Tom Uren

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Thomas Uren, AO (born 28 May 1921), Australian politician, was a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke Australian Labor Party governments.

Uren was born in Balmain, Sydney, then a working-class suburb, and was educated at Manly High School. Uren played rugby league for Manly Warringah in his youth and was a strong competitive swimmer. He had an early career as a professional boxer and challenged for the Australian heavyweight championship against Billy Britt.

In 1939 Uren joined the Australian Army and served in the 2/40 Infantry Battalion. He was deployed to Timor and was a prisoner of the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, during which time he worked on the Burma-Siam railway and served with Edward "Weary" Dunlop. He was later transferred to Japan where he witnessed the distant crimson sky resulting from the explosion of the US atom bomb on Nagasaki.

After the war Uren spent a short time trying to revive his boxing career which included a trip to England and he worked for his passage on voyages through the Panama Canal. On return he spent some time as a Woolworths manager at Lithgow. He was inspired to join the Australian Labor Party after attending Ben Chifley's funeral.

He and his wife, Patricia, moved to Sydney and established two small retailing outlets to gain the financial independence to pursue a political career. He won Labor pre-selection in 1957 for the House of Representatives seat of Reid in western Sydney and was subsequently elected in 1958. Uren was to represent the electorate until 1990, thirty two years later.

Uren was a strong supporter of the left wing of the Labor Party, led at first by Eddie Ward and later by Jim Cairns, and was sometimes accused of being a secret communist, an accusation he denied. He campaigned against the Vietnam War, conscription and nuclear testing.

In 1969 Uren was appointed by Gough Whitlam to the Opposition front bench with responsibility for housing and urban affairs, which became his passion for the rest of his career. He was Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975. Among his achievements, he was a key player in the creation of the Towra Point Nature Reserve. Despite his rhetoric as a firebrand, he proved a highly competent minister and was one of the few ministers to emerge from the fall of the Whitlam government with his reputation enhanced.

In 1976 Uren was elected Deputy Leader of the Labor Party under Whitlam as Opposition Leader, but after the 1977 election, when Bill Hayden was elected Leader, he was replaced by Lionel Bowen. He succeeded Cairns as leader of the ALP Left, and bitterly opposed Bob Hawke's rise to the Labor leadership. As a result, when the Hawke government was elected in 1983, Uren was omitted from the Cabinet - he was given the junior poprtfolio of Territories and Local Government, and from 1984 to 1987 Local Government and Administrative Services.

Uren stood down from the ministry after the 1987 election and retired from Parliament in 1990. He was the last veteran of World War II in the House of Representatives. In retirement he continued to campaign for various causes.

[edit] References

• National Library of Australia. Papers of Tom Uren. Retrieved on April 19, 2005.
• Green Left Weekly Online Edition. Tom Uren's account of an era. Retrieved on April 19, 2005.
• Tom Uren (1995). Straight Left. Random House Australia,. ISBN 0-09-182998-4.

Preceded by Frank Crean	Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party 1975-1977	Succeeded by Lionel Bowen
Preceded by Doug Anthony	Longest serving member of the Australian House of Representatives 1984-1990	Succeeded by Ian Sinclair