Les Tanner

Les Tanner (15 June 1927 – 23 July 2001) was an Australian cartoonist and journalist.

Les Tanner was born in Sydney and began his career at The Daily Telegraph in 1942, as a printer's devil. Soon transferred to the press artists room, he worked under the mentorship of Senior Artist Frank Broadhurst and William Edwin Pidgeon, (aka WEP) a three-time Archibald Prize winner, and later Illustrator Tommy Hughes. At eighteen, Tanner was sent to Japan by the editor Brian Penton to work at BCON – the Occupation Force Newspaper – as a cartoonist and journalist. Pidgeon had introduced him to the works of Hokusai and other ukiyo-e artists, including Utamaro; and much of Tanner's spare time and staff sergeant's pay was spent buying as many woodblock prints as he could whilst there. It was in Japan, that Les Tanner also met his lifelong friend and fellow artist, Gus McLaren, when he was sent to interview him about his role in teaching art to the Japanese in Osaka.

On his return to Australia, Tanner joined the A.M. Magazine as an illustrator before returning to The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, where he had his first assignment as a political cartoonist. His popularity grew and he was soon cartooning a week in review page each week, as well as being daily cartoonist. He later became Art Director at The Bulletin. When he drew a controversial cartoon of Sir Henry Bolte, then premier of Victoria, to illustrate Editor Peter Coleman's article against capital punishment, Sir Frank Packer pulped the entire edition of the magazine. Packer had not thought about the airmail delivery of this edition to Melbourne, where the following morning it appeared on the news stands at Flinders Street. Nor had he thought about subscription copies, so that many regular readers received the magazine despite his best efforts. Packer went on to ban a BBC television program on capital punishment due to air on GTV-9 – one of Packer's own television stations on 31 January 1967. But the cartoon and editorial achieved even greater prominence in the public domain when ABC television ran a story on it and the banned Channel 9 program that night, under the banner of censorship of the press, much to the glee of both Tanner and Coleman.[1] Throughout the fifties and sixties, Tanner was one of the few cartoonists of the era to regularly highlight the plight of the first Australians in Australia. As an advocate for social justice in all its forms, Tanner enjoyed challenging racism head on because it so offended him. He was never afraid to challenge the inequities of society and felt a moral obligation as a commentator to highlight them.

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