Jack Miles

Who was Jack Miles?

John Bramwell "Jack" Miles, also known as J.B.M., was a Scottish-born Australian stonemason and communist leader.

Miles was born at Wilton, Roxburghshire, Scotland, to journeyman mason William Miles and Louisa, née Wiggins. He was educated at Edinburgh and apprenticed to a stonemason in northern England. He was employed at Newcastle and then Consett in Durham, where he joined the Independent Labour Party. On 9 October 1911 he married Elizabeth Jane Black at Lanchester; the couple emigrated to Queensland and arrived in Brisbane on the Orama on 31 March 1913.

Miles was recruited to the Queensland Socialist League in 1918 and was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1920. Employed as a meatworker from 1920 to 1923 he represented the Australian Meat Industry Employees' Union on the Trades and Labor Council before returning to stonemasonry and representing the United Operative Stonemasons' Society of Queensland. In the late 1920s, having risen to prominence in the CPA, he and Lance Sharkey won control on a platform of strong opposition to the Australian Labor Party's "social fascist" policies. Miles disliked middle-class communist converts, condemning Fred Paterson and John Anderson.