Australian Dictionary of Biography

Ruth Crow, protesting during U.S. President George Bush's visit to Melbourne in 1992, photographed by John Ellis.

University of Melbourne Archives, 1999.0081.00839

Ruth Hope Crow (1916–1999), communist, teacher, and community activist, and Maurice Stuart Crow (1915–1988), communist, lawyer, and community activist, were wife and husband. Ruth was born on 14 September 1916 at Ballarat, Victoria, fourth of five children of locally born parents Dougald Forbes Stalker Miller, dentist, and his wife Winifred Maud, née Coutts, teacher. As descendants of two well-known Ballarat families, the Millers were class-conscious and encouraged their children to be well read, good-mannered, and articulate. Ruth, or Ruthie as she was known by close friends and family, was educated at Pleasant Street State School and received a scholarship to attend the Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, Ballarat (1931–33). Her later school years coincided with the Depression and were difficult: the family’s financial circumstances deteriorated and they were left almost penniless when Dougald died in 1932. They moved to Melbourne and lived on the wages of the three eldest children.

After leaving school, Miller worked variously as a shop assistant, domestic servant, cook, and waitress. In 1934 she commenced a two-year diploma in institutional management and dietetics at the Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy, Melbourne (1934–35), winning a senior technical scholarship in her second year. While working as a maid, she formed a domestic servants’ club (1934) at Malvern to improve working conditions. She became more politically active as a student, serving as secretary of the student council and attending an anti-fascist youth camp, where she met Maurice Stuart (Maurie) Crow, a law student. In 1936 she joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Her older brother Ken had joined two years earlier and was a prominent organiser as well as a member of the Victorian State committee (1935–63) until he was expelled with others from the pro-China Ted Hill group that would form the Community Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist).

Miller married Maurie on 22 December 1937 at the Office of the Government Statist, Melbourne. He had been born on 17 January 1915 in Melbourne, eldest son of Victorian-born parents John William Stuart Crow, civil engineer, and his first wife Stella Rosa, née Obbison. Stella died of tuberculosis in 1921, and the following year John married Rosa Doreen, née Stubbs, with whom he had two sons. Maurie was educated at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School (1924–32), where he excelled as an athlete and cricketer. In 1933 he enrolled at the University of Melbourne (LLB, 1941). By 1935 he had joined the university’s Labor Club, the CPA, and the Movement Against War and Fascism. Their common political interests and beliefs drew Maurie and Ruth together, and in 1938 they were heavily involved with the CPA, the Workers’ Sports Federation (WSF), and the Spanish relief campaign.

Not long after their marriage, and with war imminent, the Crows decided to move to the Dandenong Ranges. The CPA was banned on 15 June 1940, while they were operating the Observatory Tea Rooms, Kalorama (1939–43), and helping to arrange activities for the WSF. In 1943 the Crows returned to Melbourne, where they lived in a one-room flat at Brunswick with their two daughters, June (1940) and Julie (1942), who were often cared for in kindergartens and crèches. The flat had no kitchen or dining room and the Crows were determined to prove that communal living could work. They spent most of their time outside and relied on local facilities, such as the Brunswick Baths, where they swam daily. The Crows also continued their political and community work during the war, which has seen the ban on the CPA lifted in 1942. Becoming increasingly involved in efforts to improve women’s working conditions and child-care services, Ruth served on the Council for Women in War Work (1942–43) and the Coordinating Committee for Child Care in War-time (1943). She was also secretary organiser of the Brunswick Children’s Centre (1943–44). Always busy, she volunteered as an air raid warden and helped establish the Day Nurseries’ Development Association, all while maintaining her activities with the CPA, including attending branch meetings and the Left Book Club and assisting with Party publications.

In 1945 Ruth completed a ten-month course for youth leaders organised by the department of social studies at the University of Melbourne and the National Fitness Council of Victoria. She subsequently worked as a youth leader at the Exhibition Youth Centre, Carlton, as well as an education field officer for the Victorian Association of Youth Clubs (both 1946–48). After becoming involved with the CPA’s Eureka Youth League camp, she led the formation of the Junior Eureka League as State (1949) and national (1950–53) organiser. She was also an early member of the Union of Australian Women.

During this time, Maurie’s employment at the munitions factory at Footscray resulted in a period of intense activity as an organiser for the Federated Clerks’ Union (FCU) (1945–50). The Victorian branch contained a number of high-profile communists, including Lloyd Edmonds, who had served in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and Frank Meyer, with whom Maurie worked ‘to change the union’s conservative, paternalistic approach to industrial relations’ (Love 1994, 2). In February 1950 Maurie appeared before the royal commission into communism in Victoria, where he denied allegations that he was part of a scheme to send communists to vote at union meetings. From this point on, he and Ruth were under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). He remained involved with the FCU, but after being admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor in 1954, he also began working as a lawyer, including with fellow communists Cedric Ralph, John Zigouras, and Rex Mortimer.

Maurie was a student at the Minto Bush Camp, a CPA training school near Campbelltown, Sydney, in 1958. One ASIO informant anticipated Maurie’s rise within the CPA: ‘Age brings understanding and, as the years pass, the Party is realising that bellicose brawniness will have to give way to the quiet, and very effective, voices of the backroom boys like Maurie’ (NAA A6119, 7885). A few years later, Maurie was elected to the Victorian State committee.

Joining the teachers’ union, Ruth worked as a teacher (1953–59) of cookery and home economics, including at Brunswick, Pascoe Vale, and Flemington girls’ high schools. In the 1960s and 1970s she wrote for the North Melbourne News, Northern Advertiser, and Melbourne Times, often under the pen name ‘Una Voce.’ She was also heavily involved in a wide range of community and urban action groups, such as the Coburg Education Committee (late 1950s), the North and West Melbourne Neighbourhood Centre (from the late 1970s), Community Child Care (1970s; life member 1979), and the Clean Air Council of Victoria (treasurer 1966). In 1966, two years after Maurie visited the Soviet Union with a CPA delegation, she toured with women from the CPA.

The Crows had moved to North Melbourne in mid-1964. It was there that Maurie, supported by Ruth, helped form the Melbourne Town Planning Research Group, which led to the development of a three-part Plan for Melbourne (1969–72). As leading lights in the North Melbourne Association, the Crows advocated for community-controlled services and were early champions of dense mixed-use inner-city areas. Their idea of a linear urban corridor to Gippsland with neighbourhood hubs connected by high-speed rail was later described as ‘radical and socially informed with a very modern-sounding manifesto’ (Freestone 2017, 130). Two major projects followed: the Citizens Action Plan for North and West Melbourne (1973) and Make Melbourne Marvellous (1985).

In the 1970s Ruth played a prominent role in the North Melbourne Cosy Cottage project, which provided short-term social and emergency housing, particularly for country families visiting for hospital treatment. The Crows were also involved with the Radical Ecology Conference. This led to the Movement Against Uranium Mining (1976) and the Community Energy Network as well as the publication of Seeds for Change (1978), a blueprint for Melbourne that was responsive to emerging energy and environmental concerns. For their town planning work, they were jointly awarded the Victorian chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architect’s Robin Boyd award (1972) and the Town and Country Planning Association’s Barrett medal (1973).

Ruth and Maurie Crow were gifted organisers who shared a lifelong commitment to socialist principles. One friend remembered them as ‘humble, unpretentious, tireless in their devotion to “the people”, and totally devoted to each other’ (Sandercock 2023, 38). Ruth was an optimist with a ‘zest for life’ (Morrow 1999, 16), and a great talker, though some recalled that her single-mindedness could ‘back you into a corner’ (Anne Sgro, in Nichols 2018, 374). Maurie was the quieter of the two and was sometimes known to disown his own ideas, especially in co-authored publications, where Ruth was always listed as first author. In their later years Ruth continued her activism in child care and was involved with the Melbourne District Health Council (1986–88) and the Melbourne City Council Bicentenary Committee (1987).

Maurie died on 4 April 1988 in Melbourne and his body was donated to science. Four hundred people attended his memorial at North Melbourne Town Hall. Following her husband’s death, Ruth withdrew from committee work, moved into a retirement village at Carlton North, and donated their collection of books and papers to Footscray Institute of Technology (later Victoria University), where as an active senior associate, she was a ‘curator of their legacy’ (Nichols 2018, 376). In 1993 she was appointed AM. She died at Horsham on 9 April 1999 and her body was also donated to science. The following year the City of Melbourne unveiled a memorial plaque to the Crows in the Australian native garden in Royal Park. Ruth was later added to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women (2008), and a drop-in space, known as Ruth Crow Corner, was established in her memory at Arts House in North Melbourne Town Hall. In 2016 McIver’s Coffee & Tea Merchants released a Ruth Crow tea blend.