Keith McCallum Dowding (21 July 1911 – 26 August 2008) was an Australian minister and left-wing activist who was the father of Western Australian Premier

Peter Dowding Peter McCallum Dowding SC (born 6 October 1943) is an Australian lawyer and former politician who served as the 24th Premier of Western Australia, from 25 February 1988 until his forced resignation on 12 February 1990. He was a member of parli ...

. Dowding was born in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

to John McCallum Dowding and Margaret Katherine Welch. Keith was the older brother of

MI9 MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: (1) assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (P ...

agent

Bruce Dowding Kenneth Bruce Dowding (4 May 1914 – 30 June 1943) was an Australian who worked for the British Directorate of Military Intelligence as a MI9 agent and was involved in the French Resistance during World War II under the alias of "André Mason". H ...

. He attended

Melbourne University The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

, graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

, and in 1939 was ordained a

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

minister. Also in that year he married Marjorie Darcy and was sent home from his army chaplaincy in

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

after questioning the differences in treatment between officers and troops and his Christian burial of a Japanese pilot. He re-enrolled as a private and worked in the Japanese language division of the army. Following a period as minister in

Murrumbeena Murrumbeena is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 13 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Glen Eira local government area. Murrumbeena recorded a population of 9,996 at the 2021 cen ...

, he worked in Scotland with

George MacLeod George Fielden MacLeod, Baron MacLeod of Fuinary, (17 June 1895 – 27 June 1991) was a Scottish soldier and clergyman; he was one of the best known, most influential and unconventional Church of Scotland ministers of the 20th century. He ...

. Marjorie died during this period, survived by the couple's eight-year-old son,

Peter Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a sur ...

. In 1951, he returned to Australia, where he married Marjorie Lazarus, a Jewish widow. The couple settled in

Woollahra Woollahra is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located 5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. W ...

, where the Dowding manse became a central meeting place for 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 the f ...

's left faction, including

Les Haylen Leslie Clement "Les" Haylen (23 September 1898 – 12 September 1977), also known by the pen-name Sutton Woodfield, was an Australian politician, playwright, novelist and journalist. Early life Haylen was born on 23 September 1898 at Gundaroo, ...

Eddie Ward Edward John Ward (7 March 189931 July 1963) was an Australian politician who represented the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in federal parliament for over 30 years. He was the member for East Sydney for all but six-and-a-half weeks from 1931 u ...

and

H. V. Evatt Herbert Vere Evatt, (30 April 1894 – 2 November 1965) was an Australian politician and judge. He served as a judge of the High Court of Australia from 1930 to 1940, Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs from 1941 to 1949, and l ...

. Dowding was also involved in the

Petrov Affair The Petrov Affair was a Cold War spy incident in Australia, concerning the defection of Vladimir Petrov, a KGB officer, from the Soviet embassy in Canberra in 1954. The defection led to a Royal Commission and the resulting controversy contribu ...

, becoming the confidant and spiritual advisor of Alan Dalziel, one of Evatt's staffers who was accused of being a Soviet spy. Following Dalziel's acquittal, Dowding moved to

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, becoming minister at

Ross Memorial Church The Ross Memorial Church is a Uniting Church building on Hay Street in West Perth, Western Australia. History Five years prior to the construction of the church a brick hall (designed by Andrew Oswald Wilson) was built adjacent to the chur ...

. He ran as the Labor candidate for

Swan Swans are birds of the family (biology), family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the goose, geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form t ...

in 1958, but by 1961 his views were outside the Labor mainstream and he was expelled from the party in 1962 for opposing the

White Australia policy The White Australia policy is a term encapsulating a set of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia, starting i ...

. Dowding was later readmitted to the Labor Party, becoming its senior WA vice-president and a life member; he was also readmitted to the

Returned Services League The Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) is a support organisation for people who have served or are serving in the Australian Defence Force. Mission The RSL's mission is to ensure that programs are in place for the well-being, care ...

, which had expelled him in 1953 for "alleged communist leanings". He was a campaigner for a wide variety of causes, serving as president of the Western Australian Council for Civil Liberties, convener of People for Nuclear Disarmament, president of the Western Australian branch of

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, founder of Freedom from Hunger in WA, chairman of the Refugee Task Force and West Australians for Racial Equality, and national vice-president of the

United Nations Association of Australia The United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) is the official non-profit, non-government, membership-based, organisation in Australia working on behalf of the United Nations core body to promote its overall aims and ideals, and equally s ...

. He and his second wife divorced and he remarried Jane Hutchison, an Anglo-Indian nurse he met in Nigeria working with the

Save the Children Fund The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization established in the United Kingdom in 1919 to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic ...

, in the 1960s. He died in August 2008.

References

United Nations Association - Presidents and Life Members

References

Further reading