Rev. Alf Dickie

L to R: Rev. Norman Anderson, Rev. Alf Dickie, Sam Goldbloom
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Among individual peace activists are: Vivienne Abraham, Frank Coaldrake, Kenneth Rivett, Dorothy Gibson and the ‘peace parsons' Alf Dickie, Frank Hartley and Victor James.
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Dickie was much influenced by Christian radicals like the Dean of Canterbury, the Reverend Hewlett Johnson, who preached social justice through radical political change in the social order.

Although Coaldrake and Dickie came from such different understandings of their Christian mission each in their own way dedicated themselves to work for world peace.
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Alf Dickie worked as an engineering tradesman until he reached the age of 30 years, when he answered the call to join the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. Notebooks reveal a deep interest in biblical studies from a young age. After ordination he served in several parishes before coming, in 1943, to the Parish of North Essendon. It is not evident as to the influences that moved him towards a radical political viewpoint. In 1947, he took part in a May Day march with a group of clergy led by the Anglican Dean, Henry Langley. The following May Day he addressed a Yarra Bank gathering identifying himself with trade union calls for a more equitable economic system.

In 1949 the Australian Peace Council was formed and Dickie became its first chairperson. This was at an early stage of the Cold War. The council's policy came under the influence of communists and Dickie was publicly vilified as a ‘fellow traveller' of the Communist Party. However, it would seem from the records that while Dickie encouraged dialogue with Marxists he sought his own directions, in the light of his Christian beliefs, on how to create a more peaceful and just world. His special concern was the nuclear arms race. He saw his mission as mobilising ordinary people against the war-like policies of governments. He believed that if governments were to exercise the immense power opened up to them by nuclear science ‘they will bring doom on God's creation'.

In 1951 Dickie was among a group of clergy who set up the Peace Quest Forum to ‘provide an opportunity for conflicting views upon politics that made for war and peace' to be heard.

It was not only in the media and parliament that Dickie was accused of communist leanings and being disloyal to his country. His parishioners were disturbed by not only what they read in the media but heard personally in his weekly sermons. He faced his parishioners with a willingness to discuss their concerns, setting down his beliefs in a tract, Should Such a Faith Offend, in order that his parishioners ‘may judge the truth or error of the rumours'. He was not, he said, a communist by affiliation or philosophy but one who believed ‘Christians should be working to change the present order of society'.

Like Coaldrake, Dickie slowly won the respect of his Christian brethren. He was elected to serve as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, from 1965 to 1966, and he held the post of Executive Officer of the Presbytery of Melbourne, from 1968 to 1972.

Alfred Dickie [Papers] (167 kb) Federated Felt Hatters' Employees Union, Victorian Branch (253 kb) Federated Clerks Union, Victorian Branch (651 kb)