Mary Catherine (Molly) Hadfield (1922 – 2012)

At 15, Molly Hadfield (1922-2011) wanted to be a nurse. Growing up in a small town in country Victoria through the 1930s Depression, she had no choice but to be political. Surrounded by uncles and a grandfather who, as shearers, constantly talked unions and politics, she had a father who was an environmentalist before the word was coined. Her educational and employment experiences led her in that direction, too.

Having left school by necessity when she was 13 years old, her mother having died when Molly Hadfield was 10, she was told that nursing was not for her – ‘you can’t do the exams’ – but she would be welcome to work in the nurses’ dining room. She took the job. Under the rules lunches were set out on tables for nurses, but sisters and matrons’ meals were kept in the oven. Sisters and matrons sat down to piping hot fare. Cold and cooling meals waited until nurses finished their shifts. The unfairness of the hierarchical system struck Molly Hadfield then and stuck with her, as did the distinction made between kitchen and nursing staff which prevented her from meeting on the premises with cousins and friends who were nurses.

Moving to the city in 1940, she made stockings and men’s underwear, timed by time-and-motion men roaming up and down the factory aisles clicking their stopwatches. This too grounded her strong stand on industrial rights, carried on through decades in lobbying, marches and protests. Her activism began from her family’s centre, too. She fought for tenants rights when she and her family were threatened with eviction. It began collectively when she lobbied for a school bus, then public transport, kindergartens, community centres, footpaths and roads, for residents of a newly developing outer suburb of Melbourne, Chelsea, where she and her family moved upon leaving Collingwood.

From 1970, Molly Hadfield worked at the International Bookshop in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, living during the week in inner-city Fitzroy and returning to Chelsea at weekends. She combined her bookshop work with reading the books and going to Women’s Movement conferences: running the International Bookshop stall at women’s conferences was a major bonus. For her, fair wages for women incorporated the need for family friendly policies, working conditions cognisant of pregnancy and maternity needs of working women, attention paid to aged care and support for those caring for relatives with a disability. She was mindful that without these services, equal pay would not be won, for women would never be recognised as full participants in the world of paidwork and worthy of remuneration commensurate with their capabilities, talents and workplace contribution.

Her perspective developed out of her own experience and the books she took down from the shelves. She learnt, too, from her own experiences. In the 1970s, her homecare and family responsibilities expanded exponentially. She took on the care of the husband of a friend, having promised she would do so after the friend died. The husband had a brother, along with two sisters suffering from dementia. Active in the community health centre movement, Molly Hadfield agitated for complementary medicine, consumer rights and aged care, and was instrumental in establishing the Frankston Housing for the Aged Action Group. She succeeded in gaining one worker for the centre, for eight hours. Then the centre expanded into an organisation with a staff of five.

Meanwhile, she marched and protested during the maritime workers strike, alongside her longtime friend and colleague Edith Morgan, their photograph appearing, fists raised triumphant in celebration and support, on the cover of With these Arms, songs and poems of the MUA. Most recently, she participated in a protest by bank workers over conditions which, amongst other restrictions, prevented them from leaving their workstations to go to the lavatory, even if pregnant, and required them to work unpaid overtime – all with minimal training. The conditions of the protesting workers she compared with factory workers’ conditions in the 1950s and 1960s. Today’s workers and conditions, she believed, come off badly against the poor working conditions of past decades. ‘I have been protesting for over fifty years now,’ she said, and ‘I suppose I’d better stop. But I am not going to stop while I have breath in my body and a working head to think about it all.’[1]

Molly Hadfield and Edith Morgan Demonstrating on Melbourne Wharves

Jocelynne A. Scutt (c) August 2006