Margaret Holmes, 1909-2009
MARGARET HOLMES was a Christian pacifist who, in 1959, founded the NSW branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. With it she tackled Aboriginal rights, apartheid, chemical and biological warfare, prison reform, US bases and the nuclear arms race - but the Vietnam War was her biggest challenge.
When prime minister Robert Menzies addressed a public meeting at Hornsby following the reintroduction of compulsory military service, Holmes, knowing the value of dramatising issues, led a group of league members dressed in black veils as they slowly and silently walked out of the room handing out "We mourn for peace" leaflets. Later she led a delegation to lobby Malcolm Fraser, then minister for the army, asking him not to send conscripts to Vietnam.
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom worked with Save Our Sons to support draft resistors, demonstrated in Canberra and helped organise protests when the first conscripts set sail to Vietnam in 1966. Holmes was also instrumental in producing the league's booklet about chemical and biological weapons, New Perversions of Science (CBW), which was sold in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and America.
Margaret Joan Read, who has died aged 100, was born in Sydney on January 24, 1909, the first of five children of Dr William Read and his wife, formerly Irene Phillips. In 1915, Dr Read joined the AIF as part of the 2nd Australian General Hospital and Mrs Read followed him to England with Margaret and two younger children. On the trip, Margaret had her first experience of war, having to go to bed fully clothed in case of a U-boat attack.
In England, Mrs Read wangled a passage to Cairo, where Dr Read was stationed. Margaret then accompanied her mother delivering ''comforts'' to the wounded soldiers from Gallipoli in hospital there.
Margaret was an ultra-patriotic mirror of her parents' pro-Empire views when her studies at Sydney University began in 1927, but her world view was challenged and radicalised at the university. She was a member of the university's first Student Representative Council and met Thomas Arthur Glennie (known as Tag) Holmes through the Student Christian Movement. The movement helped to further shape her beliefs, as did voluntary work for the University Settlement in Chippendale. She switched from arts to medicine and graduated in 1933 with a bachelor of science degree.
Margaret and Tag were married in 1933 then spent a year in England, where he did post-graduate study. On their return, Tag went into practice in Mosman alongside his father and later opened his own practice.
When the Holmeses moved into their newly built house, Coolabah, the surgery was part of the building. For the next 44 years, Coolabah welcomed a never-ending stream of visitors, plus live-in help and a growing family - six children by the end of World War II. Holmes balanced domestic demands with a continuing interest in world affairs and Christian Socialism.
In 1939 the Holmeses founded a "50-50 Club" to help refugees and locals get to know each other. Holmes was active in many organisations, including the Mothers' Union, Boy Scouts and the nearby nursery school - the first preschool in Australia. She also joined the Left Book Club and attended events such as the 1937 Australian Congress of Peace and Friendship with Soviet Russia - and thus became a "person of interest" to NSW Special Branch and later ASIO.
There was a resurgence of peace activities at the end of World War II, many of which Holmes supported. She and Tag also joined the New Education Fellowship and took up oil painting. Then, when the younger children were in secondary school, Holmes began her major years of activism.
In 1959, as the Cold War heightened fears of another war, she travelled the world for six months and attended the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom congress in Stockholm. At the invitation of two Russian delegates she visited the Soviet Union on her way home - smuggling bibles to a Baptist minister in Moscow - and later visited India.
Inspired by the women she had met on her travels, on her return Holmes founded the NSW branch of the league. In 1967, the Holmes went abroad again, to South Africa, where they visited the political activist Helen Joseph (then under house arrest), and the US, where they attended anti-war meetings and she spoke on radio explaining that many Australians did not believe they should be in Vietnam.
At 80, Holmes helped to organise the 24th Triennial International Congress of the the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in Sydney. She was still being consulted and addressing audiences about peace well into her nineties.
Always one to see the potential of emerging movements, she was an early protagonist for the environment, Aboriginal co-operatives, the Australian Democrats, ethical investment and the Grameen Bank, as well as giving support to local community concerns from the (Middle) Headland Preservation Group to the Barn at Mosman Bay. She remained a faithful member of St Luke's Anglican Church, Mosman.
Margaret Holmes was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2001. A biography, Margaret Holmes: The Life and Times of an Australian Peace Campaigner, was published in 2006.
Margaret Holmes is survived by her six children, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Tag Holmes died in 1984.
Michelle Cavanagh
as posted here
She was obviously a very sincere and worthy person. Also shows that governments can be fair - she still received an Order of Australia even though she attracted NSW Special Branch and ASIO interest for a time.
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