Labour Australia

Wally Curran, n.d.

Walter James (Wally) Curran (1932-2014) meat industry worker and trade union official. 

Birth: 20 January 1932 at Williamstown, Victoria, son of native-born parents Charles Walter Ronald (Wally) Curran, (1908-1968) a slaughterman, and Marjorie Alberta, née Flett (1910-1985) a factory worker. Marriages: (1) 1953 to Eileen May Bromley. They had two children. (2) 1962 to Violet Malos. Death: 24 March 2014 at Williamstown, Victoria. 

• When Wally was nine months old his father left home. They would not meet for another fifteen years. Educated at Williamstown Technical School until aged fourteen.
• Meatworker employed at several meatworks in Melbourne, Borthwick’s, Angliss’s and Jackson’s.
• Member of Committee of Management, Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union. Assistant Secretary, Victorian Branch, from December 1958 to 1972. Secretary until 1997. Awarded Order of Australia medal on 25 January 1997.
• President, secretary, Young Labor Association, 1958-59. Left Australian Labor Party in the 1960s.

Sources
A.E. Davies, The Meat Workers Unite, The Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union (Victorian Branch), (Melbourne, 1974); John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962.