Victor James
Rev. Victor Montgomery Keeling James (19 March 1897 – 1984) was a Unitarian minister in Melbourne, Victoria from 1947 to 1969. He was the target of right-wing hostility in the 1950s and 1960s due to his activities in the peace movement and links to Communist China. Background. The Melbourne Unitarian Church was founded in 1852 as a conventional anti-Trinitarian church with the Bible as its foundation. William Bottomley (1882–1966) was born in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, son of a Wesleyan lay preacher who died when Bottomley was 16 years old. He, also, was a preacher before becoming a Unitarian  and paid propagandist for the Independent Labour Party. He came to Melbourne from Somerset in 1926 to take up an appointment as minister of the Melbourne church. He was known as a pacifist, a cause which was gaining ground following the jingoism of the First World War, in which he served. He briefly entered politics as a candidate against Harold Holt for the Federal seat of Fawkner in 1937 and opposed participation in WWII. He was a popular and energetic minister, attracting a large following to the church, including university students to its Young People's Society. He was involved  with the Workers' Educational Association and the University Extension Board. He gave thoughtful and entertaining talks on ABC radio. He conducted a popular program, "The Unitarian Half-hour" weekly on radio 3XY, which ran from 1943 or earlier. He published a monthly magazine, "The Beacon" from the mid-40s, which would survive to 1956. He attracted guest speakers ranging from the conservative Wilfrid Kent Hughes to Maurice Blackburn. Zelman Cowan was a regular before he became a national figure and O. R. Snowball used the pulpit in his push for divorce reform. Bernard O'Dowd and Marie Pitt were active members. The  vibrant intellectual atmosphere and freedom of the church also attracted a number of "free spirits" and "oddball" individualists. History. Victor James was born in Pontypool, Wales, son of a dentist, druggist and Calvinist Methodist lay preacher, but strongly influenced by his neighbour, a shoemaker and student of Darwinian evolution, who encouraged him to question Biblical authority. Following demobilisation in 1918 he trained as a dentist, with a practice in Ilminster, Somerset, and by 1922 was married and living in Taunton, where he heard Bottomley preaching and so became a regular attendee and occasional lay preacher of Taunton Unitarian Chapel on  Mary Street. He began preaching at nearby Yeovil, which had lost its regular minister and was in danger of closing. He abandoned dentistry to study externally for the Unitarian ministry, a four-year course at Manchester College, Oxford; he then returned to South Wales, where he became minister of the Unitarian churches of Aberdare and Mountain Ash nearby. Bottomley came out of his service in the First World War disillusioned but not an absolute pacifist. He was not enamored with the anti-religious and undemocratic nature of Communism. He championed workers' rights but not absolutely — he spoke against the miners ' strike of 1949. James had not only served in that conflict but, due to his longstanding antipathy to Fascism, served also in WWII as instructor with rank of company commander in the Welsh Regiment, followed by an RAF regiment (5358 Airfield Company) as squadron leader in China. He then served as Provost Marshal at Kowloon, accompanied by his wife, in the years 1945–1946. He was not as religious as Bottomley, being more humanist, perhaps agnostic. Melbourne church. James was invited by Bottomley to take the position of assistant minister of the Melbourne church. He arrived by the "Orion" with his  wife and four children on 3 July 1947. He became publicly involved in freedom of speech and anti-war movements (see below)), generally perceived as Communist-inspired. Though he was at pains to point his participation was out of a personal conviction and not on behalf of his congregation, it drew unwelcome attention to the church, which in 1949 split along political lines. James conducted "The Unitarian Half-hour" from 1947 or earlier to 1964. In 1952 James invited Stephen Fritchman, pacifist and minister of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles to address the congregation on the occasion of  its 100th anniversary service. He was also to have toured other States, sponsored by the Australian churches, but his application for a passport was refused by the US State Department. With the smaller congregation and departure of its more generous supporters, maintenance of the old building in Cathedral Place became insupportable, and in 1964 James's congregation built the Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church at 110 Grey Street, East Melbourne, opposite Mercy Hospital. James left the ministry in 1969 and was succeeded in 1972 by Terrence Stokes, previously known for his involvement with the Victorian Society of Organists. Activist. Perhaps  his first foray into public activism was in 1949, when he was one of 23 clergy who signed a public letter of protest against the proposal of a large section of city councillors to ban one John Rodgers, director of Australia-Soviet House, from holding a meeting in the Melbourne Town Hall, and efforts by the RSL to disrupt such events. The Democratic Rights Council was founded in Sydney, 1935, by the Labour Council, which had come under attack as a pro-communist body. James was a member when he and a handful of others, in September 1949 following a  successful peace rally, founded the Australian Peace Council (APC). Charter members included Doris Blackburn MHR, Leonard Mann, Frank Dalby Davison, Eleanor Dark, William Hatfield, Canon W. G. Thomas (secretary of Anglican Board of Missions), Jessie Street, Dr. Eric Dark, Dr. R. C. Traill, F. J. Waters (President of the Queensland Legion of Ex-Servicemen), J. W. Legge M.Sc, of Melbourne University. A major preoccupation of the Australian Government in 1950 was the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, which would make the Australian Communist Party, and party membership, illegal. In June James spoke against the Bill and he, the Methodist Rev. F.  J. Hartley, and the Presbyterian Rev. A. M. Dickie, all signatories to the Town Hall letter, founded the Democratic Rights Council in response. Dubbed the "peace parsons", they had also been involved in the formation of the APC. James was elected secretary of the organization, which despite being derided as Communist fellow-travellers, by June 1950 had 107,000 members. James's other activities include: In none of these events was he supported by the Unitarian church. Other interests. James was an expert woodworker, specialising in fine carpentry, carving and wood turning He had his own workshop where he build radio  and electronic equipment and inculcated the ideals of fine craftsmanship in his son William, later a maker of precision optical instruments for astronomy. Family. James married Ida Rose Relleen (2 July 1903 – 5 July 1958) in Ilminster. Later address was 124 Glenfern Road, Lysterfield Postscript. Hartley and Dickie were awarded the 1965 Joliot-Curie gold medal by the World Peace Council. The reference does not mention James.