Review of Dr Kaye Murray=s biography of Irene Greenwood (1898 -1992)

Voice For Peace - The Spirit of a Social Activist

Dr Kaye Murray=s recently published book on this Amost remarkable woman@ pays well deserved and well written tribute to Irene Greenwood=s life and work.

Both Kaye Murray and Irene Greenwood approached peace activism from a feminist perspective, and Irene=s life and Kaye=s biography of it reflect their continuing attempt to reconcile the class and humanist aspect of it with the gendered aspect, because of woman=s biology, of peace. It is up to you, the reader, to decide how successfully Kaye has done this - or whether it could only be concluded that her book shows the importance of all aspects. I can only offer you the prospect of a fascinating journey with Irene Greenwood. It will take you through her early family experience of Anglicanism and social justice work for Indigenous Australians to her later more independent Theosophical attachment, to a liberal feminism, to a socialist Aradical@ feminism in the 1930's, to Afirst wave@ post World War 2 feminism, to Asecond wave@ feminim after 1970.

Irene's engagement with her chosen organisations in those decades reflected the emphases which dominated her thinking in the most productive periods of her 94 years of life.

The WA government named one of its State Ships after her and Maritime Union members were proud to sail on a ship named after a leading proponent of their union=s longstanding policies, not always publicly popular, on peace issues.

Only during World War 2 had it been publicly popular to praise the Soviet Union when it bore the brunt of Hitler=s attacks but Irene Greenwood had supported Soviet campaigns in the 1930's to contain European fascist regimes by collective security treaty - and later, during the Cold War, she defended the Soviet Union=s right to be able to conduct its social experiment in peace.

Irene=s appreciation of peace as a class issue began because of her association in 1930's Sydney with Jessie Street and Linda Littlejohn in the United Associations of Women and it continued when her links with WA led to her association with journalist Joan Williams and leading novelist Katherine Susannah Prichard, both well known communists.

Besides those organisations so far mentioned they include Women=s International League for Peace and Freedom(WILPF),the United Nations Association of Australia(UNAA) and many others,including her membership of the National Advisory Committee on Women=s Affairs under the Whitlam Labor Government.The author,herself, writes about such organisations from personal experience.

Kaye Murray=s book provides a short history of the Australian peace movement from the 1920's with particular concentration on the role of women without ignoring their world context. See

The book is timely,since there is now an ongoing threat to the authority of the United Nations from the US Bush Administration,which is asserting the superpower authority of the US against the supra-national authority of the world body.

Reviewed by Bruce Toms