Douglas Darby

Evelyn Douglas (Doug) Darby MP (24 September 1910 – 22 August 1985) was an Australian politician, elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. His efforts in denouncing socialism, attacking the labour movement, breaking strikes, organising anti-Soviet Eastern European émigrés, supporting Australia's military commitment to the Vietnam War, and championing non-communist Taiwan, established Darby's reputation as a powerful right-wing ideologue.

Darby was born in Lowestoft, England, and remained proud to be British throughout his life. He trained at Portsmouth Teachers College before taking a job as steward and galley hand on a P&O liner bound for Australia. When Europe went to war in 1939, Darby attempted to enlist in the Second Australian Imperial Force but was rejected because of myopia. Instead, having studied at the University of Sydney, he was seconded from primary teaching to the Youth Section of the Federal Department of Labour and Industry, to work as a vocational officer.

Darby went on to found the British Orphans' Adoption Society (BOAS) which "sought to bring British war orphans to Australia for legal adoption." From June 1940 to January 1941, the Society sent 2,000 pounds in weight of warm clothing to England. Dame Enid Lyons, the widow of former Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, Professor F.A. Bland, Darby's economics professor, and Sir Arthur Rickard, owner of Sydney's largest real estate company, became BOAS patrons. Darby married fellow teacher Esme Jean McKenzie in 1941 and moved to the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly in 1951, before purchasing a house in nearby Balgowlah in 1953 where he spent the rest of his life. Douglas and Esme had two sons and four daughters.

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