Carmel Shute

Carmel Shute

Carmel Shute is a former historian and Communist Party of Australia member.

In the '80s she worked for the ABC Staff Association in Melbourne.

Honoring Zangalis

The celebration of the life of George Zangalis, the well-loved Communist Party of Australia activist, unionist and multiculturalist, that was planned before his death on 25 March 2021, will still take place as scheduled on the afternoon of Sunday, 25 April at Alphington Grammar’s Multi-purpose Andrianakos Centre in Alphington.

Long-time friend Theo Markos, who will also talk at the event said: “George, a true visionary, was one of the major proponents and advocates of multiculturalism in Australia, as well as a fierce campaigner for social justice and workers’ rights.

The chairperson of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria (ECCV), Eddie Micaleff will be the first of the speakers recalling his long association with Mr Zangalis through their long friendship and work on the ECCV, and the Combined Pensioners Association. Mr Micaleff, a former trade union official and Victorian MP was a regular guest on Mr Zangalis’ radio programme on 3ZZZ-FM.

Other speakers will include Luba Grigoravich, the Victorian state secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) of which Mr Zangalis was a long-serving and active member. Former Labor Minister Jenny Mikakos, current federal MP Maria Vamvakinou and Lily D'Ambrosio the Victorian Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and Minister for Solar Homes will also be among those who will speak at the event.

Donations will be welcome to help the family to buy the remaining 22 files on Mr Zangalis that are held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

“The family have four but it’s $250 for each remaining folder. And once accessed all these files go on Australian Archives website where anyone can read them. They become an important historical research tool,” said Carmel Shute, a long-term family friend who will introduce the proceedings on Sunday.

Laurie Aarons memorial

The April 3 2005 celebration of the life of Laurie Aarons was attended by over 350 people, from all over NSW and from many parts of Australia, including ministers and former ministers, lawyers and judges.

The formal speeches by historian Stuart MacIntyre, Dr Meredith Burgmann MLC, union leader Rob Durbridge, and retired CPA leader Joe Palmada combined tales of Laurie's life with assessments of many different aspects of his mass movement and inner-party work.

The speeches from the floor began with Jose Ramos Horta, Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, who was representing Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and the entire government.

This was a great tribute to Laurie and the CPA for their rapid support for the independence struggle way back in June 1974. Steve Quinn, on behalf of his family in Wollongong, recalled the many links between their families since the 1940s, and some great tales of street meetings and clandestine work.

Other notable speeches came from Tom Uren, Carmel Shute, Rudi Talmacs, Daria Healy-Aarons and Bronwyn Healy-Aarons, David McKnight, Elliott Johnston, Bert Heinemann, Romaine Rutnam, Richard Walsham and Noel Olive.

Laurie would have enjoyed Bob Gould's backhanded compliment. There was a beautiful song written and performed in Tagalog by a Filipino comrade, Ejay.

"The Party" launch

SEARCH Foundation March 14 2022.

The Melbourne and Brisbane launches of The Party by Stuart MacIntyre are on this week!

Melbs: Weds 16/3 at VTHC at 5:30pm

Bris: Sat 19/3 at 1:30pm at the TLC Bldg.

With Frank Bongiorno, Joy Damousi, Carmel Shute, Julius Roe and Julie Kimber in Melbourne.

And Jon Piccini, Patricia Hovey, Beth Gordon and Bob Anderson OAM in in Brisbane.

"Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists"

"Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists", was edited by Bob Boughton, Danny Blackman, Mike Donaldson, Carmel Shute, and Bev Symons (SEARCH Foundation, 2020).

SEARCH Bios Project Collective

From the SEARCH Foundation:

A small group of SEARCH members are setting out to answer these questions, as part of the activities and events being held to mark the CPAs centenary. We intend to delve into the records and produce a series of short biographical sketches of CPA members who might otherwise be forgotten. These sketches are intended to invite critical reflection and comment on the CPAs history, its high points and its low points, its great achievements and its abject failures, and all the shades in between.

Our aims are simple. To honour the memories of past comrades and the contributions they have made to the struggle for socialism; to inspire current and future generations of socialists by their example; and to use this work to reflect critically on the history of the CPA, and draw out lessons from the past which are relevant to today’s struggles.

Bios project collective: Bob Boughton, Danny Blackman, Louise Connor, Bob Makinson, Marg Penson, Scott Poynting, Carmel Shute, Bev Symons.

Carmel Shute has been a SEARCH Foundation member since the early 1990s.

SEARCH Foundation, 2009

SEARCH Foundation AGM, November 28. 2009.

Apologies: Caitlin Perry, Reg Wilding, John Bourne, John Varley, Gabrielle Kavanagh, Jack Tarlington, Richard Archer, Margaret Kirkby, Cat Kutay, Brian Manning, Jack Mundey, Judy Mundey, Meredith Burgmann, Pat Toms, Claire Moore, Leonie Short, Vera Nord, Doug Eaton, Bill Fleming, Connie Healy, John Hill, Norma Nord, Leonie Ebert, Jack Humphrys, Roger Keyes, Adrian Shackley, Rose Read, Louise Connor, Sophia Connor, Hannah Roe, Grahame McCulloch, Carmel Shute, Andrew Jones, Robert Jovanovski, George Koletsis, Joe Palmada, Max Bound, Claire Girroto, Audrey McDonald and Tom McDonald put in apologies to the SEARCH Foundation AGM, November 28, 2009.

SEARCH Foundation

Melbourne activists tendering apologies to the SEARCH Foundation 2006 AGM included Linda Gale, Carmel Shute, Deborah Valance, Jane Inglis.

NOW WE THE PEOPLE

In July 2001, endorsers of the SEARCH Foundation's NOW WE THE PEOPLE conference in Sydney included Carmel Shute.

CPA 90th birthday

According to Peter Love, members of the SEARCH Foundation, organised the 90th birthday party of the Communist Party of Australia at the AMWU's Melbourne offices on Sunday 7 November, 2010.

Organizers were Cavell Zangalis, Carmel Shute, Louise Connor, Rob Durbridge and Roger Wilson.

CPA 80th Anniversary

Alastair Davidson, Giovanni Sgro, Carmel Shute.

"Lessons for the 21st Century"

The 70 people who attended a seminar entitled "The Communist Party of Australia: Lessons for the 21st Century" on October 22 2000, agreed that an anti-capitalist movement can be built: the September 11-13 (S11) protests in Melbourne against the World Economic Forum were fresh in their minds.

The seminar was organised by the SEARCH Foundation, which has held the CPA's assets since the party's dissolution in 1991, and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH). None of the four speakers, and few in the audience, grasped the significance of the CPA's history for the confrontation with capitalism today.

Nearly all present were older than 40 and most had been members of, or worked with, the CPA. They expressed opposition to the need for a revolutionary party, an attitude which has contributed to the weakening of the anti-capitalist movement from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Former joint national secretary of the CPA Eric Aarons summed up these ideas. He counterposed a struggle for radical reforms to outright revolutionary change. The aim of radical reforms, Aarons said, was to alter the direction of events and the relations of power within the existing system.

Carmel Shute, a historian and CPA member from 1974 until its dissolution, said the CPA's Stalinism had killed support for socialism in Australia. "The Leninist party is also dead", she proclaimed.

According to Shute, the CPA never abandoned the "Leninist model", equating Leninism with Stalinism. The CPA considered itself a "vanguard" organisation, Shute claimed. This involved a top-down organisation of discipline, sacrifice and meetings.

Jack Mundey, former CPA president and leader of the militant NSW Builders Labourers Federation in the 1960s and early 1970s, said ecological socialism was possible and necessary and that the need for a political organisation to the left of the ALP was obvious. The Greens could be that organisation, he suggested, although it lacked a commitment to ecological Marxism as the means of integrating struggles.

75th anniversary of the CPA

75th anniversary of the Communist Party of Australia celebration in Melbourne, 21 October 1995.

Speaker John Halfpenny.

The Organizing Committee Rob Durbridge, Janna Thompson, David Ettershank, Richard Walsham, Peter Gibbons, Carmel Shute, Peter Weimar, Michael Evans, Sol Marks, Olga Silver, Louise Connor, Llewellyn Johns, Kate Kennedy, David Ettershank, Julius Roe, Rob Dunne.

Broadside Weekly board

Broadside News, number 3, June 17, 1992, page 15

An addition to the alternative media is due to appear this week with the first issue of a new paper, Broadside Weekly.

Described as "an independent, broadly based left and progressive weekly", Broadside will be formally launched in Sydney on June 5.

Proposals for the project were initiated in the second half of 1990. The new paper has a supporters' association headed by a board consisting of Brian Aarons, Anthony Albanese, Wendy Bacon, Peter Barrack, Meredith Burgmann, Wendy Caird, Patricia Caswell, Kerren Clark, Tony Cooke, Drew Hutton, Ron Knowles, Stuart MacIntyre, Tom McDonald, Peter Murphy, Carmel Shute, John Sutton, Lindsay Tanner, Jo Vallentine and Roger Woock.

Broadside Weekly was supported by the SEARCH Foundation.

Broadside Weekly sponsors

Sponsors of the the Broadside Weekly listed in issue number 3, June 17, 1992, page 15 included Carmel Shute.

Broad Left Weekly sponsors

160 people sponsored the Broad Left Weekly in a pamphlet published in the January 30 1991 Tribune - including Carmel Shute.

Launching conference

Tom McDonald, Barbara Pocock, Jack Mundey and Carmel Shute played leading roles.

"It's time to act"

"It's time to act" was a 1991 statement calling for the formation of the New Left Party.

Melbourne sponsors were : Marian Aveling, Susan Barclay, Lynda Blundell, Laurie Carmichael, Frank Cherry, Ruth Crow, Mick Doleman, Rob Durbridge, Kiri Evans, Ralph Gibson, Angela Sdrinas, Carmel Shute, Theo Sidiropolous, Mike Sutherland, Jil Toovey, Rob Watts. .

"STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS"

In April 1986 several hundred attendees of The Broad Left Conference in Melbourne signed an add in the National Times "STATEMENT REGARDING ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS".

Signatories included Carmel Shute.

The Broad Left Conference

The Communist Party of Australia, Association for Communist Unity and others organized The Broad Left Conference, which was held 1986 28th-31st March, at the NEW SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Broadway, Sydney.

Carmel Shute was among the list of sponsors.

Japanese communists