'Unbreakable solidarity of women throughout the world with heroic Vietnam': Freda Brown, women's organisations and the anti-Vietnam war movement

Many Australians campaigned against their nation’s participation in the Vietnam War. Amongst them was the Sydney communist Freda Brown. Three of the groups she worked for – the anti-conscription group Save Our Sons, the Union of Australian Women, and the Women’s International Democratic Federation – co-operated closely in their Australian and international campaigns against the Vietnam War.

A maternalist approach was shared by these three organisations in their anti-war campaigns in the Vietnam era. Mobilising against the prevailing Australian concept of a woman’s role to keep the home fires burning and support the troops, Brown’s work in the peace movement took her, twice, to North Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. Alongside many other communist and non-communist pacifists, she worked alongside women and men in Australia and across the world, with organisations including the Vietnam Women’s Union, WILPF and the World Peace Conference. Just one material outcome of the work of women in these organisations, including Brown, was the funding of the Hanoi Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital.

This paper explores the importance of networking by examining Brown’s peace campaigns within these organisations. It examines how gender was employed as a mobilizing theme for the anti-war movement, and the strategic and complex blend of maternalism and internationalism applied.