A further dossier from Ferret First Class Paul Feldman.
The ASIO file on Katherine [sic] Ann Jennings reveals that she came to their attention via her relationship with one of the legendary figures of Australian unionism, Tas Bull of the Seamen's Union (1932-2003). From Wikipedia and.another source (https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2018.116/tas-bull ) we learn that Tas grew up in Hobart and went to sea at 14 after the death of his father. He returned to Australia three years later after travelling the world and seeing much social and economic inequity. Tas was a Communist Party member right up to the 1960s, and became a leading light of the Waterside Workers Federation. His autobiography 'Life on the Waterfront' was published in 1998. On the day of his funeral, a thousand mourners followed his hearse along the Hungry Mile.
It seems from the file that Ann and Tas got together in Hobart around 1960, and two marriages were affected. Tas came from a Salvationist background, and according to the ASIO file, his mother was quite upset.
The file records Ann's attendance, with Tas, at a number of meetings of Communist Party members at no less than the Double Bay Sailing Club. (Was this an attempt to throw the spooks off the trail by meeting amongst the toffs, or a nod to Tas's seagoing predilections? Come to think of it, those eighteen footers certainly leaned to the left). Amongst other things, Ann is recorded as stating at one meeting her intention to go overseas in May 1963. She and Tas must have resumed together on her return, as the file records their relationship lasting until 1967.
At another meeting, Ann is recorded as saying that she is still teaching at 'the Bexley high school'
And for all we know, Ann and Tas are still together, in the silent black and white of an ASIO surveillance film. It’s a city footpath, seen from upstairs across the street. There’s the roof of an FJ Holden and an ad for Tooths Lager. And there are two men in white shirts with rolled up sleeves, next to an unmarked door. Then a couple arrive and greet them. There’s Tas exhaling a smoke, and Ann looking quite flash. Whatever she says makes the bigger doorman laugh. Then the door opens and they disappear. Soon, that may be all that’s left to mark their union of long ago.
The file records that in March1969 Ann Jennings' car was amongst a number of vehicles used to convey demonstrators to a vigil at Long Bay Gaol, where a number of draft resisters were then incarcerated.
The Sydney Morning Herald informs us that Friday the 14th of March 1969 was a warm fine night. The ASIO observer reports a subdued event, with placards but no disturbance. The conscientious objectors inside the gaol would have been locked in their cells well before 8pm. They included Stephen Townsend, younger brother of the more famous Simon, and Mike Jones, then a big man on campus at Sydney Uni. Those attending the vigil had forgone a rare night of television. As the vigil began, ABN 2 was showing The Avengers with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, while TEN 10 had Mission Impossible. TCN 9 were left well behind, with Bobby Limb. Perhaps some of the students had had the forethought to bring a bottle of Brandivino to pass around covertly. It would have been an uncomfortable night on the hard ground once the conversation died down. Were any of them thinking of the next ballot, and what they might do?
Also on file are two folios relating to ASIO's adverse security report on our esteemed fellow student Bruce Searle (STHS 1967). Bruce was the Jean Cocteau of his year, and like any sensible work-shy lad, he applied to join the Commonwealth Public Service. This was in 1969. Bruce needed a security clearance and, in ASIO's eyes, his past history as a young Communist weighed heavily against him.
The ASIO operative records all this, and also the fact that Bruce gave Katherine Ann Jennings as a character reference and described her as a personal friend. The ASIO operative offers the information that Ann was born in 1919 and is sceptical that someone so much older could actually be a friend. The file itself shows that the 1919 birthdate is wrong, but the spooks sometimes ignored facts if they stood in the way of pumping up moral condemnation.
But they were dead right of course. The Australian public had so much to fear from Bruce, a spindly aesthete whose sardonic social commentary was declared best essay in the STHS journal of 1967. Getting shut out of a lifetime job with the APS probably cost him a quarter of a million, but did he care? As a photographic artist now represented in our nation’s galleries, he had his mind on other things, and hopefully still has… But meanwhile, in ASIO’s very own Sydney office, a middle manager by the name of Ian George Peacock was getting quite fed up with seeing younger graduates being promoted past him. Within a few years, Mr Peacock would shake his tail feathers before the KGB and fatten his retirement fund by giving up the names of dozens of agents and informers. His betrayal, approved from Moscow by none other than Kim Philby, would remain undetected right up to his death.
Finally, the file records an ASIO blunder in identifying the Sydney radical feminist Kate Jennings as Ann's daughter Karen. The operative confidently states that no one else who could be Kate Jennings was born during the period 1945 to 1948. The possibility that the Catherine Ruth Jennings born in NSW in 1947 could actually be the Kate Jennings they were monitoring did not occur to them. As the late PM John Gorton once famously said, ASIO were 'stumblebums'..
