Helen Palmer (publisher)
| Helen Palmer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Helen Gwynneth Palmer May 9, 1917 Kew, Victoria, Australia |
| Died | 6 March 1979 (aged 61) North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Cause of death | Cancer |
| Occupation | Schoolteacher, publisher |
| Website | adb |
Helen Palmer (Helen Gwynneth Palmer) (1917–1979) was a prominent Australian socialist publisher after the Khrushchev Secret Speech of 1956 and the USSR's invasion of Hungary of the same year, which caused many leftists to leave the Communist Party of Australia.
She was responsible for the financial and editorial publication of Outlook, a non-dogmatic magazine of Australian socialism. Palmer's significance is her cultivation of an inclusive and tolerant left intellectual network in Sydney and Australia more broadly, which contributed strongly to the emergence of the Australian new left of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Palmer was additionally an author, educator, servicewoman, trade unionist and communist activist.
Contributors to Outlook included the writer Stephen Murray-Smith and the historian Ian Turner, who wrote an article, "The Long Goodbye" for the final issue. "How to review over 13 years, 82 issues, of Outlook?" his article began. "For 13 years, Outlook has been a significant element in the vanguard, standing on the ground of socialist humanism; is there anything that can take its place," he ended.
Palmer was the daughter of Vance and Nettie Palmer, prominent Australian intellectuals. During her undergraduate career at university Palmer was a newspaper editor. After military service during WWII in an education unit, Palmer took to secondary teaching. Facing difficulty after publishing on the People's Republic of China in 1953, Palmer eventually secured continuing if extremely tenuous casual employment in secondary education in Sydney.
A member of the Australian Communist Party, Palmer was expelled after her involvement in circulating the Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev, a cause for political expulsion within Australia, where some of the Communist Party leaders claimed the speech was a CIA forgery.
As a result of her expulsion, and of that of many of her immediate comrades, Palmer began publishing Outlook, which continued from 1957 to 1970, and was notable for its attention to indigenous issues: at that time particularly those of Australian Aborigines and Papuans in Australia's protectorate.
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