Kevin Cook

Kevin Cook (1939-2015) was a Wandandian Man, born in 1939 and grew up in Wollongong. After work in the steel mills, he headed to Sydney to work on the new high-rise city buildings. Cookie became a dogman, the dangerous job riding the loads up the towers. This was a dramatic time in the industry: the Builders Labourers' Federation had shifted to leadership by workers from the job sites, making uncompromising demands for safety and developing green bans to protect residents and the environment.

Cook brought his knowledge of Aboriginal and migrant communities together with these new BLF methods when he became the organiser for Aboriginal BLs on the Redfern Housing Company, and worked with the National Black Theatre in Redfern, before becoming involved in Tranby​ Aboriginal Adult Education Cooperative College in 1975. He believed cooperatives were useful for Aboriginal communities, but went further.

Cook had seen for himself in Wollongong how the education system was failing Aboriginal kids. With Tranby​ support, he spent six months at Coady Cooperative Institute in Canada, meeting activists from Africa and around the world, building international networks. He returned to become General Secretary of Tranby​ and built it into a centre for adult learning and cultural revival. Young Aboriginal men and women travelled from across the country to undertake courses in basic literacy, community studies, business training and preparation for tertiary education.

Cook used his many contacts and his enthusiasm to draw in young activists. One was Brian Doolan, a teacher working in the Wilcannia community who became Tranby's​ first Director of Studies. There were Indigenous educators like Terry Widders​ and Lynette Riley, unionists and academics. At first it was mostly unpaid until, after lots of submission writing, support flowed from the new Federal Aboriginal Education structures.

Cook was taking an active role in NSW political life, becoming involved in the Labor Party's Aboriginal Affairs Policy Committee, with Bob Bellear​, Rod Pickette​ and Meridith Burgmann​. At the same time, Kevin was building his Trade Union networks, setting up the Trade Union Committee on Aboriginal Rights (TUCAR) at Tranby​ to strengthen communication between unions and Indigenous organisations.

But Cook's priority was education in the community. Despite struggling with funding, Tranby​ started courses in communities – with many in the bush. The funding mainstays were unions like the MUA, individual donations and the backing of the Australian Council of Churches. Linked with the courses running at the college and those in communities, he built links with campaigners on issues such as Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Stolen Generations.

At the same time, Kevin developed Tranby​ as a base for bush people involved in the struggle for Land Rights in NSW. From 1979 to 1983, Kevin was chair of the first NSW Aboriginal Land Council, a community organisation which led campaigning for land rights. He travelled from one end of the state to another, getting to know and listen to communities and to bring their concerns to centre stage. The final NSW Bill in 1983 was a frustrating mix which recognised some rights but took away others. After much consultation, Cook decided to work with the new Land Rights Act as Chairperson of the Interim Land Council, set up to organise the policy's structures. He insisted that community voices should be heard, and encouraged many different strategies to achieve land rights – some within the Act like land claims and others outside it altogether, such as heritage protection.

Through this time, Tranby​ offered support for communities struggling with the new policy's demands by running new courses in rural areas to build skills in accounting, legal and management skills. National Land Rights laws were promised in the early 1980s and a unified national Aboriginal response was needed.

Pat Dodson has said of Kevin that he "opened the pathways" by which leaders from all states could feel safe and confident in their new relationships with those from other states. Cook built those national relationships which brought the Federation of Land Councils into being. This network built the foundation for the push into the international arena. In the mid 1980s, Cook and Aboriginal unionists used their ACTU standing to take the arguments for Indigenous rights into the International Labour Organisation, then revising Convention 107 on Indigenous people. As unionists, they demanded the ILO listen to Indigenous people in any vote on Indigenous labour conditions. Their arguments won: the ILO meetings were henceforth opened to hear Indigenous people speak on Convention 107.

His view was that these were issues of social justice.

"We needed to take it out of this narrow focus of 'these are issues for Aboriginal people and Aboriginal people need to be the ones that fight it'. These issues do restrict and oppress indigenous peoples. But we needed to involve a much larger portion of the community to achieve what needed to be achieved, because it was a thing for all of us. It wasn't just a thing for black fellas. It was for all Australians."

In the later 1980s, despite his worsening emphysema, Cook continued to nurture the innovative role of Tranby​ in education, national and international politics. As a national hub, Kevin enabled Tranby​ to be the base for the long march Bicentenary Celebrations in 1988. Over this same time, his support for international movements was extensive, building on the links he had made at Coady Institute, Tranby​ had visits from Hilda Lini​ and Barak Sope​ from Vanuatu; Herbert Chitepo​, the Zimbabwean leader; Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela's ANC comrade; and from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Left unionist

Kevin Cook was one of the leaders of the NSW BLF, along with Joe Owens, Jack Mundey and Bobby Pringle, at a time when it was at the cutting edge of innovation in trade union organising and led many of the great social struggles of the 1970s and 80s that have shaped Australian society and the left since that time - the urban environmental movement, trade union democracy and workers control, support for the culture of the working class, the peace movement, the anti-uranium mining movement, woman in non-traditional work and a host of other progressive and radical initiatives.

Kevin Cook had a long association with the MUA and its leaders in the WWF and the SUA, particularly through the Reverend Alf Clint going back to Elliot V. Elliot, Pat Geraghty and Jim Healy. A number of MUA leaders have served as Directors on the Tranby College Board, including Taffy Sweetenson, Laurie Steen, Paddy Crumlin and Robert Coombes.

Cookie had a close personal relationship with many MUA officials, officers and members, and he loved the MUA, just as we loved him.

Cookies life story and his relationship with all the people, movements and causes he was associated with is contained in the book that Cookie and Heather Goodall wrote called “Making Change Happen ”, published in 2013. The book contains interviews with MUA leaders and its production and launch was supported by the union. The book is essentially a manual for organising and networking for which there was no better participant and advocate than Cookie.

It is not possible to speak about Cookie without mention of his Soul Mate and life's partner, Judy Chester and their Children, they complemented each other in every way, Judy, like Cookie, was a tireless worker around issues of Social Justice. Cookie was a lifelong member and friend of the Unions, his basic tenant was working class from which he never strayed, he lived his life in accordance with this tenancy, he was always accessible to everyone, possibly to a fault from an outsiders view, but at the end of each day he gave clarity to the chaos.

Paddy Crumlin from the Maritime Union of Australia, when notified of Cookie's passing responded, 'Oh no! Beautiful man and lifelong Comrade', Kevin Tory, Cookies forever Comrade, called up to make sure we had received the sad news said, 'I have to hang up now I am shattered'. And so it was with Dr. Paul Torzillo, Geoff Clark, Jack AhKit, Pat O'Shane, Mike O'Shane and from all of those who knew him and with whom we have spoken, diverse responses, every one endorsing the character of and love for our Comrade, Kevin Cook.

From his small office in Tranby, Cookie worked with the organizing committee under the National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations to organize the 1988 march, the biggest gathering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander People at any time in Australian history, then marching from Redfern Park to Hyde Park we were met by thousands of supporters at Belmore Park, Trade Unionists, Political Activists, Migrant Groups, Conservationists and all manner of supporters who joined in and finished off in Hyde park, a day we will remember for the rest of our lives.

Cookie organized representation from us to attend 10 years of the United Nations Working Group in Geneva developing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He organized our participation at the World Council of Indigenous Peoples while ever it remained relevant. Our inclusion in the ACTU delegation in attendance at the International Labor Organisations two-year revision process of Convention 107. Ensured Indigenous People welcomed Nelson Mandela to Australia, linked ourselves into the Kanaky struggle, developed relationships across the Pacific Rim, welcomed and hosted South African Trade Union Delegations before the barriers of 'apartheid' were pulled down.

Sent delegations from the World Council of Churches to visit some of the most impoverished communities in Australia to bring attention to the plight of Aboriginal people in Australia back in the -70s, there is a whole lot more that Cookie done which I am sure will be mentioned by other commentators in the coming days. Tranby was the cross roads for all the political activists traveling to Canberra or Sydney for street marches, demonstrations, overseas delegations or all manner of things during the -70s, -80s and -90s.

Visiting Tranby you would never know who you were likely to meet there, Bruce McGinness, Gary Foley, Helen Corbett, Jacki Katona, Chris Kristofferson, Patrick Dodson, John AhKit, Geoff Clarke, David Ross, Josie Crawshaw, Mick Miller, Clarrie Grogan, Michael Mansell, Rob Riley, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Joe McGinniss, Warren Mundine, the list just goes on and on, everyone from everywhere would drop into Tranby to see Cookie, this was the meeting place, this was where the struggle was given focus, where the peripheral material was stripped away and the focus was on the nuts and bolts, this was the measure of the man, small in statue a giant in the struggle.

Bush Camp

Two splits in the Communist Party of Australia, in 1963 and again in 1971, saw it become a leaner organisation with a more accommodating attitude to other groups among the new left. Minto Bush Camp was important to this opening of the party, hosting seminars on gay rights, feminism, radical lesbian separatism, the anti-war movement and the campaign for Aboriginal autonomy. Indeed, members of the Communist Party of Australia were already seasoned campaigners for Aboriginal equality. Key events like the planning of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy took place, in part, at Minto. Kevin Cook was frequently at Minto, as a communist and Builders Labourers Federation member, and more and more often as an Aboriginal activist. As the 1970s eased into place the camp hosted barbeques and wine bottlings, usually as an incentive for the inevitable working bees that had built the place and kept it running.

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.

Kevin Cook was among the list of sponsors.