John Garden - The Communist

The Communist

In November 1920 Garden announced the formation of the Communist Party of Australia, which he had initiated with W. P. Earsman. Garden was prominent in 1921 at the All-Australian Trade Union Congress in Melbourne, which wanted to impose a positive socialist policy on the Australian Labor Party. He rapidly became one of its most prominent figures, leading a group of militant trade unionists known as the "Trades Hall Reds."

Under Garden's leadership the CPA concentrated on trying to gain control of the New South Wales trade unions, and through them to re-enter the Labor Party (which was based on affiliated trade unions). This led to a split in the CPA, with more radical members rejecting the attempt to re-enter the Labor Party. In 1922, however, Garden attended the Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, which endorsed his strategy. Although the Labor Party, under its parliamentary leader Jack Lang, rejected Communism, Garden as Secretary of the Trades Hall was a powerful figure in the labour movement, and in 1923 he was readmitted to the Labor Party and elected to its state executive.

In 1924, however, Lang regained control of the New South Wales Labor Party and had Garden and other Communists once again expelled from the party, a decision which was upheld by the federal executive. This was the end of the CPA's attempts to take over the Labor Party, and by 1925 the CPA had become mainly an appendage of Garden's machine in the Sydney Trades Hall. At the 1925 state elections the CPA ran candidates, including Garden, against Labor candidates in working-class seats and was heavily defeated. This convinced Garden that the CPA had no future, and in 1926 he left the party.