CPA: An admirable history of struggle

By Ernest Tomic As a former member of the Communist Party of Australia, I wish to respond to John Percy's recent articles in Green Left about the history of the CPA. I was a member from 1983 to 1985. I joined when I was 16 years old. Growing up in a working class immigrant family, I was raised on political discussion. At 13 I enthusiastically declared myself a communist. At 14 I had some serious thinking about communism to do when waves of strikes hit Poland and Solidarnosc was born; not to mention my growing contact with my father, a Croatian nationalist, whose own father had died in a Yugoslav prison for fighting against Tito's partisans during the war. It was hard reconcile the ideas of communism, a classless society without oppression, with what had been happening in Eastern Europe and China under one party state socialism. But I read as extensively as I could on socialism and labour movement history and discovered the notion of workers' self-management and workers' cooperatives. In 1981 I discovered a book called Comrades Come Rally by John Sendy which contained a history of the CPA from the 1930s to the '70s. That book was a real eye-opener. True, the CPA was "Stalinist" from about 1929 until the late '60s, but for all its mistakes, the CPA has had a very proud and noble history. As a former member and an Anarchist, I feel proud to have been a member of the CPA and still in some ways feel part of that communist tradition. Sure, CPA leaders like Lance Sharkey and Ernie Thornton were hardline Stalinists, but they were also hard working, self-sacrificing, sincere men who, along with thousands of CPA members since the '20s, struggled hard for the rights and living conditions of the working class. Communist trade unionists were often the best members the unions had and up until the '70s and beyond retained the respect and support of their fellow trade unionists. I think of Paddy Troy, Jim Healy, Ted Bull and Harold Peder, to name a few. Nor was it solely on the industrial front that communists did such good work. Their role in left-wing theatre, bringing poetry and plays to work sites, and their role in workers' education and encouraging working class literature were also admirable. There's a rich history of Australian writers and story tellers who have been CPA members and supporters. There was also their role in international solidarity, their struggles against fascism in the '30s, the struggle against sending pig iron to Japan in 1938, and their support for Indonesian independence from the Dutch after World War I which led to wharfies black banning Dutch shipping. Communists were among the few to stand against racism — combating the racism of Australian cane cutters against their Italian brothers in the '30s and trying to stop the anti-immigrant riots in Kalgoorlie in 1934. The CPA for years was almost a lone political voice in supporting Aboriginal struggles. In particular, they did as much as they could for the Aboriginal stockman's strike in the Pilbara of 1946. Communists were also important in the Vietnam moratorium movement. Women in the CPA, historically, had mixed luck. The CPA leadership at least paid lip service to women's rights. I remember articles in Tribune about the women's auxiliaries that organised strike support, particularly on the coal fields, and the importance of communist women in this. There were also articles about the Union of Australian Women and its communist links. I knew a number of older women communists who'd been members for decades and who felt very proud of their membership. As a 17 year-old communist, when I felt so keenly from comrades the importance of developing an understanding of feminism, I took it for granted the Communist Party had been sympathetic to women's causes from the beginning. Years later, I discovered that hadn't always been the case and heard about the misogyny of some male communists from women who'd experienced it first hand in the 1950s and '60s. The cultural watershed of course was the late '60s and '70s with the upsurge of the women's liberation movement. But for years before that the most progressive women and the most visionary about issues of justice and equality between women and men joined the Communist Party. And it was men in the Communist Party who were most likely to be open minded about women's rights, just as they were the most likely to oppose racism. Some great autobiographies of women communists in Australia have been written, among them A Proletarian Life by Audrey Blake and Love and Anger by Justina Williams. Also, a film has been made, Red Matildas. I joined the CPA in 1983. I met some very fine people, the memory of whom continues to inspire me today. I never doubted the sincerity, idealism and hard work of any of the communists I knew in Perth in those years. The CPA was also a profound educational experience for me. I joined because I believed in working class revolution for socialism and that was it. In the CPA there were often more discussions about homophobia and sexism than there were about converting the working class to socialism. I met fine comrades involved in the Campaign Against Racial Exploitation, and the peace and environment movements. I learned that injustice was far more than the division between rich and poor. Finally I learned about democratic socialism. Comrades were well aware of history and the crimes committed in the name of socialism. We weren't into icons. Lenin was just another thinker to us. We had our own individual opinions about him and some weren't flattering. This iconoclasm, the freedom of thought and debate in the party, internal democracy (at least in Perth) was refreshing. Also refreshing was its desire to face facts and see the world realistically, and to ponder realistically how to reach people and create a mass socialist movement in Australia. That's what the "prospects for socialism" debate in the '80s was about. The CPA having been the main standard bearer of socialism, it was right that by the '80s, when the left was obviously declining and in stagnation overseas (at least in North American and Western Europe), we held this debate. I think many of us decided that the prospects had never seemed so gloomy — few people then or now in Australia are interested in socialism. Then there was the example of actually existing socialism. I spoke to a Polish comrade who honestly hoped the Polish workers would smash the power of the Communist Party in Poland. I think many of us felt the same way about Eastern Europe and I bet (at least I hope) that many of us cheered the fall of one party state socialism in Eastern Europe. But being demoralised about socialist prospects by 1984 didn't mean we were demoralised about the struggle for social justice. Many of us were energetically working in various social movements and were excited about the recent successes of the Nuclear Disarmament Party and the Greens Party in Germany. We realised times had changed and a radically different approach was needed to capture the radical sentiments of people. Socialism is suffering from the weight of so much historical baggage and from so much association with the suppression of human rights and democracy — which if you read Alexander Solzhenitsyn you will discover did not begin with Stalin but with Lenin and Trotsky, and which targeted and swept away all of Russia's non-Bolshevik socialists. In conclusion, though critical of the Stalinist and undemocratic past (up until the late '60s) of the CPA, its entire history of struggle for social justice and the working class in Australia is very admirable. I don't think John Percy has given the CPA enough credit for its achievements, and also for its positive and democratic chances in the '70s. And as an ex-CPA member I still believe many socialists must utterly let go of any undemocratic ideas and obsolete historical baggage if they have any chance of reaching a significant number of people in Australia.