Freda Brown

Who was Freda Brown?

Freda Yetta Brown, born Freda Yetta Lewis in Sydney, was an Australian political activist who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later the Socialist Party. She married Bill Brown, a leading Australian Communist, in 1943. She is the only Australian woman to have been awarded a Lenin Peace Prize, which she received in 1977-78. Her daughter, Lee Rhiannon, is an Australian Greens member of the Australian Senate and previously a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Freda Brown joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1936, at a time when the CPA was firmly loyal to the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. She worked in her father’s signwriting business, before becoming a journalist working for the Radio Times, and then later for various Communist-affiliated trade union papers.

After the Second World War, Freda Brown joined the New Housewives Association, later known as Union of Australian Women, a Communist front, and ultimately became its president. She was instrumental in the United Nations' celebration of International Women’s Year in 1975.