When people describe their part in events of our own life time, they often awaken in us recognition mixed with self-reproach. We recognise how greatly our attitudes have changed, but also that our images of significant people and movements are still tinged with our earlier prejudices.
This was the case when I was reading Iola Mathews' account of her personal and working involvement in the struggle for a society more just for women (Winning for Women: A Personal Story, Iola Mathews, Monash University Press). Many of her friends, allies and causes belonged to the hostile armies of my youthful imagination, and still bear traces, even though I have since come to recognise their generosity of spirit and the justice they sought.
I grew up in a Catholic world where strikes led by communist unions brought the personal discomfort of cooking on wood fires and regular train and tram strikes. World politics were dominated by the struggle with Communism and its oppression of Catholics; local politics became focused on the bitterness of the Labor Party Split. Communists like Lance Sharkey and Ernie Thornton and politicians like Clyde Cameron and Doc Evatt wore hats of the deepest black, and this spilled out over the left wing unions, peace movements, the Age and abortion campaigners. The United States wore a white hat, but not the Australian Liberal government, the old enemy, which at best wore grey.
My attitudes and my predilection for hats of any hue have changed, and reading this book was a refreshing walk along a long deserted battle field, recognising the camaraderie and generosity in the once opposed army to which many of Mathews' friends, allies and causes belonged, and putting aside the caricatures that once represented them.
She reveals the persons behind the public masks given to her friends, including Bill Kelty, Jan Marsh, Bea Faust, Bert and Jo Wainer, Gareth Evans and Joan Kirner. Even in matters on which I would take issue with them, such as abortion in which I see the common reduction of the question to one of a woman's right to choose as a source of sadness rather than liberation, I have come to recognise the depth of women's suffering and inequality that has animated people who campaigned for its legalisation.
The slice of life described in this book took Mathews from journalism to work with the Women's Election Lobby and to advocate with the ACTU for the promotion