Len Fox

Leonard Phillips Fox (28 August 1905 – 3 January 2004) was an Australian writer, journalist, social activist, and painter.

Background and early years

Fox was born in Melbourne. His uncle was the painter Emanuel Phillips Fox, who died when Len Fox was aged 10. In 1984 Fox donated a painting ''Sunlight Effect'' painted by his uncle (''ca''. 1889) to the National Gallery of Australia, in memory of his mother.

Fox studied science at the University of Melbourne, concurrently earning a Diploma of Education. He taught at Scotch College from 1928 to 1932, then spent four years in Europe where he witnessed the rise of Fascism. On returning to Melbourne he joined the Movement Against War and Fascism and the Communist Party of Australia. He was to remain a member until 1970, long after most 'comrades' had quit as a reaction to the Stalinist purges.

Career

His career as a journalist began in 1936 with a pamphlet entitled ''Spain!''.

He moved to Sydney in 1940, and immediately started writing for left-wing weeklies, starting with '' The Voice of State Labor''. He took up painting, producing an array of left-wing propagandist posters, and covers for his many booklets, such as ''Australia's Guilty Men'', a 32-page diatribe against ''(inter alia)'' Prime Minister Robert Menzies for his dealings with Axis countries in the early days of WWII When the State Labor Party collapsed in 1944, he took up with The ''Tribune'' where he worked from 1946 to 1955, and in which he first wrote defending refugees and Jews against prejudice

In 1955 he married Mona Brand, a fellow Communist and idealist, who was to become a respected playwright. At the instigation of Wilfred Burchett, they spent 1955–56 in Hanoi, he working as a print journalist, she for Radio Hanoi.

In 1956, Fox was a co-founder of the Indigenous rights organisation the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, along with Pearl Gibbs, Charles Leon, Ray Peckham, Bert Groves, Grace Bardsley, Faith Bandler, and Jack Horner.

Fox and Brand's home for the next 50 years was a modest terrace house in Little Surrey Street, near Kings Cross, in an era when the area was not fashionable. They were together when he died, and his coffin was draped with the Eureka Flag, long a subject of his research and of three of his books, authenticating a flag in the Ballarat Art Gallery as the flag that flew over the stockade of the Eureka rebels in 1854.

Legacy

Fox's widow Mona initiated the Len Fox Painting Award in his memory. From 2011 and bi-annually the Castlemaine Art Museum invites entrants from amongst living Australian artists who are to represent in painting their reactions to the art and life of Emanuel Phillips Fox whose first biography was written by Len Fox in 1985. One winner is awarded $50,000 and their painting acquired for the collection of the Art Museum. It is amongst the richest painting prizes in Australia. The 2021 winner was First Nations artist Betty Kuntiwa Pumani.

Selected publications

(not included are the many dozens of pamphlets and booklets published for various left-wing organizations)
*''The Strange Story of the Eureka Flag'' self-published 1963
*''Depression Down Under'' (ed.) self-published 1977
*''Old Sydney Windmills'' Self-published 1978
*''The Aboriginals'' pub. Thomas Nelson (Australia) 1978
*''Marani in Australia'' with Faith Bandler, pub. Rigby, Adelaide 1980
*''Broad Left, Narrow Left'' self-published 1982
*''The Time was Ripe: A History of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, 1956–69'' with Faith Bandler Alternative Publishing Cooperative 1983
*''E Phillips Fox and His Family'' self-published 1985
*''Depression Down Under'' (ed.) 2nd edition, Hale and Iremonger, 1989
*''Dream at a Graveside: The History of the Fellowship of Australian Writers 1928 - 1988'' (ed. 1989)
*''East Sydney Sketches'' Self-published 1991
*''When I Was Ten: Memories of childhood 1905 - 1985'' (ed. with Hilarie Lindsay 1993) Fellowship of Australian Writers
*''Australians on the Left'' self-published 1996
*''Glimpses of a Century'' self-published 2000

Paintings

*''On guard at Eureka, 1854'' was accepted for exhibition for the 1955 Sulman Prize

See also

* Emanuel Phillips Fox
* Mona Brand

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, Len
2004 deaths
1905 births
20th-century Australian non-fiction writers
Artists from Melbourne
Writers from Melbourne
20th-century Australian painters
Communist Party of Australia members