Doris Blackburn

Doris Blackburn
Member of the Australian Parliament for Bourke
In office 28 September 1946 – 10 December 1949
Preceded by	Bill Bryson
Succeeded by	Seat abolished
Personal details
Born	Doris Amelia Hordern 18 September 1889(1889-09-18) Melbourne, Victoria
Died	12 December 1970(1970-12-12) (aged 81) Coburg, Victoria
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Independent Labor
Spouse(s)	Maurice Blackburn
Occupation	Campaigner

Doris Amelia Blackburn (18 September 1889 – 12 December 1970) was an Australian activist and Member of Parliament.

She was born Doris Amelia Hordern in Melbourne, Victoria, and became involved in women's rights and peace issues from a young age and served as the campaign secretary of Vida Goldstein, the first woman to stand for election to federal parliament in Australia. She married Maurice Blackburn, a fellow firebrand socialist, in 1914 and spent their honeymoon organising anti-war and anti-conscription campaigns.

While her husband served at different times as a Labor member of the Victorian and Federal parliaments, Blackburn continued to work on social issues, some of which brought her into conflict with the Labor Party (of which she too was a member) and following Maurice's expulsion from the party in 1937, Doris resigned from the ALP. Maurice continued to sit in parliament as an independent but lost his seat at the 1943 federal election to the official Labor candidate, and died the following year.

Upset at Labor's treatment of her husband, Doris stood as an Independent Labour candidate for Maurice's old seat of Bourke at the 1946 election, winning it and in doing so became only the second woman to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives. In parliament Blackburn, who shared the cross benches with fellow former Labor member Jack Lang,^[1] championed similar issues to her late husband, gaining nationwide notoriety in 1947 as the only MP to vote against the Atomic Energy Bill, and served as the national President of the Council for Civil Liberties. Following an electoral redistribution, her seat of Bourke was abolished, leaving Blackburn to run for the newly established seat of Wills. Against the Labor and Liberal parties she received 20 percent in 1949 and 17 percent in 1951 but came third each time, both convincingly won by Labor.

Blackburn continued to be active in social issues, serving as president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and co-founding, with Douglas Nicholls, the Aborigines Advancement League and the Federal Council for Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Blackburn died in Coburg, Victoria.

References

1. ^ Daly, F. (1977) From Curtin to Kerr, Sun Books, Melbourne.

External links

• Entry for D. Blackburn in the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition

Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Bill Bryson	Member for Bourke 1946–1949	Division abolished

Persondata
Name	Blackburn, Doris
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	18 September 1889
Place of birth	Melbourne, Victoria
Date of death	12 December 1970
Place of death	Coburg, Victoria