The morality Tom Uren learned on the Burma railway stayed with him all his life. He believed in the collective spirit. That did not make him weak.

Tom Uren would have been 105 on 28 May. Nowadays, Tom Uren’s politics would be dismissed as ‘woke’. To be woke is to be weakly sentimental, to be hopelessly idealistic that is at odds with reality. Only those who are hard and mean are ‘real’. We hear this daily, usually from people in the media representing the mega-wealthy.

I think Tom Uren knew a lot about what is real and what is not. In 1941, at the age of 20, he fought for the Australian heavyweight title. That year, he also joined the Army and, as a committed Christian, knelt beside his bed in the barracks each night and said his prayers.

Born in working-class Balmain, Tom never forgot seeing his mother, to whom he was devoted, humiliated by a committee dispensing charity during the 1930s’ Depression. But his political crucible was the Burma railway where prisoners of different nations, including Australia, were worked as slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army. More than 100,000 perished.

Tom’s commanding officer was Weary Dunlop. In terms of post-war politics, Tom and Weary were generally on opposite sides, but, in Thailand with death and disease overwhelming them, Tom recognised Weary as a true leader. The stories about Weary Dunlop and what he did on behalf of his men are legend. Young Tom Uren saw them happen like miracles before his eyes.

The morality Tom experienced in the prison camp shaped his life. He expressed it thus: “The big man takes the heavy end of the log”. Tom was the big man. He told me he stood between a prisoner and a guard who was bashing him, taking the blows himself, adding with a twinkle in his eye, “Of course, being an old boxer, I knew........

© Pearls and Irritations