Australian Dictionary of Biography

Hilda Barclay, Education, 20 March 1957

NSW Teachers Federation

Hilda Violet Barclay (1905–1997), schoolteacher and trade union leader, was born on 14 November 1905 at Willoughby, New South Wales, eldest of four children of New South Wales-born Olivia Bertha Barclay, née Simpson, laundress, and her English-born husband Charles Barclay, coal-lumper. Hilda attended public and private schools, completing her education at North Sydney Girls’ High School. In 1920 she passed the Qualifying certificate. She went on to complete various Department of Technical Education exams, working parttime in what were known as ‘women’s handicrafts.’ In 1927 she joined the New South Wales teaching service as a domestic science teacher.

Barclay taught at Manilla, then at North Sydney Domestic Science School, before moving to Bathurst, and then to Glen Innes. Soon she was travelling further afield. At the end of May 1938, she joined other teachers at the Sydney Women’s Club to be farewelled before going overseas on an exchange arranged by the New South Wales Department of Education in cooperation with the League of the Empire. She taught at Bolton, Lancashire. Overseas travel gave her a new perspective: a visit to Germany led to her witnessing fascism, which ‘convinced her of the need to strengthen the trade unions so that such things would not happen in Australia’ (Education 1950, 45).

Returning to Australia in 1939, Barclay taught at Taree. The following year she joined the council of the New South Wales Public School Teachers’ Federation (later the New South Wales Teachers’ Federation). President of the Home Economics Teachers’ Association (1940–44), in 1942 and 1943 she was elected to the federation’s executive. She left the classroom in 1944 when she was elected the federation’s first female organiser, a position she held until 1956. The teachers’ union had affiliated with the New South Wales Labor Council and the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 1943. In 1944 she was elected to the executive of the Labor Council, serving on its equal pay committee. As part of a left-wing group within the teachers’ federation, she was involved in the push to have the labour councils as well as the ACTU actively involved in education policy, arguing that ‘teachers have never realised the power they hold’ (Education 1951, 48).

Described as ‘tall, dark, [and] efficient’ (Sun 1947, 4), Barclay was ‘a capable speaker’ (Coffs Harbour Advocate 1951, 1). She was at the centre of the movement for a new deal for teachers, particularly women teachers. The Married Women’s (Teachers and Lecturers) Act of 1932 had resulted in the retrenchment of married women and from that point until its repeal in 1947, they had to resign from the service on marriage. Federation membership and union power were at a low ebb during the Depression, but by the end of the war, union membership had rebounded to over 90 per cent. The expansion of the welfare state and the postwar baby boom resulted in a teacher shortage, which strengthened the federation’s bargaining power. In 1946 and 1949 the federation won large salary gains. By 1945 the executive had been feminised, having six male and seven female members. The federation executive became a ginger group for women’s employment and opportunity, concerned with social justice for all members. A first step had already been taken with the establishment in 1943 of a common qualification, with a teaching certificate for all teachers, without consideration of gender.

With her election as a federation organiser, Barclay played a leading part in the campaigns for a ‘New Deal for Education,’ which pressed the Commonwealth government to provide increased funding. She became the secretary of the joint organising committee for the successful 1947 New Deal for Education Conference held in the Sydney Town Hall, which drew 844 representatives from 784 organisations. The New Deal included equal pay amongst its objectives. It failed to achieve this goal, however, with the Public Service Board deciding in 1949 to maintain women teacher’s salaries at four-fifths of the men’s rate. Women teachers were angered, and an equal pay and status committee was formed within the federation, with Vera Leggett as secretary, Lucy Woodcock as president, and Barclay one of its members. After a hard-fought campaign, a protest outside Parliament House on 26 March 1958 ‘turned into a jubilant celebration’ (Millar 1993, 24) when the premier, Joseph Cahill, stated that equal pay for New South Wales teachers would be phased in by 1963. Barclay was one of around five hundred who attended the 1963 celebratory dinner at Sydney’s Trocadero dance hall, the culmination of the federation’s equal pay campaign, as attention turned to equal opportunity.

In 1956 Barclay had not been re-elected as federation organiser and had returned to the teaching ranks at Chatswood High School. The following year she was again elected to the teachers’ federation executive (1957–60). She was instrumental in establishing the Teachers’ Club, Sydney, being a foundation member and a director of its board in 1958 and holding the role until 1961, when her life changed. On 9 August that year at the registrar-general’s office, Sydney, she married a fellow teacher, Scottish-born divorcé Samuel Lewis Williams Thomson, with whom she had worked as federation organisers. The couple lived at Cremorne, before shifting to Hornsby, where Sam died in 1987; Hilda retired from teaching in 1969. She died on 21 February 1997 at Maitland, and was cremated.