John Garcia, a friend and comrade, was larger than life: magnetic, passionate, kind and sincere.
I met John in the heady days of the late 1970s that followed massive anti-war protests, the new Gough Whitlam government withdrawing troops from Vietnam, then Whitlam being sacked, leaving the country in disarray with a new layer of disappointed activists and communities.
John’s earlier life influenced him to be a progressive human being: he relates to disadvantaged peoples and he acted to create change.
I first met him when he was a member of the Communist League in Queensland. When he and Pat Brewer, his then partner, moved to Sydney they joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), of which I was a member.
John was head of Aboriginal Housing in Brisbane, a First Nations state-based services organisation. He also worked as an architect and town planner for the Queensland Institute of Technology.
Members of Aboriginal Housing wanted an Aboriginal community school on Palm Island, the biggest reserve in Queensland, rather than being sent to Brisbane and drifting away from their roots.
John approached the Queensland University student union to fundraise $10,000 for the Palm Island community school. A few days later he was arrested by the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government on trumped up charges of “conspiring against the state”.
That was 1975. Pat recalled that 15 plain clothes police came into the house and dragged John out at 4am (so the police did not have to show their documents), along with Lionel Lacey and another male Aboriginal friend, who was sharing their house.
Both John and Lionel were taken back to police headquarters and charged with conspiracy to obtain $10,000 from the head of the Student Union at Queensland University. John was jailed, but only for a few days. The police argued that he was menacing this man to try to raise funds for the school through the University’s Union.
Lacey was 16 or 17, and had already been acquitted of any charges in the Children’s Court, so the police couldn’t put him in jail. But they wanted him charged and sent him to an adult prison to serve 14 years. Dennis Walker had flown down to Sydney for an engagement the night before, and was arrested.
John, Walker and Lacey — known as the “Brisbane Three” — were charged with various offences, including menacing and conspiracy. The Bjelke-Petersen government was determined to crush the growing Aboriginal rights movement.
Other Aboriginal activists were also raided the night John was arrested and, over the next few weeks, many Aboriginal activists were harassed by the police.
Good friend and Aboriginal activist Sue Chilly was arrested on August 15, 1975, but her charge was also thrown out.
The Brisbane Three campaign became national: it ended up all charges against them dropped. Walker was extradited to Queensland from NSW for the same “menacing” charges.
When the case was finally thrown out, because no such crime existed, John’s solicitor advised him to leave the country, before more trumped up charges could be made.
John went to Barcelona, Spain, where the dictator Francisco Franco had just died, in November 1975. Left-wing parties were still illegal.
John became involved in organising clandestine meetings, distributing leaflets and educating and mobilising the community.
He was arrested in 1975, held for five days and beaten by the police, but released after public pressure. Pat and Elena went to Spain in early 1976. He and Pat continued being involved in anti-fascist campaigns.
Even basic rights had to be fought for. John was involved in painting of murals throughout the Barcelona streets. He organised communities in neighbourhoods to support reforms and labour rights. He was arrested again in 1977 for campaigning for the rights of the Basque minority.
Even during his five-week sentence, John organised hunger strikes in solidarity with political prisoners; this expedited his release.
You would not be surprised to hear the post-Franco government expelled him and he returned to Sydney, Australia with Elena. Pat followed soon after.
John’s family had always fought against fascism: his Republican mother walked out over the Pyrenees Mountains, pregnant with John, to flee the fascists.
He was born in a refugee camp in France for people fleeing the Spanish Civil War. He arrived in Australia with his Aunt, Maria Luisa (“Tita”). Tita and her husband Diego first settled in Mount Beauty, Victoria, where Diego worked on the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme.
John attended school there, later moving to Wollongong where Diego worked in the mines. John went to North Wollongong High School with many other migrant kids. He earned a traineeship with BHP and went on to university in Sydney, becoming an architect.
He played a key role in setting up the Spanish Democratic Centre in the early 1970s, which brought him under ASIO’s sights.
John was a sensitive political leader, with a wealth of experience and compassion. He was a general secretary of the Spanish Democratic Centre in Sydney, campaigning against the Franco dictatorship setting up an Australian embassy.
Speaking French, Spanish and English, his language skills helped him forge and build solidarity movements with the people of Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile and the whole of Latin America.
He strongly related to these people, many of whose nations were under the control of United States' puppet dictatorships.
The solidarity groups John was involved in blossomed. He was active with the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society and became a national coordinator of the Committee in Solidarity with Central America and Cuba (CISCAC).
John led the solidarity work in the SWP: he encouraged a team approach. His work with Latin and South American refugees was critical. A political refugee himself, he knew their plight all too well. The SWP was humbled by his political contribution, because it gave the organisation a direct connection to struggling political parties in many of these countries.
John’s creativity was a huge asset to the movement. When a conference was being organised, he would start by drawing up a poster. I remember one based on Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.
John was a great orator; he always spoke with passion. John wrote for the SWP’s weekly newspaper, Direct Action which later became Green Left.
He was elected to the SWP’s national leadership and helped coordinate members’ work in various unions. He also worked at the General Motor's Holden (GMH) car factory in Pagewood for around 18 months. He was astute and cautious, the result, probably, of years of working underground in Spain. Informers within the SWP ensured that the comrades were all sacked from GMH — except John. It turned out he had used his other name — Andres.
John worked in Newcastle steelworks for a few years, leading the SWP’s union work. He became an organiser in Wollongong and supported the historic Jobs for Women campaign that, after 14 years, managed to make jobs available for women in heavy industry.
He helped build the anti-nuclear movement, the movement against uranium mining, the Nuclear Disarmament Party and various community-based actions around Hiroshima Day. He was also a NSW candidate for the SWP.
He made connections with the indigenous people of Kanaky, (New Caledonia), his fluent French helping the party understand the Kanak minority’s struggle for independence.
John was the translator whenever Kanak representatives attended labour and solidarity movement conferences in Australia.
He also made films: his passion for the plight of Indigenous nations colonised by the French steered him on to work with film maker, writer and director Michel Daeron to make Moruroa: Le Grand Secret, about the French nuclear tests’ impact on the Polynesian people (Moruroa is the native Tahitian name, instead of “Mururoa”, used by the French army).
They developed a script about the Tahitian leader and campaigner for advocate for French Polynesian independence Pouvana’aaO’opa and the metua (father) of French Polynesia’s independence movement, with Marlon Brando to play the lead role. The project never came to fruition, however.
Two months ago, when one of the Kanak leadership passed away, John wrote an obituary for his friend Louis Uregei: “He was as impressive when addressing his foes as he was gentle and generous with his friends.”
This was John, too: impressive when addressing his foes, gentle and generous with his friends.
His life, his love for people, his passion for change has made all who knew him so much richer.
Juan Jose Garcia — presente!
[A celebration of John’s life will be held on February 16, 2pm at the Austinmer Surf Lifesaving Club, Lawrence Hargrave Drive, Austinmer. All welcome.]
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