OBITUARY

Jack Hutson (13.05.1912–21.02.2003)

Peter Love

When Jack Hutson died on 21 February 2003 the Labour History community lost one of its most quietly constructive and dedicated members. For several years Jack had been the Secretary of the Melbourne Branch and editor of Recorder. His unobtrusive but always purposeful work ensured that the Executive met on time, that rooms and speakers were arranged, that Recorder was produced regularly and that the Branch's special events were well organised and systematically run. On occasions, he shared the results of his research into the arbitration system with us as our speaker. Now that Jack has gone, we realise how much we relied on him to keep us all going. When several people had spoken at his funeral and his wake, it became clear just how many people and organisations had come to rely on Jack's disciplined, well-informed and self-effacing work for them.	1
Jack Hutson
Jack Hutson was born on 13 May 1912 in the small Lincolnshire village of Hogsthorpe, the eldest of six children. His parents, Frank and Florence Hutson, were schoolteachers. At the time of his birth, Jack's father was the head teacher at the village school. During World War I his father was a munitions inspector, being unfit for military service because of poor eye sight. After the war, he remained in the civil service, being a founding member of the Civil Service Association. Although Jack's father was unable to take an active part in politics, both parents were interested in the Socialist party and the Fabian Society, his mother becoming publicly active. By the early 1930s the family lived in Leeds where, in 1934, she was elected a city councillor. Although there is no evidence that Jack was politically active at this stage, he certainly came from an activist family.	2
Jack did well at school and began his working life in the engineering profession. He completed his formal qualifications at night school and, in the mid-1930s took a job as engineer in charge of the maintenance plant at the oil fields in Sarawak. As the Imperial Japanese Army approached Sarawak, Jack prepared an ingenious rolling ball system that was inserted in the oil pipes to the loading wharf which would both block the pipes and be very difficult to detect. When he was evacuated to Australia, he left behind the only known piece of industrial sabotage of his whole career. For the rest of his life Jack typified what Tom Sheridan has called the 'mindful militants' among the industrial activists in the engineering trades.	3
As a well-qualified and experienced engineer, Jack was directed to war-time manufacturing work as a production engineer where, by the end of hostilities, he had assumed managerial responsibilities. Soon after, his developing political ideas led him to resign his position and return to the bench as a tradesman at another firm. From that point on, his work as a trade unionist and member of the Communist Party became the primary focus of his life. It was through Jack's role in training and research for the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) that his most substantial work for the union movement was done. He became one of the best-informed unionists on the Australian arbitration and wage fixing system, providing both strategic and practical advice to unionists far beyond the ranks of the AEU. His years of research and experience were distilled in two important books: Penal Colony to Penal Powers (AEU, 1966), and Six Wage Concepts (AEU, 1971). For many of his comrades they became what Julius Roe, Federal President of the AMWU, at Jack's funeral called the 'Bible and Koran' for industrial activists. Indeed, there is room for a serious look at the wider influence of Jack's works in the formal study of the arbitration system. This would be a worthy project for a member of the labour history community interested in the hitherto unacknowledged contribution of working class intellectuals to the development of the Australian labour movement. He was certainly influential in the union movement's planning of strategies for Australia's industrial reconstruction in the 1960s and '70s, alongside better-known figures like Laurie Carmichael.	4
When Jack retired from the union he turned his attention to the Communist Party of Australia, of which he was a long-standing member. Working out of the Victorian office, he assumed a significant responsibility for the party's financial affairs. In the party offices he was well-known for his punctilious attention to financial details, as well as the orderly conduct of his workspace. Indeed, one of the favourite activities for office pranksters was to slyly rearrange the items on Jack's desk just to disturb his measured demeanour. At party fund-raising events, such as the Tribune Fair, Jack was the 'bag man; who collected and counted the considerable takings but steadfastly refused to even consider the possibility that he might be robbed on the way home to his Hawthorn flat. Despite the appearance of an obsessively orderly personal style, Jack knew how to enjoy himself. A lover of fine food and elegant dining, he was occasionally heard to criticise the less refined culinary tastes of his union and party comrades. He enjoyed classical music, being something of a closet opera buff. He also had a taste for exotic holiday locations, often visiting remote and 'interesting; places before they were 'discovered;.	5
In recent years his work was focused on the Labour History Society where we saw the purposeful, rather self-effacing side of Jack that was happy to contribute to our common cause without any expectation of private gain or public recognition. It is the kind of selfless work of people like Jack that sustains the movement we all serve. We are already the poorer for his passing. Farewell Jack and thanks mate.	6

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