Communist Influence in Australian Unions is Remarkable

Grey River Argus, 15 April 1948, Page 3

Communist Influence in Australian Unions is Remarkable

MELBOURNE, April 3. The Queensland railway strike and much industrial strife elsewhere in Australia that has gone before it have moved sober-minded- Australians to do some hard thinking. There is said to be fewer than 20,000 members of the Communist, party in all Australia, but their numerical strength is no criterion of their influence in the trade unions or of their capacity for mischief in industry.

On the political front the Communists have not yet made a purposeful effort; they are too busy elsewhere. At both Commonwealth and State elections they usually put into industrial strongholds of the Labour Party • a handful of candidates who almost invariably command a relatively insignificant vote. But elections are regarded merely as useful opportunities of spreading Communist propaganda. Only one Communist has _ been elected to any Australian Parliament —Frederick Paterson, a Rhodes scholar and a barrister, who is serving his second triennial term in the Queensland Legislative Assembly. Among the trade unions by astute' and ruthless leadership the Communists have contrived to exert an influence out of all proportion to their numbers.

They have seized upon the legitimate grievances of trade unionists — notably the tardy and cumbersome operation of the machinery of industrial arbitration, to which the Queensland railway strike is at least partly ascribable—to persuade tens of thousands of decent working men and women wlio are not Communists that “direct action” is more effective than either conciliation or arbitration, because it produces dividends so much more quickly. The vast majority of Australian unionists who fall under the spell of Communists leadership are not concerned with Marxist idealogy and have only the haziest ‘conception of what it is. But they, want more money and better working conditions, and the Communists get both for them. As a result the party has more than trebled its membership since 1939—significantly, it had its rise in the economic depression of the early nineteen thirties—and by occupying strategic positions in the trade union movement has profoundly influenced the conduct of those who angrily repudiate the mere suggestion that they are even Communist sympathisers. Of 20,000 members of 70 unions affiliated with the Melbourne Trades Hall, for instance, only two or three per cent, are active Communists. Ernest Thornton, Federal Secretary of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association with an Australian membership of 40,000 working in the iron and steel industry, is one of Australia’s best-known Communists.

Idris Williams, president of the Coalminers’ Federation, with a membership of 15,000, is a Communist. James Healy, Federal Secretary of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, with a membership of 20,000 is a Communist.

J. J. Brown, Federal president and Victorian secretary of the Australian Railways' Union with a membership of 18,000 is perhaps the ablest . Communist leader of all. He cut his salary from £A6OO to £ASOO a year and accepts only strike pay of £A2 a week while his union is on strike. E. V. Elliott. Federal secretary of the Seamen’s Union, is a Communist.

In Victoria Don Thomson, secretary of the Building Tracies Federation, is a Communist, and so is E. J. Rowe, Federal councillor of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, ' one of the leading spirits in the Queensland strike, who evaded the police for nine days aftei' the Queensland Arbitration Court ordered him to be imprisoned and pay a fine. of £A6O for having directed destruction of certain voting papers in a secret ballot taken by order of the Court on the question whether members of his union in Brisbane should return to work.

Other unions while not manned by Communist officers, are controlled by Communists. It is the essence of Communism that it begets the clanger of trying to overcome one tyranny with another.

Cool judgment is engulfed in and vision is clouded by the bitter passions which it evokes until ultimately reaction besieges the last strongholds of belief in freedom of opinion.

Already the Opposition in the Commonwealth Parliament has demanded legislation declaring illegal the Communist Party and its numerous subsidiaries, and in Victoria the newly-arrived Liberal-Country Party Administration is preparing legislation accordingly. . ' The Prime Minister (Mr Chifley), to his credit has refused to yield to his clamour. He is gratefully supported by those who perceive* that the .battle with Communism is essentially a battle of ideas. If Communism is to be not merely driven underground—there to flourish among the young people for whom there is an added spice in membership of a banned organisation —its philosophy must be countered by better solutions of the social evils to which it pretends to have the one effective answer. As a practical beginning, an attack must be made upon the popular discontents upon which Communism feeds—the inadequacies qf the public education svstem, with its resultant inequality of opportunity for voung people, the prevalence of sub-stand-ard housing, and the waste involved in gambling and abuses of the liquor traffic, to mention only a few. It is along such lines as these that Australians who are primarily concerned with the quality of their country’s life would have the attack upon Communism proceed, leaving the law already upon the statute book to deal with Communists who are proven transgressors. The secret of the Communists’ advance is their fanatical devotion, to their cause. They will stop at nothing to crush opposition. They will impoverish themselves to sustain party funds. There ?s no sacrifices from which they will shrink. , .. , The most resolute and purposeful resistance to Communism in the unions comes from groups organised by Catholic Action, probably because they alone are inspired by religious zeal, which is also the motive force of Communism. These groups are reviving among their adherents a sense of their obligation to take a constructive interest in the affairs of their unions, and that is an important service to the community at large. For if Communists have contrived to capture control of some unions, it is largely through the default of those who have stayed away too long from union meetings and who awake to their duty too late.