Social democracy
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very good idea, Bill And Im thinking, I guess my name will feature prominently here. Then I thought, well if thats so, thats so, Ill handle it. Anyhow, it wasnt. That was surprise number one. And I wasnt sure of that until we had really finished.
The result of the meeting was that while at least one undercover member (Herbert Chandler) lost his place on the proposed ticket for the 1940 executive, he was replaced by others: Ted Walsham, a railway shop steward and James Starling, a teacher. Over 50 years later it is difficult to identify with certainty all the dual members who reached the executive level of the ALP in this period. On one level it was of secondary importance to the fact that the political line of the CPA was clearly accepted by a broad group of non-communist anti-Lang forces on the executive. However, it is essential to understand the strength and strategy of the CPA to identify as accurately as possible its actual members in the leadership of the ALP.
The 1939 Unity Conference elected a 32member executive which contained at least five. They included Hughes, Evans, the union officials Barker and Glasson, and the mayor of a mining town, H.B. Chandler. At the 1940 conference the 32person executive included Hughes, Evans, Barker and Glasson, plus Walsham, Starling and Sloss who became a city councillor with left-wing support and later a member of parliament. A group of five or seven communists from an executive of 32 could exercise considerable weight given that they were held in high regard, acted en bloc and held the vital full time position of General Secretary.
As the annual Easter 1940 conference drew closer, the CPA forces, in line with Comintern, became alarmed about the possibility that Britain and France would conclude an agreement with Hitler who would then turn the war to the East. This issue came to a head on the second day of the conference on Saturday, March 23. A sub-committee of three: Jack Hughes, Bill Gollan and Lloyd Ross, all undercover CPA members, drafted a tough resolution. It read, in part:
The Labor Party has always been opposed to imperialist wars and today in the present war situation we demand that every energy be utilised to bring about a cessation of hostilities and the establishment of peace at the earliest opportunity on a just and equitable basis in order to avoid the slaughter of millions. We declare that the Australian people have nothing to gain from the continuance of the war.
The resolution effectively declared that Australia should refuse to assist Britain, which had declared war on fascist Germany. In place of loyalty to Empire it substituted loyalty to the anti-war traditions of the labour movement. The parliamentary Labor leader, William McKell, who was a co-opted member of the committee took no issue with its general tenor but insisted that one sentence be deleted. This was agreed but it was then restored on the conference floor. That sentence read:
The conference makes it clear that, while being opposed to Australian participation in overseas conflicts, it is also opposed to any effort of the anti-Labor government to change the direction of the present war by an aggressive act against any other country with which we are not at war, including the Soviet Union.
The resolution and its rider created uproar from the Langite minority. Hughes told the conference that the war is just a war of adventure and plunder in which we should have no concern. In a phrase that would come to symbolise the stance of the new leadership of the ALP he said: Hands off Russia is the policy of the labour movement today as it has been in the past. Amid interjections suggesting he was a not a Labor man, but a communist, Lloyd Ross predicted within a few months we will be asked to stand side by side with Imperialist Britain in a war against the only real Social[ist] State in the world. We wont be there. Ross was cheered for this comment and the Hands Off Russia resolution passed by 195 to 88.
For conservative Prime Minister Menzies, the Easter conference opened a vital chink in Labors armour in the coming federal election in that it allowed the conservatives to link federal Labor with the taint of unpatriotic and anti-British feeling. Menzies argued that the resolution was treason and marked a stage in the disintegration of federal Labors war policy and challenged its leaders to rebut it. Yet the Hands Off Russia resolution or the assumptions on which it drew its support was not so extreme or absurd as it might appear today. The labour movement and ALP had not forgotten the bloody cost of the war to end wars in 191418 and prior to September 1939, a significant strand of Labor opinion, including the parliamentary leader at the federal level, John Curtin, was passionately isolationist.
In Moscow the spirit of the resolution was in tune with the Comintern. In March 1940, Andre Marty dictated directives for Australia and New Zealand. In discussing work in the unions and the Labor Parties, Marty urged:
We must not forget for one moment, that the British Empire must disappear and that in this fight the social democratic parties also shall disappear. The question is how can we convince the honest members of the Labor Party and the trade unions to unify with the Communist Party, the revolutionary party and create in this manner the organisational foundation of the working class. Here is the way to destroy the rule of the reformists in the workers movement.
But it was the communists not the reformists whose influence was to be destroyed. In 1994 Hughes concluded: We followed the partys line with the war when it was so off beam and a denial of everything we had been fighting and struggling for, the defeat of fascism and all the rest of it. [Because of this] in one minute, virtually…. it went down the drain.
As the war in Europe intensified the HughesEvans position became increasingly untenable. In April Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. In May the phoney war ended with the German blitzkreig invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium followed by the attack on France. The public desire to assist Britain with Australian troops overwhelmed the earlier reservations and hopes for peace on which the Hands Off Russia resolution was built. Within Australia forces grew calling for a government of national unity with the conservative United Australia Party. But the NSW executive of the Labor Party strongly opposed this and attacked other Labor forces who supported it.
A Special Federal ALP Conference in June 1940 opted for a more pro-war stance, agreeing to conditional participation in the European war. Shortly after this, another split developed between the left-controlled NSW branch and the federal leadership. The conservative federal government, with support from the Labor Opposition, had proposed to amend the National Security Act to give extra powers to require individuals to place themselves, their services and their property at the disposal of the Commonwealth. This was bitterly opposed by the HughesEvans forces who publicly supported five Labor federal MPs who opposed the amendments.
On August 2 the federal executive of the ALP moved decisively and suspended the left-dominated NSW executive. It denounced the inspired and unwarranted propaganda circulated in NSW about a proposed National Government and reaffirmed its own rejection of a national government. Trying to avert a split, the executive offered a secret deal to Hughes. In exchange for his support to drop Evans, Hughes would become a junior minister in the next national Labor government. After consulting with the CPA leadership, the offer was rejected and with it died the intriguing possibility of a communist minister of the crown.
On August 17, the suspended HughesEvans leadership reconvened their forces with 18 members of the old executive. They decided to create a new party the Australian Labor Party, State of NSW. This body became the vehicle of what remained of the alliance between the undercover CPA members and the non-CPA Left. It failed to win significant electoral support and in January 1944 it amalgamated with the Communist Party, with five of its leaders becoming members of the Central Committee of the CPA: J. Hughes, W. Gollan, H. Chandler, E. Ross and A. Wilson. At least four and possibly all five were already secret members of the CPA. So ended one of the most intriguing but little-known episodes in underground communist political work in an advanced democratic country.
What were the long term results of the CPAs penetration of the Australian Labor Party? The most significant result was their opposition to the creation of a National Government, that is, a non-party government of national unity. From the outbreak of war until August 1940 pressure grew to form a National Government which, for the communists, was absolute anathema because it meant class collaboration. In April the former leader of the rural-based Country Party, Sir Earle Page, publicly called for a national government, but was rebuffed by federal Labor Opposition leader, John Curtin. A government armed with sweeping defence powers and lacking an Opposition would be too powerful, Curtin argued.
Powerful forces within Labor urged a national government. In early June Curtin called a federal conference to discuss Labors war policy and the Sydney Morning Herald noted: It is believed that an influential section of the conference will advocate the formation of a National Government on the lines approved by the British Labour Party. A Special Federal Conference in June 1940 revealed the key supporter of national government Qu