COMMUNIST CHALLENGE TO THE LABOUR PARTY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25129, 10 March 1947, Page 6

COMMUNIST CHALLENGE TO THE LABOUR PARTY

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

This article in the “Sydney Morning Herald” was contributed by Mr J. p. ORMONDE, a member of the New South Wales executive of the Labour Party. He has for some time written regularly in the Herald on current industrial and political issues. (Published by Arrangement.)

The tactics of the Communist Party in using its influence in the industrial movement to harass the Commonwealth Government and, if possible, destroy it, are a challenge that the Australian Labour Party can no longer afford to ignore. t x Action is urgent because the future of the Australian people is being jeopardised by the strike tactics now being employed—not against employers, but, in most cases, against Labour Governments. _ This is not a plea for less militancy in the trade union movement. The Labour Party was built on the militant spirit of its pioneers, and strong, aggressive trade unions are as necessary to-day as they ever were. It is a plea that the paradox of Communist influence in the trade unions alongside the party’s pitiful fauure to win seats in Parliament after 20 years of striving, should be tackled by the Labour Party as a clear challenge to its own influence with the organised workers. Conflict Over Strikes The conflict between the Communist Party and the Labour Party is clearcut. The Communist Party believes in strikes at any time and on any issue as a weapon of political expediency to further the immediate and long-range ends consistent with thes “party line. ’ The Labour Party believes in strikes only when they are necessary to achieve legitimate industrial objectives. Labour believes that it can avert an economic crisis in Australia, and asks for the trade unions’ co-operation and patience. The Communist Party claims that the crisis is inevitable, and proceeds with a policy that will, if it is allowed to continue, fulfil that P Unionists must be shown by the Labour Party that their interests and the interests of the nation will be best preserved by electing to the leadership of trade unions men who have most in common with the Labour Party—-the party whose members govern Australia. _ It is not really strange that the Communist Party is given a power through the trade unions that’ it is denied in Parliamentary polls. It has that disproportionate industrial power because nothing is done by the Labour Party to preach its own doctrines as counter to facile Communist propaganda in the industrial wing of the movement. To state these things is not “Redbaiting.” They must be said if Labour is to be given its chance to carry into effect the policies that the people elected it to implement. Attempts to defeat those plans must be challenged, whether they are made by big business or any other group. Effective, constructive militancy is not to be feared; anarchy, and the sort of strikes that simply defiver the workers involved into the hands of their opponents, are a very real menace.

Unions in Retreat It has been a major aim of Communist propaganda to spread the false idea that only Communists are militant in prosecuting the workers’ interests. They have gone some way towards fixing that idea where it does their party most good. But union members must now be concerned at the mauling their morale is getting at the hands of the Communist Party. For 12 months the trade union movement has been in almost constant retreat. Most of the displays of industrial might in that period have been directed against Labour Governments. with the employer looking on unhurt. The recent dockyard dispute was a case of thousands of workers being thrown on the street by a small minority, and kept there by an employers’ lock-out. Nobody doubts that the four months’ stoppage was little more than an inconvenience to the metal trade employers involved. A strike that suits the employers is one that the workers should avoid. As usually happens In such strikes, it was left to the Labour Council to save the day—to get the men back to work as a body, not as a defeated rabble. Such strikes enfeeble the workers and bankrupt their unions.

Another example of a political strike that did the workers and the union* involved no good was the steel-coal strike of a/year or so ago. The workers can be tricked into such strikes only as long as the Labour Party is content to do nothing to expose them. The inducement to act is strong now, because Communist objectives are plainly stated. Communist policy is indicated by the Communist journal “Tribune” of February 18. which quotes the party leader, Mr' J. B. Miles, as saying* “Gains can only be won in struggle against the employers, Mr Chifley, and the Arbitration Court.”

This means, unhappily for Australia bqpause of the party s industrial power that the Communist Party believes that workers’ rights have still to be won the hard, way: that there is no solution the democratic way, the Labour Party’s way. Even if the perfect arbitration eystern is evolved in the Federal Parliament next week, the Communist Party will hot be satisfied, because it is opposed to arbitration in any circumstances.

Upsetting* Production If the 40-hour week were to operate throughout Australia to-morrow, it would not change the Communist Party’s plan of not allowing industry to settle down peacefully to the task of production. To the Communist Party, any part lof the Australian democracy, includ. ing trade unions, especially those registered in the Arbitration Court, an part and parcel of the capitalist sy«tern. It is the prime task of the Labour Party to refute this talk; this cannot be done unless a strong Labour propaganda machine is set in motion. The Communist Party runs candidates for Parliament, but it does not believe in Parliament as we know it. Labour believes in Parliament and in the orderly achievement of the socialist objective. It believes that the continuance in office of the Chifley and other Labour Governments is the only means of achieving that goal, and that only a strong Government backed by a substantial trade union movement can benefit the workers in the immediate future. Australia needs 12 months of solid production if the strain*- of the immediate future are to be met But the Communist Party is preaching that an economic crisis is inevitable and that gains must be won before it comes.

“We need further development of the struggle,” says Mr Miles. “We need correct action to win key demands of the workeiK in good time, before the economic crisis hits Australia. Wide sections of the workers are already in the struggle, and the situation is favourable for advance." Policy of Restriction This profession makes no allowance for the fact that we have a Labour Government which has undertaken to ward off the crisis, or, if it comes, to soften the blow. In other parts of the world Communists advocate increased production; here they urge a policy of restriction. Communist hopes that its campaign against the Labour Government would bring the workers to the Communist Party are giving way to doubt. One of its spokesmen, Mr R. Dixon, says: "We ar* witnessing a movement away from th * Labour Party and Labour Governments which is not being expressed in any organised move towards the Communist Party. There is real danger that this ’could lead to confusion and defeat, as in 1916 and 1931, and in the coming to office of reactionary parties, ...” To the Labour observer, that is ths inevitable end of the Communist Party’s campaign to destroy Labour; the worker will be thrown to the reactionaries. The only alternative in Australia to the Labour Party is the group now known as the Liberal Party. Memories of 1931 should direct the choice. Labour has to meet the challenge of the Communist Party intelligen(Zy—wf merely by passing resolutions. It has to become as effective with propaganda for its own cause as the Communist Party is for its policies.