Marcia Langton
Professor Marcia Langton AO is an anthropologist and geographer, and since 2000 has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has produced a large body of knowledge in the areas of political and legal anthropology, Indigenous agreements and engagement with the minerals industry, and Indigenous culture and art. Her role in the Empowered Communities project under contract to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and as a member of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians are evidence of Professor Langton's academic reputation, policy commitment and impact, alongside her role as a prominent public intellectual.
Her 2012 Boyer lecture series titled The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom is one of her recent contributions to public debate, and added to her influence and reputation in government and private sector circles. In 1993 she was made a member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her work in anthropology and the advocacy of Aboriginal rights.
Professor Langton is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of Trinity College, Melbourne and an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Queensland. In 2016 Professor Langton was honoured as a University of Melbourne Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor. In further recognition as one of Australia’s most respected Indigenous Academics Professor Langton has in 2017 been appointed as the first Associate Provost at the University of Melbourne.
Broadside Weekly sponsors
Sponsors of the the Broadside Weekly listed in issue number 3, June 17, 1992, page 15 included Marcia Langton.
TUCAR
The Trade Union Committee on Aboriginal Rights (TUCAR) was formally set up in a 1977 meeting attended by Tranby staff Kevin Cook and Rev. Alf Clint, along with South Coast Elders Jacko Campbell and Gubboo Ted Thomas, Marcia Langton from the Black Defence Group and supportive unionists Rod Pickette, Sergio Zorino, Meredith Burgmann, Hannah Middleton, and others. Along with the Maritime unions and the Building Unions, the new organisation gained rapid support from the Missos (the Miscellaneous Workers Union) and the unions in Education, Banking and Health. These and other unions affiliated with TUCAR to back Aboriginal campaigns and to get better conditions for Aboriginal workers.
The TUCAR committee met regularly first in the NSW Trades Hall and then later at the NSW Teachers Federation building in Surry Hills. With funding from unions and from employment grants, TUCAR was able to employ a full-time coordinator, with Lee Silva and others before Kevin Tory took up this role in 1987. TUCAR was also able to employ several Aboriginal employees, a number of whom were Tranby staff or graduates like Margaret Friel and Veronica Collett.
1977 Redfern Land Rights Conference
Bob Bellear and Marcia Langton.
DSP origins
The Democratic Socialist Party started as the orthodox Trotskyist Socialist Workers League (SWL), founded in 1972 by members of the radical Socialist Youth Alliance] (previously, and also currently, called Resistance) which grew out of the student radicalisation surrounding Australian involvement in the Vietnam War.
Separate to this, the Labor Action Group formed in Brisbane. Led by John McCarthy and Sue McCarthy (who had recently returned after working with the International Marxist Group in England) and Di Zetlin and Larry Zetlin, it fused with the SWL at the SWL founding conference in January 1972. The SWL affiliated to the reunified Fourth International, under the influence of the American section, the Socialist Workers Party. It was also undoubtedly due to this influence that the SWL itself took the name Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
The Communist League in Australia was co-founded by Queensland doctor John McCarthy (1948–2008), who later played a major role in integrating the CL and the SWP. Author Peter Robb was the second main driving force, and helped to produce its newspaper, Militant. Activist and later academic Marcia Langton was the third member of the CL committee. McCarthy broke away from the SWP (then Socialist Workers League) to create CL, and then, along with Robb and Langton, rejoined the SWP four years later, in November 1976.
"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 Marcia Langton.
Contacts for the advertisement were Patrick Dodson and Marcia Langton.
Opening Session
Speakers at Easter 1986 The Broad Left Conference opening session were:
- Jennie George - President NSW Teachers federation. ACTU executive member.
- Brian Howe - MP
- Marcia Langton - coordinator Land Claims Central Land Council.
- Jim Falk - author and activist.