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
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dowding, Keith
1911 births
2008 deaths
Politicians from Melbourne
Australian Presbyterian ministers
Members of the Order of Australia
University of Melbourne alumni
Australian military personnel of World War II
Military personnel from Melbourne
Clergy from Melbourne
Activists from Melbourne
20th-century Australian Presbyterian ministers
21st-century Australian Presbyterian ministers