers' Union, the Mannequins and Models Guild of Australia, and the Fuel and Fodder Workers' Union. Between 1970-1976 McDonald was the Industrial Relations Officer with the Royal Australian Nursing Federation and the Victorian Mothercraft Nurses' Association; he was the industrial consultant for the Hospital Scientists' Association and the Hospital Pharmacists' Association from 1976-1980; and the Pastrycooks, Biscuit Makers and Allied Trade Union, and Mannequins and Models Guild from 1980-1982. From 1982 he began writing and publishing books: Australia at Stake (1977), Red Over Black (1982), The Evidence (1984), Shadows Over New Zealand (1985) and The Kiwis Fight Back (1986). McDonald's views shifted from left to right and in 1984 he was involved in a campaign organised by the Australian League of Rights against Government Aboriginal policies and Asian immigration. In 1985 he went to New Zealand promoting the same ideas about Maori land rights movement. McDonald died on 9 September 2003.
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author; political activist; trade union official
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Entered from deposit description on 26 September 2011
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Sources
University of Melbourne Archives, http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/imu/imu.php?request=display&port=45000&id=c1e8&flag=start&offset=0&count=1&view=details (accessed on 26 September 2011)
Trevor Hawkins. "Geoff McDonald, the revolutionary reformer, nurses his girls to victory," National Times, 23 June 1975, p. 10