Happy 100th Birthday to the Communist Party of Australia
In 1920, a small group of socialists met in Sydney to found the Communist Party of Australia. They fought for a world free of exploitation and built on solidarity. They failed in their ultimate goals. But a century later, we remember their legacy of struggle and the real accomplishments of the workers’ movement in Australia.
We need to preserve the memories of Australia’s communist militants, unionists, and organizers — and to make their experience relevant to a new generation of leftists.
On the weekend of October 30–31, 1920, twenty-six socialists from all over Australia met in Sydney. They resolved to establish the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), an organization whose contribution to the workers’ movement echoes to this day.
The CPA grew rapidly in the 1920s and ’30s, claiming over twenty thousand members by the late 1940s. Although the party enjoyed a brief upsurge during the 1960s and 70s, the anti-communist atmosphere of the Cold War eventually tipped it into slow decline. In 1991, delegates at the final CPA congress voted to dissolve the party.
Today, a hundred years after that founding meeting, we need to preserve the memories of Australia’s communist militants, unionists, and organizers — and to make their experience relevant to a new generation of leftists.
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