| Contents > Perceptions of Communism in Australia Reception and Rejection by Robert M V Dick |
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Perceptions of Communism in Australia
Reception and Rejection
It would be difficult today to imagine the circumstances that would lead to the perception of the Australian Government that the Communist Party or some other radical group, was actively planning to overthrow our established system of government. But in 1950 so real was the Menzies Government’s belief that this is what the Communist Party of Australia was planning to do it enacted a Bill that would give the Government the power to dissolve the Party, prosecute communists and disqualify them from holding certain positions. The Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950 was probably the most contentious piece of legislation ever passed by an Australian Parliament. The Government’s actions underscore the power of their perceptions of what Communism meant.
Focusing on the immediate post World War 2 period up until the late 1950s, this paper seeks to identify events that created those perceptions not to justify the Government’s actions but to more fully understand them and their effect. Not everyone shared the Government’s concern about what Communism meant for Australia. Members of the Communist Party of Australia and their fellow-travellers had another vision of an impending change, a revolutionary change that many thought imminent. The manner of that change was perceived by the Government as good enough reason to suppress Communism. The same events that may have influenced the Government’s actions also appear to have been an energising factor for those who believed that the ideal society Marx had predicted was imminent leading many to embrace Communism only later to later reject it as evidenced by the rise and decline in Party membership over this period.
The Government’s efforts and those of other opinion leaders including the Catholic Church and the Returned Services League in influencing public perceptions of the supposed ‘threat’ will also be briefly explored to perhaps reach a conclusion on their effectiveness in persuading people to reject Communism.
Our perceptions are created by external stimuli and the way in which we categorise them will depend to some extent on our previous experiences and our emotional state. Our interpretation of those perceptions is therefore open to subjective evaluation. McCullagh proposes “Our perceptions of the things in the world are a function of our culture, of its practices and concepts.”(Behan McCullagh, 1998, p. 24) He further proposes that cultural variations can occur particularly when they become theory laden which can strongly influence how our perceptions are interpreted.
Original perceptions are not permanent. As new experiences occur we can update or change our perceptions. Our perceptions might also be wrong either because we do not get complete information or we misunderstand the stimuli. What we perceive therefore may not reflect reality – there can be ambiguity in perception. This suggests that perceptions can be manipulated.
Menzies position on Communism reflects a deep conviction that Communism constituted a threat that demanded action. Was his perception right and did it justify the actions that the United Australia Party under his leadership took in 1940 and again in 1950 now as leader of the Liberal Party? Pursuing answers to these important questions would take us beyond the limits of this paper. But what should be done is to at least sketch in the context of the situation because this was critical not only to the strengthening of Menzies perceptions about the Communist Party in Australia, but to the perceptions of others as well.
The view that Communism constituted a threat gained much ground during the Depression in the 1930s. To the large numbers of unemployed workers and their families in desperate circumstances the Communist Party appeared to be the only organisation prepared to actively help them. This was an image that the Party was keen to promote and out of their own unemployed workers’ groups formed the Unemployed Workers Movement (UWM) and successfully signed up new members out of the large number of unemployed. This made it possible to channel the militancy of the unemployed through membership of the UWM into membership of the Communist Party. As McIntyre points out the UWM was intended to extend the influence of the Communist Party “to tap the discontent of unemployed workers, draw them into action around their immediate concerns, lead them into activities that would demonstrate the futility of reform, and ultimately recruit them to the revolutionary cause.”(Macintyre, 1998, p. 197.) Brown rejects the assertion of the UWM being a Communist front as a notion put forward by “bourgeois historians” but he fails to conclusively prove otherwise.(Brown, 1986, p. 64)
The growing membership of the Communist Party swelled the size of the many rallies organised by the UWM around Australia to protest at the plight of the unemployed and in some cases to deliberately provoke the police into a violent response.(McGillick, 1980, p. 50) There can be no argument about the personal hardship many suffered during the Depression with an unemployment rate around 30% forcing many to the poverty level. There is also no doubt that in some situations the UWM did help those in need when government failed them. But their concern for the unemployed must be balanced with the declared revolutionary aims of the Communist Party as expressed by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Australia on 29 August 1931 that included such statements as:
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The Communist Party is fighting the battle of the exploited against the exploiters, and is leading the struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the capitalists and the big landowners.
and:
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Power can be wrested from the hands of the ruling class only by ruthless class struggle. Victory can be gained only by a mass revolutionary front with the Communists.(McGillick, 1980, p. 48 - 49)
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| Contents > Perceptions of Communism in Australia Reception and Rejection by Robert M V Dick |