Profile - Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997)

Journalist Rupert Lockwood was born in Victoria in 1908. His father Alfred was a newspaper proprietor, so it’s probably no surprise that Lockwood commenced a career in journalism. He began by working on his father’s newspaper, the West Wimmera Mail, at the age of just nine, and joined the Melbourne Herald in the early 1930s until he left Australia in 1935.  

Rupert spent three years working in Asia and Europe, where he observed the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain. Upon returning to Australia in 1938, he joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and pursued a career in labour movement journalism.  

Rupert is strongly associated with the Royal Commission into Espionage held during 1954-55. During this time the government accused him of being a Russian spy.   

His opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1969 led to him leaving the CPA.  

During later years he became an accomplished author, producing several books including Black Armada (1975), War on the Waterfront (1987) and Ship to Shore (1990). He worked as an historian for the Waterside Workers' Federation and edited WWF national journal The Maritime Worker.   

Rupert Lockwood died in 1997 at the age of 91. As journalist and historian Rowan Cahill wrote, Lockwood was “a man of many talents who earned the right during his lifetime to be termed journalist, orator, pamphleteer, editor, author, historian, intellectual, and socialist” (R Cahill 1997).  

References

Cahill, R 1997, Obituary: Rupert Lockwood, Illawarra Unity - Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 1(2), accessed <https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=unity>