William Winspear, socialist and journalist, was the son of John Winspear, coalminer, and his wife Elizabeth, née Robson. Having migrated to New South Wales about 1874, Winspear worked in the New Lambton coalmines where he developed radical ideas. A small inheritance enabled him to stop working as a miner and on 12 March 1887, with his wife Alice's help, he published the first issue of the Radical from his home at Hamilton, near Newcastle; in August it became the mouthpiece of the Australian Socialist League. Renamed the Australian Radical in March 1888, the paper ceased publication in April 1890 after Winspear had differences with the League because of its growing support for state socialism.
In the depressed 1890s Winspear sold his printing plant and moved his family to Sydney but he was unable to support them. According to contemporary newspapers, he was imprisoned for house-breaking in a desperate attempt to provide food. He eventually found work as a clerk and in 1910 published Poems. Full-time treasurer of the Australian Socialist Party (1912-16), he often edited its newspaper, the International Socialist, to which he frequently contributed poetry, articles and 'socialist fables', sometimes as 'W.R.W.' In 1914 he analysed the inadequacies of recent Labor governments in his lengthy pamphlet, Economic Warfare.
According to his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Winspear is 'best known for a poem he did not write, 'The Blood Vote', which became famous as anti-conscription propaganda. It was written by E. J. Dempsey, a leader-writer on the pro-conscription Evening News, who asked Winspear to sign the poem.' After the war Winspear worked for the Torch, the local newspaper at Bankstown. He remained apart from all political parties, but in 1939 wrote and published a three-volume pamphlet, Essays and Rhymes of the System, which showed that he had retained libertarian socialist convictions.
