The Birth of a Movement

The CPA formed in 1920, and without it, the Battle of Phoenix Street would never have taken place. During the 1920s, the party remained small, with a membership of under three hundred. Despite this, it developed a network of rank-and-file committees that gave it a stake in the labor movement.

During the 1930s, the CPA built on this foundation. Communist-led strikes across the mining, shipping, and transport industries — as well as financial support from the Soviet Union — transformed the party into a formidable industrial force, with around 5,000 members and a network of members in union leadership positions. At the same time, the party effectively infiltrated the ALP by sending union delegates to Labor’s policymaking conferences.

The CPA grew its power against the backdrop of the Great Depression, particularly through its central role in trade union–led struggles against wage and budget cuts.

Between 1929 and 1932, unemployment in Australia rose from 10 percent to 32 percent. In 1931, Australia’s industrial court deepened the crisis when it cut wages by 10 percent citing employer claims that wage cuts “would act as a stimulus of general industrial activity.”

But austerity only worsened the crisis. As a result, by 1930, membership in the Unemployed Workers’ Movement (UWM) — which the CPA founded and led — grew to 30,000. The UWM coordinated blockades of houses when tenants were threatened with eviction, and it was willing to use force against police. If police broke UWM blockades, activists would typically take revenge on the landlord by severely damaging the house.

Thanks in part to the UWM’s intransigence, militancy became the norm among tens if not hundreds of thousands of workers. Unionists even started left-wing militias like the CPA-aligned Workers’ Defence Corps. In the Workers Weekly, the CPA’s newspaper, party leaders described the corps as a check on fascist paramilitaries, especially “the New Guard and its bourgeois backers.”

The CPA was especially concerned by the New Guard’s rapid growth and links with police, the army, and employers. In 1931, 2,000 people attended the New Guard’s inaugural public rally where its founder, Eric Campbell, outlined a plan to defeat communism with “shock-troops organized into a mobile force.” By the end of the year, police determined that it had at least 36,000 members.

The CPA countered the rise of fascism in Australia through the Movement Against War and Fascism (MAWF), the Australian chapter of the Communist International–sponsored “World Movement Against War.” Historian David Rose argues that MAWF was a “nominally non-communist front group to promote Soviet foreign-policy aims and to recruit new members.” At the time, that meant countering anti-Soviet propaganda, building the CPA, and fighting legal restrictions on the right to protest.

The United Australia Party

In the early 1930s, the United Australia Party (UAP) swept to power federally and at a state level in Victoria, New South Wales (NSW), and Tasmania. The party itself was not fascist, however UAP leaders dealt sympathetically with far-right organizations that shared their pledge to destroy communism. For example, in 1931, the UAP leader, Joseph Lyons, rallied the New Guard in support of his successful federal election campaign. Coordination like this between fascists and the UAP added urgency to left-wing organizing.

Ironically, prior to founding the UAP, many leading members — including Lyons and former prime minister Billy Hughes — had long careers as Labor MPs. Indeed, Lyons had served as a minister in James Scullin’s Labor government that he defeated in a landslide at the 1931 federal election. Just months before his victory, Lyons left the ALP after a feud between Prime Minister Scullin and Jack Lang, the populist Labor premier of NSW, split the party.

The 1931 Labor split centered on Lang’s refusal to implement an economic plan that Lyons — who was a minister in the Scullin government at the time — presented to the ALP’s federal caucus. The so-called “Premiers’ Plan” required state and federal governments to cut wages and funding for Depression relief programs. Lyons and other ALP fiscal conservatives pushed for a deflationary response to the Depression that promised cheap credit for industry and the timely payment of overseas debt.

Although Lang was far from a consistent left-winger, he staunchly opposed the Premiers’ Plan. Instead, NSW adopted “the Lang Plan,” suspending state government payments on overseas loans to avoid budget cuts. Lang’s plan was popular in NSW but seriously problematic for the federal government, which had guaranteed the state’s debts. When Lang carried out his plan and defaulted, Scullin and Labor’s national executive expelled the premier and his supporters for “having flouted the decisions and authority of the federal party.”

Lang and his supporters did not capitulate to the Premiers’ Plan, and so, Scullin’s move split Labor. It’s unclear whether this was a strategic choice by Scullin or an act of desperation. In either case, conflict between Lang, Scullin, and Lyons worsened. In May 1931, Lyons and other frustrated conservatives abandoned Scullin to form the UAP. Then, on November 25, Lang-aligned federal MPs joined conservatives to bring down the ALP government, triggering a shock election.

The UAP easily won the 1931 election, partly because Lang and Scullin loyalists ran against each other, splitting the Labor vote. As UAP prime minister, Lyons introduced the Financial Agreement Enforcement Act, aimed at forcing Lang into paying overseas debts. The act deprived Lang of banking facilities that were placed under federal control. The resulting standoff between Lang and Lyons led to a constitutional crisis that ended when the NSW governor general dismissed the premier.

“With the dismissal of Mr. Lang I can see already the clouds of depression which have been hanging over Australia clearing away,” bragged Lyons.

Scullin and Lang’s failed economic plans severely damaged the ALP’s credibility. Consequently, in 1932, the UAP won control of the NSW and Victorian state governments. Having seized the main levers of political power in Australia, the UAP initiated a crackdown against militant unionists and the CPA.

In Victoria, the UAP government outlawed left-wing publications and street demonstrations with laws that criminalized “the potential obstruction” of traffic — effectively giving police the power to arrest any person at a public demonstration.

The Free Speech League

In response, the CPA and militant members of the ALP formed the “Free Speech League.” The campaign’s organizers defied UAP laws restricting public speeches, especially at anti-fascist, trade union, and UWM rallies. To help counter police repression, the CPA announced plans to “activate and enlarge the workers’ defense corps.”

In Victoria, the CPA faced a particularly odious adversary in Sir Thomas Blamey, who was both police commissioner and the commander of the “White Army,” a secret paramilitary named after anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia. By 1932, Blamey and the UAP premier, Stanley Argyle, had used the laws prohibiting the “potential obstruction” of traffic to drive all left-wing meetings in Melbourne underground.

Nonetheless, radical speakers continued to address crowded streets in working-class suburbs like Brunswick while the CPA mobilized its industrial base to rally union members against the UAP and Blamey. Meanwhile, some ALP representatives challenged the laws in parliament and the press. Fortuitously, the Victorian Labor opposition leader, Tom Tunnecliffe, strongly supported the free speech campaign. Tunnecliffe’s public criticism of Blamey and the UAP helped the Free Speech League reach a mainstream audience.

In 1933, Victorian police arrested Tunnecliffe and two other Labor MPs for speaking at a public meeting in Phoenix Street, Brunswick. It proved to be a turning point in the free speech campaign. Police had hoped to punish these ALP leaders for defying restrictions on political gatherings, although the move backfired when the arrested MPs faced trial and elected to go to jail rather than pay a fine.

In response to Tunnecliffe’s imprisonment, moderate unions like the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) threatened  the Victorian UAP government with a “free speech fight” unless it repudiated Blamey and repealed laws prohibiting “protests against increasing impoverishment.”

Though he was eventually released, the media spectacle surrounding Tunnecliffe’s imprisonment helped to popularize the free speech campaign. Meanwhile, the CPA mobilized local free speech defense committees to protect public speakers from arrest. In response, Blamey intensified violent crackdowns on political gatherings. When the Brunswick Council protested, Blamey sent them a stern warning stating that “free speech did not concern the police.”

The Battle for Phoenix Street

Blamey and the Brunswick Council found themselves sparring largely because Brunswick was at the center of radical politics in Melbourne. As a result, it received an outsize share of police violence. Brunswick’s high street, Sydney Road (then named “Pentridge Road,” after the infamous prison in Coburg) was a popular site for political orators. Customarily, Brunswick residents congregated to listen to public speakers at the intersection of Sydney Road and a small cul-de-sac, Phoenix Street. On Friday nights, ALP activists would gather there alongside CPA and UWM speakers.

Although the Free Speech League was a broad coalition of political groups, it earned its notoriety thanks to Patullo and Counihan who led the Battle for Phoenix Street. In May of 1933, the two members of the Young Communist League (YCL) — the youth section of the CPA — hatched a plan to drive Blamey out of Brunswick.

To succeed, they needed three things: an element of surprise, a spectacle, and a way to protect themselves from the inevitable police response. So, they planned to incite a mass protest by attracting a crowd large enough to overwhelm police batons and, potentially, bullets.

On May 19, the plan went into action when Patullo climbed onto the roof of a moving tram and shouted, “We are fighting for freedom of speech and will defy the police!” As the authorities surrounded the vehicle, Counihan, who later became one of Australia’s eminent social realist painters, emerged from a horse-drawn cart that carried a reinforced steel cage. With the police distracted, Counihan padlocked the cart to a post on Sydney Road before locking himself inside the cage.

Once he was safely in the cage, Counihan began speaking, using an old gramophone horn to amplify his voice. As he later recalled,

I began by stating the issues of the free speech struggle itself, calling for maximum organized support for the Free Speech campaign, then dealing with the plight of the unemployed.

By this stage, police had shot Patullo in the thigh and dragged him away. Undeterred, Counihan carried on. To the amusement of thousands of onlookers, the police were unable to open the cage, giving Counihan ample time to finish speaking before surrendering, as per his plan.

The protest humiliated the police and Blamey. It took an entire squadron of motorcycle patrols, mounted men, plainclothes police in cars, and over forty beat officers to disperse the crowd. Worse still, authorities were forced to admit that an officer had shot an unarmed protester.

And in case the theatrics of the battle itself hadn’t been enough, Counihan also managed to transform his trial into a political platform from which to speak out against Blamey. During his cross-examination, Counihan forced police to admit that the action at Phoenix Street was neither obscene nor illegal. Moreover, he successfully argued that the shooting of Patullo justified his using the cage to protect him “from the bullets of police.”

While awaiting trial, police held the two young communists in Coburg’s Pentridge Prison. But thanks to Blamey, they were not alone. Indeed, there were so many politically minded prisoners in Pentridge that it was home to a thriving Marxist study group.

The courts fined Counihan £15 (approximately US $1,743 today) and sentenced him to three months imprisonment for offensive behavior. He subsequently appealed this sentence and won. But a judge found Patullo guilty of “riotous behavior,” which was a more serious charge.

At his sentencing hearing, Justice Stafford offered to release Patullo if he paid a £5 fine and accepted a bond guaranteeing his “good behavior for two years.” The bond meant that any infraction of the law would land him back in Pentridge. “I am not prepared to enter into a bond,” Patullo replied.

Patullo’s defiance was almost certainly calculated. Indeed, the spectacle caused by his protest, gunshot wound, and trial inflamed the free speech campaign. The CPA stepped up the number of defiant public speeches in Brunswick while Labor MPs pressured the premier to release police reports detailing Patullo’s shooting. In parliament, Tunnecliffe — who had also paid the price for addressing crowds on Phoenix Street — singled out Blamey as a vengeful police chief. After a short time, the government capitulated and ordered Patullo to be released. On July 14, the CPA claimed victory in the Worker’s Weekly, describing the outcome as

a win for the agitation of the International Labor Defence and proof of how effective mass organization activity is in the struggles of workers against capitalist class injustice and police brutality.

The “Battle of Brunswick” Today

Patullo’s release was too little too late for the Free Speech League. Buoyed by public opinion, the Labor opposition introduced legislation to decriminalize open-air meetings. Humiliated, the UAP hastily agreed to Labor’s proposal, and amended the Traffic Act to remove the charge of “potentially obstructing” traffic.

Today, although Patullo’s contribution is often overlooked, a modest memorial stands on the corner of Sydney and Glenlyon Roads commemorating Counihan.

Indeed, the free speech campaign was so successful that Victoria’s then attorney general Menzies felt obliged to offer a partial defense of communist protests. As he told one newspaper:

The present conditions cannot continue. There is nothing illegal about communism so long as Communists express their views without exciting anybody to violence. They are as much entitled to express their views as Sunday school teachers or Salvationists.

That statement is astounding considering Menzies initiated the 1951 referendum to ban the CPA. And that referendum failed, at least in part thanks to the efforts, two decades prior, of many thousands of communists, leftists, and unionists, Counihan and Patullo included. The majority of Australians, it seemed, agreed more with the position Menzies expressed in the aftermath of the victory at Phoenix Street.