Tom Uren: prisoner of war went on to fight for social justice TOM UREN 1921–2015 Tom Uren left school at 13, became a boxer, was fighting World War II in Timor on his 21st birthday, spent his next three birthdays as a prisoner of the Japanese, including on the infamous Burma-Thailand railway, and saw the sky change colour over Nagasaki after the atom bomb was dropped. He became a minister in the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating governments, deputy leader of the federal Labor Party, and was largely responsible for the creation of the National Estate, protecting large areas of Glebe and Woolloomooloo from developers, and decentralisation to Albury Wodonga. Believing that one of the greatest advances of the 20th century was the new understanding of humankinds impact on the environment, he campaigned long after leaving Canberra for saving wilderness areas and the Sydney Harbour foreshores. For an old boxer and prisoner-of-war, he spoke frequently of love, sometimes quoting Paulo Freire: Dialogue cannot exist in the absence of a profound love for the world and for men. Freire was a Brazilian Marxist Catholic whose writings were a tonic to Urens soul, although Uren was never a Marxist. He drew his social values from life and living, rather than from books. Tom Uren, who has died at 93, was born in Balmain on May 25, 1921 to Tom Uren and his wife, formerly Agnes Miller. He carried Cornish and Celtic blood from his fathers family, and Jewish and English from his paternal grandmother. After the family moved to Harbord when he was five, Tom walked barefooted to the local primary school, before being made to wear shoes to Manly Intermediate High. Read more: smh.au/comment/obituaries/tom-uren-prisoner-of-war-went-on-to-fight-for-social-justice-20150126-12y83z.html
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:09:04 +0000