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The Communist Party of Australia was founded in Sydney on 30 October 1920 by a group of socialists inspired by reports of the Russian Revolution. Among the party's founders were a prominent Sydney trade unionist, Jock Garden , Adela Pankhurst (daughter of the British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst) and most of the then illegal Australian section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW rapidly left the Communist Party, with its original members, over disagreements with the direction of the Soviet Union and Bolshevism. In its early years, mainly through Garden's efforts, the party achieved some influence in the trade union movement in New South Wales, but by the mid 1920s it had dwindled to an insignificant sect.
In the later 1920s the party was rebuilt by Jack Kavanagh, a experienced Canadian Communist activist, and Esmonde Higgins , a talented Melbourne journalist who was the nephew of a High Court judge, H B Higgins . But in 1929 the party leadership fell into disfavour with the Comintern, which under orders from Stalin had taken a turn to extreme revolutionary rhetoric (the so-called " Third Period"), and an emissary, the American Communist Harry Wicks, was sent to sort the party out. Kavanagh was expelled and Higgins resigned.
A new party leadership, consisting of J B (Jack) Miles , Lance Sharkey and Richard Dixon , was imposed on the party by the Comintern, and remained in control for the next 30 years. During the 1930s the party experienced some growth, particularly after 1935Events January January 1 Italian colonies of Tripoli and Kyrenaika are joined together as Libya January 7 World War II: Italian premier Benito Mussolini and French foreign minister Pierre Laval conclude agreement in which each power undertakes not to oppo when the Comintern changed its policy in favour of a "united front against fascismBenito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler Fascism (in Italian, fascismo , capitalized, refers to the right-wing authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. The name comes from fascia which may mea." The party began to win positions in trade unions such as the Miners Federation and the Waterside Workers Federation, although its parliamentary candidates nearly always polled poorly at elections.
During the early stages of World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough the party was banned, but after the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1 entered the war the party had a brief period of popularity. Its membership rose to 20,000, it won control of a number of important trade unions, and a Communist candidate, Fred PatersonFrederick Woolnough Paterson ( 1897- 1977) was an Australian politician. He was the only member of a Communist party ever to be elected to a parliament anywhere in Australia. Early history Paterson was born and raised in Gladstone, Queensland. He studied, was elected to the Queensland parliament . But the party remained marginal to the Australian political mainstream. The Australian Labor PartyThe Australian Labor Party or ALP is Australia's oldest political party. It is so-named because of its origins in and close links to the trade union movement. While Australians normally spell Labour with an "-our" ending, in the name of the party it is sp remained the dominant party of the Australian working class, and always refused to enter alliances with the Communists.
After 1945Events January January 5 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland. January 7 British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge. January 12 World War II: and the onset of the Cold WarThe Cold War (c. 1945- 1991) was the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. On one side was the Soviet Union and its allies, often referred to as the E, the party entered a steady decline. Following the new line from Moscow, and believing that a new "imperialist war" and a new depression were imminent, and that the CPA should immediately contest for leadership of the working class with the Australian Labor Party, the CPA lauched an industrial offensive in 1947, culminating in a prolonged strike in the coalmines in 1949. The Chifley Labor government saw this as a Communist challenge to its position in the labour movement, and used the army to break the strike. The Communist Party never again held such a strong position in the union movement.
In 1951 the Menzies conservative government tried to ban the party, but a referendum to alter the Constitution to permit this was narrowly defeated. When Stalin died and Khrushchev revealed his crimes in the Secret Speech, members began to leave. More left after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. In 1961 the split between the Soviet Union and China was mirrored in Australia, with a small pro-China party being formed.
By the 1960s the party's membership had fallen to around 5,000, but it continued to hold positions in a number of trade unions, and it was also influential in the various protest movements of the period, especially the movement against the Vietnam War. But the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 triggered another crisis. Sharkey's successor as party leader, Laurie Aarons , denounced the invasion, causing a group of pro-Soviet hardliners to leave and form a new party, the Socialist Party of Australia.
Through the 1970s and 1980s the party continued to decline, despite adopting the rhetoric of Eurocommunism and democratising its internal structures so that it became a looser radical party rather than a classic Marxist-Leninist one. By 1990 its membership had declined to less than a thousand, and in 1991 it was wound up. In 1996 the Socialist Party then took up the now-unused name of Communist Party of Australia (see Communist Party of Australia (revived)). This party, along with a number of small Trotskyist groups, maintains the Communist tradition in Australia, but none of these groups is of any political significance.