Elsie Locke

She was the daughter of William John Allerton Farrelly (1878–1945) and Ellen Electa Farrelly (née Bryan; 1874–1936).

Both of Locke's parents were born in New Zealand, and while only educated to primary level (see ), they were both progressive thinkers.

William's intelligence was recognised early at school, and he strongly encouraged education for his children, himself being unable to continue his education past Standard Six.

Meanwhile, Ellen had been a teenager during the New Zealand women's suffrage movement, and passed on the idea of gender equality to her daughters, as well as teaching them the value of being independent.

Elsie grew up in Waiuku, a small town south of Auckland, where she developed a repugnance towards war at an early age.

As a young girl, she witnessed the injuries of World War I veterans first hand — "...when visiting Warkworth I was taken to see a man whose face had been half shot away and who never went off his farm".

Though she left Waiuku at a young age, she retained strong ties to the town into her old age, and often returned.

Unusually for a Pākehā of her generation, she developed a close relationship with the local iwi in Waiuku, Ngāti Te Ata, and her later research proved vital to their Treaty of Waitangi claim.

Elsie Violet Locke (née Farrelly; 17 August 1912 – 8 April 2001) was a New Zealand communist writer, historian, and leading activist in the feminism and peace movements.

Locke was the youngest of six children, born Elsie Violet Farrelly in Hamilton, New Zealand on 17 August 1912.

While few working class children, particularly girls, went to high school when Locke was young, she continued on to Waiuku District High School, a student there from 1925 to 1929.

Locke was the only member of her family to complete high school, and the only student in her class for her final two years of schooling.

Locke wanted to be a writer, rather than a teacher or nurse, the conventional careers for literate women of her generation.

She won a scholarship to study at the University of Auckland, where she became known as "Little Farrelly".

She started in 1930, at the beginning of the Depression, and Locke struggled for income – she lived off a mixture of scholarships and part-time jobs, such as working at the Parnell Public Library.

She became involved in printing the early literary magazine, Phoenix, and though she did not write for the magazine, her flat was a central base for all those involved.

In 1932 during her time at the university, Locke had an experience that would become a major influence on her future political ideology and activism, according to her daughter, Maire Leadbeater.

This "watershed experience" was the sight of 10,000 unemployed men marching down Queen Street, which according to Leadbeater instilled in Locke an ambition "to be one with all who struggled and all who were oppressed".

Locke gained an increasing interest in socialism during her studies, and attended meetings of Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Fabian Society.

In 1932 she organised a Working Women's Convention, and the following year she graduated university with a BA, and joined the Communist Party.

Locke joined the Communist Party in 1933, and was a leading party activist, particularly in the 1930s.

After graduating university in 1933, Locke moved to Wellington, where she became involved in leading the local branch of the Communist Party.

In 1935 Locke married her first husband, Frederick Engels ("Fred") Freeman, a fellow Communist Party member, and became Elsie Freeman.

In 1937 Elsie divorced Fred – considered a "shameful disgrace" at the time, and in 1938 her first son, Don, was born.

She had sole custody of Don, at a time when being a solo mother was particularly difficult.

In November 1941 she married her second husband, John Gibson ("Jack") Locke (b. 1908), with whom she stayed until his death in 1996.

Jack, a meat-worker who had immigrated to New Zealand from England at 19, was a leading member of the Communist Party, and the couple had met at the party's meetings.

Jack was soon posted in Christchurch by the Communist Party, and in 1944 they moved into 392 Oxford Terrace, a "tiny gingerbread cottage" with an outside toilet, on the banks of the Avon River.

Elsie loved the country, and hated cities – she later said that she did not want to move to Christchurch but did so for Jack.

However, the couple lived in the cottage until their deaths.

Elsie had three more children with Jack – Keith, Maire, and Alison.

She brought her four children up to appreciate everything artistic, and love the outdoors.

The family often took tramping trips, and scrimped to send Maire to ballet lessons.

Elsie continued to attend many cultural events with Maire into her old age.

Both Jack and Elsie were lifelong atheists.

Locke wrote of her early life and education in her 1981 autobiography, Student at the Gates, which discusses the influences which shaped her socialist philosophies, and some of New Zealand's dominant political and literary personalities of the 1920s and 1930s.

Probably best known for her children's literature, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature said that she "made a remarkable contribution to New Zealand society", for which the University of Canterbury awarded her an honorary D.Litt. in 1987.

She was married to Jack Locke, a leading member of the Communist Party.

Keith Locke, Elsie's son, became a Green Party MP, in parliament from 1999 to 2011, and her daughter Maire, now called Maire Leadbeater, was councillor in the Auckland City Council and the Auckland Regional Council.

Both have been long-time peace and anti-nuclear activists.