Elsie Locke: biography launched

Looking for Answers: A life of Elsie Locke by Maureen Birchfield was launched in Christchurch on Wednesday last week (October 7). There have also been launches in Auckland and Wellington. Elsie Locke was, as the press release from the University of Canterbury Press puts it, “an influential writer and activist”. A member of the Communist Party (CPNZ)* from 1933 until 1956, Elsie was also a member of the CP’s National Committee and a columnist in it’s various newspapers. She was editor of the CP’s Working Women magazine (1935–36), which was wound-up in order to launch Woman Today, a broader feminist magazine which continued until 1939. Elsie was also a founder of what became the Family Planning Association. Elsie was one of several leading communists who resigned from the CP, in protest at the party’s support for Russia’s crushing of the Hungarian Uprising – others included Connie and Albert Birchfield, parents of Elsie’s biographer, and Sid and Nellie Scott. However, unlike the Birchfields and the Scotts, Elsie’s husband Jack Locke remained a member of the CP and its successors until his death in 1996. It’s fair to say that it was Elsie’s achievements after leaving the CP that earned her most recognition. The fact that she was an ex-communist also made her more acceptable to establishment liberals who have honoured her with an with Elsie Locke Park in 1997, and this year a bronze bust as one of 12 Christchurch “Local Heroes”. From the 1950s, Elsie was a leading figure in the peace and anti-nuclear movements. And while Jack worked at the Belfast freezing works, Elsie worked at home, being a not so traditional house wife and mother, while writing children’s stories for the School Journal and a series of historical novels for children. The first being the much loved classic The Runaway Settlers (1965), based on the true story of a single mother who flees domestic violence in Australia and settles in Lyttleton Harbour. As many readers will know, among Elsie’s four children are Green Party MP Keith Locke (who, in the 1970s was a leader of the Trotskyist Socialist Action League) and Maire Leadbeater who is also a prominent peace activist, a former Auckland City Councillor, and campaigner for human rights in East Timor and Indonesia. Until their deaths Elsie and Jack (who died in 1996) lived at their small grapevine covered cottage it what is known as the Avon Loop on the banks of the Avon river in the eastern side of inner city Christchurch. From 1972 they were founding members of a remarkable community organisation called the Avon Loop Protection / Planning Association. Following Elsie’s death on April 8 2001, Maureen Birchfield, who’d recently published a biography of her mother, Elsie’s friend and comrade Connie Birchfield, was asked by the Locke family to write their mother’s story. The result is a big book (560 large pages) for a big life. Although I’m only half way through I can already recommend it as a interesting and entertaining read. *The CPNZ was the forerunner of Socialist Worker, publishers of UNITYblog.

Above: Jack and Elsei Locke on the front step of their home in the 1980s. This and the Working Woman cover were scanned from the book.

Biography of Elsie Locke out now

From Canterbury University Press Biography of influential writer and activist published 26 August 2009 
 The life story of a woman who helped shape New Zealand history but went largely unrecognised during her lifetime has been published by Canterbury University Press. Looking for Answers: A life of Elsie Locke is a compelling biography of a writer and activist who campaigned for birth control, women’s rights, nuclear disarmament, social justice and the environment long before such causes were popular. She wrote almost 40 books, including historical novels for children and social histories of New Zealand, plus numerous articles and School Journal stories. She won many awards for her writing over the years and in 1987 the University of Canterbury awarded Locke an Honorary Doctorate of Literature for her work in children’s literature and history. Biographer Maureen Birchfield said she was invited to write the book by the Locke family because of the family connection through her parents, Connie and Albert Birchfield, who were friends and fellow members of the Communist Party from the 1930s to mid-1950s. She said she accepted because of her “conviction that this was a very important life story that needed to be written”. “I thought Elsie was a pretty impressive person before I began discovering more about her through my research. Then the more I discovered the more admiring of her I became.” 

Ms Birchfield said had Locke been alive to see the biography, she probably would have been embarrassed by it, being a private and modest person. It reveals the central role Locke played in the organisations she was involved in.
 
“She always downplayed her involvement and gave centre stage to other people rather than herself. She liked to be called ‘ordinary’ but she really was extraordinary and a pioneer in many ways.” Ms Birchfield said because Locke was so multi-dimensional in her interests her story would appeal to a wide audience. She said readers of Looking for Answers would learn about a “low profile but very important New Zealander and through her about the social and political scene in New Zealand from the 1930s Depression to the 21st century”. “It is also an inspiring story of how an ‘ordinary’ working class woman can achieve so much at grass-roots level.” Ms Birchfield spent five years researching and writing the book incorporating much of Locke’s unfinished memoir. She also drew on primary sources such as minutes of Communist Party meetings, personal letters, archives of organisations and movements, articles in long-forgotten journals, and memories and insights from Locke’s family and friends. She has also incorporated declassified information, released by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service “at the eleventh hour”. Looking for Answers: A Life of Elsie Locke will be launched on 18 September at a function hosted by Elsie’s son, Green Party MP Keith Locke, at the Grand Hall at Parliament. Associate Professor of History, Charlotte Macdonald from Victoria University of Wellington, a specialist in New Zealand and women’s history, will launch the book. The book will also be launched in Christchurch on 7 October at the Great Hall of the Arts Centre by Dr Len Richardson and in Auckland on 30 October at the Women’s Bookshop in Ponsonby. The book has been published with the support of Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand History Research Trust Fund of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. • Looking for Answers: A Life of Elsie Locke, by Maureen Birchfield, published by Canterbury University Press, September 2009, RRP NZ$69.95, Cased & jacketed, 560pp, 1.75kg, 200 x 210mm, full colour, ISBN 978-1-877257-80-3. 
 
For further information please contact:
 Maria De Cort 
Publicist 
Canterbury University Press 
 c/-Communications & Development
 University of Canterbury
 Private Bag 4800 
Christchurch
 Tel: +64 3 364 2072 
Fax: +64 3 364 2679 
 maria.decort@canterbury.ac.nz