Doreen Borrow, a communist, trade unionist and peace activist who gave her life to the struggle for peace and socialism, died on July 25, aged 98. She is survived by her children David, Susan, Stephen and Kathryn.

Doreen was born in 1926 and grew up in the small mining town of Captains Flat in the Monaro district of New South Wales. The town developed during a short-lived mining boom in the late 19th century. Despite promises of a revival in the late 1920s, which prompted Doreen’s father to move his family to the town and sink what little money they had into a billiard hall, it was hit hard by the Great Depression.

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Doreen grew up in poverty, but recalled that she had never gone hungry and enjoyed a happy childhood sustained by her mother’s optimism and her father’s poetry and storytelling, told by the fire during the town’s cold winters.

Like many working-class women of her generation, Doreen received a very limited education and was soon working, married and then having her first child.

The Captains Flat miners were militant unionists. There was a significant strike in 1948–49 and a lockout in 1954–55 lasting seven months apiece. Nevertheless, the unions, Doreen recalled, were concerned exclusively with the affairs of men.

On November 21, 1957, Doreen’s husband, David Borrow, was killed in a mining accident at the age of 32. With four children and few prospects in a small rural town, Doreen took what little compensation she received for her husband’s death and took off for Wollongong with her four children, new partner and dog.

Doreen arrived in Wollongong in 1960 and found........

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