Michael Jerome (Mick) Young (1936–1996)

Michael Jerome Young (1936–1996), shearer, trade unionist, and politician, was born on 9 October 1936 in Sydney, sixth of eight children of Ray Barnard Young, commercial traveller, and his wife, Kathleen Bridget, née Shanahan, both New South Wales-born and of Irish Catholic descent. Mick attended Marist Brothers’ College, Mosman, leaving at the age of fifteen to become a trainee wool classer. He went to western New South Wales to gain practical experience and, with his garrulous personality and sense of workplace solidarity, fitted readily into the tough culture of the woolshed. By early 1954 he had turned to shearing. During the bitter strikes of the 1950s he aligned himself with the labour movement, becoming at the age of twenty secretary of the Broken Hill Pastoral Workers’ Committee...