:''This article is about the historical Communist Party of Australia, dissolved in 1991. For the current party, see Communist Party of Australia (revived)'' The Communist Party of Australia was founded in Sydney on 30 October 1920 by a group of socialists inspired by reports of the Russian Revolution. Among the party's founders were a prominent Sydney trade unionist, John Garden, Adela Pankhurst (daughter of the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst) and most of the then illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW rapidly 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 sect. ==History== In the later 1920s the party was rebuilt by Jack Kavanagh, a experienced Canadian Communist activist, and Esmonde Higgins, a talented Melbourne journalist who was the nephew of a High Court judge, Henry Higgins. But in 1929 the party leadership fell into disfavour with the Comintern, which under orders from Stalin had taken a turn to extreme revolutionary rhetoric (the so-called "Third Period"), and an emissary, the American Communist Harry Wicks, was sent to sort the party out. Kavanagh was expelled and Higgins resigned. A new party leadership, consisting of J B Miles, Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon, was imposed on the party by the Comintern, and remained in control for the next 30 years. During the 1930s the party experienced some growth, particularly after 1935 when the Comintern changed its policy in favour of a "united front against fascism." The party began to win positions in trade unions such as the Miners Federation and the Waterside Workers Federation, although its parliamentary candidates nearly always polled poorly at elections. During the early stages of World War II the party was banned, but after the Soviet Union entered the war the party had a brief period of popularity. Its membership rose to 20,000, it won control of a number of important trade unions, and a Communist candidate, Fred Paterson, was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly. But the party remained marginal to the Australian political mainstream. The Australian Labor Party remained the dominant party of the Australian working class, and always refused to enter alliances with the Communists. After 1945 and the onset of the Cold War, the party entered a steady decline. Following the new line from Moscow, and believing that a new "imperialist war" and a new depression were imminent, and that the CPA should immediately contest for leadership of the working class with the Australian Labor Party, the CPA lauched an industrial offensive in 1947, culminating in a prolonged strike in the coalmines in 1949. The Ben Chifley Labor government saw this as a Communist challenge to its position in the labour movement, and used the army to break the strike. The Communist Party never again held such a strong position in the union movement. In 1951 the Robert Menzies conservative government tried to ban the party, first by legislation that was Australian Communist Party v The Commonwealth, then by referendum to try to overcome the Australian Constitution obstacles to that legislation, but Australian referendum, 1951. When Stalin died and Khrushchev revealed his crimes in the Secret Speech, members began to leave. More left after the Hungarian Revolution, 1956 of History of Hungary in 1956. In 1961 the split between the Soviet Union and China was mirrored in Australia, with a small Maoism party being formed. By the 1960s the party's membership had fallen to around 5,000, but it continued to hold positions in a number of trade unions, and it was also influential in the various protest movements of the period, especially the movement against the Vietnam War. But the Soviet Prague Spring in 1968 triggered another crisis. Sharkey's successor as party leader, Laurie Aarons, denounced the invasion, causing a group of pro-Soviet hardliners to leave and form a new party, the Socialist Party of Australia. Through the 1970s and 1980s the party continued to decline, despite adopting the rhetoric of Eurocommunism and democratising its internal structures so that it became a looser radical party rather than a classic Marxist-Leninist one. By 1990 its membership had declined to less than a thousand, and in 1991 it was wound up. In 1996 the Socialist Party then took up the now-unused name of Communist Party of Australia (see Communist Party of Australia (revived)). This party, along with a number of small Trotskyist groups, maintains the Communist tradition in Australia, but none of these groups is of any political significance. ==Legacy== Despite its usually peripheral role in Australian politics and its ultimate failure, the Communist Party had an influence far beyond its numbers. From 1935 to the 1960s it occupied leadership positions in a number of important trade unions, and was at centre of many major industrial conflicts. Many of its members played leading roles in Australian cultural life, such as the novelists Katharine Pritchard, Judah Waten and Alan Marshall, the painter Noel Counihan and the poet David Martin (poet). In some ways the negative influence of the Communist Party was more important than anything the party itself did. Conservative politicians such as Stanley Bruce in the 1920s and Robert Menzies in the 1950s won elections by linking the Labor Party with Communism. In the early 1950s Catholics in the Labor Party were led by hatred of Communism to form "Industrial Groups" to combat Communist influence in the unions. This led in 1954 to a party split and the formation of the Democratic Labor Party, which used its Australian electoral system at elections to keep the ALP out of power. The Communist Party and its members campaigned for many years for causes such as improved conditions for industrial workers, opposition to fascist and other dictatorships, equal rights for women and civil rights for the Aboriginal people. It achieved some successes in these areas, and many of its positions were later taken up by the political mainstream. But the party never succeeded in persuading many people that Communism was the answer to these problems. Against these achievements must be set the party's long history as an apologist for Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. It was revulsion against this which led most of the party's best members to leave sooner or later. ==Youth movement== The youth wing of CPA worked under several differnt names in different periods, Young Communists, Eureka Youth League, Young Socialist League and Young Communist Movement of Australia. The Eureka Youth had been a founding member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a membership later taken over by YCM. ''See also:'' Communist Party ==Further reading== *Professor Stuart Macintyre has published the first volume of a major history of the Communist Party, ''The Reds'' (Allen and Unwin 1998), taking the party's history to 1941. Australian labour movement Communist parties Political parties in AustraliaComIntern sections
==Memo from mainman== The suggestion of starting a progressive page on CPA/Australian Left history is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as it's protected so that conservatives can't vandalise it. This is particularly critical in an area as important as CP and labour history. As a note to Dr Carr: do think it's in any way possible that your membership of the Australian Labor Party and your employment as an ALP spin doctor might just be a teeny, weeny bit of a conflict of interest, that might just preclude you from writing objectively on such a topic? user:mainman No. User:Adam Carr 10:13, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) I'm glad to see rhetoric is not dead in the Australian Labor Party. user:mainman Ok, let me spell it out then. *I have a PhD in Australian history, and my thesis dealt extensively with CPA history. I therefore know what I am talking about. As a professional historian, I am perfectly capable of writing objectively about political parties whose views I do not share, whether they are the CPA or the Liberal Party. *Is it your position that only Communists can write Communist history? Presumably you therefore also think that only Nazis can write the history of Nazism. This is nonsense. *As a matter of fact, although I am (obviously) not a Communist, I have no particular animus towards the CPA. I had many friends who were CPA members in the 1970s and 80s and I have a high opinion of most of the former CPA members I have met. Nevertheless the CPA failed, and it failed for clear and identifiable reasons, and any article about the CPA's history must reflect that, whoever writes it. *Your edits to the article were not done to correct errors or add material, they were a blatant attempt to impose a pro-Communist POV on the article. I reverted that and will continue to do so. *So far you have made no serious effort to discuss whatever issues you have with this article, instead merely making flippant remarks and childish insults. Until you adopt a different attitude the article will remain as it is. User:Adam Carr 03:26, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC) Oddly enough, I find myself completely in agreement with the aforementioned comrades: the article as it stands is complete and utter rubbish, that basically has no reference to historical reality. It's quite clear that the article -- as it is -- has no point for existing other than as anti-communist propaganda. But for a website that purports to be an 'encyclopedia' that is not really good adequate. Realistically, the article should be prefaced with the disclaimer that it is a conservative, anti-communist view of the CP. User:Red Ted I'm in complete agreement. --User:Pete Travail 10:16, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Please stick to the one account. Sockpuppetry is bad. User:Ambi 10:23, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC) :What the hell are you on about, idiot? And as for your ludicrous claim that "As the author is an ALP member, and I'm even further to the left, accusing us of being conservative is laughable. " :I'm absolutely fascinated. How do YOU define conservatism? Personally, I'm a bit too old to believe in empty rhetoric, and what I prefer to believe in is actions not words, policies not propaganda. :And how about this for a definition of conservatism -- say, support for the US Free Trade Agreement? By that definition, the ALP pass effortlessly, as they supported and passed the FTA in the Senate, with the support of the other conservatives. :How about another definition of conservatism, say, support for privatisation? Again, by that definition, the ALP also pass as conservatives, as they so deftly proved by the privatisation of QANTAS and the Commonwealth Bank, and allowing the partial sell-off of Telstra. :By almost any definition of conservatism -- as just another example, preferencing the DLP and Family First before the Greens, as occurred in the last election -- the ALP do indeed pass as conservatives. And by defining the ALP as conservatives merely means that we are identifying historical reality. But they are not idle words, used lightly. --User:Red ted 04:42, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) The idea is for an article to be neutral, and favour neither side, not to be either a puff piece or an attack piece - while the current version may well have flaws, it's certainly more neutral than the alternative. And as for accusing me of being biased in my judgment, I don't see any of you complaining about the article I wrote on Fred Paterson. User:Ambi 05:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC) Have you actually read the article, in question, from start to finish? It is filled with factual errors, and lies and slanders, and value judgements that have no bearing to reality, other than conservative, anti-communist propaganda. You want an example? See the section on the 1949 miners strike -- apparently carried out by the party "on orders from Moscow": what utter bullshit! There are no other words that can describe that section: there is also absolutely no existing, collaborative evidence to support that statement, other than in the bizarre fantasies of R. G. Menzies and other conservatives. The revised section is closer to actual historical reality than the original, which is, to put it bluntly, complete revisionist crap. PS your article on Fred Patterson contains factual errors. --User:Red ted 06:23, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) ==IWW in early CPA== Just to let everyone know, can you please not revert-war my recent edit, adding in the period the IWW (I think it was the Industrial Union Defence League due to its illegal nature, but it was basically the Australian IWW) was in the CPA. Thanks. User:Fifelfoo 06:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC) It's true that the remnants of the IWW were active in the early CPA, but they were not the only organisation. Members of the Australian Socialist Party were heavily involved in the early CPA, also. It simply isn't true, however, that all old members of the IWW left the CPA: many stayed. Mainman was going to rewrite that initial section to include the early Party formation, the role of the IWW and ASP and it's historical current but he hasn't done it yet and until the current political difficulties are resolved with the Wikipedia page, he's unlikely to do it. However, reference to the IWW will be included in the article when it finally takes it's completed form.--User:Red ted 07:28, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) ==Who said the Cold War was over?== I read this article and I'm convinced it was ghost-written by Bob Menzies and Bob Santamaria. What a load of cold-war bullshit. --User:Peter Jackson 04:35, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) Specific matters of fact and interpretation can be debated. General insults will be ignored. User:Adam Carr 11:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) I agree with you totally, Peter. The article as it stands is complete bourgeois crap. --User:Red ted 07:17, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC) You're both right, I think: the entire thing needs to be completely rewritten. Think, just for a second, about what's omitted: * The CP's primary role in creating the ACTU * The CP's role in opposing the White Australia policy * 60 years of campaigning for the full democratic rights of Aborigines * 60 years of building the Peace Movement * The CP's role in Australian workers getting the 44 hour week, the 40 hour week, the 38 hour week and sections getting the 35 hour week All of these things are just completely omitted, as though they didn't happen. It's what happens when history is written by the ignorant and revisionists. --User:Mainman 06:54, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC) Firstly, please spare us this silly sockpuppet game. We all know you are all the same person. Secondly, some of those points are in fact made in the article. Thirdly, as I have said several times, you are perfectly free to edit the article in a constructive way. If you want to add information on the points you raise, go ahead. But if you again fill the article full of stalinoid crap, you will again be reverted. User:Adam Carr 10:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) Actually, comrade, we aren't all the same person. --User:203.213.55.107 19:00, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) Whatever. However many of you there are, you have not managed to make a single useful contribution to this article between you. Incidentally, your claim that the CPA had a "primary role" in establishing the ACTU is not supported by Hagan's history of the ACTU, or by Davidson or Macintyre's histories of the CPA. The CPA had only a few hundred members in 1927 and controlled no unions. John Garden did play a leading role in establishing the ACTU but he had left the CPA in 1926. User:Adam Carr 02:44, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) To Dr Carr: sorry about the late reply on your query, but I forgot all about it. Jock Garden didn't leave the CP: he was formally expelled in December, 1926. And Garden's departure didn't really alter the Party's influence on Sydney Trades Hall, or it's growing influence in Brisbane and Melbourne Trades Halls, as it's influence existed, by and largely, independently of Garden. It appears to be a little known point amongst bourgeois historians that the Sydney Labor Council affiliated -- in 1921 -- with the Moscow-based Red International of Labour Unions (the RILU or Profintern, as it became known): and this affiliation lasted for more than a decade, even after Garden's opportunistic tendencies made him persona non grata with the CP. Garden himself was elected to the International Executive of the RILU 18 months after his formal expulsion from the CP: and the relationship between the RILU and Sydney trades hall continued up until the early 1930s. And Garden required the RILU support to maintain his position within Sydney Trades Hall: he was still cruising on his RILU position years after, even after he kissed and made up with Jack Lang. The formation of an Australian peak trade union body was one of the very first CP policies. It was formal Party policy from 1923: it was NOT ALP policy, and quite a number of ALP aligned bodies were vehemently opposed to the ACTU's formation. It might be instructive for you to read up on the Australian Workers Union (AWU) -- then the most influential ALP-aligned union -- attitude to the ACTU: the AWU boycotted the ACTU founding conference -- calling it a conference that would allow the domination of the labour movement by communists and 'red-wreckers' -- and maintained it's opposition for much of the century. The AWU's opposition to the ACTU can be compared to it's original support for the One Big Union (OBU) campaigns of 1918-1921. The AWU initially supported the formation of the OBU, essentially because it saw it as an opportunity to place the entirety of the Australian labour movement under AWU/ALP control. But this was also the sticking point of the OBU with the overwhelming majority of craft-based unions, who saw through the ruse and realised the opportunity it gave to the AWU to body-snatch, which many saw as being detrimental to their own organisational interests and that of their membership. AWU -- and ALP -- opposition to the OBU only began after it became clear that the AWU was not going to be the dominant political force in any OBU that would eventually emerge: by the early 1920s, various State and Federal ALP governments had already alienated sections of the labour movement, particularly the rail unions. The CP's policy and view was that Ausralian labour movement needed a peak, national body, modelled after the English Trade Union Congress and the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. This policy received widespread support throughout the majority of the craft-based unions, in some areas being considered a realistic and viable extension of the OBU. Quite a number of CP members had been involved in the OBU campaigns: many of the original OBU activists had joined the 'Sussex Street' or 'Trades Hall' CPA, one of the two CPs that originated after the intitial CP founding congress in October, 1920, the other being the 'Liverpool Street' CPA, based around the membership of the old Australian Socialist Party (ASP). It should hardly be surprising that conservative historians downplay the role of the CP and the RILU in the formation of the ACTU, given the political climate of the 1920s and today. The Bruce-Page conservative government had introduced legislation -- the Crimes Amendment Act -- to ban the CP, making it a gaolable crime to promote policies of radical political change; membership of the CP was formally a crime in the eyes of the law, that could result in a lengthy gaol sentence. In NSW, the right-wing Lang ALP formally made CP membership an expellable offence; and the right-wing ALP government in Queensland was waging a vicious attack on Communists and progressive trade unions, particularly the rail unions. These factors all combined to ensure that CP trade union agitation had to occur informally, even covertly in most areas: no other practical course was realistically possible. --User:Mainman 20:15, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) Allowing for your polemical spin, that is all broadly correct. The historic role of the Australian Workers Union in opposing Communism and other forms of extremism in the Australian trade union movement is something the union doesn't get nearly enough credit for. But you still haven't provided any evidence that the CPA as a party, or even CPA members in the capacity of trade union officials, played any actual role, let alone a "primary role" (your words) in the formation of the ACTU. The initiative for founding the ACTU came from the Melbourne Trades Hall, whose secretary was Ted Holloway - a radical but certainly not a Communist. The main motive for establishing it was so that the unions could present a united case to the Arbitration Court, which was quite contrary to the CPA's policy at that time. I'm not aware that any Communists were even present at the ACTU's founding congress. I don't recognise any CPA names (apart from Garden) in the illustration on page 30 of Hagan's ''Short History of the ACTU''. (Bob Ross is there, but he of course was the leading Marxist ''opponent'' of forming a Bolshevik-type party in Australia.) It's true that the ACTU founding congress decided to affiliate to the PPTUS, a Comintern front, but that was Garden's doing, not the CPA's. So I am still waiting. User:Adam Carr 04:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Communist_Party_of_Australia:
Communist_Party_of_Australia
Communist_Party_of_Australia
Communist_Party_of_Australia_(Marxist-Leninist)
Communist_Party_of_Australia_(revived)
Communist Party of Australia
:''This article is about the historical Communist Party of Australia, dissolved in 1991. For the current party, see Communist Party of Australia (revived)'' The Communist Party of Australia was founded in Sydney on 30 October 1920 by a group of socialists inspired by reports of the Russian Revolution. Among the party's founders were a prominent Sydney trade unionist, John Garden, Adela Pankhurst (daughter of the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst) and most of the then illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW rapidly 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 sect. ==History== In the later 1920s the party was rebuilt by Jack Kavanagh, a experienced Canadian Communist activist, and Esmonde Higgins, a talented Melbourne journalist who was the nephew of a High Court judge, Henry Higgins. But in 1929 the party leadership fell into disfavour with the Comintern, which under orders from Stalin had taken a turn to extreme revolutionary rhetoric (the so-called "Third Period"), and an emissary, the American Communist Harry Wicks, was sent to sort the party out. Kavanagh was expelled and Higgins resigned. A new party leadership, consisting of J B Miles, Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon, was imposed on the party by the Comintern, and remained in control for the next 30 years. During the 1930s the party experienced some growth, particularly after 1935 when the Comintern changed its policy in favour of a "united front against fascism." The party began to win positions in trade unions such as the Miners Federation and the Waterside Workers Federation, although its parliamentary candidates nearly always polled poorly at elections. During the early stages of World War II the party was banned, but after the Soviet Union entered the war the party had a brief period of popularity. Its membership rose to 20,000, it won control of a number of important trade unions, and a Communist candidate, Fred Paterson, was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly. But the party remained marginal to the Australian political mainstream. The Australian Labor Party remained the dominant party of the Australian working class, and always refused to enter alliances with the Communists. After 1945 and the onset of the Cold War, the party entered a steady decline. Following the new line from Moscow, and believing that a new "imperialist war" and a new depression were imminent, and that the CPA should immediately contest for leadership of the working class with the Australian Labor Party, the CPA lauched an industrial offensive in 1947, culminating in a prolonged strike in the coalmines in 1949. The Ben Chifley Labor government saw this as a Communist challenge to its position in the labour movement, and used the army to break the strike. The Communist Party never again held such a strong position in the union movement. In 1951 the Robert Menzies conservative government tried to ban the party, first by legislation that was Australian Communist Party v The Commonwealth, then by referendum to try to overcome the Australian Constitution obstacles to that legislation, but Australian referendum, 1951. When Stalin died and Khrushchev revealed his crimes in the Secret Speech, members began to leave. More left after the Hungarian Revolution, 1956 of History of Hungary in 1956. In 1961 the split between the Soviet Union and China was mirrored in Australia, with a small Maoism party being formed. By the 1960s the party's membership had fallen to around 5,000, but it continued to hold positions in a number of trade unions, and it was also influential in the various protest movements of the period, especially the movement against the Vietnam War. But the Soviet Prague Spring in 1968 triggered another crisis. Sharkey's successor as party leader, Laurie Aarons, denounced the invasion, causing a group of pro-Soviet hardliners to leave and form a new party, the Socialist Party of Australia. Through the 1970s and 1980s the party continued to decline, despite adopting the rhetoric of Eurocommunism and democratising its internal structures so that it became a looser radical party rather than a classic Marxist-Leninist one. By 1990 its membership had declined to less than a thousand, and in 1991 it was wound up. In 1996 the Socialist Party then took up the now-unused name of Communist Party of Australia (see Communist Party of Australia (revived)). This party, along with a number of small Trotskyist groups, maintains the Communist tradition in Australia, but none of these groups is of any political significance. ==Legacy== Despite its usually peripheral role in Australian politics and its ultimate failure, the Communist Party had an influence far beyond its numbers. From 1935 to the 1960s it occupied leadership positions in a number of important trade unions, and was at centre of many major industrial conflicts. Many of its members played leading roles in Australian cultural life, such as the novelists Katharine Pritchard, Judah Waten and Alan Marshall, the painter Noel Counihan and the poet David Martin (poet). In some ways the negative influence of the Communist Party was more important than anything the party itself did. Conservative politicians such as Stanley Bruce in the 1920s and Robert Menzies in the 1950s won elections by linking the Labor Party with Communism. In the early 1950s Catholics in the Labor Party were led by hatred of Communism to form "Industrial Groups" to combat Communist influence in the unions. This led in 1954 to a party split and the formation of the Democratic Labor Party, which used its Australian electoral system at elections to keep the ALP out of power. The Communist Party and its members campaigned for many years for causes such as improved conditions for industrial workers, opposition to fascist and other dictatorships, equal rights for women and civil rights for the Aboriginal people. It achieved some successes in these areas, and many of its positions were later taken up by the political mainstream. But the party never succeeded in persuading many people that Communism was the answer to these problems. Against these achievements must be set the party's long history as an apologist for Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. It was revulsion against this which led most of the party's best members to leave sooner or later. ==Youth movement== The youth wing of CPA worked under several differnt names in different periods, Young Communists, Eureka Youth League, Young Socialist League and Young Communist Movement of Australia. The Eureka Youth had been a founding member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a membership later taken over by YCM. ''See also:'' Communist Party ==Further reading== *Professor Stuart Macintyre has published the first volume of a major history of the Communist Party, ''The Reds'' (Allen and Unwin 1998), taking the party's history to 1941. Australian labour movement Communist parties Political parties in AustraliaComIntern sections
Communist Party of Australia
==Memo from mainman== The suggestion of starting a progressive page on CPA/Australian Left history is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as it's protected so that conservatives can't vandalise it. This is particularly critical in an area as important as CP and labour history. As a note to Dr Carr: do think it's in any way possible that your membership of the Australian Labor Party and your employment as an ALP spin doctor might just be a teeny, weeny bit of a conflict of interest, that might just preclude you from writing objectively on such a topic? user:mainman No. User:Adam Carr 10:13, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) I'm glad to see rhetoric is not dead in the Australian Labor Party. user:mainman Ok, let me spell it out then. *I have a PhD in Australian history, and my thesis dealt extensively with CPA history. I therefore know what I am talking about. As a professional historian, I am perfectly capable of writing objectively about political parties whose views I do not share, whether they are the CPA or the Liberal Party. *Is it your position that only Communists can write Communist history? Presumably you therefore also think that only Nazis can write the history of Nazism. This is nonsense. *As a matter of fact, although I am (obviously) not a Communist, I have no particular animus towards the CPA. I had many friends who were CPA members in the 1970s and 80s and I have a high opinion of most of the former CPA members I have met. Nevertheless the CPA failed, and it failed for clear and identifiable reasons, and any article about the CPA's history must reflect that, whoever writes it. *Your edits to the article were not done to correct errors or add material, they were a blatant attempt to impose a pro-Communist POV on the article. I reverted that and will continue to do so. *So far you have made no serious effort to discuss whatever issues you have with this article, instead merely making flippant remarks and childish insults. Until you adopt a different attitude the article will remain as it is. User:Adam Carr 03:26, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC) Oddly enough, I find myself completely in agreement with the aforementioned comrades: the article as it stands is complete and utter rubbish, that basically has no reference to historical reality. It's quite clear that the article -- as it is -- has no point for existing other than as anti-communist propaganda. But for a website that purports to be an 'encyclopedia' that is not really good adequate. Realistically, the article should be prefaced with the disclaimer that it is a conservative, anti-communist view of the CP. User:Red Ted I'm in complete agreement. --User:Pete Travail 10:16, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Please stick to the one account. Sockpuppetry is bad. User:Ambi 10:23, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC) :What the hell are you on about, idiot? And as for your ludicrous claim that "As the author is an ALP member, and I'm even further to the left, accusing us of being conservative is laughable. " :I'm absolutely fascinated. How do YOU define conservatism? Personally, I'm a bit too old to believe in empty rhetoric, and what I prefer to believe in is actions not words, policies not propaganda. :And how about this for a definition of conservatism -- say, support for the US Free Trade Agreement? By that definition, the ALP pass effortlessly, as they supported and passed the FTA in the Senate, with the support of the other conservatives. :How about another definition of conservatism, say, support for privatisation? Again, by that definition, the ALP also pass as conservatives, as they so deftly proved by the privatisation of QANTAS and the Commonwealth Bank, and allowing the partial sell-off of Telstra. :By almost any definition of conservatism -- as just another example, preferencing the DLP and Family First before the Greens, as occurred in the last election -- the ALP do indeed pass as conservatives. And by defining the ALP as conservatives merely means that we are identifying historical reality. But they are not idle words, used lightly. --User:Red ted 04:42, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) The idea is for an article to be neutral, and favour neither side, not to be either a puff piece or an attack piece - while the current version may well have flaws, it's certainly more neutral than the alternative. And as for accusing me of being biased in my judgment, I don't see any of you complaining about the article I wrote on Fred Paterson. User:Ambi 05:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC) Have you actually read the article, in question, from start to finish? It is filled with factual errors, and lies and slanders, and value judgements that have no bearing to reality, other than conservative, anti-communist propaganda. You want an example? See the section on the 1949 miners strike -- apparently carried out by the party "on orders from Moscow": what utter bullshit! There are no other words that can describe that section: there is also absolutely no existing, collaborative evidence to support that statement, other than in the bizarre fantasies of R. G. Menzies and other conservatives. The revised section is closer to actual historical reality than the original, which is, to put it bluntly, complete revisionist crap. PS your article on Fred Patterson contains factual errors. --User:Red ted 06:23, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) ==IWW in early CPA== Just to let everyone know, can you please not revert-war my recent edit, adding in the period the IWW (I think it was the Industrial Union Defence League due to its illegal nature, but it was basically the Australian IWW) was in the CPA. Thanks. User:Fifelfoo 06:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC) It's true that the remnants of the IWW were active in the early CPA, but they were not the only organisation. Members of the Australian Socialist Party were heavily involved in the early CPA, also. It simply isn't true, however, that all old members of the IWW left the CPA: many stayed. Mainman was going to rewrite that initial section to include the early Party formation, the role of the IWW and ASP and it's historical current but he hasn't done it yet and until the current political difficulties are resolved with the Wikipedia page, he's unlikely to do it. However, reference to the IWW will be included in the article when it finally takes it's completed form.--User:Red ted 07:28, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC) ==Who said the Cold War was over?== I read this article and I'm convinced it was ghost-written by Bob Menzies and Bob Santamaria. What a load of cold-war bullshit. --User:Peter Jackson 04:35, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) Specific matters of fact and interpretation can be debated. General insults will be ignored. User:Adam Carr 11:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) I agree with you totally, Peter. The article as it stands is complete bourgeois crap. --User:Red ted 07:17, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC) You're both right, I think: the entire thing needs to be completely rewritten. Think, just for a second, about what's omitted: * The CP's primary role in creating the ACTU * The CP's role in opposing the White Australia policy * 60 years of campaigning for the full democratic rights of Aborigines * 60 years of building the Peace Movement * The CP's role in Australian workers getting the 44 hour week, the 40 hour week, the 38 hour week and sections getting the 35 hour week All of these things are just completely omitted, as though they didn't happen. It's what happens when history is written by the ignorant and revisionists. --User:Mainman 06:54, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC) Firstly, please spare us this silly sockpuppet game. We all know you are all the same person. Secondly, some of those points are in fact made in the article. Thirdly, as I have said several times, you are perfectly free to edit the article in a constructive way. If you want to add information on the points you raise, go ahead. But if you again fill the article full of stalinoid crap, you will again be reverted. User:Adam Carr 10:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) Actually, comrade, we aren't all the same person. --User:203.213.55.107 19:00, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) Whatever. However many of you there are, you have not managed to make a single useful contribution to this article between you. Incidentally, your claim that the CPA had a "primary role" in establishing the ACTU is not supported by Hagan's history of the ACTU, or by Davidson or Macintyre's histories of the CPA. The CPA had only a few hundred members in 1927 and controlled no unions. John Garden did play a leading role in establishing the ACTU but he had left the CPA in 1926. User:Adam Carr 02:44, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) To Dr Carr: sorry about the late reply on your query, but I forgot all about it. Jock Garden didn't leave the CP: he was formally expelled in December, 1926. And Garden's departure didn't really alter the Party's influence on Sydney Trades Hall, or it's growing influence in Brisbane and Melbourne Trades Halls, as it's influence existed, by and largely, independently of Garden. It appears to be a little known point amongst bourgeois historians that the Sydney Labor Council affiliated -- in 1921 -- with the Moscow-based Red International of Labour Unions (the RILU or Profintern, as it became known): and this affiliation lasted for more than a decade, even after Garden's opportunistic tendencies made him persona non grata with the CP. Garden himself was elected to the International Executive of the RILU 18 months after his formal expulsion from the CP: and the relationship between the RILU and Sydney trades hall continued up until the early 1930s. And Garden required the RILU support to maintain his position within Sydney Trades Hall: he was still cruising on his RILU position years after, even after he kissed and made up with Jack Lang. The formation of an Australian peak trade union body was one of the very first CP policies. It was formal Party policy from 1923: it was NOT ALP policy, and quite a number of ALP aligned bodies were vehemently opposed to the ACTU's formation. It might be instructive for you to read up on the Australian Workers Union (AWU) -- then the most influential ALP-aligned union -- attitude to the ACTU: the AWU boycotted the ACTU founding conference -- calling it a conference that would allow the domination of the labour movement by communists and 'red-wreckers' -- and maintained it's opposition for much of the century. The AWU's opposition to the ACTU can be compared to it's original support for the One Big Union (OBU) campaigns of 1918-1921. The AWU initially supported the formation of the OBU, essentially because it saw it as an opportunity to place the entirety of the Australian labour movement under AWU/ALP control. But this was also the sticking point of the OBU with the overwhelming majority of craft-based unions, who saw through the ruse and realised the opportunity it gave to the AWU to body-snatch, which many saw as being detrimental to their own organisational interests and that of their membership. AWU -- and ALP -- opposition to the OBU only began after it became clear that the AWU was not going to be the dominant political force in any OBU that would eventually emerge: by the early 1920s, various State and Federal ALP governments had already alienated sections of the labour movement, particularly the rail unions. The CP's policy and view was that Ausralian labour movement needed a peak, national body, modelled after the English Trade Union Congress and the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. This policy received widespread support throughout the majority of the craft-based unions, in some areas being considered a realistic and viable extension of the OBU. Quite a number of CP members had been involved in the OBU campaigns: many of the original OBU activists had joined the 'Sussex Street' or 'Trades Hall' CPA, one of the two CPs that originated after the intitial CP founding congress in October, 1920, the other being the 'Liverpool Street' CPA, based around the membership of the old Australian Socialist Party (ASP). It should hardly be surprising that conservative historians downplay the role of the CP and the RILU in the formation of the ACTU, given the political climate of the 1920s and today. The Bruce-Page conservative government had introduced legislation -- the Crimes Amendment Act -- to ban the CP, making it a gaolable crime to promote policies of radical political change; membership of the CP was formally a crime in the eyes of the law, that could result in a lengthy gaol sentence. In NSW, the right-wing Lang ALP formally made CP membership an expellable offence; and the right-wing ALP government in Queensland was waging a vicious attack on Communists and progressive trade unions, particularly the rail unions. These factors all combined to ensure that CP trade union agitation had to occur informally, even covertly in most areas: no other practical course was realistically possible. --User:Mainman 20:15, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC) Allowing for your polemical spin, that is all broadly correct. The historic role of the Australian Workers Union in opposing Communism and other forms of extremism in the Australian trade union movement is something the union doesn't get nearly enough credit for. But you still haven't provided any evidence that the CPA as a party, or even CPA members in the capacity of trade union officials, played any actual role, let alone a "primary role" (your words) in the formation of the ACTU. The initiative for founding the ACTU came from the Melbourne Trades Hall, whose secretary was Ted Holloway - a radical but certainly not a Communist. The main motive for establishing it was so that the unions could present a united case to the Arbitration Court, which was quite contrary to the CPA's policy at that time. I'm not aware that any Communists were even present at the ACTU's founding congress. I don't recognise any CPA names (apart from Garden) in the illustration on page 30 of Hagan's ''Short History of the ACTU''. (Bob Ross is there, but he of course was the leading Marxist ''opponent'' of forming a Bolshevik-type party in Australia.) It's true that the ACTU founding congress decided to affiliate to the PPTUS, a Comintern front, but that was Garden's doing, not the CPA's. So I am still waiting. User:Adam Carr 04:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
C
CA | CB | CD | CE | CF | CG | CH | CI | CJ | CK | CL | CM | CN | CO | CP | CR | CS | CT | CU | CW | CX | CY | CZ |Words begining with Communist_Party_of_Australia:
Communist_Party_of_Australia
Communist_Party_of_Australia
Communist_Party_of_Australia_(Marxist-Leninist)
Communist_Party_of_Australia_(revived)
Sponsored links: praca, nurkowanie.
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
