Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill (born 1945) is an Australian radical historian and journalist with background as a teacher, and farmhand, and has variously worked for the trade union movement as a rank and file activist, delegate and publicist.

Biography

Rowan Cahill was educated in state schools, his secondary schooling taking place at Normanhurst Boys' High School (NSW). He is a graduate of Sydney University, the University of New England, and Wollongong University.

During the Vietnam War he was a conscientious objector, and was prominent in the anti-war, student protest, and New Left movements of the period, primarily as a publicist and communicator. Formative journalistic influences during the 1960s were gained on the Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit under the editorships of Hall Greenland and Keith Windschuttle.

In 1967 Cahill was a founder of the radical and innovative Sydney Free University (1967–1972); between 1969–1973, he was a member of the editorial board of Australian Left Review (ALR), a bi-monthly journal of theory and practice published by the Communist Party of Australia. During this period, ALR had a pioneering role in introducing the work of Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) to Australian intellectual and political audiences. Beginning in 1967, Cahill was placed under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).