One of Brisbane's best-known left movement identities, Bob Leach, died in Sydney on Christmas eve.
Several hundred people gathered in St Mary's Church in Brisbane's West End on December 31 for a moving funeral meeting for Bob. The audience included representatives of the whole Brisbane progressive movement, plus many of Bob's family and friends, reflecting his broad personal and political connections in the community.
Leach died of a heart attack at 57. At the time, he was preparing to fly out on the 1998 Southern Cross Work Brigade to Cuba, to be followed by a six-month stay in Ireland to write a book. Bob had only recently retired as a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, where he taught history and politics for many years.
Speakers at the meeting recounted stories of Bob's skills as a teacher. He had also been made a life member of his union, the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union.
He was involved in a variety of progressive causes and committees around Brisbane over the years; more recently, the campaign to oppose the Howard and Borbidge governments' budgets. He also helped re-establish the Politics in the Pub discussion nights at the Boundary Hotel. Bob was a fervent opponent of "economic rationalism", and had left the ALP in the early 1980s in opposition to its right-wing policies.
In recent years, he became committed to developing a left alternative to the Labor Party, and edited the book The Alliance Alternative in Australia: Beyond Labor and Liberal to promote discussion on this issue. Leach was strongly impressed by the formation of the NewLabour Party and the Alliance in New Zealand, and attempted to emulate these developments in Australia by founding the New Labor Party here (later renamed Progressive Labour Party, after the ALP registered the former name).
Bob's wide circle of friends and political acquaintances were reflected in the anecdotes told about him at a wake at his house following the meeting on December 31.
Jim McIlroy