Vale Hannah Middleton 25/10/1942 – 12/06/2025
With Hannah’s death in June this year, Australia, indeed the world, has lost an exceptional and inspirational peace and justice activist. However, be assured she leaves a legacy as tenacious as she was in life.
The backbone of her activism was an unstinting commitment to communism. She joined the Communist Party of Great Britain at age twenty and, within a year of settling in Oz (1974), she was a member of the then Socialist Party of Australia. In recent years, she served periods as president and general secretary of the CPA.
A standout illustration of her activism is her contribution to First Nations’ struggle for justice. Having lived with the Gurindji people of Dagu Ragu, NT, for eight months and completing her thesis 'The Land Rights and Civil Rights Campaign of the Gurindji at Wattie Creek’, her respect for First Nations’ culture and understanding of colonial injustices was acute. With every campaign she initiated, she highlighted its relevance to First Nations.
From the 1980s through to the 2020s Hannah, with her partner Denis Doherty, concentrated their peace activism through the Australian Anti-Bases Coalition (AABC). From her Sydney base, Hannah published articles, lobbied hard and organised street actions in Sydney and protests at US bases. She was an impressive networker, reaching out across Australia and abroad, from Guam, Japan, Sth Korea to NZ, UK, US.
Hannah brought prodigious intelligence and exactingness to peace work which would have been daunting had it not been spiced with an irresistible warmth. She was one of the peace movements wonder women! Vale Hannah!
- Julie Marlow, WAWAN