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Trotskyism in Australia
Notes from a talk with Ted Tripp (1976)
By Peter Beilharz
At the 1991 Labour History Conference in Melbourne, Barbara
Curthoys
was talking on the Comintern and the Communist Party of Australia. At
one stage Barbara mentioned the name of Ted Tripp, saying that he had
attended the Lenin School in Moscow in the 1930s. Dick Curlewis then
asked from the floor, was this the same Tripp who had been active in
the Victorian Labor College. It was indeed, as others present indicated.
E.C. Tripp was a lifelong communist and Trotskyist who died
recently, in his eighties. The moment of interchange at the conference
reminded me that I had interviewed him in 1976, when I was a new
postgraduate at Monash University, planning to write a history of
Australian Trotskyism. That project never came off, partly because
Australian Trotskyism was historically thin and all over the shop; I
felt completely unable to control its endless splits and chicaneries,
both global and local, and subsequently became more interested in the
question of how Trotskyism worked as a political discourse, how it was
that such gifted historians as Isaac Deutscher and Perry Anderson could
use a political vocabulary which was both deeply flawed and practically
misleading.[1]
While I do not personally practise any longer as a historian,
I
still have some of the historian’s habits — among other things, never
throwing anything out. Printed below is the annotated record of my talk
with Tripp. I interviewed Ted Tripp at his Maidstone home on 23 April
1976. He was evidently suspicious of taperecorders, so I instead took
notes and spoke with him again on two subsequent occasions seeking
further clarification. It is admittedly, only the record of a
conversation, but it may be of interest to some. The history of
Trotskyism in Australia, lamentably, remains to be written.[2]
Ted Tripp was born in London on 25 September 1900, into what
he
described as a petty bourgeois family. His father, who was involved in
the Liberal movement, died when Tripp was seven. Consequently the
family was forced close to the breadline, and Tripp’s mother put him
into a boarding school, "a petty bourgeois gentleman’s" school. Tripp
took admission exams for Cambridge Junior, but at this stage his mother
intervened, removing him from the boarding school in order to place him
in an engineering apprenticeship. Were it not for this intervention,
says Tripp, he would doubtless not have become a Socialist; plainly, he
identified socialism with the proletariat, and scoffed at all things
middle class.
In the Locomotive Shop of the Metropolitan Railways, Tripp
came to
be radicalised around the age of 16. Then came the extraordinary
influence of the Russian Revolution. Tripp walked to the other end of
London every week to buy the left press. Around this time his socialism
remained "instinctive". At this stage Tripp became acquainted with
pamphlet literature; he wanted to read Marx’s Capital, but
could not afford to buy it.
In 1922 Tripp came to Australia. Here, in Townsville, he took
on
locomotive work and made his first political affiliation, to the
Queensland branch of the Communist Party. In the next few years he was
to see the Townsville branch outgrow the Brisbane branch. He attended
the 1927 Conference. Tripp was a CP candidate for Mundingburra in
Queensland in 1929 or 1930. He did well in the election, scoring around
1500 of the 4000 votes of Jack Dash (ALP). Around the same time (or a
little after) Tripp was offered a position as student at the "Lenin
University" in Moscow. This opportunity almost fell through when
the
CPA spent the money allocated for Tripp’s expenses. The Communist
accountant of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council fiddled the TLC’s
books to raise the necessary amount — 65 pounds.
1930-31 — a period of some 18 months — were spent in Moscow,
under
his party pseudonym of Clayton. Tripp worked hard, apparently keeping
to himself. This, coupled with his position as the sole Australian
attending at this time, was most beneficial. There was no one to betray
him. Other students attending were betrayed by their fellows. Tripp
remembers that some Polish students sympathetic to Bukharin at the
"university" at the time were shot. Tripp even addressed the Comintern,
the speech being largely a rhetorical exercise manufactured by a Soviet
friend in the Red Labour Union (who later "disappeared"). The speech
went down well. On his return, Tripp did a lecture tour on the Soviet
Union. He knew what was happening in the CPSU while he was in Moscow;
Trotsky was already persona non grata and likewise Bukharin, who he
remembered, was popular in the non-Soviet left. He also witnessed an
example of kulak liquidation. Tripp’s time in the Soviet Union was thus
the moment of the formation of his Trotskyism, but this only emerged
explicitly in response to social fascism, that policy insisting that
communists should work not only against fascists but also against
social democrats.
Tripp returned to Australia in late 1931. Now he was sent to
Mildura
by the CPA to alleviate the meagre fortunes of the party there. A man
called McGillick was the cause of the trouble — a rabble-rouser, he had
alienated the citizenry and enraged the local bourgeoisie. Tripp
believed that the New Guard were present in Mildura. Two main incidents
indicated this. One occurred in a local hall, which was surrounded by
antagonistic locals, although Tripp, McGillick, a local woman and her
child were the only people attending the "meeting". Tripp’s strategy
was as follows: McGillick rushed the door with a table, Tripp,
following closely, leapt on to the table (outside) and began to speak.
Fascists de-legged the table. Tripp, however, in the process was able
to persuade the police into protecting the leftists present. The second
incident occurred on the banks of the Murray River. Here an inflamed
populace immersed and almost drowned several communists. The Labour
Defence Army had been called in, but seemed to melt away. Tripp was
anticipating tarring and feathering. The incident blew over, though
local harassed McGillick and Tripp in their boarding house, before
Tripp left Mildura in the early hours of the morning (days later).
Back in Sydney, Tripp was expelled from the CP in 1934,
essentially for disagreeing with social fascism.[3]
There was a streak of irony here: when in the Soviet Union Tripp asked
for an organiser to be sent out to Australia. It was that organiser —
Herbert Moore, a "slippery type", who specified the new policy of
Social Fascism, recommending opposition to Labor as the left flank of
reaction, to the CPA — thus ensuring Tripp’s expulsion. More, Tripp
claimed to be disillusioned with the CPA’s parasitic monetary attitude
to the CPSU, struggling through the NEP period, hamstrung by famine,
the relics of feudalism and insufficient industrial productive
capacity, hardly able to support western communist opportunists, nor
was he particularly pleased with the CPSU itself — hence his latent
Trotskyism. His opposition to social fascism was intuitive, lacking a
theoretical dimension. O’Loughran, a co-thinker, was expelled with
Tripp but did not become involved in the Trotskyist movement.
Tripp came to move into more substantial Trotskyist material
after his expulsion. He read Where
is Britain Going and Terrorism
and Communism,
and joined the Balmain Trotskyists. This was an extraordinarily
difficult period for Tripp. The extent of communist and industrial
ostracisation of Trotskyists was immense. Working now in the Government
Ammunitions Factory, the CPA attempted to get Tripp fired. He was
accused of embezzling CPA funds, and the like. The CPA made life close
to unbearable, but Tripp was able to stick it out. His total opposition
to the war incurred even greater ostracisation, given CPA support for
the Soviet Union.
Tripp was in the Independent Communist League in Sydney
between 1934
and 1938. This was not the same party as the Workers Party. The Workers
Party was formed by Jack Sylvester and Laurie Short — after 1934, Short
and Nick Origlass were the dominant figures. The Workers Party
eventually became Pabloist. The ICL followed the ideas of Max
Shachtman. Tripp remembers contact with J.P. Cannon, leader of the
American Socialist Workers Party. He also thought it likely that seamen
had been the initial source of Trotskyist material in Australian cities
and ports around 1928. The Independent Communist League had no
working-class base. Some Sydney University students were involved. Its
activities were almost purely propagandist. The Balmain Trotskyists,
however, ran the Unemployed Workers’ Movement. The ICL’s basis, like
that of international Trotskyism, was the critique of Stalinism. Thus
its involvement in opposition to the Spanish Civil War, for example,
was based on a critique of Stalin’s tactics. Tripp’s work with the ICL
primarily involved writing and lecturing. He edited Permanent
Revolution in 1938, but couldn’t remember anything about it
particularly, 40 years on.[4]
Tripp "slipped out" of the ICL when he came to Melbourne in
1938,
for personal reasons, to get married. He observed that he probably
would have stayed in Sydney otherwise. There was no Trotskyist party in
Melbourne then — just isolated individuals. He became a tutor at the
Victorian Labor College, and has had no affiliations since. In his own
mind, he never actually broke with Trotskyism.[5]
Did Tripp think there was a theoretical dimension to
Trotskyism in
the thirties? Yes and no. It was limited, circumstantially, but there
was certainly a dimension of principle. Personalities and
vendettas, however, were most important. No one ever left the CP: they
were expelled. This bred great and potentially violent animosities on
both sides. Tripp picked up valuable strike strategy material from the
USSR in 1931. He felt this to be most relevant. He still adheres to the
principles of Leninism, a strong sense of the need for discipline,
organisation, striking to win, and remains implacably opposed to the
ALP. He adheres to a traditional Trotskyist position, exemplified in
Trotsky’s Transitional
Program:
he sees the present situation as potentially revolutionary: all that is
lacking is the revolutionary party. At the same time he is today (1976)
strongly critical of groups like Spartacists who tend to sloganise. The
Melbourne Revolutionary Marxists, likewise, he views as ineffectual.[6]
Tripp thinks that a (new) revolutionary party could be established in
the Labor College, amidst the very bastions of trade union economism.
The only obstacle is that while there has been an influx of students
there is a shortage of good working-class propaganda material. We
should still be studying Trotsky, according to Tripp, especially the Lessons
of October and The
Struggle Against Fascism in Germany.
Tripp places great stress on the fundamentality and moral purity of the
working class. The petty bourgeoisie are not to be trusted (a legacy of
fascism?). He has a strong distaste for petty bourgeois intellectuals,
and for university education. The working class doesn’t need an
opportunity to study at bourgeois institutions so long as they have
institutions such as the Labor College.
Finally, I asked Tripp his recollections of other actors.
Sylvester,
he said, formed Sydney Workers Party with Short. Short was a devoted
and courageous Marxist — to the extent of selling Trotskyist material
outside CPA offices. The rot set in with his coming to a position of
power. Of Jim McClelland and John Kerr he knew nothing. Tripp heard
that, prior to his expulsion, Lovegrove had pretensions to be forming a
faction inside the CPA (with Tripp). This never eventuated. Guido
Baracchi may have had Trotskyist sympathies, but was not active, to
Tripp’s knowledge. A millionaire, Tripp had heard, he was a Marxist
perhaps, but never a revolutionary. John Anderson, similarly too
intellectual, had come from the CPA to the Trotskyists; he was a
member, in both cases, a Marxist but not a dialectician.[7] Tripp
closed the interview
by exhorting me not to get caught up in explaining history, rather to
join in changing it.
1. See Trotsky’s Marxism: Permanent
Involution? Telos 39, 1979; The Other Trotsky, Thesis
Eleven 3, 1982; Trotsky as Historian, History Workshop
Journal 20, 1986; Isaac Deutscher, History and Necessity, History
of Political Thought 7, 1986; Trotsky, Trotskyism and the
Transition to Socialism, London, Croom Helm 1987; The Young
Trotsky: Waiting for History, Political Theory Newsletter
3, 1991; in a different register see T. Ali, Redemption, London
Picador, 1991.
2. Alistair Davidson charted some
fragments in his Notes on Trotskyism in The Communist Party of
Australia, Stanford, Hoover, 1969. Robin Gollan notes Tripp’s
activity in Sydney in Revolutionaries and Reformists, Communists
and the Australian Labour Movement 1920-1955,
Canberra, ANU Press, 1975. Frank Farrell refers several time to Tripp
mainly in the context of activity in Friends of the Soviet Union and as
a writer — alongside John Anderson — for the Workers Party paper, Militant.
See International Socialism and Australian Labour: The Left in
Australia, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1981, 202, 209-210. Ralph
Gibson comments on Tripp’s path in The People Stand Up,
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster, 1983, observing that Tripp’s stance in
Mundingburra was "labour anti-Labor", pro-Kavanagh within the CPA (36)
Later he reflects that Tripp in mid-1931 was national secretary of the
Friends of the Soviet Union while Gibson acted as Victorian secretary
(72). A useful reference on the postwar period is Denis Freney’s
autobiography, A Map of Days: Life on the Left, Sydney,
Heinemann, 1991, also see his Trotskyist Trends, Australian
Left Review 1972, 12-17. See also Daphne Gollan, The
Balmain
Ironworkers’ Strike of 1945, Labour History
22, 1972 23-41, and 23 1972, 62-73. Other national Trotskyisms have
been more thoroughly surveyed and analysed; material on the French,
Italian, English, American, Spanish and Sri Lankan experiences are
detailed in Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to
Socialism, 192-194, and now see R.J. Alexander, International
Trotskyism, Durham, Duke University Press, 1991. [Since Pete
Beilharz wrote these notes, Hall Greenland’s book, Red Hot, The
Life and Times of Nick Origlass has appeared, Sydney, Wellington
Lane Press, 1998. George Petersen’s self-published memoir, George
Petersen Remembers, Sydney, Breakout Press, 1998, also has some
material on Australian Trotskyism. — Steve Painter]
3.Workers Weekly, 13 July, 1934.
4. Tripp’s recollection here seems to blur
and
telescope the chronology, especially across the period from the 1930s
to the 1950s. Shachtmanism had its intellectual origins in the 1930s,
but the slogans of bureaucratic revolution, or state capitalism only
became independent political positions after World War II and
subsequent to the publication of works like Bruno Rizzi’s Bureaucratisation
of the World (1938) and James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution
(1945). For Shachtman, see The Bureaucratic Revolution,
New York, Donald, 1962. Similarly, Pabloism is a postwar phenomenon,
which has its genesis of Trotsky’s defence of entry into the French
Socialist Party in 1936, but this was a tactical response which ran
against the broad thrust of the Transitional
Program for Socialist Revolution and the Tasks of the Fourth
International,
which in 1938 made emphatic Trotsky’s sense that independent Trotskyist
leadership was the vital absence in socialist politics. Pabloism into
the 1950s was associated with the idea of entrism or liquidationism
into large parties or revolutionary movements, whichever was the larger
or more influential. The clearest intellectual expression of this idea
can be found in the work of Isaac Deutscher, where the logic of history
indicates that historic agents are chosen to lead the revolutionary
cause regardless of their Trotskyist credentials. See also M. Lowy, The
Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, London, 1982.
5. In 1978 Tripp joined the Socialist
Workers Party, see Direct Action, 26 October 1978, 8-9. Direct
Action subsequently published Tripp’s article, Moscow
in the 1930s: How the Comintern was Stalinised in its 30
November 1978 issue, 10, 11.
6. Melbourne Revolutionary Marxists
published a significant pamphlet in 1975 entitled, Towards a
Revolutionary Regroupment of the Australian Left. Its content is
indicated in Beilharz, Australia, Yearbook on International
Communist Affairs,
1976, Stanford, Hoover, 231-8. The Spartacists responded to Tripp’s
return to mainstream Trotskyism in 1978 with their broadside, Tripp’s
Meanderings Revisited. How the SWP Distorts Trotskyist History. Australasian
Spartacist, December 1978, 2, 11. This article quotes Militant,
10 January 1938, which indicates that Tripp quit the Workers Party
after an April 1938 conference but did not formally resign until 27
May. In May 1938 Tripp’s group, now known as the ICL, with a paper
called Permanent Revolution, fused with the Workers Party to
form the Communist League of Australia, minus Tripp. The CL split again
in 1939 over the question of adopting Trotsky’s Transitional
Program.
The splitters formed the Revolutionary Workers League, which rejoined
the CLA, splitting again in 1940 when the old RWL became followers of
Shachtman.
7. See more generally A.J. Baker, Anderson’s
Social Philosophy, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1979.
From Labour History, No. 62, May 1992.
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