During this early phase of the controversy within the CPA, E. P. Hill, who was later to become the principal leader of the pro-Chinese faction, and to lead the pro-Maoist split in is ranks, was aligned with the anti-Chinese part of the CPA leadership. As leader of the Party in the State of Victoria, Hill “was reprimanding and punishing party members for belittling the Soviet Union and speaking eulogistically of China.”[546]
Meanwhile, the principal supporters of a more moderate line for the CPA were Laurie and Eric Aarons, two brothers, both of whom had spent time in China in the 1950s. They “seemed more and more to become the spokesmen of a moderate, nationally adapted, and flexible party line, to which their earlier Chinese experience had presumably provided a measure of ideological-tactical preparation.” As a consequence, “personal rivalry and animosity between the Aarons brothers, on the one hand, and Hill on the other, as heirs apparent to the aging, ailing Sharkey-Dixon CPA leadership, was to sharpen into a factional polarization in the party, as the doctrinal and tactical divergence between Moscow and Peking became increasingly clear after 1959.”[547]
Richard Dixon was National Chairman of the CPA, and Lance L. Sharkey was General Secretary. Professor van der Kroef has noted that “Initially there was little doubt that Peking’s increasingly Stalinist militancy after 1959 sat well with Sharkey and Dixon (encouraged by Hill), and that despite the Soviet intervention in Hungary Khrushchevism generally seemed a danger to the older CPA leaders. Conversely, for the Aarons faction, Peking’s new hard line was tantamount to the loss of a dream and the beginning of a wrenching tactical reorientation, covered by an increasing ideological stress on the CPA as a national party adapted to Australian conditions.”[548]
Clearly, such older leaders as Dixon and Sharkey were faced with a serious quandary. On the one hand, they sympathized with the radical, essentially Stalinist, positions being adopted by the Chinese. On the other, their whole lives had been devoted to the Soviet Union. When these two men attended the Conference of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow late in 1960, they came under intense pressure from the Soviet party to support the position of the CPSU against the Chinese. Dixon, who suffered two heart attacks during the meeting and, as a result, stayed in Moscow for medical treatment for more than a year, was under particularly intense pressure.[549]
It was not until the end of 1961 that the majority of the CPA’s top leadership declared in favor of Moscow. The occasion for this was a report rendered by Secretary General Sharkey on the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, which he had attended as a fraternal delegate, to a meeting of the CPA’s Political Committee. The Political Committee issued a statement at that time which was endorsed in February 1962 by the Central Committee. “This statement and endorsement may be taken as the first official commitment by the party’s leadership to the Soviet position, complete with expressions of ‘profound confidence in and admiration’ for the CPSU, and an attack on Enver Hoxha and the Albanians.”[550]
E. P. Hill and the Establishment of the CPA-ML
Unlike Dixon and Sharkey, E. P. Hill, faced with the same quandary, chose to support the militancy and radicalism of the Chinese, rather than adhere to his long association with the CPSU. Hill was the son of a secondary-school principal, and was himself a prominent lawyer, as well as a part-time faculty member of the University of Melbourne. He had for long been a “virtual party czar in Victoria.”[551]
Professor van der Kroef, writing in 1970, said that “Hill’s ability and reputation as a barrister had constantly been at the service of striking workers and militant trade union activists. … When … a special Royal Commission investigated CPA activities in Victoria, Hill had done yeoman service to protect the party and the trade unions it dominated, storing up a vast amount of credit among the rank and file members on which he could now readily draw. … Hill also won a solid reputation in a number of workers’ compensation cases.”[552]
E. P. Hill clearly did not support the endorsement of the Soviet line by the Political Committee in December 1961 or the ratification of the statement by the Central Committee two months later. But at the February 1962 CC meeting, he resigned as state secretary of the PC A in Victoria, a post he had held for thirteen years, apparently as part of an attempted compromise, which included agreement that pro-Maoist material would be allowed to circulate inside the CPA. Subsequently, the CPA national leadership sought to destroy Hills control of the Victoria state organization, with only partial success—and with clear failure to destroy the influence of Hill and his followers in the state labor movement.
Meanwhile, Hill remained a member of the Central Committee. It was not until June 1963 that he and four of his followers were removed from that body. Then, in August, he was expelled from the CPA itself.
Meanwhile, Hill had been organizing his followers in preparation for launching a rival organization to the Communist Party of Australia. He began to publish his own journal, The Australian Communist, late in 1963. Its first issue said that there was need for such a periodical since the “leaders of the Communist Party of Australia have deserted Marxism-Leninism and embarked upon the path of revisionism.” Hill and his followers also began to issue a weekly paper, The Vanguard, published several pamphlets, and imported increasing numbers of Peking Review.[553]
The new party, the Communist Parry of Australia-Marxist Leninist, was apparently formally established at a meeting in Melbourne on March 15, 1964. (Professor van der Kroef noted that no public statement of the date was made until five years later).[554] E. F. Hill was named party Chairman. Clarie O’Shea, secretary of the Melbourne Tramways Union, and Paddy Malone of the Building Labourers’ Federation, were elected Vice Chairmen, and Frank Johnson, who had succeeded Hill as secretary of the Victoria PCA organization, was chosen as secretary.[555]
The Nature of CPA-ML
Justus van der Kroef wrote in 1970 that the CPA-ML “is, and will probably remain for some time, a small, tightly organized, and secretive, sect of ideologues, seemingly concerned more with preserving and articulating its dogmatic rectitude than with establishing practical programmes or organizations for joint popular action (as the parent CPA is attempting) or even with winning broader public support. Whereas the parent CPA regularly publicizes its conferences and other party gatherings, the changes in its party constitution, as well as the names and decisions of its national, state and local committees, neither CPA-ML organs, nor any other public media, have ever adopted on any conference held by the Maoist faction since its founding, nor has its Constitution ever been published (assuming there is one), nor have the names of its present or of any previous Central Committee ever been published. … CPA-ML publications carry neither the names of editors, nor the editorial and business addresses.”[556]
The CPA-ML continued to be a highly secretive organization. Peter Beilharz reported in 1976 that “Organizationally, the CPA (ML) remains a mystery. Its unofficial youth offshoot, the Worker-Student Alliance [WSA], was disbanded; it is unclear as to whether the Young Communist League, formed to help the CPA (ML) ‘direct’ the WSA, still exists or not.”[557]
557
Peter Beilharz, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1976, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 234.