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Thomas Uren (1921 - 2015)

Thomas (Tom) Uren
Born in Balmain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australiamap
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Died at age 93 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australiamap
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Profile last modified | Created 7 Feb 2015
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Biography

"Tom Uren was a fighter - in the boxing ring, the prisoner of war camp and as a long-term advocate of socialism and peace."[1]

Former Labor deputy Tom Uren dies at 93
Tom Uren's politics of peaceful revolution were moulded by trauma - the depression and years as a Japanese prisoner of war.

During his 31 years as a federal Labor MP of the left, ministries in the Whitlam and Hawke governments and deputy leadership of the party, Uren never abandoned his commitment to socialism and peace.

Though increasingly isolated as Labor became market oriented in the 1980s, he left important legacies - strengthened local government, regional centres and new agencies to protect the environment.

To some he was the conscience of the party, to others a self-indulgent political dinosaur.

Thomas Uren, who died early on Australia Day aged 93, was born on May 28, 1921 in the working class Sydney suburb of Balmain. The family later moved to Manly.

His father was often unemployed in the depression. His mother pawned household goods to pay the rent and went before a "committee of nice people" which decided if the family deserved welfare.

Uren left school at 13 to get what work he could.

A fine sportsman, he played Presidents Cup rugby league, was Freshwater Surf Club's junior champion and fought for the Australian heavyweight championship.

He joined up when war broke out.

Prisoner of war
He was taken prisoner after a bloody battle against overwhelming Japanese forces near Koepang. His next three birthdays were as a PoW.

During his 18 months on the Burma-Thailand railway Uren suffered and saw dreadful brutality and debilitating, often fatal, diseases.

He was in the Hintok camp under the command of Melbourne surgeon Edward (Weary) Dunlop. Dunlop took the miserable allowance paid to his officers so he could buy food and medicine which were allocated according to need.

English PoWs died more quickly because, hidebound by class division, their officers didn't share.

Uren later said: "Only a creek separated our two camps, but on one side the law of the jungle prevailed and on the other the principles of socialism."

Eventually, Uren was shipped to Japan and put to work in a factory at Omuta.

When he arrived he would have "exterminated every Japanese person on the face of the earth". But at the factory he worked with Japanese and found them considerate and comradely.

Omuta is about 80 kilometres from Nagasaki where, on August 9, 1945, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb.

Uren finally came home and in 1947 married Patricia Palmer. They had two adopted children.

He tried to revive his boxing career after working his way to London as a stoker, but the years of privation and disease had taken an irreparable toll.

Woolworth's storeman
Back again in Australia, he became a Woolworths storeman, after missing a trainee manager's position because of his lack of education. Within 21 months he was managing the Lithgow store.

He joined the Labor Party after attending Ben Chifley's funeral in nearby Bathurst in 1951.

In 1958 he entered federal parliament after winning a tough preselection battle for the safe western Sydney seat of Reid. As a member of the Left, he became very close to the Melbourne idealist Jim Cairns, one of the few men he loved. Though he felt Cairns later made terrible mistakes, they remained lifelong mates.

Uren was an early and uncompromising opponent of the Vietnam war.

After the 1969 election, in which Gough Whitlam took Labor close to government, Uren became urban and regional affairs spokesman.

Able administrator, driving force for change
He kept the portfolio after Whitlam came to power in 1972 and made his new department a powerhouse of ideas. Uren proved an able administrator as well as a driving force for change.

Although some of his proposed regional growth centres were stillborn, a few - like Albury-Wodonga - took off.

Sewerage was brought to many parts of outer Sydney and Melbourne and historic inner city precincts were saved from ugly development.

Uren thought his greatest achievement was the creation of the Australian Heritage Commission; his greatest disappointment failing to stop the flooding of Lake Pedder in Tasmania.

Two relationships deeply troubled Uren during this period.

In 1974, Patricia left him. When Patricia later developed breast cancer, she returned. They were together the night before she died in 1981.

The other was Cairns' relationship with Junie Morosi.

Uren knew she would be trouble and tried to talk his friend out of hiring her.

But the new treasurer was intensely in love and pleaded that unless he put Morosi on staff he'd never have the time to see her.

Uren, putting his heart before his head, finally gave her appointment his qualified blessing and made his Canberra flat available to the pair.

After the dismissal and Malcolm Fraser's landslide victory, Uren was elected deputy leader - winning the final ballot against Paul Keating by 33 votes to 30.

After the 1977 election, when Bill Hayden took over from Whitlam, Uren lost his position as deputy to Lionel Bowen.

Uren was ambivalent about Hayden and the pair fell out over uranium exports.

Although Hayden made big inroads into Malcolm Fraser's majority in 1980, Uren came to believe Bob Hawke was the better bet.

Hawke took over in time to lead Labor back to power.

Hawke, to Uren's disappointment, made him territories and local government minister. He had a furious row with the new PM and when Hawke ended the meeting with an offer to shake hands, he was told to "shove it up your arse".

Yet Uren threw himself into local government for the two terms he held the portfolio, fighting for more money for the third tier of government.

Uren became distressed by the government's faith in the market. The period was "bloody awful, lacking real compassion."

He didn't stand for the ministry after the 1987 election and had a final term on the backbench before retiring in 1990.

With former Australian Democrats leader, the late Janine Haines, he went to Baghdad to help free 29 Australians being held hostage in the lead-up to the first Gulf war.

In 1991 he married Christine Logan, an Australian Opera singer, gaining a little daughter in the process.

He mellowed towards Whitlam, though less so with Hawke.

He found new joys, particularly in art. Lloyd Rees was another he loved.

"A professional boxer, a soldier, a federal parliamentarian of 31 years and a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke governments, Uren died on Australia Day at the age of 93."[2]

A lion of the Labor movement, Tom Uren has been celebrated as an extraordinary man who served two prime ministers and his country.

Michael Uren led the tributes in front of more than 700 people at a state funeral in Sydney, saying the crowded Town Hall was testament to his father's character and influence, after having spent his life in service to others.

His father was "arrogant, egotistical, opinionated, loving, humble, hard and very gentle", he said.

"And yet with all these qualities, he chose a life of service to others.

"I love ya old fellow. I'm going to miss you, you old bastard."

The funeral procession was accompanied by a percussion and funeral song performed by the East Timorese community, honouring Uren's time spent there when deployed during World War II.

Uren was a long-time supporter of East Timorese independence.

Senior Labor MP Anthony Albanese, who was told by Uren more than a decade ago that he would be MC at the funeral, said Uren was not just his mentor, but the closest person he'd had to a father figure in his life.

"The passing of a man such as Tom Uren has caused us great sadness," Mr Albanese said, adding that Uren would have wanted his life story "to inspire a new generation striving for a more compassionate and just Australia, and world".

"He was a truly extraordinary man."

Political dignitaries past and present, including past Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and former Liberal prime minister John Howard, attended the funeral.

Born in 1921 in the then working-class suburb of Balmain, Uren left school at the age of 13 to look for work, as the impact of the Great Depression still lingered.

He was a professional boxer, and fought for the Australian heavyweight title, before serving with the Australian Imperial Forces in World War II, during which time he was a prisoner of war at the hands of the Japanese, forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway alongside Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop.

In 1945, from his POW camp, Uren witnessed the "discoloured sky" as an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan.

He would later become one of the first Labor MPs to question Australia's support for the war in Vietnam, and in the early 1990s led a delegation to free Western hostages before the first Iraq war.

Uren was elected to federal parliament for the seat of Reid in 1958, was Labor deputy leader in 1976, and served in parliament until 1990.

Described by Mr Hawke as a "people's politician", Uren was also credited with establishing the Register of the National Estate, which recognised natural, indigenous and historic heritage places.

A private cremation was held on Wednesday afternoon.

File Format: jpg. Tom & Patricia Uren. Format: jpg. Tom Uren. Format: jpg. Tom Uren (3).

Sources

  1. Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), "Tom Uren, the fighter who loved", 26 JAN 2015 - 12:22 PM UPDATED 26 JAN 2015 - 12:47 PM, http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/01/26/tom-uren-fighter-who-loved
  2. Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), "Labor's lion Tom Uren farewelled in Sydney", 4 FEB 2015 - 7:40PM, http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/04/labors-lion-tom-uren-farewelled-sydney

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