Martie Lowenstein

Wendy Lowenstein (1927-2006) was a writer, journalist, teacher, librarian and mother of three who loved history and Australian literature. Inspired by reading Studs Terkel’s Hard Times she pioneered oral history in Australia with her books, The Immigrants, Weevils in the Flour, an oral record of the 1930s Depression in Australia, Under the Hook: Melbourne Waterside Workers Remember, and Weevils at Work: what's happening to work in Australia.

For 30 years, my mother passionately recorded everyday people’s experiences, mostly working people with families and people who have struggled for social and political change. She wanted others to understand and experience Australia’s ‘real life’ history. Wendy’s life work reflected her passionate belief in history from a proletarian perspective: “I am offering a collection of the raw material of working-class history.”

She first interviewed Jim McNeill to record his experiences during the Great Depression but later asked if he would discuss his experience as a member of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. In this extract, he describes the two occasions he was wounded in action.  

Jim McNeill (1900-1976) worked until 1927 when work became scarce. He joined Industrial Workers of the World, going to Adelaide, with an IWW organizer, Ted Dickenson to strengthen the fight for free speech, as Adelaide members of the IWW were in jail for speaking in public. Organizers like Ted and Jim spoke every day at the unemployed shelter, a sort of Labour Exchange, an immense corrugated iron shed where about two thousand people waited to hear if any work was available. From1928 there were no rations for single men in South Australia and they weren't resumed until about 1932. But Jim and Ted managed to stay alive somehow.

Jim left Sydney to enlist in the International Brigades by smuggling himself aboard a ship to join other Australians fighting in Spain. Wendy also interviewed Tom Hills, a Sydney wharfie, who smuggled Jim and other Australian volunteers onto ships. “Most never had a razoo. They couldn’t pay for a passage to England. It was one of my jobs to organize passages. I’d go down to the waterfront pubs and get talking to the seamen…. the Liverpool Irishmen were the easiest and the Blue Funnel was the best line. I’d tell them a tale, say, ‘There’s a fellow going home to England, his mother’s dying’. You’d live in the crew’s quarters and, as they changed watch, they’d get out of one fellow’s bed and into the bed of the fellow that was going on watch. Or they’d stick you in a hiding place and bring you out at night. Jim McNeill lost a stone [14 pounds] on the journey over because of the confinement.”

Jim returned to Australia on 7 February 1939, however in November that year, he enlisted in the 2nd AIF, to continue fighting against fascism in WWII. 

This interview somehow missed getting into the vast collection of Wendy’s interviews held in the National Library of Australia and it would have remained on reel to reel in my dusty garage. 

Michael Samaras had seen a small part of Jim McNeill’s story that was written in Weevils in the Flour, so he contacted me asking to access the full Jim McNeill interview which set me on a search for a missing interview, 50 years old, still on reel-to-reel tape. Luckily it was in great condition and easily digitized using my aged tape recorder. The garage must have had ideal conditions for preserving the tape as the audio was astoundingly clear and well preserved. 

The full interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10OutTtIGKM&list=PLpULRjUfQRE46IBzoh67Wif-w-ODe_Pce.