Herbert Moxon, a victim of the “Bolshevisation” of the Communist Party of Australia

Beris Penrose

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Introduction

Bob Gould

Beris Penrose is a historian who lives in Melbourne, and whose politics are in the International Socialist tradition. She has also written some extremely useful articles on occupational health and safety.

Shades of red, 1920

Nancy Mills

The 30th October, 1920, in Sydney, was a clear, cool Spring day. In a small hall above Fay’s bookshop, at the corner of Pitt and Liverpool Streets, twenty-six people gathered together. They represented the two main socialist groups, and their purpose was to amalgamate to establish the Australian Communist party.

A Trojan horse within Social Democracy

David McKnight

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Introduction

Bob Gould

This is a chapter from Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War: The Conspiratorial Heritage, by David McKnight (Frank Cass, London, 2000).David McKnight teaches in the Humanities Faculty at the University of Technology, Sydney. He began his activity on the left as a high-school student, when he joined the youth group, Liberation, organised by the late Denis Freney, in the late 1960s. He later joined the Communist Party of Australia and was for some years a journalist on Tribune, along with Denis Freney.

Ignorant demagogy about the labour movement

And the history of the Communist Party and Labor Party

Bob Gould

Peter Boyle’s first response to me is very revealing, in style, language and content. It went up only a few minutes after my post, and he didn’t even bother to correct obvious spelling mistakes.

A stitch in time

Experiences in the rag trade

Betty Reilly

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Introduction

Bob Gould

My bookshop in King Street, Newtown, is about 200 yards from what was the piece of waste ground called the Bullring, where the circus used to play in Newtown and where working-class public meetings used to take place.

The CPA and the Comintern

The Communist Party of Australia and the Communist International (1927-1929)

Barbara Curthoys

History indeed looks different when you know the end of the story. Christopher Hill

It has been generally accepted that the events at the ninth annual conference of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1929, resulting in a change of leadership and the ousting of the “right-wing deviationists”, were a turning point in its history. The incidents which surrounded the 1929 conference, the characterisation of the leading players, the role of the Communist International (Comintern), and the estimation of its outcome have been variously interpreted but none doubt its significance. The period has been covered by a number of writers but the material recently made available by the Comintern Archives in Moscow may serve to illuminate the story further.¹

What is happening in the Communist Party?

Gil Roper

From The Militant, Sydney, November 29, 1937 (Vol 4, No 14 — new series)

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Introduction

The partly forgotten world of Sydney Marxism from the 1930s to the 1950s

Bob Gould

Gil and Edna Roper were active in the left of the labour movement from the 1920s until the 1960s. As a brash young rebel in the 1950s, I got to know them both, and they were very kind to me.

Honeymoon over. Collapse of the left coalition

Honeymoon over: the collapse of the left coalition. Bob Gould

The CPA and the left. Denis Freney

An open letter to Moratorium sponsors

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Introduction: Socialists and the Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960 and 1970s

The recent movement against the imperialist war on Iraq was the biggest such movement the world has seen. There has been some dismay that it seems to have ebbed as quickly as it appeared. The Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960s and early 1970s also surged and ebbed several times in the course of a very long struggle.

The Communist Party in Australian life

Bob Gould

This article is an overview of the significance and influence of the Communist Party in Australia, covering the period between the German invasion of Russia in 1941 and the dissolution of the CP in the early 1990s. This essay is to be considered along with other pieces I have written, including my lengthy polemical study of Stuart Macintyre’s book, The Reds, on the CP until 1941, and my short piece on the labour movement split of 1955. It is very much work in progress. I am circulating it in my usual fashion, for criticism and comment, by anyone interested, and I will modify it suitably on the basis of valid observations and criticisms. I would like to stress that it is, at this stage, a very rough early draft.

Stewart Macintyre’s The Reds

Stuart Macintyre’s The Reds, a bland, overly nostalgic and essentially Stalinist company history of Australian Communism

Bob Gould

The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998

I must initially state my personal view of this book. I have been rather a fan of some of Macintyre’s historical writing. I find three of his other books exceedingly useful: Proletarian Science, about the ideological and intellectual climate that produced the foundation leaders of the British Communist Party; Militant, the intelligent and revealing biography of Western Australian waterfront union leader Paddy Troy; and, in another vein, the reflective examination of 19th century liberalism in the state of Victoria.