| Contents > Perceptions of Communism in Australia Reception and Rejection by Robert M V Dick |
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The size of the mass rallies unsettled the larger population who while willing to help the disadvantaged in their own way were now confronted by a mob sometimes unruly and violent. The apparent growth in Communist Party membership in this period added to the general concern but possibly unnecessarily so. Membership did increase in the 1930s and McIntyre estimates that at the end of the war there were more than 20,000 Australian communists, but if it were possible to separate active members from inactive and those who were fully paid-up and those that weren’t, the number might be much smaller.(Macintyre, 1998, p. 412)
At the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, the Menzies Government acquired the power under the National Security Act to subject those publications considered to be prejudicial to national security, to censorship. In 1940 tighter controls were introduced that banned Communist publications and those of other organisations and ordered trade unions to remove Communists from editorial positions and to declare all Communist organisations illegal.(Macintyre, 1998, p. 396) When Menzies resigned as Prime Minister in 1941 and John Curtin was commissioned to form a Labor Government, these controls were removed by the Labor Attorney General Dr Evatt.
May 1940 brought an abrupt end to the so-called ‘Phony War’ with the German occupation of France and nearby countries. An all-out effort was now waged by the Government to arouse Australia to the dangerous situation in Europe and the potential threat from Japan. A large rally held in Melbourne in May 1940 helped to build up patriotic enthusiasm and what Menzies called to a “move against enemies in our midst.”(Martin, 1993, pp. 296-297) The popular feeling generated by the gathering would doubtless support any move by the Government to do this.
Australian Communists initially supported the war regarding the fascists to be the great enemy. But the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact in August 1939 however forced a rethink of their position. In line with the Comintern view issued in 1939 the war then came to be regarded as an imperialist war on both sides and Australian Communists now opposed Australia’s involvement.(Brown, 1986, pp. 97 - 98) A ‘Hands off Russia’ resolution passed at a Labor Party Conference in Sydney in March 1940 called for a cessation of hostilities. The Conference further claimed that “the Australian people have nothing to gain from a continuance of the war” which was being managed “by the anti-Labor Menzies Chamberlain Government”.(Day, 1999, p. 378) For Menzies this confirmed the overwhelming left-wing influence on the Labor Party and he denounced the resolution as “an un-British attitude which the Australian people will not stomach.”(Martin, 1993, p. 297)
In June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and it did not take long for the Communist Party to reverse its opposition to the war and now support all allied efforts to defeat Nazi Germany. Anyone showing anti-war sentiments would be out of step with the new policy.
John Curtin replaced Menzies as Prime Minister in 1941 and he remained in power until his death in 1945. When Federal Parliament convened in 1944 Robert Menzies had reformed the United Australia Party as the Liberal Party which he now also led. The Liberal Party platform did not include a policy of an outright ban on Communists. Menzies had resisted calls from the Country Party to go that one step further mainly on the basis that if declared illegal, the Communist Party would go underground and become more dangerous. Also, to declare any system of political thought illegal would be regarded as an attack on freedom of speech.(Martin, 1993, p. 81)
John Curtin died in 1945 and was succeeded by Ben Chifley. As well as his mounting apprehension of the Communist Party heightened by a series of post-war industrial disputes, Menzies and the Liberal Party were now faced with moves by the Chifley Labor Government to nationalise the private banks. The Liberal Party viewed this as a result of Communist influence on the Labor Government. In Menzies’ view this was socialism by stealth and in the Parliamentary debate on the issue Menzies stated:
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But no further consideration of the facts reveals that this socialization measure is no example of unpremeditated illegitimacy. It is, on the contrary, the normal child of long-considered socialist policy which, in Australia, for the last 25 years, has been deeply influenced by Communist and Revolutionary ideas.(Crowley, 1973, p. 177)
Although not enough to now pursue outright dissolution of Communist party it was as a result of two unrelated events that led to a Liberal conversion and to now include the declared intention to ban the Communist Party if voted into office, in the Party platform.
The first event occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1948 where wartime resistance leader Jan Masaryk had been appointed as a token democratic Foreign Minister in the Communist Government in Prague. Masaryk jumped or was pushed to his death from an upper window of the foreign office weeks after the Soviet inspired coup that had installed him. The personal tragedy was internationally mourned but it also confirmed long held suspicions in the West as to the intentions of the Stalin Government in Moscow and Communism internationally.
The other event was a rail strike in Queensland which ran from 13 February to 3 April 1948. This stoppage was one of a number of major disputes across Australia that disrupted large sections of the economy. Early in the strike the Communist Party took up the causes of the striking workers. Mr Ted Rowe a Communist Party Central Committee member was reported in the Communist newspaper Tribune, Sydney, 14 Feb 1948, as vowing to continue the strike until their aims were met.(Crowley, 1973, p. 183) The high profile role played by the Party and by Fred Paterson MLA, the only Communist Member of State Parliament in Australia led many to believe, the Liberal Party included, that the Communists were responsible for the dispute. Later events revealed the strike was not primarily inspired as a Communist disturbance.(Martin, 1999, p. 81 - 82)
Having now taken a decision to ban the Communist Party in Australia if elected, Menzies wasted no time in creating the perception at Liberal Party rallies that the Communists represented the prospective fifth column in the event of a war with Russia. The period of tension starting from the closing years of the War and extending into the late 1980s known as the Cold War created a generally held perception in Australia and elsewhere, that the Soviet Union was determined to colonise Eastern Europe and not stop there and that war with Russia was possible. That perception appeared justified when Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949.
In the same year miners employed in NSW mines went on strike in support of claims for benefits they claimed had accrued both during and after the war. Despite last minute efforts to try to avert the strike, it went ahead and for the next seven weeks the Labor government fought it out with the Miners Federation and other Unions who supported them. Again, the Communist Party was prominent in the conduct of the strike. Police raided the Communist Party headquarters, ‘return to work’ pamphlets were dropped from the air at miners’ meetings and the Navy used to unload emergency coal supplies imported from India. Blackouts, reduced train services and industry shut-downs exacerbated what was turning out to be a bitter confrontation between the Labour Party and the Communist Party. Faced with a Government threat to place troops in the mines, the miners returned to work.
Tactically the strike could not have taken place at a worse time for the Labor Government, for the miners and the Communist Party. With the Cold War beginning to occupy people’s minds, and the prominence of the Communist Party in the dispute, rightly or wrongly it was the Communist Party that was seen to be the cause of the dispute.
The 1949 strike gave Menzies the ammunition that he revelled in using. He undertook an extensive public speaking interstate tour and used the circumstances of the Miners’ strike to great effect.(Martin, 1999, p. 107) The 1949 Federal election resulted in a landslide victory for the Liberal Party and. Robert Menzies became Prime Minister. The industrial situation and the succession of events in Asia that exposed the region’s vulnerability to Communist aggression were high on the new Government’s agenda.
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| Contents > Perceptions of Communism in Australia Reception and Rejection by Robert M V Dick |