The fight against the antilabor witch-hunt laws in the late 1940s and early 1950s offers some important lessons for working-class fighters today, at a time when the capitalist rulers are using the creation of a war atmosphere to try to expand police powers, curtail political rights, step up attacks on the rights of immigrants, and use patriotic calls to blunt workers' resistance to the bosses' attacks.

The Menzies government organized this referendum after the High Court declared unconstitutional the thought-control legislation known as the Communist Party Dissolution Act. The prime minister put forward the repressive act in April 1950, but the court struck it down in a 6-to-1 vote a year later, with only Chief Justice John Latham voting to uphold the law. Menzies had placed banning the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) at the center of his program since 1948.

The witch-hunt bill, derived in part from the 1940 U.S. Smith Act, defined a communist as "a person who supports or advocates the objectives, policies, teachings, principles or practices of communism, as expounded by Marx and Lenin." The government could declare a person to be a member of the CPA or a communist. A "declared" person couldn't hold office, be employed by the commonwealth, or an "authority of the commonwealth," such as a trade union.

Under the act, the CPA would be dissolved as an unlawful association and a receiver appointed to dispose of the party's property. Members who continued to function after its dissolution faced five-year jail terms. Wide search powers were to be granted to the cops.

The High Court heard the case beginning Nov. 14, 1950, at the height of the Korean War.

The source of the anticommunist witch-hunt was the rulers' pressing need to curb working-class militancy at home. This would enable Australian capitalists to take maximum advantage of being part of the victorious U.S.-led alliance in World War II and to increase their profit rates in a period of relative economic expansion.

Throughout Asia, which the Australian imperialist rulers arrogantly considered part of their backyard, workers and peasants were seizing the opportunity to free themselves from imperial control. While the class struggle in Papua New Guinea, the colonial jewel in the Australian imperialist crown, was quiet, independence wars or civil wars were under way in Indochina, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya, Korea, and China.

In Australia, in the context of a huge labor shortage, the working class was trying to claw its way back from the austerity and sacrifice imposed during the war, when wages had been "pegged" to 1941 levels, strikes officially prohibited, and rationing imposed. Inflation meant that prices had risen by late 1950 to about 75 percent above the pre-World War II level.

Demands for an immediate postwar increase of 21 percent in the basic wage, for equal basic wages for women, the establishment of a commission to determine a "just" minimum wage, and a shorter workweek were at the heart of working-class expectations.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) formed the government from October 1941 to December 1949.

In 1949 the ALP government of Benjamin Chifley, with Herbert Evatt as attorney general, prosecuted two CPA leaders for "seditious" speech and revamped domestic spying by establishing the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO).

These were a continuation of moves by earlier governments, which saw the CPA and the Communist League banned in mid-1940. The ban on the CPA was lifted in late 1942 after the Stalinized party pledged to prevent strikes as part of its patriotic support to the rulers' war. The CPA, founded in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, had by the early 1930s succumbed to the pressures of Stalinism and ceased to be a revolutionary party.  
 
Postwar upsurge
The period between 1946 and 1949 saw some of the biggest strikes in Australian history, including months-long national disputes involving steelworkers, meat workers, metal workers, railway workers, stevedoring workers, printers, and miners.

The 1949 national coal miners' strike, in the midst of a cold winter, marked a watershed in politics.

Miners voted to strike by a 10-to-1 margin and 23,000 walked off the job on June 27, 1949. The Chifley ALP government swiftly moved to break the strike. Parliament passed a bill two days later, drafted by attorney general and deputy ALP leader Evatt, to prevent union funds from being used for strike relief. Fund-raising didn't stop, and eight union officials were jailed for defying the bill.

Within two weeks the miners' action brought the economy to a standstill. The government went on a redbaiting blitz with full-page ads in every newspaper across the country attacking the strike and in particular the section of the leadership of the union that belonged to the Communist Party. Railway union officials and members were pressured to move coal, but that didn't break the strike either. Then the ALP organized a "mission to the coalfields," with politicians going into mining towns and villages to try to create a return-to-work movement.

The Sydney headquarters of the CPA was raided by cops. Finally, when all that failed, Chifley called in 2,500 troops to mine coal in the open-cuts beginning August 1. The strike was broken. Miners voted to return to work--against the recommendation of the union's executive--which they did on August 15.

Labor lost the December 1949 election to the Liberal-Country Party coalition of Menzies and Fadden, partly because of the rise of redbaiting and reaction but also because of workers' anger at Chifley breaking the coal strike. The ALP wouldn't win government again for 23 years.  
 
Alliance with U.S. imperialism
In June 1950 U.S. imperialism launched it war against Korea. The new Menzies government intoned the stock-in-trade phrases of "communist expansionism" and "aggression from the north" and was the first to answer Washington's call to back up the teetering Syngman Rhee dictatorship. Equally gung ho on intervention, the ALP opposition demanded only that the government act more decisively.

Australian fighters flew their first combat missions on July 2, with warships arriving one day earlier. Combat troops arrived on September 28. In all, some 17,000 Australian sailors, soldiers, and airmen engaged in combat and support in Korea over the next three years. The rapid backing of Washington reflected Canberra's recognition during World War II that London's world domination, with its Pax Britannica, was a thing of the past. It moved to ally with Washington, the now dominant imperialist power.

For showing their reliability in Korea and dropping their disagreements with Washington over the rearming of Japan, the Australian rulers secured the ANZUS treaty, which was drafted in February 1951. The war pact's mutual defense provisions were invoked for the first time only in September 2001.

Menzies' Communist Party dissolution bill was opposed by the ALP and many unions, despite deep internal divisions. ALP leader Chifley opposed the bill for curtailing the free expression of opinion and explained, "It opens the door for the liar, the perjurer and the pimp to make charges and damn men's reputations and to do so in secret without having either to substantiate or prove any charges."

Albert Monk, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, explained, "Experience throughout the world has shown that the banning of one political party by a government, irrespective of political ideology, has always been a prelude to suppression of other political parties and the smashing of trade unions...."

But after months of maneuvering, the ALP let the bill pass unamended. Menzies commented that the ALP did this "not because it is in favor of it, but because it is frightened to risk its political skin on the issue." The bill passed on Oct. 19, 1950, in the midst of fierce fighting in Korea. As it became law the next day, cops raided CPA offices in major cities. Simultaneously, 10 unions and the CPA challenged it in the High Court, with Evatt agreeing to represent the Waterside Workers' Federation.

Shortly after the High Court's March 1951 decision declaring the law unconstitutional, Menzies called a special election and then won control of both houses of Parliament. On July 5 he proposed the referendum to amend the Constitution to enable the government to make laws regarding communists and communism. The proposal included the provisions of the 1950 act that the High Court had struck down.

From then until the September 22 referendum, the political issues posed were at center stage. Evatt, by then the ALP leader, ran the official "no" campaign, speaking at large meetings around the country. Divisions within the ALP were so deep that some state and local branches boycotted his meetings, with the Victorian branch having supported a "yes" vote within the ALP national executive. Menzies faced fewer internal divisions, but a vice president of the Young Liberals was suspended for campaigning for the "no" vote.

Evatt, now branded a "defender of Communism," argued that the ALP in government had acted against those with "proven subversive records" and noted its record in passing resolutions against Communist Party "disruption" of unions.

Evatt's arguments centered on saying the constitutional changes were unnecessary, as antisubversion and sedition laws already existed, and that the Menzies government had a wider intent than it was admitting. He explained that the powers being granted would be open-ended, and could be extended against the ALP itself or others in future. His stance was to oppose "totalitarianism of the Left and Right."  
 
CPA's response
In 1951 the CPA was still a large organization. Its leaders ran a sectarian campaign for a "no" vote, for example, calling for "a united front from below" with ALP supporters. CPA leaders urged support to the party's program, which included chauvinist opposition to Japanese rearmament, rather than focusing on explaining the stakes for the entire working class if Menzies's proposals won out.

Above all, CPA propaganda was marked by Australian nationalism and chauvinism. One CPA leaflet pictured a Japanese soldier about to decapitate an Australian prisoner and is captioned: "One of Menzies's friends...dealing a death blow to an Australian.... Don't let Menzies deal a death blow to Australia." Another shows a vicious Asian face behind the muzzle of a gun and reads, "Stop Rearming Japan--Vote "No." Millions of its leaflets were distributed in Sydney alone.

As the referendum campaign opened, opinion polls showed 80 percent supported a "yes" vote. Every big-business daily in the country editorialized for "yes," with one exception. As the campaign continued, some prominent individuals joined in calling for a "no" vote.

One of the few places a working-class campaign was waged for a "no" vote was on the Balmain waterfront in Sydney in the massive ship repair facilities at Mort's Dock. The workforce had gone on strike repeatedly during WWII and had run up against Stalinist union officials time and again. A small group of mostly unskilled workers at the dock who were revolutionists helped form a "No" committee and organized a mock referendum. The vote was 658 no, 101 yes, and 195 abstentions or spoiled ballots.

On September 22, despite years of anticommunist rhetoric and in the midst of a shooting war, Menzies's witch-hunt proposal went down to defeat. The results were close, with the "no" vote at 2,370,009, or 50.48 percent, of the 4.7 million votes cast. Some 66,653 others abstained. A majority in the states of New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria voted no.

After it failed, the rulers, the government, and those who looked to them continued along a witch-hunting course. But their efforts were weaker as a result.

By the mid-1950s, the ALP had split along the seams exposed by the referendum. It didn't regain government until 1972. Menzies remained prime minister from 1949 to 1966, far outstripping both Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher's records.

In 1962, Menzies himself pointed ruefully to the referendum's lessons. It showed that "electors...are not only reluctant to vote for new powers for the Commonwealth but are also, by deep instinct, unwilling to modify in any way the old principle that 'a man is innocent until he is proved guilty.'"

Menzies had badly misjudged the real class relationship of forces when he called the referendum. Millions of working people struck a counterblow because they understood the totalitarian character of the government's moves. They were convinced that they could be next and acted in their class interests.  
 
 
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