Speak Up, Reach Out: A Life to Reckon with

Graham Smith’s memoir is a microcosm of Australian politics and society at a particularly volatile time, seen through the eyes of a storyteller who was both compassionate and analytical.

The Second World War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the political, economic and social upheavals of postwar Australia, and Sir Robert Menzies’ (failed) attempt to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia - Graham lived through these events and made influential contributions to them all. He was involved in and committed to the struggles of the marginalised and impoverished - as a communist in mid-twentieth-century Australia he became one of the marginalised. But, as Barbara Pocock has said in her contribution, he ‘was never a hater. Always a builder, and much more likely to meet division with humour than criticism.’

Speak Up, Reach Out does not provide answers to the petty discriminations that Graham experienced; rather it details the achievements of a profoundly dignified and humble man who refused to be defined by the hostile environment in which he found himself.