Eva Bacon
Encyclopedia
Eva Bacon born Eva Goldner, was a socialist and feminist based in Brisbane
, Australia
, who was most active between the 1950s and the 1980s. Raised in Austria and a member of several leftist political organisations in her youth, Eva Goldner escaped Nazi occupied Austria in 1939, eventually migrating to Australia. Goldner remained involved in local and international politics and joined the Communist Party of Australia
(CPA), marrying fellow member Ted Bacon in 1944. Throughout her career Bacon was an active member of the CPA, and the Union of Australian Women
(UAW), where she was heavily involved in International Women's Day
campaigns, including attending the 1975 UN World Conference on Women
in Mexico celebrating International Women's Year
. Bacon was also an active member of the Women's Electoral Lobby
(WEL), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
(WILPF). She was passionate about childcare issues, and through her political work clashed particularly with conservative Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson.
in 1909 to Jewish parents, Eva Goldner was aware of fascism and anti-Semitism from early in her life. She was a Communist militant in her youth and as a member of International Red Aid
, a Communist organisation established to provide aid to 'class-war' political prisoners, she worked to help victims of fascism. Goldner and her mother, as leftist Jewish women, were forced to flee Austria in 1939 following the Nazi occupation of Austria, migrating to Australia after some time in England.
Goldner, a dressmaker and fashion designer by trade, became involved with the left in her new home where she attended her first International Women’s Day meeting the same year she arrived. She attributed that meeting to inspiring much of her later political activism. Goldner soon became a member of the Communist Party of Australia
, where, at a performance by the Unity Theatre Group, she met her husband Ted Bacon, a returned soldier and fellow communist and political activist. They married in 1944 in Brisbane
and had one child, a daughter, named Barbara.
While Bacon insisted that her Communist leanings did not affect her work with other political groups such as the UAW, it is clear that her involvement in the CPA had a negative impact on her reliability in other areas of her life. Right-wing politicians such as Joh Bjelke-Peterson drew connections between her involvement with the two groups to try and discredit the UAW as a Communist organisation.
Bacon was a member of the Central Committee
of the CPA since 1948 by her own account, and she and Ted remained committed members throughout their lives.
was the Premier of Queensland from 8 August 1968 – 1 December 1987 who personally objected to Eva Bacon's political activities and her membership of the Communist Party. His attitude towards political activists, and groups such as the Union of Australian Women
was paternalistic: “...all these protest groups consist of the hard-core activists who hide behind the gullible, the naive and the well-meaning.”On the subject of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Eva Bacon has been quoted as saying “I believe Mr Bjelke-Petersen in using my personal political commitment is trying to enlist support for his anti-democratic policies”.
The Bjelke-Petersen government's ‘censorship laws’ were designed to limit the impact of the CPA in Queensland by censoring the publication of positive content about the organisation in the media, instead promoting negative perceptions of the group, and all the organisations with which it was associated. The Queensland government's ‘obscenity’ laws also restricted the promotion or dissemination of sexually orientated information even if it was educational. The Women's Liberation Movement
’s pamphlet ‘Female Sexuality and Education’ was considered to be obscene by Bjelke-Petersen, and was confiscated from the Brisbane offices of Communist Party of Australia by the ‘State Licensing Branch’ of the Queensland Police Department at 5 p.m. on Friday 8 October 1971.
was, and in Victoria
remains, a feminist activist organisation that relies on letter writing, petitions, marches and demonstrations to gain its objectives. Some of these objectives were as follows:
As an older organisation, it has had to change some of its goals over time, whilst maintaining its primary aims. This was evident for Bacon during the 1970s as she has spoken of the introduction of the notion that “the ‘personal’ is political”, and ‘sexual politics’ taking three years for the organisation to fully support. Her struggle with this shift was due to the move away from the economic and general political struggles that the UAW had previously focused on as the way to gain equality with men. As a member of the Union of Australian Women
, Bacon involved herself in numerous activities including writing for the UAW's magazine, Our Women, as well as working on books such as Uphill all the way: A Documentary History of Women in Australia. Her involvement in the Indigenous rights movement is acknowledged by the National Museum of Australia
. Although believed to be a faction of the Communist Party of Australia
by the Premier of Queensland at the time, Joh Bjelke-Petersen
, the Union of Australian Women has always maintained its independence from the CPA.
In 1958 Bacon was involved in with the UAW's International Women's Year celebrations which drew a crowd of hundreds to hear speakers Dymphna Cusak and Dame Sybil Thorndyke, a celebration which also addressed women’s influence on history, socialism, and world peace. Eleanor Roosevelt
sent a message about this meeting to the UAW, among others.
In 1960 Bacon coordinated a visit to Australia by Madam Chao Feng of the National Women’s Federation of China and Madame Roesijati R. Sukardi, a journalist with the Indonesian Women’s Organisation to attend IWD meetings nationally. As Australia did not recognise China at the time, the UAW set about obtaining visas for the visitors and were delayed to the point that Feng and Sukardi could not attend several of their appointed meetings.
According to personal anecdotes, Bacon was most proud of her involvement in the UWA's program for reviving the IWD celebrations in Australia following World War II
. She encouraged women to join marches and demonstrations on IWD's official date of 8 March and 'saw IWD as a campaign, needing work almost all the year round with 8 March as the highlight, rather than a one-day function.'
marked 1975 as International Women’s Year (IWY) and declared the Decade for Women covering 1976-1985. In this year a World Conference on Women
was held in Mexico for international government representatives to take part in and a Tribune simultaneously for other groups and interested parties attended by women from all over the world to come together and discuss women’s issues and women’s rights.
As her involvement with International Women’s Day events was so strong at home, Eva Bacon was invited to attend as a delegate to the Tribune by the Australian Government who invested over $3 million into the 1974-1976 budgets for International Women’s Year activities. Bacon was the only representative from Queensland chosen to take part in the Tribune, taking part as a member and on behalf of the UAW according to official papers found in her personal Archive, along with Government documents and documents from the Australian Embassy in Mexico confirming her involvement.
holds one of the most extensive collections of archival material documenting Left-wing and radical activism in Brisbane
and state-wide. The collection includes publications, literature and personal archives of key groups and figures of the movement including that of Eva and Ted Bacon. The Bacon archive was donated in the late 1980s in the hope of protecting the documents in the face of a still heavily anti-communist public sphere. Additions were continually made until 1999 when Ted's brother, on behalf of the deceased couple, compiled the last of their work and the Fryer archive became officially available for academic use. The Eva and Ted Bacon collection consists of a wide range of publications, photos and other literature as well as a series of hand-written notes, research and drafted political theses.
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, who was most active between the 1950s and the 1980s. Raised in Austria and a member of several leftist political organisations in her youth, Eva Goldner escaped Nazi occupied Austria in 1939, eventually migrating to Australia. Goldner remained involved in local and international politics and joined the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
(CPA), marrying fellow member Ted Bacon in 1944. Throughout her career Bacon was an active member of the CPA, and the Union of Australian Women
Union of Australian Women
The Union of Australian Women is a left-wing women's organisation that operated in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century concerned with local and international issues regarding women's rights, international peace, and equality.- History :...
(UAW), where she was heavily involved in International Women's Day
International Women's Day
International Women's Day , originally called International Working Women’s Day, is marked on March 8 every year. In different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and...
campaigns, including attending the 1975 UN World Conference on Women
World Conference on Women
The World Conference on Women was established in 1975 during the International Women's Year.The most recent conference was the Fourth World Conference on Women....
in Mexico celebrating International Women's Year
International Women's Year
International Women's Year was the name given to 1975 by the United Nations. Since that year March 8 has been celebrated as International Women's Day, and the United Nations Decade for Women, from 1976–1985, was also established.-International:...
. Bacon was also an active member of the Women's Electoral Lobby
Women's Electoral Lobby
WEL is credited with major achievements for women in Australia in relation to anti-discrimination and equal opportunity legislation, equal pay decisions, the funding of women’s and children’s services.....
(WEL), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established in the United States in January 1915 as the Woman's Peace Party...
(WILPF). She was passionate about childcare issues, and through her political work clashed particularly with conservative Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson.
Early Life and Young Adulthood
Born in AustriaAustria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in 1909 to Jewish parents, Eva Goldner was aware of fascism and anti-Semitism from early in her life. She was a Communist militant in her youth and as a member of International Red Aid
International Red Aid
International Red Aid was an international social service organization established by the Communist International...
, a Communist organisation established to provide aid to 'class-war' political prisoners, she worked to help victims of fascism. Goldner and her mother, as leftist Jewish women, were forced to flee Austria in 1939 following the Nazi occupation of Austria, migrating to Australia after some time in England.
Goldner, a dressmaker and fashion designer by trade, became involved with the left in her new home where she attended her first International Women’s Day meeting the same year she arrived. She attributed that meeting to inspiring much of her later political activism. Goldner soon became a member of the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, where, at a performance by the Unity Theatre Group, she met her husband Ted Bacon, a returned soldier and fellow communist and political activist. They married in 1944 in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
and had one child, a daughter, named Barbara.
Communist Party of Australia
During her life in Australia, Eva Bacon was heavily involved in the Communist Party of Australia. A communist in her youth in Austria, it was natural for Bacon to seek out like-minded people when she escaped the Nazis for Australia. Through her involvement with the CPA, Bacon met and married her husband Ted, who served as the Secretary for the Queensland Branch of the CPA for some time. Ted and Eva were heavily involved in the CPA as shown by the hundreds of leaflets, pamphlets, typed speeches, and letters from protest, rallies, events, and meetings contained in their personal Archive.While Bacon insisted that her Communist leanings did not affect her work with other political groups such as the UAW, it is clear that her involvement in the CPA had a negative impact on her reliability in other areas of her life. Right-wing politicians such as Joh Bjelke-Peterson drew connections between her involvement with the two groups to try and discredit the UAW as a Communist organisation.
Bacon was a member of the Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
of the CPA since 1948 by her own account, and she and Ted remained committed members throughout their lives.
Joh Bjelke-Peterson
Sir Joh Bjelke-PetersenJoh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG , was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state...
was the Premier of Queensland from 8 August 1968 – 1 December 1987 who personally objected to Eva Bacon's political activities and her membership of the Communist Party. His attitude towards political activists, and groups such as the Union of Australian Women
Union of Australian Women
The Union of Australian Women is a left-wing women's organisation that operated in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century concerned with local and international issues regarding women's rights, international peace, and equality.- History :...
was paternalistic: “...all these protest groups consist of the hard-core activists who hide behind the gullible, the naive and the well-meaning.”On the subject of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Eva Bacon has been quoted as saying “I believe Mr Bjelke-Petersen in using my personal political commitment is trying to enlist support for his anti-democratic policies”.
The Bjelke-Petersen government's ‘censorship laws’ were designed to limit the impact of the CPA in Queensland by censoring the publication of positive content about the organisation in the media, instead promoting negative perceptions of the group, and all the organisations with which it was associated. The Queensland government's ‘obscenity’ laws also restricted the promotion or dissemination of sexually orientated information even if it was educational. The Women's Liberation Movement
Women's liberation movement
The Women's Liberation Movement was a political movement, born in the 1960s from Second-Wave Feminism.It generated mythology almost before it was born such as bra burning - and it was allegedly a matter of deep concern to those within it at the time that its history would allegedly be rewritten...
’s pamphlet ‘Female Sexuality and Education’ was considered to be obscene by Bjelke-Petersen, and was confiscated from the Brisbane offices of Communist Party of Australia by the ‘State Licensing Branch’ of the Queensland Police Department at 5 p.m. on Friday 8 October 1971.
Union of Australian Women
The Union of Australian WomenUnion of Australian Women
The Union of Australian Women is a left-wing women's organisation that operated in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century concerned with local and international issues regarding women's rights, international peace, and equality.- History :...
was, and in Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
remains, a feminist activist organisation that relies on letter writing, petitions, marches and demonstrations to gain its objectives. Some of these objectives were as follows:
- to achieve and maintain an enhanced status for women
- to obtain higher living standards for all
- for the government to improve the welfare of its citizens
- for public infrastructure to be shared by all (regardless of gender or race)
- the right for women to work
- to obtain fertility control
- for the equality of indigenous Australians
- to oppose the White Australia Policy
As an older organisation, it has had to change some of its goals over time, whilst maintaining its primary aims. This was evident for Bacon during the 1970s as she has spoken of the introduction of the notion that “the ‘personal’ is political”, and ‘sexual politics’ taking three years for the organisation to fully support. Her struggle with this shift was due to the move away from the economic and general political struggles that the UAW had previously focused on as the way to gain equality with men. As a member of the Union of Australian Women
Union of Australian Women
The Union of Australian Women is a left-wing women's organisation that operated in Australia in the latter half of the 20th century concerned with local and international issues regarding women's rights, international peace, and equality.- History :...
, Bacon involved herself in numerous activities including writing for the UAW's magazine, Our Women, as well as working on books such as Uphill all the way: A Documentary History of Women in Australia. Her involvement in the Indigenous rights movement is acknowledged by the National Museum of Australia
National Museum of Australia
The National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....
. Although believed to be a faction of the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
by the Premier of Queensland at the time, Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG , was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state...
, the Union of Australian Women has always maintained its independence from the CPA.
International Women's Day
Eva Bacon attended her first International Women’s Day (IWD) meeting in 1939, not long after she migrated to Australia. She became heavily involved in IWD activities after her involvement with the UAW began, and acted as the International Women’s Day Committee secretary for the UAW between 1951 and 1974.In 1958 Bacon was involved in with the UAW's International Women's Year celebrations which drew a crowd of hundreds to hear speakers Dymphna Cusak and Dame Sybil Thorndyke, a celebration which also addressed women’s influence on history, socialism, and world peace. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
sent a message about this meeting to the UAW, among others.
In 1960 Bacon coordinated a visit to Australia by Madam Chao Feng of the National Women’s Federation of China and Madame Roesijati R. Sukardi, a journalist with the Indonesian Women’s Organisation to attend IWD meetings nationally. As Australia did not recognise China at the time, the UAW set about obtaining visas for the visitors and were delayed to the point that Feng and Sukardi could not attend several of their appointed meetings.
According to personal anecdotes, Bacon was most proud of her involvement in the UWA's program for reviving the IWD celebrations in Australia following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. She encouraged women to join marches and demonstrations on IWD's official date of 8 March and 'saw IWD as a campaign, needing work almost all the year round with 8 March as the highlight, rather than a one-day function.'
International Women's Year 1975
The United NationsUnited Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
marked 1975 as International Women’s Year (IWY) and declared the Decade for Women covering 1976-1985. In this year a World Conference on Women
World Conference on Women
The World Conference on Women was established in 1975 during the International Women's Year.The most recent conference was the Fourth World Conference on Women....
was held in Mexico for international government representatives to take part in and a Tribune simultaneously for other groups and interested parties attended by women from all over the world to come together and discuss women’s issues and women’s rights.
As her involvement with International Women’s Day events was so strong at home, Eva Bacon was invited to attend as a delegate to the Tribune by the Australian Government who invested over $3 million into the 1974-1976 budgets for International Women’s Year activities. Bacon was the only representative from Queensland chosen to take part in the Tribune, taking part as a member and on behalf of the UAW according to official papers found in her personal Archive, along with Government documents and documents from the Australian Embassy in Mexico confirming her involvement.
Childcare
Throughout her activist career Bacon lobbied for children’s rights and for the establishment of appropriate childcare facilities through every party she was involved in. During the 1950s Bacon traveled back to Europe to attend conferences on motherhood and childcare, and in 1967 through the UAW Bacon lobbied for after school and work based child care for mothers, arguing to the Queensland Government that these were legitimate concerns for mothers and children. Through her work with the UAW, Bacon was involved in the establishment of a childcare centre at The University of Queensland in 1971.The Eva and Ted Bacon Archive Collection
The Fryer Library at the University of QueenslandUniversity of Queensland
The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...
holds one of the most extensive collections of archival material documenting Left-wing and radical activism in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
and state-wide. The collection includes publications, literature and personal archives of key groups and figures of the movement including that of Eva and Ted Bacon. The Bacon archive was donated in the late 1980s in the hope of protecting the documents in the face of a still heavily anti-communist public sphere. Additions were continually made until 1999 when Ted's brother, on behalf of the deceased couple, compiled the last of their work and the Fryer archive became officially available for academic use. The Eva and Ted Bacon collection consists of a wide range of publications, photos and other literature as well as a series of hand-written notes, research and drafted political theses.
Selected articles published in Our Women
- 'Blue Flowers', 1961, October-December issue.
- 'The Magic Circle', 1964, June-September issue.
- 'Tropical Fruit Salad', 1965, March-May issue.
- 'The Language of Flowers', 1965, June-August issue.