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Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been in a steady decline since its peak in 1945. Like most communist parties in the West, the party was heavily involved in the labour movement and the trade unions. Its membership, popularity and influence grew significantly during most of the interwar period before reaching its climax in 1945, where the party achieved a membership of slightly above 22,000 members. At its peak it was the largest communist party in the Anglophone countries on a population basis, and held industrial strength greater than the parties of "India, Latin America, and most of Western Europe".
Although the party did not achieve a federal MP, Fred Paterson was elected to the Parliament of Queensland (for Bowen) at the 1944 state election. He won re-election in 1947 before the seat was abolished. The party also held office in over a dozen local government areas across New South Wales and Queensland.
After nineteen years of activity, the CPA was formally banned on 15 June 1940 under the relatively new Menzies government (1939–1941). The party was banned under the National Security (Subversive Associations) Regulations 1940. Two-and-a-half years later, the party was again a lawful organisation. When the party contested the federal election eight months later, it received its biggest vote total. Getting a total of 81,816 votes (1.93–2.00%), the party received over 20,000 in Victoria and Queensland, and over 19,000 in New South Wales. It was the party's biggest vote total since the 1934 federal election. However, by the late 1960s the party fell into single digit numbers before a brief spike in the mid 1970s. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the party was effectively stagnant and was dissolved in 1989. To the present, the party is the fourth-oldest political party in Australian political history since Federation, lasting for 70 years, 122 days.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was founded at the Australian Socialist Party Hall in Sydney on 30 October 1920 socialists inspired by reports of the Russian Revolution. The estimates for attendees at the founding ranges from below thirteen (Alistair Davidson) to twenty-six (Stuart Macintyre). Sixty invitations were issued. Groups included the Australian Socialist Party (ASP), some members from the Victorian Socialist Party (although the party itself did not join), as well as a variety of militant trade unionists. Among the party's founders were prominent Sydney trade unionists, Jock Garden, Tom Walsh, and William Paisley Earsman, and suffragettes and anti-conscriptionists including Adela Pankhurst (daughter of the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst), Christian Jollie Smith and Katharine Susannah Prichard.
Most of the then illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) joined, but the IWW soon left the Communist Party, with its original members, over disagreements with the direction of the Soviet Union and Bolshevism. In its early years, mainly through Garden's efforts, the party achieved some influence in the trade union movement in New South Wales, but by the mid-1920s it had dwindled to an insignificant group.
A visits to the 1924 New Zealand conference by CPA executive members Hetty and Hector Ross got the (also small) Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) agreeing to temporary affiliation with the CPA, and were followed by visits in 1925 by Harry Quaife, and by Norman Jeffery a bow-tie wearing former "Wobbly" (IWW member).
Garden and other communists were expelled from the Labor Party (ALP) in 1924. The CPA ran candidates including Garden (for Sydney) at the 1925 New South Wales state election in working-class seats against the ALP but was decisively defeated. This prompted Garden to leave the party in 1926 and return to the Labor Party. The leadership of the party went to Jack Kavanagh, an experienced Canadian communist activist who had moved to Australia in 1925, and Esmonde Higgins, a talented Melbourne journalist who was the nephew of then-High Court Justice, H. B. Higgins.
In 1929 the party leadership fell into disfavour with the Communist International (Comintern), which under orders from Joseph Stalin had taken a turn to radical revolutionary rhetoric (the so-called "Third Period"). After allowing party member Bert Moxon in Queensland to organise Communist candidates for the 1929 Queensland state election, the CPA leadership refused to do the same for the 1929 Australian federal election and instead supported the ALP, leading the Comintern to denounce the party's relationship to the ALP as 'opportunist'. In December 1929, a new party leadership including Moxon, Jack Miles, Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon was elected in response to these denunciations, and began a period of strict centralisation and obedience to Moscow. Kavanagh was expelled in 1930 and Higgins resigned, and an emissary of the Comintern, the American communist Harry M. Wicks, was sent to correct the party's perceived errors. Though Moxon was removed as national secretary by the end of 1930 and later expelled from the party's central committee entirely, Miles and then Sharkey would lead the party until 1965.
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Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been in a steady decline since its peak in 1945. Like most communist parties in the West, the party was heavily involved in the labour movement and the trade unions. Its membership, popularity and influence grew significantly during most of the interwar period before reaching its climax in 1945, where the party achieved a membership of slightly above 22,000 members. At its peak it was the largest communist party in the Anglophone countries on a population basis, and held industrial strength greater than the parties of "India, Latin America, and most of Western Europe".
Although the party did not achieve a federal MP, Fred Paterson was elected to the Parliament of Queensland (for Bowen) at the 1944 state election. He won re-election in 1947 before the seat was abolished. The party also held office in over a dozen local government areas across New South Wales and Queensland.
After nineteen years of activity, the CPA was formally banned on 15 June 1940 under the relatively new Menzies government (1939–1941). The party was banned under the National Security (Subversive Associations) Regulations 1940. Two-and-a-half years later, the party was again a lawful organisation. When the party contested the federal election eight months later, it received its biggest vote total. Getting a total of 81,816 votes (1.93–2.00%), the party received over 20,000 in Victoria and Queensland, and over 19,000 in New South Wales. It was the party's biggest vote total since the 1934 federal election. However, by the late 1960s the party fell into single digit numbers before a brief spike in the mid 1970s. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the party was effectively stagnant and was dissolved in 1989. To the present, the party is the fourth-oldest political party in Australian political history since Federation, lasting for 70 years, 122 days.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was founded at the Australian Socialist Party Hall in Sydney on 30 October 1920 socialists inspired by reports of the Russian Revolution. The estimates for attendees at the founding ranges from below thirteen (Alistair Davidson) to twenty-six (Stuart Macintyre). Sixty invitations were issued. Groups included the Australian Socialist Party (ASP), some members from the Victorian Socialist Party (although the party itself did not join), as well as a variety of militant trade unionists. Among the party's founders were prominent Sydney trade unionists, Jock Garden, Tom Walsh, and William Paisley Earsman, and suffragettes and anti-conscriptionists including Adela Pankhurst (daughter of the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst), Christian Jollie Smith and Katharine Susannah Prichard.
Most of the then illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) joined, but the IWW soon left the Communist Party, with its original members, over disagreements with the direction of the Soviet Union and Bolshevism. In its early years, mainly through Garden's efforts, the party achieved some influence in the trade union movement in New South Wales, but by the mid-1920s it had dwindled to an insignificant group.
A visits to the 1924 New Zealand conference by CPA executive members Hetty and Hector Ross got the (also small) Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) agreeing to temporary affiliation with the CPA, and were followed by visits in 1925 by Harry Quaife, and by Norman Jeffery a bow-tie wearing former "Wobbly" (IWW member).
Garden and other communists were expelled from the Labor Party (ALP) in 1924. The CPA ran candidates including Garden (for Sydney) at the 1925 New South Wales state election in working-class seats against the ALP but was decisively defeated. This prompted Garden to leave the party in 1926 and return to the Labor Party. The leadership of the party went to Jack Kavanagh, an experienced Canadian communist activist who had moved to Australia in 1925, and Esmonde Higgins, a talented Melbourne journalist who was the nephew of then-High Court Justice, H. B. Higgins.
In 1929 the party leadership fell into disfavour with the Communist International (Comintern), which under orders from Joseph Stalin had taken a turn to radical revolutionary rhetoric (the so-called "Third Period"). After allowing party member Bert Moxon in Queensland to organise Communist candidates for the 1929 Queensland state election, the CPA leadership refused to do the same for the 1929 Australian federal election and instead supported the ALP, leading the Comintern to denounce the party's relationship to the ALP as 'opportunist'. In December 1929, a new party leadership including Moxon, Jack Miles, Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon was elected in response to these denunciations, and began a period of strict centralisation and obedience to Moscow. Kavanagh was expelled in 1930 and Higgins resigned, and an emissary of the Comintern, the American communist Harry M. Wicks, was sent to correct the party's perceived errors. Though Moxon was removed as national secretary by the end of 1930 and later expelled from the party's central committee entirely, Miles and then Sharkey would lead the party until 1965.
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