Uren was born on May 25, 1921 in Balmain to Tom Uren and his wife, formerly Agnes Miller.  After the family moved to Harbord when he was five, Tom walked barefoot to  primary school, before being made to wear shoes to Manly Intermediate High. He left school during the Depression aged 13, because his father, a former jockey and jack-of-all-trades, was out of work. Young Tom helped classify rabbit and kangaroo skins, sold newspapers and caddied on golf courses. He became a surf lifesaver and rugby league forward and learnt to box at Jack Dunleavy's gymnasium.

War days

Uren, pictured far left with fellow members of the 2/1st Heavy Battery in 1941, (Courtesy:Australian War Memorial P10957_002) had applied to join the army in May 1939 and was accepted soon after World War II broke out in September, but took leave to fight for the Australian heavyweight title in 1940, aged 19. He had been suffering from the flu and although he knocked Billy Britt down in the sixth round, he was beaten in the seventh.

Uren went to Darwin, then to Timor in December 1941. Uren was among those forced to surrender the next year. The prisoners were taken early in 1943 to Singapore, from where Uren was loaded into a railway  truck which ended up at Konyu River camp, where the surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Edward "Weary" Dunlop was commanding officer of the men slaving to build the Burma-Thailand railway for the Japanese.

Uren moved later to the Hintok camps and in 1944  was transported to work in a copper smelting plant at Saganoseki, Japan, then at lead smelting works at Omuta. Finding his Japanese fellow workers comradely, he realised then that it wasn't the Japanese he hated, but militarism.

Entree to politics

After the war Uren worked at the Port Kembla steelworks and met Patricia Palmer; her brother had shown him her photograph when they were prisoners. They married in 1947.

Uren continued to box and went to England, with mixed success; his wartime malaria had left effects. He came home, worked as a labourer, then as a trainee executive at Woolworths. He joined the Labor Party in 1951 on his way to the funeral of Ben Chifley, the former Labor Prime Minister.

Living in Guildford, he won the western Sydney seat of Reid in 1958. When he retired from Parliament in 1990, he had been father of the House for eight years.

Uren was a leading figure in the Australian anti-war movement. In 1960, he revisited Japan as part of a peace initiative. He urged in 1968 that trade with Asia be expanded: "Trade and goodwill are our frontline of defence."

He was the first Labor MP to question support for US intervention in Vietnam, in August 1962. 

Whitlam years

Uren was the Labor Party's first environment spokesman in the Federal Parliament, in 1969. He believed in revolutionary change, but understood the nature of struggle and the fact that the people had to be convinced. Although he remained on Labor's left, his idea of revolution was not necessarily of right or left but a battle over the environment and human rights. He said in 1994: "I want to help build an environmentally sensitive, beautiful and more tolerant world."

As Minister for Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam government, Uren helped stop the destruction of inner-city suburbs, cut the sewerage backlog and established the Australian Heritage Commission.  Uren promoted the restoration and re-use of derelict inner city areas such as the Glebe Estate and Woolloomooloo. Uren was deputy Labor leader from 1976-'77. He is pictured with Labor leader Gough Whitlam.

Uren, pictured second from left above with Whitlam, John Kerr, Kep Enderby and Jim Cairns, succeeded Cairns as leader of the ALP Left. He held relatively junior ministries in the Hawke government years and became Father of the House of Representatives in 1984.

After politics

Uren retired from Parliament in 1990. He continued to campaign for fairer pensions for Australians who were prisoners of war under the Japanese and the protection of Sydney Harbour and its foreshores. He opposed Australia's participation in Iraq and Afghanistan  conficts.

Uren was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the 2013 Australia Day Honours.

With Tony Stephens