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25

        About the middle of the year there were rumours of a snap election, to be called by Wran well ahead of schedule.

        No candidate had yet been preselected for the A.L.P. in Manly.   Our previous candidate, Marc Gumbert, was approached to run again but declined.   The Party Head Office then began to put pressure on the local Electorate Council to come up with a name urgently.

        The secretary of the Manly State Electorate Council of the Australian Labor Party was Peter Randall, a unique character and a tireless worker for the party.   His stocky figure was familiar to all sides of politics in Manly.   Peering at the world through thick glasses, he overcame a stammer to make his opinions known on a wide range of issues.   Despite being a right wing Catholic he had worked hard campaigning for Marc Gumbert, an avowed Marxist.

        His  bete  noire  was Alf Thorpe, the left wing President of the SEC.   Thorpe had worked as a child in an English coal mine, and had taken part in the great strike there in the depression.   He had never forgotten what he had seen then.   He had migrated before the War, served in the Air Force, and joined the Commonwealth Public Service.   Now in his seventies, Alf was spending his retirement working for socialism, and fighting Randall, whom he saw as a stooge of the right wing - controlled ALP head office.   Our meetings were often  

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