Jim Cairns - Early Days

Early Days

James Ford Cairns was born in Carlton, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne, the son of a clerk. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Sunbury. His father went to the First World War as a lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Forces, but became disillusioned with the war and lost his respect for Britain. He did not return to Australia. Following the war he essentially deserted his family, and he travelled to Africa where he committed suicide after a stay of six or seven years.

Cairns attended Sunbury State School and later Northcote High School, where he completed his Leaving Certificate. Though life during the Depression was difficult with his mother having to work to provide for the family, and with himself having to make a three-hour daily commute by train, he was a good student, making his name at Northcote High School due to entering the school's broad jump championship and winning it easily with a jump of twenty feet and two inches, his competitors producing jumps of sixteen to seventeen feet.

In 1933 Cairns joined the Police Force in order to have more time for his interest in athletics. He soon became a detective and gained notoriety working in a special surveillance team known as "the dogs" shadowing squad wherein he was involved in a number of dramatic arrests. While working he studied at night and completed an economics degree at the University of Melbourne. He was the first Victorian policeman to hold a tertiary degree. In 1939 he married Gwen Robb (died 2000), whose two sons he adopted.

In 1944, Cairns left the Police and was employed, successively as a tutor and lecturer in the Army and a senior lecturer in economic history, at the University of Melbourne. He was a knowledgeable economist and was considered a convinced socialist. In 1946 he applied to join the Communist Party, but was rejected. He joined the Labor Party and became active in its left wing. The Victorian Labor Party was at this time controlled by the Catholic right-wing forces known as the "Groupers", associated with B. A. Santamaria, and Cairns was a leading opponent of this group.

In 1955, when the federal Labor leader, Dr. H. V. Evatt, attacked the Groupers and brought on a major split in the Labor Party, Cairns sided with Evatt. At the 1955 election, he stood for the House of Representatives for the working-class seat of Yarra, held by the leading Grouper, Stan Keon. In what Cairns has been quoted as saying was "... the most active and intense and vigorous election campaign that's ever been run in Australia." Cairns was elected and held Yarra until 1969, when it was abolished at a redistribution. He then shifted to Lalor in Melbourne's western suburbs.