The Industrial Groups were groups formed by the Australian Labor Party in the late 1940s, to combat Communist Party influence in the trade unions.
In 1941 B.A. Santamaria founded the Catholic Social Studies Movement, generally known simply as "the Movement". The Movement quickly gained a large influence in the Industrial Groups. Members of these groups were informally called 'Groupers'.
Under the influence of the Movement, the Groupers opposed not just the Communist Party, but elements within the Labor Party who they believed were insufficiently opposed to communism.
Although supportive of the Industrial Groups at first, Labor leader 'Doc' Evatt turned against them, causing a split in the Labor Party, with many 'Groupers' resigning or being expelled, and the formation of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist), later to become the Democratic Labor Party.
Famous quotes containing the words industrial and/or groups:
“We agree fully that the mother and unborn child demand special consideration. But so does the soldier and the man maimed in industry. Industrial conditions that are suitable for a stalwart, young, unmarried woman are certainly not equally suitable to the pregnant woman or the mother of young children. Yet “welfare” laws apply to all women alike. Such blanket legislation is as absurd as fixing industrial conditions for men on a basis of their all being wounded soldiers would be.”
—National Woman’s Party, quoted in Everyone Was Brave. As, ch. 8, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“... until both employers’ and workers’ groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about “ignorant” and “unfair” public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)