Rupert Lockwood
Rupert Ernest Lockwood (10 March 1908 – 8 March 1997) was an Australian journalist and communist activist.
Lockwood was born in Natimuk to newspaper proprietor Alfred Wright Lockwood and Alice Francis. He became a journalist in 1930, working for the Melbourne Herald until 1935, when he went overseas. He worked in Singapore, Japan, China and the United Kingdom before observing the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain. He returned to Australia in 1938 and joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1939. After finding work in the minor labour press he became associate editor and then editor of the Waterside Workers' Federation's Maritime Worker. He played a significant part in the Royal Commission into Espionage (1954–55), in which the government alleged that he was a Russian spy. In 1969 he left the Communist Party, disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He later wrote several books including Black Armada (1975), Humour Is Their Weapon (1985) and War on the Waterfront (1987). Lockwood died in 1997.[1][2]