Life
Brian Fitzpatrick was born in Warrnambool, Victoria on 17 November 1905, the third son and seventh child (of eight) of Peter Fitzpatrick, a state school teacher and his wife Mary née Callister. He was educated at state schools in the country and in Melbourne, matriculating with first-class honours in French and winning a scholarship to the University of Melbourne. He graduated Bachelor of Arts (with honours) in 1925 and Master of Arts in 1934. For ten years, from 1925, he worked as a journalist in London, Sydney and Melbourne.
In 1937 Fitzpatrick won the University of Melbourne’s Harbison Higinbotham Scholarship with his manuscript of British imperialism and Australia 1783-1833; it was published by George Allen and Unwin in 1939. A sequel was The British Empire in Australia : an economic history, 1834-1939 (1941). Other published works included A short history of the Australia labor movement (1940), The rich get richer (1944), The Australian Commonwealth: a picture of the community 1901-1955 (1956), The highest bidder; a citizen’s guide to problems of foreign investment in Australia (1965) with E.L. Wheelwright and Readings in Australian history (1965) with B.J. Munday.
Fitzpatrick edited The Australian democrat, an independent non-party monthly news- review (1947-1950), The Australian news-review (1951-1953), and from 1958 until his death in 1965, he published Brian Fitzpatrick’s Labor newsletter: what is going on in Australian politics.
During the 1940s Fitzpatrick wrote a weekly column ‘ Where do we go from here’ in Smith‘s weekly. He broadcast regularly from 3XY during the late 1940s and early 1950s and for ten years before 1965 wrote a monthly article for The Rationalist. His economic analyses were presented to the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration by the Australian Council of Trade Unions as part of its case in the Basic Wage Enquiry in 1940, and also to the Standard Hours Enquiry in 1949.
In 1940 Fitzpatrick was appointed a Research Fellow in the Department of History, University of Melbourne, but in September 1942 he was given leave to join the Commonwealth Rationing Commission; subsequently in June 1943 he worked for the Department of War Organisation of Industry. He resumed his Fellowship at the University in 1944 and remained there until 1947.
Fitzpatrick was a foundation member of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties in 1935. From 1939 until his death he was its General Secretary, devoting much of his lifetime to its affairs.
In 1932 he married Kathleen Pitt who was later Associate Professor History, University of Melbourne. The marriage was dissolved. In 1940 Fitzpatrick married Dorothy Davies, an executive member of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, and later a Senior Teaching Fellow at Monash University. They had two children, Sheila and David.
Brian Fitzpatrick died in Sydney on 3 September 1965.
References:
BENNETT, D M. ‘Introduction’. In Fitzpatrick, B. A future or no future – foreign policy and the A.L.P. Melbourne, Victorian Fabian Society, 1966.
CRAWFORD, Raymond M. ‘Brian Fitzpatrick 1905-1965’, Historical studies, v. 12 no. 46, April 1966 : 327-9
CROWLEY, Frank. ‘Brian Fitzpatrick: a tribute’. Labour History, no.10, 1966: 3-4
GOLLAN, Robin. ‘Brian Fitzpatrick’. Overland, no. 33, December 1965: 9
HANCOCK, Sir Keith. ‘Brian Fitzpatrick: a tribute’ Meanjin Quarterly, v.24 no. 103, 1965: 393-4
TURNER, Ian. ‘Introduction’. In Fitzpatrick, B. Short history of the Australian labor movement. Melbourne, Macmillan, 1968. (re-issue of 1944 ed.)
[Source: National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms4965]