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Australian Labour and the Profintern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Frank Farrell
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In common with many other countries, Australia has had, since 1920, a Communist Party, which is an obvious and continuing symbol of international reaction to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Naturally enough the formation of this Communist Party and its subsequent history has attracted a degree of attention from historians and scholars of Communist movements and Australian politics. The impact of the Profintern, on the other hand, has been completely neglected. Even at the international level no full-scale study of the Profintern and its related trade-union organisations is yet available, and though one scholar has noticed that in Australia “the history of communism in the unions is […] separate from CPA political history”, the bases of this separation have been left relatively unexplored. This article seeks to examine Moscow's links with the Australian trade-union movement via the Profintern in the period 1920–35. It would seem that these links overshadowed the CPA as a “Communist” influence in the Australian context, at least for the first decade of the Comintern's existence. The separation of CPA history from the wider influence of Communism in the unions is discernible almost from the very start.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , April 1979 , pp. 34 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1979

References

1 For studies of the CPA see Davidson, A., The Communist Party of Australia: A Short History (Stanford, 1969)Google Scholar (hereafter The CPA); World Communism: A Handbook 1918–1965, ed. by Sworakowski, W. S. (Stanford, 1973), pp. 18–21Google Scholar; Gollan, R., Revolutionaries and Reformists: Communism and the Australian Labour Movement 1920–1955 (Canberra, 1975).Google Scholar

2 The name Profintern derives from the Russian abbreviation for trade-union International. Australian unionists referred to the organisation as the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) or, more often, simply the Red International. I have used the various names interchangeably throughout this text. On the formation and general history of the Profintern see Lorwin, L. L., Labor and Internationalism (New York, 1929), esp. pp. 228–46, 530–37Google Scholar; Foster, W. Z., History of the Three Internationals (New York, 1955), pp. 272–307Google Scholar; World Communism, op. cit., pp. 375–77.

3 Davidson, The CPA, p. 183.

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7 Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists, op. cit., pp. 2ff.

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9 Ibid., p. 194.

10 For a participant's view of these developments see Lang, J. T., I Remember (Sydney, 1956), esp. pp. 197–202, 310–31.Google Scholar For a recent study see Jack Lang, ed. by Radi, H. and Spearritt, P. (Sydney, 1977), pp. 35–36, 50–60.Google Scholar

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18 Ibid., p. 186; Worker (Brisbane), January 1920; Labor Call (Melbourne), 11 March.

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30 Foster, History of the Three Internationals, op. cit., p. 278.

31 See Martin, Communism and the British Trade Unions, op. cit., pp. 14–15; Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, op. cit., pp. 239–41.

32 On W. Smith see Davidson, The CPA, p. 18. For a full account of the conference see Casey's “Russian Report” in the Adela Pankhurst and Tom Walsh Collection, Australian National Library, Canberra, Ms. 5894.

33 See Davidson, The CPA, pp. 6, 17, note.

34 Casey's “Russian Report”.

35 See Davidson, The CPA, pp. 22ff.

36 Lawrence, D. H., Kangaroo (London, 1923)Google Scholar, written during a brief visit to Australia in May-June 1922.

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48 McLane, op. cit., pp. 133, 136.

49 Chesneaux, J., The Chinese Labor Movement 1919–1927 (Stanford, 1968), pp. 259–60.Google Scholar On the Chinese Labor Federation's role in establishing the PPTUS see Pan-Pacific Worker (Sydney), 2 April 1928, p. 4.

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63 Pan-Pacific Worker, 1 October 1930, pp. 316–17; Brimmell, Communism in South East Asia, op. cit., pp. 103ff.; McLane, , Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia, pp. 165ff.Google Scholar

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65 See ibid., 2 December, esp. pp. 10–20; Lozovskij, A., Protiv vojny, imperializma i reformizma: Doklad i zaključitel'noe slovo na Tichookeanskoj konferencii profsojuzov 16 avgusta 1929 g. (Moscow, 1929).Google Scholar

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67 ACTU debate of these matters is reported in the Australian Worker, 28 February 1930.

68 Ibid., 5 March.

69 See Workers' Weekly, 3 January 1930, p. 1.

70 Davidson, The CPA, p. 37.

71 Communist, 10 February 1922, p. 1; Direct Action, March 1922, p. 1.

72 See Lazitch, and Drachkovitch, , Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, p. 115.Google Scholar

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74 Ibid., 26 September.

75 Jack Lang, op. cit., esp. chs 3 and 4.

76 Pan-Pacific Worker, 5 January 1931, p. 10.

77 Ibid.

78 Workers' Weekly, 31 July 1931, p. 2.

79 See Tasks of the Red Trade Unions and MMM: Resolutions of the Fifth Congress RILU (Sydney, 1931).Google Scholar

80 The experiments in dual unionism in which the CPA and the MMM became involved were the Pastoral Workers' Industrial Union of Australia (formed by AWU militants in 1930 and disbanded by the CPA in 1936) and an unsuccessful attempt in 1932 to establish a section of the Hamburg-based International of Seamen and Harbour Workers.

81 Red Leader, 4 January 1933, p. 2.

82 Ibid., 3 January, p. 1.

83 Ibid., 17 July 1935, p. 3; Davidson, The CPA, p. 60.

84 Red Leader, 11 January 1933, p. 4. On the ARU's affiliation with the Profintern see ibid., 14 September 1932, p. 14; 26 September 1934, p. 4; Nolan, F., You Pass This Way Only Once (Brisbane, 1975), ch. 5.Google Scholar

85 See Red Leader, 3 April 1935, p. 2.

86 World Communism, p. 376.

87 See Kisch, E., Australian Landfall (London, 1937; Sydney, 1968).Google Scholar

88 See Red Leader, esp. 2 January 1935, p. 2; 27 February, p. 2.

89 Ibid., 17 July, p. 3. Subsequently some attempt was made to continue the co-ordination of union opinion achieved by Red Leader through publication of the Trade Union Leader, a monthly journal of left-wing commentary.