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Abstract
The defeat of the Australian government's attempts to outlaw communism in 1950 and 1951 was a significant victory for the protection of civil liberties. Yet for the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, which had fought a long battle against the measures, the result was not greeted with a sense of triumph. The campaign to avert draconian powers exposed a Council struggling to adapt to the Cold War, and revealed tensions in the Council's belief in democratic institutions and the popular opinion that underpinned them.
Notes
1 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates 207, 27 April 1950, 1994–6.
2Meredith Burgmann, ‘Dress Rehearsal for the Cold War’, in Australia's First Cold War, 1945–1953, ed. Ann Curthoys and John Merritt (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984), 49–79.
4‘Referendum: A Near Miss for Mr. Menzies’, The Australian News-Review 1, no. 8 (October 1951): 4.
3Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1978), 232.
5Winston Churchill, ‘The Sinews of Peace: A Speech to Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946’, in The Sinews of Peace (London: Cassell, 1948), 93.
6Watson accurately characterised Fitzpatrick as a ‘fellow traveller’, a figure broadly sympathetic to communism, but who would not accept the regimen of membership. Watson, xvii; cf. David Caute, The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Yale University Press, 1988).
7This number from Brian Fitzpatrick, The Unnecessary Police State Bill (Melbourne: ACCL, 1950), 2.
8The Members of Parliament were Allan Fraser, E. J. Holloway, R. T. Pollard, E. J. Ward.
9P. Y. Medding, From Assimilation to Group Survival: A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1968), 62–70; cf. Norman Rothfield, Many Paths to Peace: The Political Memoirs of Norman Rothfield (Melbourne: Yarraford, 1997).
10James Waghorne and Stuart Macintyre, Liberty: A History of Civil Liberties in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2011), 60–78.
11Approved Defence Projects Protection Act (Cth), 1947; cf. Civil Liberty 9, no. 4 (July 1947); Essential Services Act (Vic.), 1948; cf. Civil Liberty 9, no. 5 (April 1948); Industrial Law Amendment Act (Qld), 1948; cf. Civil Liberty 9, no. 5 (April 1948).
12Laurence W. Maher, ‘The Use and Abuse of Sedition’, Sydney Law Review 14, no. 3 (1992): 299–301.
13The Approved Defence Projects Protection Act (Cth) 1947 was passed with limited debate on 6 June 1947; the Essential Services Act (Vic.) 1948, on 15 January 1948; the Industrial Law Amendment Act (Qld) 1948 on 10 March 1948; Civil Liberty 9, nos. 4 and 5 (July 1947 and April 1948).
14Dorothy M. Davies, How Australia Is Governed: A Program of Safeguards for Australian Democracy (Melbourne: ACCL, 1939).
15Crimes Act (Cth), 1932. Amendments to the original 1914 Act were introduced in 1920, 1926 and 1932. Strike-breaking legislation included the Transport Workers Act (Cth), 1928–9; cf. ACCL, The Case against the Crimes Act: With Objectionable Sections Quoted (Melbourne: Advance Press, 1937); and ACCL, Six Acts against Civil Liberties (Melbourne: Advance Press, 1937); Dorothy M. Davies, Brian Fitzpatrick and R. R. Rawson, The Case against the Transport Workers Act (Melbourne: ACCL, 1939).
16Australian Council for Civil Liberties, A Plea for the Retention of Civil Juries (Melbourne: ACCL, 1938).
17Brian Fitzpatrick, A Bill for a Police State: A Report of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties on the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, Introduced in the House of Representatives by the Prime Minister, April 27, 1950 (Melbourne: Brian Fitzpatrick for the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, 1950); cf. Communist Party Dissolution Act (Cth), 1950.
18Brian Fitzpatrick, The Amended Bill for a Police State: Second Report of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties on the Communist Party Dissolution Bill (Melbourne: ACCL, 1950), 1, 10.
19Frank Cain, The Australian Security Intelligence Organization: An Unofficial History (Melbourne: Spectrum Publications, 1994); David McKnight, Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War: The Conspiratorial Heritage (Portland: Frank Cass, 2002).
20Phillip Deery, ‘Remembering ASIO’, Overland 203 (Winter 2011), http://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-203/feature-phillip-deery/
21Brian Fitzpatrick, A Memorial Addressed to the Members of the Commonwealth Parliament (Melbourne, 1950), 2. The Memorial omitted any mention of the nature of James’ work.
22Brian Fitzpatrick, A Memorial Addressed to the Members of the Commonwealth Parliament (Melbourne, 1950), 3.
23 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates 207, 27 April 1950, 1994–6.
24Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 405.
26 Civil Liberty 9, no. 5 (April 1948).
25The Hon. Sir Charles Lowe, Report of Royal Commission Inquiring into the Origins, Aims, Objects and Funds of the Communist Party in Victoria and Other Related Matters (Melbourne: J. J. Gourley, 1950).
27Jon White, ‘The Port Kembla Pig Iron Strike of 1938’, Labour History 37 (1979); cf. Rupert Lockwood, War on the Waterfront: Menzies, Japan and the Pig-Iron Dispute (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1987); cf. Len Richardson, ‘Dole Queue Patriots’, in Strikes: Studies in Twentieth Century Australian Social History, ed. John Iremonger, John Merritt and Graham Osborne (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973); cf. Dorothy M. Davies, Brian Fitzpatrick and R. R. Rawson, The Case against the Transport Workers Act (Melbourne, 1939).
28National Security Act (Cth), 1939.
29Brian Fitzpatrick, ‘Of course all interjectors are liars …’, letter to the Editor, Argus, 26 April 1951, 2.
30Brian Fitzpatrick, Some Opinions from Outside the Parliament on the Communist Party Dissolution Bill: Collected and Presented to the Members of the Commonwealth Parliament by the Australian Council for Civil Liberties (Melbourne: ACCL, 1950), 3, 8.
31Fitzpatrick to Dr E. P. Dark, 4 June 1950, Brian Fitzpatrick Papers, MS 4965/1/3200, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), Canberra.
32On public opinion, see John Murphy, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000), 97–104.
33Fitzpatrick, The Unnecessary Police State Bill, 16.
34Fitzpatrick, The Unnecessary Police State Bill, 16.
35 What Is the Referendum? Some Questions and Answers (Melbourne: Referendum Research Committee of the Melbourne University Labor Club, 1944), preface.
36Constitution Alteration (Post-war Reconstruction and Democratic Rights) Act (Cth), 1944.
37Fitzpatrick to Evatt, 9 November 1942, Brian Fitzpatrick Papers, MS 4965/6/94–7, NLA.
38Fitzpatrick, The Unnecessary Police State Bill.
39‘Reasons why we think liberal citizens of every party (and none) should VOTE NO’, Argus, 19 September 1951, 10.
41Emphasis in original; ‘Reasons why we think liberal citizens of every party (and none) should VOTE NO’.
40The court ruled that the Bill was ‘wholly invalid’, 83 CLR 1; cf. Philip Ayres, Owen Dixon, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2007), 219–24.
42Emphasis in original; ‘Reasons why we think liberal citizens of every party (and none) should VOTE NO’.
43Emphasis in original; ‘Reasons why we think liberal citizens of every party (and none) should VOTE NO’.
44This contradicted the Council's long campaign against this legislation, in particular the political sections of the Crimes Act. The earliest example was the Council's first publication: ACCL, The Case against the Crimes Act.
45‘Reasons why we think liberal citizens of every party (and none) should VOTE NO’, 10.
46‘“We oppose these gravely disturbing proposals …”’, Argus, 15 September 1951, 2. Kathleen Fitzpatrick was also involved in other campaigns at this time, such as taking the rostrum against a censorial Victorian Public Entertainment Bill: ‘Public Protest Meeting’, Argus, 11 July 1951, 27.
47Fitzpatrick to H.V. Evatt, 20 October 1951, Brian Fitzpatrick Papers, MS 4965/1/4449, NLA.
48Allan Fraser to Fitzpatrick, 23 October 1951, Brian Fitzpatrick Papers, MS 4965/1/4451, NLA; Evatt responded after the election thanking Fitzpatrick for his contribution to the campaign: Evatt to Fitzpatrick 28 November 1951, Brian Fitzpatrick Papers, MS 4965/1/4452, NLA.
49 Civil Liberty 13, nos. 1–2 (July 1957): 20–2.
50 Civil Liberty 12, no. 2 (October 1956).