Guide to the Papers of Rupert Lockwood, 1851-2012

 

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Collection context

Summary

Collection number:
MS 10121
Creator:
Lockwood, Rupert
Extent:
16.2 metres and (90 MS Boxes + 15 Archive Boxes)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Rupert Lockwood, National Library of Australia, MS 10121, [class/series/file/item number(s)]'.
Availability:
Available
Access conditions:
Available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:
According to Rupert Lockwood's biographer, Rowan Cahill, some of Lockwood's papers were destroyed in a fire in 1957. Certainly there is little in the collection that documents Lockwood's career as a journalist before that date. The papers in the Lockwood collection consist of correspondence, writings, notes, research material, photographs, sound recordings and printed material relating to Lockwood's life as a journalist, writer, Communist Party member, historical, industrial and political researcher, and editor. A major portion of the collection comprises drafts of his pamphlets, articles and books, particularly of Black armada, War on the waterfront and Ship to shore. Notes and research material, including titled subject files, are also abundant. Records documenting Lockwood's role in the Petrov Affair include copies of official records, including 'Document J', correspondence, articles, news cuttings and printed material. Many of the photographs were collected by Lockwood when editor of Maritime worker and reflect the subject matter of that journal. There is also correspondence and submissions from readers sent to him as editor. Family who are represented in the correspondence include Lockwood's siblings, Douglas, Allan and Lionel Lockwood, ex-wife Betty Searle and his children, in particular Penny Lockwood. Other correspondents include Vic Bird, Tim Bowden, Tas Bull, Rowan Cahill, Veronica English, Irina Golovnya, Ken Gott, Jo Hawke, David McKnight, Ron Maxwell, Bernice Morris, Helen Palmer, Katherine Prentice, Paul Stenhouse, Russel Ward, Judah Waten and Douglas Wilkie.
Biographical Note:

Rupert Ernest Lockwood was an Australian journalist, writer and editor. He was born in 1908 at Natimuk in the Wimmera region of Victoria, to parents Alfred Wright Lockwood and Alice (nee Francis). After Alice died in 1913, Alfred married a woman of German descent, Ida Dorothea Klowss. This event led to the family being subjected to anti-German harassment, a theme which figures in Rupert Lockwood's autobiographical writings. Alfred was proprietor of the local West Wimmera Mail newspaper, which he used as a forum for expressing his personal views. Alfred also involved his children in the newspaper's production, as a result of which Rupert not only grew up setting type and using the printing machine, but from the age of fourteen was reporting local news. Rupert was educated at Natimuk State School and Wesley College, Melbourne.

In 1930 Lockwood joined the Melbourne Herald as a cadet journalist, and in 1933 became chief Parliamentary press reporter in Canberra. In 1935, he sailed for Singapore, where he undertook a variety of newspaper jobs and travelled throughout South East Asia, China and Japan, witnessing the Japanese military in action in China. He travelled via Trans-Siberian Railway to Russia and thence to London. Here Lockwood joined the Australian Newspaper Service and used this as a basis for travel thoughout Europe, including Germany, Italy and Spain, where he reported from Spanish Civil War fronts in 1937. His experiences in Spain in particular radicalised his existing anti-fascist political leanings, fostered during his time in bohemian Melbourne and by a period as Herald unemployment roundsman.

In 1938 Sir Keith Murdoch recalled Lockwood to Australia, where he resumed his work at the Herald and Canberra press gallery. However Lockwood's involvement with the Australian Council for Civil Liberties and an incident in which he insulted Deputy Prime Minister Menzies at a Canberra Press Gallery dinner, led to Herald management disapproval and Lockwood seeking employment elsewhere in 1939. In this year he also joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), and although he kept his membership a secret until 1942 when the Party was legalised, he became the subject of Commonwealth Investigation Branch surveillance. Lockwood produced a number of communist pamphlets and became a regular public speaker for the CPA during the 1940s-1950s.

Lockwood worked for ABC Weekly and the labour paper Daily News over the next two years. Thereafter he worked in labour movement journalism for the next 45 years, including as associate editor of the Waterside Workers Federation journal, Maritime Worker, 1952-1985, and as Communist newspaper Tribune Moscow correspondent 1965-1968. During this latter period Lockwood toured Roumania, Czecholslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany and Hungary and inside the USSR. His articles were published in Pravda and other Soviet, East German, Hungarian and Bulgarian newspapers. After his return to Australia in 1968, Lockwood began to disengage from the CPA.

Lockwood was brought to public notoriety in 1954 at the time of the defection of Soviet spies Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov. During the Royal Commission into Espionage in Australia in 1954-1955, Locwood was examined for nine days in the witness box regarding the authorship of a document, known as 'Document J', which was handed to ASIO by Petrov. He was ultimately cleared of being a Soviet agent, but the Petrov Affair remained the incident for which he was best-known. In later years he was sought after by students, television and film producers and journalists, particularly for his knowledge of the 1930s-1950s.

Apart from his writings as a journalist and pamphleteer, Lockwood's published a number of books, including Black armada (1975), Humour is their weapon (1985), War on the waterfront (1987), and Ship to shore (1990).

Lockwood died in 1997, survived by his ex-wife, Betty Searle, and daughters Penny, Althea and Andria.

Cahill, Rowan. 'Geo-politics of a soul: Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997)', in Labour History, no. 72, May 1997.

Cahill, Rowan. 'Rupert Lockwood abroad, 1935-1938: genesis of a Cold War journalist', History Cooperative's Conference Proceedings (2007), http://www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/asslh2/cahill.html

Provenance:

The papers of Rupert Lockwood were received in eleven instalments between 1997 and 2011 from Lockwood's daughter, Penny Lockwood.

Arrangement:

The papers were created and collected by Lockwood. After his move to a nursing home, the collection was placed in the custody of his daughter, Penny Lockwood. Ms Lockwood filed a small portion of the papers inside titled files, but in general there was little evidence of order amongst the collection at the time of receipt by the National Library.

Physical arrangement of the collection follows the order in which each successive instalment was received, with the arrangement of files and loose material within the original boxes largely retained. Loose material in some instances has been collocated in containers at the end of the sequence of files within the original box. See the concordance list for locations of files inside boxes and their relationship to original accession/box numbers. Lockwood's files have been retained (sometimes inside plastic bags), but fragile material, loose papers and those originally in envelopes have been rehoused into archival containers by Library staff.

In addition, an artificial intellectual arrangement within a series framework has been imposed on the collection by the Library. Lockwood's file and envelope titles (and/or those of Penny Lockwood) have been retained in the finding aid file titles and can be distinguished from Library-allocated titles by the absence of square brackets. However due to Lockwood's habit of filing material on a range of subjects into the same file/envelope etc, the majority of file titles in the finding aid do not represent all material inside containers. Rather, file titles and descriptions summarise material formats and highlight subjects and/or correspondents which/who are represented inside containers by significant amounts of material.

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:
Available for research. Not for loan.
Conditions Governing Use:
Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Rupert Lockwood, National Library of Australia, MS 10121, [class/series/file/item number(s)]'.
Location of this collection:
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
Contact: