The royal commission into antisemitism initiated by the Labor government is set to be a key element in the ongoing ruling class assault on democratic rights, Palestine solidarity, the left and the broader working-class movement. Royal commissions have previously been used for precisely this purpose, so it is worth examining in some detail two of the most notorious examples: the 1949 Victorian royal commission into the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the 1954 Petrov royal commission into espionage.
The 1949 Victorian royal commission was a decisive acceleration of the Cold War offensive against workers and the left. In 1948, the Victorian Liberal government introduced a series of repressive anti-union measures and legislation aimed at banning the Communist Party.
In 1947, the Chifley federal Labor government had passed draconian laws outlawing protests and any agitation against military projects such as the Woomera rocket range. Then, in 1949, Chifley set up ASIO to spy on the left. A number of Communists, including party leader Lance Sharkey, were arrested and jailed for allegedly subversive or seditious statements.
In the same year, a CPA functionary, Cecil Sharpley, sensationally ratted on the party, authoring a series of lurid front-page stories for the Melbourne Herald about Communist sabotage, wrecking and plotting a Russian takeover of the country. The Victorian Liberals seized on this opportunity to justify banning the CPA, setting up the royal commission headed by conservative judge Charles Lowe.
The commission’s 154 sitting days focused on an avalanche of attacks on Communists as a fifth column for a Russian invasion of Australia, who manipulated front organisations, engaged in spying and industrial sabotage and rigged union elections (disgracefully, in a few cases this was actually true). The media coverage was, to put it mildly, hysterical. Day after day, they pilloried “evil godless Communists”. A lynch mob atmosphere was whipped up.
Despite royal commissioner Lowe acquitting the CPA of being controlled from abroad and of espionage and sabotage, the damage had been well and truly done. A rabid Cold War atmosphere had been entrenched.
This is a warning about the dangers posed by the current royal commission, chaired by Virginia Bell. Even if her final recommendations are not draconian, a year of red-baiting media coverage can create a noxious atmosphere to justify a crackdown on democratic rights and greater police powers.
Robert Menzies went on to win the 1949 federal election, promising to outlaw the CPA and ban Communists from holding trade union positions. It was part of a broader class war to contain wages and working-class living standards to ensure that big business seized the benefits of the emerging postwar economic boom. As well taking advantage of the deepening Cold War atmosphere, Menzies sharply increased military spending and imposed conscription.
Menzies’ legislation not only outlawed the CPA but also members of any affiliated organisations and anyone supporting supposed communist principles. No jury trials were allowed. The burden of proof was reversed. The crown did not have to prove its case. Those charged had to prove their innocence.
Immediately after the law was passed, coordinated police raids were conducted on CPA offices. Plans were drawn up to establish internment camps, with 16,600 people listed to be rounded up.
After initially voicing some criticism of the ban, Labor folded, waving Menzies’ ban through the Senate, where Labor had a majority. However, a group of left-wing Communist-aligned unions immediately launched a legal challenge.
Defying a barrage of right-wing vitriol, Doc Evatt, soon to take over as ALP leader following Chifley’s death, presented the unions’ case in court. The judges ruled the ban unconstitutional in peacetime. But this did not deter Menzies.
Re-elected over a bitterly divided ALP in a “reds under the beds” election campaign, Menzies pushed through a new round of anti-union laws and called a referendum to ban the CPA for 22 September 1952. The media and the entire establishment vociferously backed him. Opinion polls indicated Menzies would romp it in.
But a concerted campaign initiated by the CPA and left-wing unions won the backing of civil libertarians and sections of the ALP and pushed back the red-baiting tide. The Labor left feared the sweeping powers Menzies was seeking would lead to the banning of not just the CPA but a variety of working-class organisations and the ALP itself.
Doc Evatt, as Labor leader, played a pivotal role touring the country in a campaign that dramatically shifted public opinion and narrowly defeated the ban by 2,370,009 votes to 2,317, 927.
Despite this setback, Menzies proved unrelenting. Numerous other laws were used to crack down on strikes and trade union militants. The public service was purged.
Menzies’ next major opportunity came in 1954 with the defection of Russian spy Vladimir Petrov. Menzies immediately announced a royal commission into espionage, which helped him win the 1954 elections despite Labor polling a majority of the vote.
Menzies carefully handpicked right-wing lawyers to be his attack dogs in the royal commission, which sat from 17 May 1954 to 31 March 1955. It was a star chamber: rules of evidence were abandoned. Rumours, innuendo and smears of being Russian agents were weaponised against Communists, union leaders and anyone even vaguely left wing or Labor-aligned.
When Evatt’s own staff came under attack, he intervened before the royal commission to defend them. So effective was he in exposing the lies and slander that, to shut him up, the commissioners banned him from appearing.
And because the broader left and important sections of the unions stood up to the onslaught, everything did not go Menzies’ way. He could continue to win elections with red scare campaigns, but basic union organisation remained resilient and McCarthyism did not reach anything like the extreme proportions it did in the US.
The fact that Evatt—who was far from being a radical leftist and for a period was allied with Labor’s right-wing industrial groupers—was prepared at the height of the Cold War hysteria to defy the ruling class and stand up for democratic rights just underlines how craven today’s ALP leaders are.
Today, it is not the Liberals but Albanese’s Labor government, operating at the behest of the capitalist class, that has pushed through reactionary laws giving the government the right to ban organisations, not on the basis of what they have actually done but what they might do.
The role of the trade union leadership has been just as politically disgraceful. For over two years, they refused to mobilise against the genocide in Gaza. Worse, in the wake of the Bondi attack, they denounced the Palestine movement and red-baited socialist opponents of genocide. The union leaders refuse to lift a finger to defend even the most basic democratic rights, instead backing draconian laws that can be used against any working-class mobilisation, including those directed at bosses.
This sharply contrasts with the role of the left unions in the 1950s. Then, the left unions played a vital role in defying Menzies’ attacks and in forcing a split in the ALP, driving out the party’s hard right. This helped blunt the McCarthyite assault and prevented Australia from going down the road of the US, where militants were driven out of the unions and the left was virtually destroyed.
This underlines the urgent need to build a larger and more militant socialist movement today: one that forthrightly opposes all attacks on democratic rights like the royal commission and mobilises workers to transform their unions into fighting bodies that vigorously defend living standards and stands against atrocities like the genocide in Gaza.
