By Frank Noakes
"Sydney's City Court in 1938 was a dreary place through which passed an endless procession of drunks, prostitutes, perverts, drug addicts, petty criminals and car thieves. So what a change, what a dramatic change then, when a beautiful woman with long flowing hair, is put in the dock charged with having caused a public obstruction in George Street by climbing on to the top of a motor car and delivering a speech on the visit of [Count Felix] von Luckner [unofficial Nazi emissary and wealthy yachtsperson]. Her name was Diana Gould", wrote journalist Duncan Clarke in his 1962 pamphlet Meet the Press.
Diana Gould was one against the stream from an early age. Nearly expelled for wearing a Labour Party badge at "not that sort of school", Gould progressed to handing out radical literature at London University. Her parents had a hand in her political development, she insists; "they gave me books like An Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and the Collected Plays of Bernard Shaw".
From appearing in Murder in the Cathedral, she migrated to Australia to take a job as a speech training teacher.
In the 1970s, British migrants were often chastised for bringing industrial strife to Australia in the shape of the apparently ubiquitous "pommy shop steward". For Gould the wagging finger accused her of transporting poverty in the form of the 1930s Depression.
"I hadn't been here long when I began to see real poverty, I hadn't really seen it before. I explored a bit and would find people who didn't have enough to eat and nowhere to live. I joined up with the Workers Education Society at Sydney University; one of the lecturers there was Harry Gould. Well, that was it of course, I fell in love, and got involved up to my neck in activity. Diana and Harry found time and married.
Gould soon joined the Communist Party of Australia. "They looked me up and down and said, 'Oh my God, a bourgeois intellectual — let her go into the New Theatre League and keep her quiet there'", she recalls with a smile that is never far from her mouth.
"In those days it wasn't good to be from a bourgeois intellectual background, the CPA was very much a party of the working class."
In July 1936 the League put on a big production of Clifford Odets' anti-Nazi play Till the Day I Die, which was directed by Jerold Wells and Victor Arnold. It was banned by the government and so the police were always in the audience carting people off in the middle of the play. Exciting times.
Gould went on later to direct Australian playwright Catherine Duncan's The Sword Sung in early 1938 at the group's Pitt Street premises.
On Gould's initiative they began street theatre on the Domain, and on street corners. Their verse-speaking choir performed C. J. Denis and Henry Lawson's poems in the slums of Paddington, Surry Hills, Glebe and Redfern where people were very poor, having few personal possessions and not enough to eat.
"In the midst of it all were the evictions. Every day we'd have to go and defend a family and if you couldn't prevent them from being thrown out on the street then you had to find them somewhere to live."
Gould met CPA leader J.B. Miles and immediately fell in love with his compelling personality. Much to my husband's disgust I fell in love with Jean Devanney. Devanney was seen by some in the party as far too theatrical and had written that "dreadful" book, Sugar Heaven. Gould remembers that Devanney would draw big audiences wherever she would speak.
There were many strong women in the party at that time, many from the working class. But Gould confesses that "they were very suppressed" at that time. "Women's work" often consisted of sweeping offices and mending male comrades' shirts — that is until Miles took up the question. From then women were more involved and their contributions more highly valued.
At this time, Gould was frenetic with activity from leafleting outside factory gates, campaigning for heating in state schools and for fair rents, to riding a horse down Pitt Street draped in banners which called for a boycott of Japanese goods. Being arrested was a regular occurrence in those racy days; activists viewed it as no more than an occupational hazard.
Gould relates how she, as "the pregnant lady" was assisted by officials into the NSW parliamentary public gallery. Right in the middle of an impassioned speech by Premier Jack Lang she "gave birth" to a banner demanding a fair rent court; Lang, an estate agent, was not amused!
"We were quite sure we were changing the world. We hadn't the slightest doubt that ten years hence it would be a beautiful socialist world. That was the only way to be. You only got mass support when you went out and did things."
In 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out (1936-1939). For radicals in Australia this meant endless fundraising for the war and for the international brigaders going away to fight. This is one of the proudest, if largely untold, passages of Australia's history. Gould recollects one fellow in particular: "Ron Hurd, he was a terrific speaker. He was an international brigader who came back and told us the war was absolute hell and that he would die if he went back. He went back and he died. At that time it was all very real".
The Goulds bought a printing press and hid it away in preparation for the party going underground. Harry was arrested and jailed for three months for his membership of the CPA. Later still Harry became editor of Tribune the CPA's newspaper; this remains a source of great pride for Diana — "he was a quite brilliant man", she recalls with deep affection.
During World War II the CPA grew enormously, reaching a peak of some 23,000 members. It bought a large headquarters in Sydney. There were all sorts of broad committees set up: peace, anti-fascist and unemployed committees; the feminist clubs and the Housewives Association grew — all of which involved many more thousands of people. Diana stood as a Communist Party candidate in elections during this period.
Following the war things changed dramatically. "I got myself expelled from the Communist Party. I was expelled when people got frightened in the face of the Cold War. I was prominent and wouldn't shut up; I was involved in street meetings and the party said 'No, no!, it's far too dangerous, they'll declare the party illegal and you'll drag others down with you'. Finally my local branch said: 'Okay, lets get rid of her'."
Harry stayed a member but his questioning of what was happening in the Soviet Union in the name of socialism marginalised him within the party. "They really didn't want him any more," Diana comments.
After her expulsion Diana found a run-down property outside Sydney and started teaching children to ride horses in school holidays. This enterprise boomed. "We made lots and lots of money — nearly all of which was given to the Communist Party."
Gould raised a family and built up the property; she was the breadwinner. "And now I'm back in mass work again," she exclaims with obvious delight.
At 80, full of life and more sprightly than others decades her junior, Diana has moved from the property to the outskirts of Sydney, where we spoke. Active in Amnesty International (and the local Uniting church — "sounds crazy" she says, "but they're doing useful things"), she is also a supporter of the Wilderness Society. Although "mainly concerned with conservation issues" Gould is also a supporter of Aboriginal issues.
She writes letters to the local paper, confronts the local supermarket manager if he sells inappropriate produce and passionately defends the rights of young people.
Gould has no regrets about her political activity. On the contrary, "life would have been nothing without that. If you're not an artist, or a revolutionary, or an activist, [Diana is all three] what joy do you have in your life? We've reached rock bottom when possessions are all that there is".
Gould's warm humanity, which compliments the sunny day, simply radiates and this rides with me on the train back to Sydney. The thought remains: here is a compassionate and exciting life being truly lived.