Extract from JCPML00524
Interviewer: Ron Davidson

RD Do you remember whether you ever read the Worker, or your father?

LEWINGTON: The Worker paper?

RD The Westralian Worker that Curtin edited?

LEWINGTON: Yes I remember that as if it was yesterday. I think it might have been the Liberals, they reckoned it was a Communist paper. We used to get them, we used to get those papers and always read
them. My father, he wasn't too bad considering he only had three months' schooling. If he needed any help whatsoever... see I'd do his income tax papers for him even with his council mates - I had a knack
those days which I haven't got now.

RD Did you read the paper to him or could he?

LEWINGTON: He could read it a bit himself and what he couldn't understand he would ask me, you see.

RD What sorts of things would he ask you?

LEWINGTON: Well, see, it was a Labor paper. It was a working paper - all the dealings of running the country I suppose, and politics to a certain extent. You know rules and regulations for workers and factories and that type of thing. What he couldn't find out well I would explain it to him. No, my old man was a very staunch ALP man all the way through. He worked his heart out for it.

JCPML. Records of the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. Interview of Len Lewington, 16 June 2000. JCPML00524

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