Marx House Is Red Nerve Centre In Australia

Chronicle (Levin), 9 July 1949, Page 5

Marx House Is Red Nerve Centre In Australia

Received Friday 8.30 p.m. SYDNEY, July 8. Marx House, the scene of this morning's raid hy pommppWealtlx investigation offieers, is the national headquarters of the Australian Communist Party and the perye' centre of the party activities ' throughout the Commonwealth. Situated in George Street within a short distance of the Central Railway Statiop, it is a five-storey cream-painted brick hpilding flanked hy a hotel on one side and a "hargain shop" on the other. From the offiees within operate tlie, executives controlling the activities of 12,000 registored party memhers iu* Australia and their fellow travellers. On the ground floor is the Communist activated "Pionoer Bookshop" bvliich speeialises -in the sale of IMarxist and

Leninist literature. It is possible to I purehase here a niimber ,of Communi it | news aud propaganda sheets from the Sydney Tribune' to Moscow Pravda. Light/airy offiees on the top floor house the sraff of the Tribune which is pub lished twice weekly. .Copy is sent out to the Newsletter Printery purchassd bv the Communist Party five vears ago for £2.1,000. Between the bookshop and the Tribune are the offiees of the central committee, lecture halls, and the tutorial rooms of the "Mars School. " Australia 's number one Communisi Laurence Louis Sharkey, formerly an itinerant Iahourer, occupied a seyerely furnished room in which the onlv decoration is a portrait of Stalin He was national president of the party from 1029 and last year hecanie general secretary — a position which in tlie Communist organisation has heen regarded as of the greatest . importance sinee Stalin wrqn his way to power as General Secretary of the Bolshevik T'arty. Tn the next room is Richard DixOn, aged 44, formerly knowTn as Clifton Reginald Walker, and once a railway porter, He i's now general president of the party. On the sam'e floor is a former Queensland'cane-cuttef, J. C. Henrv now organising secretary. The Gommunist Party bought Marx House for £30.500 and moved into it in 1,044. Jt is regarded as hy far the best home the party has ever had and has heen frequently mentioned in the State and Federal Parliaments for the number of telephones and othep amenities allegedly added in times of greatest restricfion. Correspopd.ents writing in the Sydney Telegraph claim that the building wTas remodehed hy fhe conseription of materials ahfl the^labour of tradesmen in tke party. There were 15 telephones in the building before the Communists took over. The present number is estiinated as 39. An ipiportant funetion of the Communist Party — the indoctrinafion and training of recruits aud partv speeialists — is earried out dailv and nightlv in klarx House. Giving evidenee this week before the Royal Commission ipto Communist activities in Yietoria the fprmer Communist, Cecil Herbert Sharpley, said that when a prominpht Victorian Communist was ordered to attend a special series of lectures at Marx House a i Communist doetor was called in to issue a medical certifleate to the effeet, that the man needed three months' rest from einployment in Victoria. The courses include definitions of basic terms speh as l?ourgeoisie and imperialism, instruction in kev Communist books and theories, methods of seizing control of unions and tacties to be adopted in a crisis. Recently reports from jCaukerra, haye puggested that the Federal" Gpvprnment mav bnv AFarx House to provide urgently need offiee spaee for Government Departments, but official sourees dp not confirm this. The Premier of West Australia (Dr. McLarty) announced in Parliament fpday that the Government intended to

support an application b.y employers for the reinclusion of a penalty 'clause in the Collie coalminers' award. phe penalty clause would provide for miners tp lose oue dav's lioliday pay for every dav on which they were on strike. Because of the diminisihng supplies South Australian housewiyeg will b« I able to use gas for only one hour tomorrow, and Adelaide will be without trams or trollev buses ovpr the yreelcend. Onlv gkeleton rail' car and b'us services will ppprate. A New Delhi massage savs the Indian freighter West Bengal sailed fqr Sydney from Calcqtba carryipg 50,00 tpns of coal. Earlier this month the Calcutta dockworkers protested against the sliipment of Indian coal to Australia becajjgp it was L'p, chal]epge to thp gepuine" trade jinion d'emands" of tfie Australian miners. " '