BY MELANIE SJOBERG
& JOHN MCGILL
Connie Frazer died, aged 76, on May 6 after a struggle with breast cancer. She was a poet, a feminist and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.
Connie's presence will be missed from the Adelaide political scene as one of the more well known and outspoken radical political activists who marched, spruiked, leafleted and directly achieved social change. It was rare for her to miss a rally, campaign action or meeting.
Connie's first experience of political activity was participation in the first of the big Moratorium marches against the Vietnam War, in May 1970. In an oral history of her life, recorded by Marg McHugh in 1993, Connie talked about the daily life of a working-class housewife and mother confronted by the new reality of a war:
"I really was caught up in being a housewife then. I was aware of the war in Vietnam going on, because by then we had TV [but] I didn't really take much notice, hardly knew where Vietnam was...
"One day I was crossing King William Street to Rundle Street thinking about what I'd got to buy when a news placard leapt out and pulled me up. All it had written on it was 'Conscription!' I felt, 'I've spent 16 years trying to teach my son that war's a bad thing, and now they're talking about taking him away and putting him in the army.' It just sort of rose up inside me. I thought, 'No way, no. I'm not going to let them take him'.
"After the first Moratorium... I really felt as though for the first time in my life — or at least for a long, long time — I've really lived today. It was because I had been plucked out of my boring life as a housewife into something different scene.
"I was struck the same as so many people who'd never been in a demonstration before. They all said the same thing: 'But they're such nice people'.
"I felt that they were better than usual because you didn't have to watch your bag and everyone was all one. There were no real divisions amongst us. It did make people positive — it made me stronger. Feeling that way how could I not go in all the rest of the demonstrations?"
Before the end of the Vietnam War, ideas of women's liberation began filtering through the movement. Connie started picking up books and articles on women's liberation. It occurred to her that this was a difficult thing for married women to pursue when they had to face resentment and confusion from husbands.
Despite this, in January 1972, Connie joined a women's liberation group initiated by members of the Resistance socialist youth organisation.
This group then united with others to build the first modern International Women's Day march in Adelaide.
Connie was determined to take the new and challenging ideas of women's liberation to women in her local area, so she began a discussion in her lounge room. Sometimes only one or two women turned up, but it grew.
The group developed an awareness about disadvantaged and abused women in the southern suburbs of Adelaide that eventually led to the establishment of one of the first women's refuges with some funding out of International Women's Year 1975.
Those seeds have grown to be part of a series of places for women in the southern suburbs of Adelaide and were the forerunner to the Southern Women's Community Health Centre. Today it is a state government funded centre that provides many health services as well as counselling, education and support services.
Connie was part of a group of women that joined together to set up the Bloor Court Women's Liberation Centre. It started in an old rented factory (where, appropriately, women had worked stitching men's shirts for a pittance). It was a space for meetings and consciousness-raising groups. Through that process they compiled a huge information file — which the Women's Electoral Lobby later used as the basis for the Women's Information Switchboard (now called the Answer Shop).
The Bloor Court centre also started an abortion referral centre, did pregnancy tests and — most importantly of all — held general meetings every Monday night.
Connie was also involved in the early formation of Women's Studies at Flinders University when the course was run relatively democratically but on a shoestring budget. Students participated in decisions about how the course would run, resulting in a decision to relieve the overworked lecturer by utilising the experiences of some of the non-academic women participants — including Connie, who taught one day a week.
The Tuesday Afternoon Group is the longest running women's liberation group in Australia. Connie was a founding member and continued as a mainstay of the group until her health forced her into a nursing home.
Connie believed the group was essential to maintaining her commitment as it provided a network for discussion and support. She said that she would never miss a meeting because she did not like the thought of a new person turning up with no-one to welcome them. Members of the group kept up that support for Connie while her health was declining.
The struggle for women's liberation held centre stage for the rest of Connie's life. She never failed to remind people of the original demands of the movement, such as free, safe available contraception and abortion; equal pay; free 24-hour childcare; socialised housework and a minimum income for all. She said that until those demands were met, feminists had to keep fighting.
Connie fiercely argued that the movement had to aim for radical social change, not simply piece-meal reforms or just getting a few women into positions of power.
Apart from her dedication to women's liberation, Connie was committed to Friends of the ABC and various environmental campaigns. At the M1 blockade of the Adelaide stock exchange in 2001, Adelaide commercial TV stations featured Connie as a contrast to the mostly young activists.
After many years of political activity, Connie decided to join the Democratic Socialist Party in 1993. She became a familiar figure around the streets of Adelaide, dedicating one day a week to delivering Green Left Weekly to shops and cafes.
When the Adelaide city council attempted in 1998 to stop activists distributing GLW on the city's streets, Connie helped to get petitions signed and rally her friends behind the GLW free speech campaign.
During her final illness, Connie remained determined to be kept informed of progressive politics and told her friends that receiving Green Left Weekly was the highlight of her week. When, earlier this year, she had to move from her flat into a nursing home, she donated all of the money raised from the sale of her furniture to GLW.
The other love and consumer of Connie's time was poetry. She was involved with Friendly Street Poets and the Adelaide Writers Centre. She has had a book of poems published under the title Other Ways of Looking and had many individual poems published. Connie would occasionally read poems at GLW fund-raising functions. She was also a voracious reader, regularly pointing out some interesting item she had found. Her enthusiasm was a great motivation to younger comrades, asking them what they thought about a newspaper or magazine article.
Late last year she was diagnosed with cancer. Her reaction to the diagnosis was one of anger because she had a mastectomy 30 years before and was determined that she would live to be 90. Many years earlier she had made the decision to donate her body to medical science.
Connie's selfless attitude and revolutionary spirit will continue to be an inspiration.
A memorial service for Connie will be held at 1pm on May 25, at the Box Factory, 59 Regent Street South, Adelaide.
[Melanie Sjoberg is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party. John McGill is the Adelaide branch secretary of the DSP.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 15, 2002.
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