Cirrus@Austlit

'In the last decade of his long life, Wal Stubbings (1913-2014), retired Water side worker from the port of Brisbane, occupied himself with his life story. As a worker, and a militant one, he had already penned a number of short articles for his union, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF, later the Maritime Union of Australia) and for the Communist Party of Australia (CPA, dissolved in 1991), and letters to the Courier-Mail. When asked to contribute to the Stubbings family history being compiled by a cousin in Melbourne, his taste for memoir was whetted and he continued on after the family history was published. Wal Stubbings knew that he had lived as a player in the political history of Australia and he wanted an autobiography that included his all-important family and his life as a militant worker.' (Introduction)