A Bob Gould archive has been set up on Marxists Internet Archive and a start has been made on making Bob’s writing available there.
Ozleft will continue to host Bob’s writing, but MIA is a better organised site that will make it easier to browse his archive and find works.
House of Representatives Adjournment Debate – Chamber 14th June 2011
Mr Speaker, Bob Gould was a unique individual. He was born into a socialist family in 1937 and died, where he would have preferred to die, in his Newtown bookshop on May 22nd 2011.
TRIBUTE BY ANDREW LEIGH, MP
Bob Gould, House of Representatives, 30 May 2011
I rise to pay tribute to Newtown bookseller Bob Gould, who passed away on 22 May 2011 aged 74. Bob was part of the progressive left in Australia for the better part of the post-war era. From the Vietnam War to asylum seekers, he has marched and argued for what he believed in. As former New South Wales MLC Meredith Burgmann noted, “He was involved in most of the great political protest movements of the time.”
Obituary to Bob Gould, 1937-2011
Hall Greenland. June 2, 2011 , Sydney Morning Herald
Founder of the anti-Vietnam War movement in Australia. Lifelong member of the Labor Party and Trotskyist. Bookseller. Bibliophile. Historian. Union agitator. Anti-censorship battler. Bohemian. Irish Catholic. Polemicist.
Eulogy for Bob Gould
By Hall Greenland
Bob Gould was my old comrade and sparring partner. My relationship with him fell into three periods … the 60s which I will return to in a moment … but then in the 70s and 80s we went our separate ways looking for paths to or beyond what Bob liked to call the socialist project to which he devoted his life … and then there was a growing reconciliation in the late 90s when Bob’s wisdom flowered and his historical writing took off and I once again learned to listen and take on board the words of a master.
Bugden’s Bookshop in King’s Cross marks the passing of Bob Gould.
(This is the speech delivered by John Percy, national secretary of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and editor of its paper Direct Action, to the funeral of Bob Gould in Sydney, May 26, 2011. Other speakers were: Mairi Petersen; Janet Bonser; Hall Greenland; Jenny Haines; Nick Martin; Meredith Burgmann; Ian Rintoul; Phil Sandford; Natalie Gould. The service finished with the singing of the International, led by an Alistair Hulett recording.)
BOB’S FUNERAL – 26.5.11
Thank you all for coming today. Bob would have been really pleased to see friends and foes, Labor, Green and Far Left supporters all in the same room and he would have been trying to figure in his head how it could all be turned in to a political force and not just a gathering at his funeral. One thing he wanted to see in his lifetime was a resurgence of the Left and he could only see it ever happening through supporters of all the parties and groups putting aside their differences and working on the commonalities.
On May 27, John Robertson, parliamentary leader of the NSW Labor Party, paid tribute to Bob Gould in state parliament. The Hansard record follows.
Bob Gould, 1937-2011
By Ed Lewis
Bob Gould’s funeral, like his life, promised to be interesting, and it didn’t disappoint. About 500 people crowded into the Palm Chapel at Macquarie Park, North Ryde, to hear nine speakers, with Mairi Petersen, Bob’s former wife, making some introductory remarks and running the ceremony.
Bob Gould 1937-2011
By Ed Lewis
The public intellectual
Bob Gould considered himself, justifiably, a public intellectual. He was proud of his writing, which was an extension of his lifelong left-wing political agitation.
Bob Gould, 1937-2011
By Phil Sandford
Bob Gould dedicated his life to defending the rights of the working class and the fight for a socialist society and his passing is a blow to the labour movement.
By Ed Lewis
Bob Gould died yesterday (May 22), aged 74. He had been ill for some time and died as a result of a fall.
Hall Greenland
Bob Gould turned 70 last month and at the celebration in my backyard in Leichhardt I had a few words to say to mark the event. Bob asked me to write up my remarks “in a less hyperbolic form” than they were delivered – I had situated him (justifiably and accurately) in the political tradition of mass democratic politics that has its roots in the French revolution and the British labour movement of the 19th century – so here goes, soberly.
This is a remarkable assembly – almost every tendency in the left, including the Labor Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Greens, is here today. And why not? Bob has made a contribution to the fortunes and evolution of each and every one of them.
Samia Hossain profiles the man who knows too much
Somewhere along my navigation through Gould’s Book Arcade, I pick up a copy of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The idea is, of course, along with the book I would be purchasing some cultural credibility in the eyes of the infamous and rather prickly-at-first man behind the counter: Bob Gould.
