Frank Hardy

Because of his experiences during the Depression, Hardy joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1939. Hardy stood unsuccessfully twice as a CPA candidate for public office: in 1953 as a Senate candidate for Victoria, and in 1955 for the seat of Mackellar (NSW) in the House of Representatives.

Hardy also stood unsuccessfully for the National Committee of the CPA in 1955 and again in 1967.

According to Pauline Armstrong, Hardy enlisted in the Australian armed forces on 10 May 1943.[1][2] He was later posted to Mataranka in the Northern Territory which was under "perpetual anticipation" of attack from the Japanese.[1] Initially editing and writing a unit newspaper for the Australian army, he was employed as an artist for the army journal, Salt. Later his short stories "A Stranger in the Camp" and "The Man from Clinkapella" won competitions, and his work was accepted by Coast to Coast and The Guardian. Many of his early stories were written under the pseudonym Ross Franklyn.

"Vincent, May 1968" (Vincent Lingiari, Gurindji man, leader of the Wave Hill strike); charcoal on paper, by Frank Hardy, drawn while researching his book, The Unlucky Australians.

He continued to work in journalism for most of his life. Although he opposed the foundation of the Australian Society of Authors for political reasons in 1963, he later joined the Society and served on its Management Committee. He played an active role in assisting the Gurindji people in the Gurindji strike in the mid to late 1960s.[5] The documentary film The Unlucky Australians, which featured Frank Hardy and the Gurindji people, was made by director and producer John Goldschmidt for Associated Television (ATV) and transmitted on the ITV network in the UK.

His most famous work, Power Without Glory, was initially published in 1950 by Hardy himself, with the assistance of other members of the Communist Party. The novel is a fictionalised version of the life of a Melbourne businessman, John Wren, and is set largely in the fictitious Melbourne suburb of Carringbush (based on the actual suburb Collingwood).

In 1950 Hardy was arrested for criminal libel and had to defend Power Without Glory in a celebrated case shortly after its publication. Prosecutors alleged that Power Without Glory criminally libelled John Wren's wife by implying that she had engaged in an extramarital affair. Hardy was acquitted and it was the last criminal libel case launched in Victoria; all subsequent libel cases have been civil. Hardy detailed the case in his book The Hard Way.

Power Without Glory was filmed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 1976 as a 26-episode television series adapted by Howard Griffiths and Cliff Green.

In 1968 Hardy published The Unlucky Australians, with a foreword by Donald Horne and contributions by Vincent Lingiari, Aboriginal Union organiser Daniel Dexter, actor Robert Tudawali and others, telling the story of the Gurindji people based on personal narratives, and the Gurindji Strike.[6]

Hardy also wrote plays, including Who was Henry Larsen (first performed 1984) and Faces in the Street (first performed 1988, published 1990), which were both based on Henry Lawson.

Hardy was a member of the Realist Writers Group, which he represented in 1951 at the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin.

• Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, Jenny Hocking (South Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7344-0836-6)
• Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment, edited by Paul Adams & Christopher Lee (North Carlton, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003, ISBN 0-9580-7941-2)
• Frank Hardy and the Making of Power without Glory, Pauline Armstrong (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-522-84888-5)
• The Stranger From Melbourne: Frank Hardy – A Literary Biography 1944 – 1975, Paul Adams (University of Western Australia Press, 1999, ISBN 1-876268-23-9)