Don Syme

Dominic Bernard Syme (28 October 1921 – 15 April 2013) was an Australian local politician, activist and prominent communist in New South Wales.

He was born in Redfern to James Syme and Annie Sheriff. He grew up in Kogarah and attended the Marist Brothers school, before leaving at age 14 to work as an apprentice bricklayer in order to help his family during the Depression years.

In 1940 he bought a small poultry farm at Moorebank, 27 kilometers southwest of Sydney, and became secretary of the Australian Poultry Farmers' Association. He served in Papua New Guinea during World War II, but he contracted malaria and was discharged on medical grounds in 1943. and adopted her three children by a previous marriage, Robyn, Wendy and Lynette "Lyn" Syme.

Don and Kathleen were both prominent communists in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Syme became an active opponent of the Vietnam War as an unjust invasion. He was also a feminist and conservationist who supported aboriginal land rights, and in common with the CPA he opposed the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In 1980 he was elected to Liverpool City Council, where he served for fifteen years. He was survived by Kathleen's daughters Wendy, Robyn and Lyn, as well as their daughters Nell and Nolene, and by nine grandchildren.