Name Hedwig Ross | ||
Hedwig "Hettie" Ross, née Hedwig Weitzel, was a New Zealand-born Australian educator and political activist. She was a founding member of the Communist Party of New Zealand and a leader of the Australian Militant Woman's Group, a department of the Communist Party of Australia, and edited several Australian political publications including the Young Communist. Throughout her career, she was an advocate for the children of the poor, and argued for the centrality of education in raising their position in society. She died 26 October 1971 at Mortdale, Sydney.
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Early life
Hedwig Ross was born Hedwig Weitzel on 17 September 1900 in New Zealand, to German immigrants Friedrich Gustav Weitzal and Maria Weitzl née Benninghoven who were farmers. As a schoolgirl in Wellington she witnessed the 1913 Great Strike of New Zealand, where workers from several industries protested against working conditions and unfair dismissals.
In 1920, when she was only nineteen years old, she graduated from Wellington Girls' College after two years study with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Philosophy, due to her extraordinary intellect. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser said in the New Zealand House of Representatives in 1921 that "she was wonderfully brilliant—brilliant enough to graduate before reaching the age of twenty." She would later return to receive a Diploma of Education at the University of Sydney.
Political activity in New Zealand
In 1921 while still at Wellington Girls' College Ross became a founding member of the Communist Party of New Zealand. During this period she was an associate of Fintan Patrick Walsh, a prominent member of the Federated Seaman's Union of New Zealand who led several large scale strikes during the 1920s. Walsh was also a co-founder of the Communist Party of New Zealand and he and Ross were rumoured to be lovers.
In August 1921, her political activities led to her being convicted of selling seditious literature. Ross sold a copy of an Australian publication, the Communist, to an undercover policeman. It was former Prime Minister Peter Fraser, who was then a member of Parliament, who took up her case. Fraser had four years earlier been convicted of the same offense, and served twelve months jail time. He strongly believed that Ross, who he described as a "young girl on the threshold of womanhood," was a victim of unfair police officiousness, and declared to parliament that "the persecution of Miss Weitzel will rank in the history of New Zealand as one of the meanest and most contemptible episodes in our political life."
However, his support failed to overrule her conviction, and Ross was expelled from Wellington Teachers' College where she was studying for her Diploma of Education. At this point, she left New Zealand for Australia, where communist views were more openly acceptable at that time, arriving in Sydney in 1922.