B , op cit«, p •32

Loc, cit. Tribune’s losses were subsidised by the Newsletter1s profits. For a statement on the profitability of the Newsletter, see Tribune, 18 January 1945.

91

Ibid., 8 October 1946. Subsequent electoral reverses were explained away in a similar fashion (see ibid., 9 May 1947, and Communist

elections. The A.L.r. has invariably placed Communist candidates last on its official 'how-to-vote' cards. On the other hand, if tne Communist Tarty had been assured of A.L.T. preferences, its

92

electoral prospects would have improved considerably." As it was, the principal reason for the poor performance of the Tarty was the solidarity of the Labor Tarty vote.

The Tarty worked for the re-election of the Federal Labor Government in 1946, but there were few instances of formal

93

co-operation between the two parties at the branch level. In con­ trast to the Australian Party, the British Party advocated an

all-party 'National Government' in 1945, but this was probably due to the fact that Britain had been governed by a National Government during the war whereas in Australia a Labor Government had been in power. Moreover, Communists participated in a number of post-war coalition governments in Europe until 1947.

The Sharkey-Tollitt controversy

In late 1947 another change occurred in the international Comrau nist line following the formation of the Cominform, although there had been signs of it some time before. Both the Western and

Communist blocs had been growing further and further apart since

92

Occasionally, Communist preferences enabled the A.L.T. to retain or capture Federal and State seats.

93

1945. The newly created Corainform declared that the world was divided into only two camps, the ’peace-loving, democratic’ bloc led by the Soviet Onion, and the 'imperialist' bloc led by the United States. In its view there could be no third way; Labor Governments were firmly placed in the 'imperialist' bloc, and as

a result came unuer increasingly heavy fire from the Communists as the tough line was implemented. As usual the Australian Party was quick to change and its concern with the implementation of the

line led to public disagreement between the British and Australian Parties in 1948. This took the form of a series of strongly worded

letters between Sharkey and the British Party Secretary, harry 94

Pollitt. The main issue in dispute was the British Party's alleged failure to follow the new line and Sharkey stated that British Party policy towards the British Labour Government did not change

appreciably in late 1947 and 1948. Previously, in October 1947 Sharkey bad criticized Pollitt's view that Britain was in a period

95

of transition to Socialism. v In the 1948 letters (which began in March and were not released until August), Sharkey accused the

British leaders of supporting tne 'class collaborationist' policies of the Attlee Government, particularly the latter's export drive

94

See ibid., 14 August 1948, 18 August 1948, 30 October 1948, and Communist Review, September 1948.

95

these views were nothing less than 'Browderism applied to British conditions’ which had 'reinforced social-democratic illusions among

,. ,9b

the masses•1

The British leaders rejected Sharkey's criticism but evaded the central issues by introducing extraneous material such as the

97

Browderist views once held by Thornton, Eventually, the outcome of the dispute was that the British Party announced a sharp break with its previous policy and instructed its members to step up resis­ tance to the Attlee Government's 'offensive1 against the workers'

living standards and also to press for wage increases and oppose Anglo-American co-operation,^^

Although hews-Weekly compared Sharkey's role in the affair to that of the French Communist Jacques Duclos who had attacked Browder in 1945 and claimed that the Cominform could not act directly against the British Party since this would evoke nationalist Communist

99

resistance, it seems clear that Sharkey did not in fact act on Cominform instructions but rather that he was concerned with doctri­ nal purity ana that, since he was basically an ultra leftist, the

9b Ibid,, 14 August 1948. 97 Loc, cit. 98 News-meekly, 29 September 1948. 99 Ibid., 25 August 1948

tough international line appealed to him personally more than the iy4l-45 line. It is also possible that Snarkey's interest in the British Party was at least partly motivated by a desire to see the Australian Party displace the British Party as unofficial

adviser to the Indian Communist Party. In one of his letters Sharkey accused Pollitt of possessing ’an incorrect understanding of the present-day manoeuvres of Britisn imperialism in relation to the Colonial Revolution.'*^ The British Party had been advocating that former British colonial territories should remain in the British Commonwealth while the Australians, in accordance with the new line, nad been pressing for the complete independence of these territories.

At the Indian Communist Party Congress in February 1948, the Indian Party Secretary, P.C. dosni, who, according to Sharkey

^a fraternal delegate at the Congress) represented the 'opportunist trend...which was largely influenced by the revisionism of Pollitt and Palme Butt', was defeated by the leader of the left-wing faction, B . T . itanadive. Sharkey's visit to India, however, assumed signifi­ cant since, in the views of a number of historians specialising in Asian Communist Parties, his talks with Malayan Communist leaders

en route to and returning from Calcutta were connected with the

TÖÖ

outbreak of the Malayan guerilla war in June 1948.*^* however, at the time a number of Asian Parties were involved in civil wars and an intermediary between the Cominform and the Malayan Communists was completely unnecessary and, even if one had existed, he would probably have been a Cninese Communist or a World Federation of Trade Unions functionary. Sharkey supported the Malayan Communists

in their 'struggle for national independence' but added that it was 'a matter for the Malayans tnemselves' as to whether they should

102

start an insurrection and decide on its timing ana conduct.

Another indication of the acute sensitivity of the Australian Party in endorsing the new international line was its volte-face over Yugoslavia, wnich, although previously regarded as tne model People's Democracy, was expelled from the Cominform in 1948. immediately, the Australian Party denounced the Yugoslav leaders, but the only repurcussion of the episode was the split in the small League for Democracy in Greece where the Communist majority expelled the President, Colonel A.W. Sheppard, and the Cnairman, W.K. Fisher, for adopting a pro-Tito stand.

103

101

See Lucian W. Pye, Guerilla Communism in M a l a y a , Princeton, 1956, p.84; Malcolm D. Kennedy, A Short history of Communism in A s i a ,

London, 1957, p.450; and d.H. Brimraell, Communism in Soutn East A s i a , London, 1959, p.210. See also Cecil H. Sharpley, op. cit., p.113. 102

Tribune, 14 August 1948. 103

Ibid., 17 July 1948, 7 August 1948. 104

Ibid., 22 March 1950, 15 April 1950; Barcan, op. cit., p.10.

Those expelled from the League joined the Australian-Yugoslav Cultural Association (Tribune, 11 March 1950).

After the war the Communist Party was not thought of as a patriotic organisation by large numbers of Australians and it quickly regained its pre-war reputation as an 'alien* body. How­ ever, the Party's leaders have never seen the Party as being

controlled by a foreign power. Sharkey has claimed that the existence of Socialism in the Soviet Union at once establishes 'a community of interest1 between Australian Communists and the Soviet Union:

Neither the Australian, nor any other Communist Party needs orders from Moscow, It is a question of studying the

philosopny, the economic and political teaching of Marxism, and applying them to Australian problems.

tie continued:

There is no question of subservience to a foreign power, but of workers of different countries pursuing...a similar or identical policy, because their common starting point is the struggle for Socialism and the application of Marxist principles to the great national and international questions as they arise.

The Australian Communist Party has no relations, official or otherwise, with the Soviet Government, nor did we ever have such relations.1^)5

Sharkey, however, fails to distinguish between defending the Soviet Union against the sweeping attacks of anti-Socialists and the

Australian Party's uncritical justification of all Soviet actions and policies.

At the domestic level the tough post-1947 line obliged the Party to stress its independence and to increase attacks on the

105

L.L. Sharkey, Australian Communists and Soviet Russia, Sydney, 1947, p p , 4, 6.

Labor Party, In addition, Australian nationalism became an impor­ tant feature of Communist policy (in contrast to the stress on

internationalism in the thirties) and the Party represented itself as the sole defender of Australian independence against the threat

l ü ö

of United States domination. At the 1948 National Congress

E.W, Campbell warned that the Federal Government's policy would lead