Ideology isn't everything, Saturday 29 June 10.30 - 11.30am

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Tom O'Callaghan is a reporter with the Bendigo Advertiser who grew up in Bendigo. In 2021 he wrote an engaging essay about the 1949 RSL opposition to the Trades Hall in Bendigo due to perceived communist infiltration. 'Bendigo had become "the spearhead of communism" and its trades hall needed to be purged, an RSL sub-branch president declared as hundreds of veterans prepared to march on the View Street building.The year was 1949 and returned servicemen were part of what today appears the unlikely vanguard of the fight against the Red Menace.' (Source: Bendigo Advertiser website)

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo has penned a funny, poignant and entertaining portrait of her father Sam Goldbloom who was a political and peace activist all his life and a member of the Communist Party of Australia. 'Sandra grew up in thrall to her father, a prominent antiwar activist, brilliant political organiser and covert member of the Communist Party. She adopted his beliefs from an early age, becoming a supporter of the Soviet Union and a peace campaigner. She travelled with him, meeting figures such as Indonesian president Sukarno, and greeted Paul Robeson and North Korean delegates with him at home. My Father’s Shadow is a portrait of life on the Left during a time of great social change. Lyrical, sharply observed and affecting, it is a candid exploration of the fraught dynamics between father and daughter – and, ultimately, the love that underlies them.' (source: Monash University Publishing website)