Jack Stannard
On November 1 we lost a great friend in Jack Stannard.
I remember the time Jack sat at the table and announced, "If we are going to have a Canberra Program for Peace, we'd better have a program". Jack was like that. Well into his 70s, he insisted on things being logical, even anarchic beings like us challenging the system with media-catching rallies and protests and climbing the flagpoles of the powerful.
Like Che Guevara, he was incensed at injustice. Like Che he did something about it to the utmost of his strength. With his wife Helene, who rarely agreed with his politics, he stuck thousands of leaflets in letterboxes and under Canberra car wipers.
Once Jack turned up at the foyer of my office dressed incognito, ready to go and attack the parked cars in Woden. We did look funny: Jack in his trench coat, Akubra and sun glasses, scurrying in and out among the blazing windscreens, and me scurrying back to work two hours later.
Jack and Helene were passionate about the privatisation of the NRMA and spoke up at board meetings. Jack wrote and published three books. At first glance, Jack's 1987 book "Local Government — a Case for Change looks like a story about unfair rates. But Jack exposes how deeply entrenched in local government law and practice is the assumption that the best interests of big developers are also best for the people.
The second book, in the Wise Country series, is Act Now for Freedom and Pure Water. In it Jack demolishes the health benefits of fluoride in our water. When I went to visit Jack at his home in Narrabunda a few days before he died, he said I was a recalcitrant on this issue. He gave Helene detailed instructions to find file number so-and-so and get a recent article and letter he wanted copied for me.
Jack died of cancer. His oesophagus had been operated on and he was on morphine and suffering occasional heart attacks. To the last day he said that was just a minor problem, that he'd rather talk about others.
Helene insisted on keeping him at home. He got the best of care — fruit and vegies from their own garden and all sorts of naturopathic diets — although Helene was also not well. She sat by his bed holding his hand and rolling her eyes at his constant struggle to have his books distributed before he died.
He would go to rallies in the sun and rain and come home exhausted. Helene would chastise him for running off with us, his girlfriends in the peace movement, and leaving her at home. We often wondered what kept them together. It must have been the struggle.
Jack's last book, Onward to Freedom, is on my desk. I have promised to review it. I asked him to tell me about it a couple of Saturdays ago. Jack was shaking with rage at the injustice of the power of Australia's media monopolies and, like Noam Chomsky, he shows that the media manufacture consent for the disastrous policies of our exploitative system.
John Chauncey Stannard, aged 77, was buried in Queanbeyan. We have lost a great friend.
— Yvonne Francis