William Alfred Clint (8 January 1906 – 21 April 1980) was an Australian priest in the Church of England in Australia (as the

Anglican Church of Australia The Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the ...

was then called). He established a number of Aboriginal co-operatives on behalf of the

Australian Board of Missions The Anglican Board of Mission - Australia (ABM), formerly Australasian Board of Missions and Australian Board of Missions, is the national mission agency of the Anglican Church of Australia. In its earliest form, it was established in 1850. ...

, including Tranby Aboriginal College.

Early life

Clint was born in 1906 in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, to John William Clint, a commercial traveller, and his wife Lilian Lancaster (née Cawdery). The family moved to Sydney when Clint was a child, and he was educated at Balmain Public School and

Rozelle Rozelle is a suburb in the inner west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 4 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Inner West Council. Location Rozelle s ...

Junior Technical School, although he left early due to his father's unemployment.

Career

Clint worked for the Balmain Co-operative Society Ltd's store. Despite a Low Church upbringing, Clint was converted to the

Anglo-Catholic Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the Catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches. The term was coined in the early 19th century, although movements emphasising the Catholic nature of Anglica ...

Christian Socialism of Fr John Hope at

Christ Church St Laurence Christ Church St Laurence is an Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican church (building), church located at 814 George Street, Sydney, George Street, near Central railway station, Sydney, Central railway station and Haymarket, in City of Sydney, S ...

. In 1927 he entered

St John's College, Morpeth St John's College, Morpeth, known colloquially as the "Poor Man's College, Armidale", was opened in Armidale in 1898 as a theological college to train clergy to serve in the Church of England in Australia. It moved to Morpeth in 1926 and closed ...

for training for ordination, becoming a lay reader in the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd in the Diocese of Bathurst at the same time. He was ordained deacon in 1929, becoming a member of the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd, but retained, on his insistence, both his membership of the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...

and the

Australian Workers' Union The Australian Workers' Union (AWU) is one of Australia's largest and oldest trade unions. It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the 1880s and currently has approximately 80,000 members. It has exer ...

. As a member of the Brotherhood he was known as Brother Alf, and served in

Tottenham Tottenham () is a town in North London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Wal ...

. He was ordained priest in 1932, remaining a member of the Brotherhood until 1935. Clint was then rector of St Mary's,

Weston, New South Wales Weston is a town in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the City of Cessnock local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. T ...

(1935-1941) and St Stephen's,

Portland, New South Wales Portland is a town in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. At the , Portland had a population of 2,424 people. The town was named after Australia's first cement works. Location Portland is part of the gateway to the Central West ...

(1941-1948). Both Weston and Portland were mining towns, and Clint had the miners at church on Sunday mornings and at Lenin meetings on Sunday evenings. In 1938 he was granted leave from his parish, and he worked his passage from Australia to England as a pantry boy in order to attend the Labour Party fete at

Thaxted Thaxted is a town and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of north-west Essex, England. The town is in the valley of the River Chelmer, not far from its source in the nearby village of Debden, and is 97 metres (318 feet) above sea level (whe ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

, hosted by the "Red Vicar" of Thaxted, the Revd

Conrad Noel Conrad le Despenser Roden Noel (12 July 1869 – 22 July 1942) was an English priest of the Church of England. Known as the 'Red Vicar' of Thaxted, he was a prominent Christian socialist. Early life Noel was born on 12 July 1869 in Royal Cottage, ...

. In 1948 he was invited by the Rt Revd

Philip Strong :''Both the subject and his father sometimes used ''Warrington Strong'' as a surname.'' Sir Philip Nigel Warrington Strong (11 July 18996 July 1983) served as the fourth Bishop of New Guinea from 1936 to 1962 and the fifth Anglican Archbishop ...

, Bishop of New Guinea, to become co-operative adviser at Gona, Papua. He walked from village to village organising Christian co-operatives. In 1951, suffering from severe dermatitis (which "caused his skin to peel off like a mango"), he was advised against returning to the tropics and became rector of St Barnabas', South Bathurst. 1 Tranby in Mansfield Street

In 1953 he was appointed director of co-operatives at the

. At the time, ABM still had a number of Aboriginal missions, and Clint travelled around them, establishing co-operatives at Lockhart River Mission (1954),

Moa Island Moa Island, also called Banks Island, is an island of the Torres Strait Islands archipelago that is located north of Thursday Island, Queensland, Thursday Island in the Banks Channel of Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. It is also a Subur ...

, Torres Strait (1956), and

Cabbage Tree Island Cabbage Tree Island, also known as the John Gould Nature Reserve, is a protected nature reserve and uninhabited continental island lying off the mouth of Port Stephens on the coast of New South Wales, Australia. The reserve and island is named ...

(1959). In 1957 Fr Hope gave Clint a house, Tranby, for his work with Aborigines. Now (2021) called Tranby National Indigenous Adult Education and Training, Tranby is still run by the Co-operative for Aborigines Limited, founded by Clint. By 1959 the Lockhart River co-operative was bankrupt due to the collapse of the

trochus ''Trochus'' is a genus of medium-sized to large, top-shaped sea snails with an operculum and a pearly inside to their shells, marine gastropod molluscs in the subfamily Trochinae of the family Trochidae, the top snails.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. ( ...

shell market. In 1960 the Rt Rev John Matthews was elected Bishop of Carpentaria; he considered Clint to be a destabilizing influence and, in 1961, banned him from entry to Anglican missions in the diocese. That led the ABM in 1962 to replace its co-operative department with an autonomous body, Co-operative for Aborigines Ltd, of which Clint was the general secretary. Clint was still general secretary when he died: the morning of his death he called the staff to his bedside, and urged them to continue their work.

Personal life

Clint was unmarried. He died in 1980; his requiem mass at Christ Church St Laurence was attended by 500 people. He was cremated at Northern Suburbs crematorium.

Legacy

Clint was the subject of an appreciative biography by his friend, the novelist

Kylie Tennant Kathleen Kylie Tennant AO (; 12 March 1912 – 28 February 1988) was an Australian novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer, and historian. Early life and career Tennant was born in Manly, New South Wales; she was educat ...

, ''Speak You So Gently'' (1959). Unusually for a Christian cleric, he was the subject of a sympathetic obituary in the

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian political parties, Australian political party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membersh ...

's newspaper, ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on th ...

''. A memorial sanctuary bell was installed at St Barnabas', South Bathurst, although the church was subsequently destroyed by fire in 2014. The boardroom at Tranby is named after Clint.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clint, Alf 1906 births 1980 deaths People educated at St John's College, Morpeth Australian Anglican priests Australian Anglo-Catholics Anglo-Catholic socialists Australian cooperative organizers People from Wellington City New Zealand emigrants to Australia