Launch of an Exciting New Book

On 7 October the Perth branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH), the CFMEU Construction Branch (WA) and Interventions Publishing (Melbourne) jointly sponsored the WA launch of Karen Throssell’s new book, The Crime of Not Knowing your Crime, in the beautiful May Holman Room of the Perth Trades Hall.

The launch was a successful combination of interstate speakers appearing by zoom and a live local audience. Professor Phillip Deery, a renowned Cold War historian, launched the book, which includes his contextual essay on the era in which Ric Throssell lived and worked.

Using narrative, documents (including extracts from ASIO files), photographs and poetry, Karen Throssell tells the story of her father, Ric Throssell. Despite never belonging to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), Ric had his promising career in the Department of External Affairs blighted on the pretext that his mother, the novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard, was a CPA member. ASIO logic seemed to dictate that if the mother was a Communist, the son must also be one and if he was a Communist, he must then be a spy.

Even after the Petrov Royal Commission cleared Ric and his wife, Dorothy, of the accusation of spying for Russia, the rumours persisted through out his career, even in his retirement and after his death. Karen wrote the book to assuage feelings of helplessness and because of her desperate desire to clear her father’s name.  Her dedication reads, ‘to my father, Ric Throssell and all those who have similarly suffered from the State’s determination to find them guilty despite [being] proven innocent.’

This book is not a biography, but rather a journey of glimpses into the life of gifted man, who was unjustly persecuted because of Cold War politics. You can purchase The Crime of Not Knowing your Crime at New Editions Bookshop in Fremantle, or on line from Interventions Inc.

Interventions is a small, Melbourne-based, independent publisher.  You can find out more about them and their publications at: https://interventions.org.au/about

Bobbie Oliver