Реферат: Social democracy
Just
a few words about our views on the question of influencing the Labor Government
should it be elected. Our first line is that we expect to bring pressure to bear
on the Labor Government through the trade union movement. Secondly, our line is
to bring about a plan of getting as many Communists as possible within the LP. The
Party in New South Wales has one or two Communists in the LP Executive. In Victoria
out of 46 organisations, we have about 34 in which we have Communist organisation.
At the same time we are trying to get direct union representation at the LP conference.
This would mean we would probably control in the future the LP conference.
In
spite of the CPA's growing successes with this tactic, Andre Marty made a number
of wrong-headed criticisms. He began by criticising the strong trade union roots
of the CPA though this was the very thing which had given it such strength in the
Labor Party. Marty argued that this meant the CPA was tainted with anarcho-syndicalism.
«[T] he whole leadership is composed of trade union functionaries,» he complained.
Anarcho-syndicalism led to a neglect of political work, as opposed to union work,
and was one explanation for the lack of growth of the CPA, he said. Marty reiterated
Dixon's point on peace and collective security. Australia had the potential to affect
global politics through the election of a Labor government which would in turn affect
British foreign policy. «The power of the Dominions – Canada, Australia, New Zealand
– is very high. They must speak and [then?] they can change the policy of
the British Government with the help of the British working class.» In the Pacific,
peace through collective security was necessary as a defence against Japanese aggression.
A
similar point was argued by another member of the Anglo-American Secretariat, Mehring,
who argued that in order to defeat Labor neutralism, the CPA should «show that Australia
is being threatened by the aggression of Japan». The CPA's later targetting of the
export of Australian scrap iron to Japan was to crystalise much of the debate over
foreign policy both within Labor and Australia more generally. Bans on Japanese
ships culminated in a major confrontation in December 1938 when the CPA influenced
waterside workers refused to load iron bound for Japan. Though the iron was eventually
loaded, the bitter dispute threw into sharp relief the communists' policy of sanctions
versus the neutralism of federal Labor.
In
1938 the CPA's dual-track strategy of working within and outside the Labor Party
began to pay dividends. In spite of the loss of the Labor Daily Lang remained
in control of the NSW Labor Party but had led the ALP to another defeat in the March
1938 elections. The Federal Executive of the ALP began to sniff the wind as the
power base of the mighty Lang slowly ebbed away. In early 1939 the Federal Executive
finally acted decisively. It decided on a «Unity Conference» of the Lang and anti-Lang
groups to resolve the split. The February meeting of the Central Committee of the
CPA was addressed by Hughes and Evans, at that stage nominally prominent Labor figures.
In May the CPA executive held a meeting with its Labor Party fraction, which discussed
the coming Unity Conference at length. The meeting concluded that the emergence
of a parliamentary-based «centre party» was crucial to the outcome of the conference
and resolved to «strive to the utmost» to work with them. It also decided to fight
to alter the basis of representation of unions and branches. Both aims would be
achieved and both proved crucial to the outcome of the conference.
The
Unity Conference inspired by the Federal Executive finally took place on August
26–27, 1939. While Lang glowered from the public gallery the result on the conference
floor soon showed the anti-Lang forces were in control. Hughes moved the key resolution
structuring the future organisation of the party, which won 221 to 153. Shortly
afterwards fist fights broke out in the gallery and order had to be restored. The
conference put undercover CPA members in key roles on the executive. Jack Hughes
became Vice-President (an office he held simultaneously with the powerful Presidency
of the New South Wales Labor Council) and Walter Evans became General Secretary
of the NSW branch of the ALP. A week later Hughes conducted a ballot for parliamentary
leader and a rebel from the Lang camp, William McKell, finally toppled Lang.
It
is one of the ironies of politics and history, that a moment of triumph is often
followed by an inexorable plunge into disaster. During the Unity Conference there
had occurred what seemed at the time merely a minor disruption. A delegate unsuccessfully
proposed the suspension of standing orders to discuss the international position.
But the chance for a debate was brutally cut short by uproar when he explained his
motive. He wished to move a resolution «expressing abhorrence with the onward march
of fascism» and viewing with disgust the signing of the German-Russian Non‑Aggression
Pact. Criticism of Russia was guaranteed to provoke loud opposition from the anti-Lang
Left. However, defence of this pact became the seed of destruction, which would
destroy both the CPA's influence and the strength of the broader Left within the
NSW branch of the Labor Party for decades to come.
The
Non‑Aggression Pact was quickly followed by a German invasion of Poland,
which was then divided between the USSR and Germany. On September 3, Britain, which
had undertaken to assist Poland, declared war on Germany. Initially, however, due
to poor communication with the USSR and following the logic of the united front
the CPA and its undercover Labor fraction boldly declared their support for
Britain's war against fascism. In a radio broadcast for a federal by‑election
in the seat of Hunter, Jack Hughes echoed these sentiments. But as the line of the
Communist International became clearer the CPA's attitude to the war soon began
to change toward one of opposition to Britain's war on Germany. This had two consequences
for the CPA dual members who had fought for three years to unseat Lang and had won
at the Unity conference just a month earlier. First, instead of remaining in the
broad stream of the militant unionism, they now had to swim against the tide of
incomprehension of their own sympathisers whom they had won by their opposition
to fascism and isolationism over the previous three years. The second consequence
flowed from this very public shift in the line: the communist dual members in the
Labor Party rapidly became identifiable as dogmatic adherents of the CPA.
The
resulting situation was the undoing of the CPA's new found influence in the Labor
Party but this was of no consequence to the Anglo-American Secretariat of the Comintern.
A Comintern report noted that the Australian government of R.G. Menzies as «the
weakest government in the British Empire». It anticipated that the Menzies government's
would be replaced by a Labor Party whose leadership «is being increasingly put under
pressure by the growing anti-war movement». It noted with satisfaction that the
CPA had rectified its line on the war with a statement on December 8, 1939, admitting
that the party had «misunderstood the importance of the Soviet-German Non‑Aggression
Pact».
After
the CPA's political somersault on the war, the issue of communism in the Labor
Party sharpened. With the Easter 1940 annual conference approaching, John Hughes
received a call from the state Labor leader, William McKell, whom he had helped
install. McKell wanted to meet him. Hughes later recalled:
When
I got to his office, he not only closed door but he locked it. He said: «I'm glad
you could come. I've got the security records of all the communists in the Labor
Party. I think we ought to go over it together. With the conference coming up, we
want to make sure we don't have any of these birds on [the next executive]»
I
said: «That's a very good idea, Bill» And I'm thinking, «I guess my name will feature
prominently here». Then I thought, «well if that's so, that's so, I'll handle it.»
Anyhow, it wasn't. That was surprise number one. And I wasn't sure of that until
we had really finished.
The
result of the meeting was that while at least one undercover member (Herbert Chandler)
lost his place on the proposed ticket for the 1940 executive, he was replaced by
others: Ted Walsham, a railway shop steward and James Starling, a teacher. Over
50 years later it is difficult to identify with certainty all the dual members who
reached the executive level of the ALP in this period. On one level it was of secondary
importance to the fact that the political line of the CPA was clearly accepted by
a broad group of non-communist anti-Lang forces on the executive. However, it is
essential to understand the strength and strategy of the CPA to identify as accurately
as possible its actual members in the leadership of the ALP.
The
1939 Unity Conference elected a 32‑member executive which contained at least
five. They included Hughes, Evans, the union officials Barker and Glasson, and the
mayor of a mining town, H.B. Chandler. At the 1940 conference the 32‑person
executive included Hughes, Evans, Barker and Glasson, plus Walsham, Starling and
Sloss who became a city councillor with left-wing support and later a member of
parliament. A group of five or seven communists from an executive of 32 could exercise
considerable weight given that they were held in high regard, acted en bloc and
held the vital full time position of General Secretary.
As
the annual Easter 1940 conference drew closer, the CPA forces, in line with Comintern,
became alarmed about the possibility that Britain and France would conclude an agreement
with Hitler who would then turn the war to the East. This issue came to a head on
the second day of the conference on Saturday, March 23. A sub-committee of three:
Jack Hughes, Bill Gollan and Lloyd Ross, all undercover CPA members, drafted a tough
resolution. It read, in part:
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