‘Stop the war on Aborigines’: the Communist Party of Australia and the fight for Aboriginal rights 1920-1934

Gibson, P

‘Stop the war on Aborigines’: the Communist Party of Australia and the fight for Aboriginal rights 1920-1934

Gibson, P

Permalink

Publication Type:: Thesis
Citation:: 2021
Issue Date:: 2021-02-24

Closed Access

	Filename	Description	Size
	Stop the War on Aborigines - CPA and Aboriginal Rights 1920-34.pdf	Submitted version	2.21 MB		View/Open

Copyright Clearance Process

Recently Added
In Progress
Closed Access

This item is closed access and not available.

Full metadata record

Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Gibson, P https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1609-5369
dc.contributor.editor	Haskins, V
dc.contributor.editor	Bennett, J
dc.date.accessioned	2025-01-27T23:59:05Z
dc.date.available	2025-01-27T23:59:05Z
dc.date.issued	2021-02-24
dc.date.submitted	2020-10-01
dc.identifier.citation	2021
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/184256
dc.description.abstract	This thesis provides a detailed historical reconstruction of the thought and practice of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) regarding Aboriginal rights from 1920-1934. Based primarily upon archives of the CPA press and internal CPA records, it charts a development from a perspective that failed to challenge the racism of the Australian mainstream, and even embraced some of these racist ideas, towards one of solidarity with Aboriginal resistance to colonisation. Running through this study is a critical engagement with early Marxist thought about Indigenous peoples and settler-colonialism. The classical Marxist tradition insisted on the importance of anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles for the revolutionary working-class movement. However, influential texts in this tradition also contained racist ideas about supposedly “primitive” Indigenous people in Australia and this contributed to the delayed emergence of a pro-Aboriginal communist perspective. As the CPA expanded to become a mass party during the Depression, the experiences of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association in NSW (forced underground in 1929) and continuing armed Aboriginal resistance in the Northern Territory, inspired theoretical innovation by Australian communists. In 1931, a CPA manifesto for Aboriginal rights drew on Marxist theory to profoundly articulate the ways that Australian capitalism was predicated on continuing Indigenous genocide, along with the importance of the Aboriginal struggle for the liberation of the entire working class. These new insights provided the basis for the first campaigns for Aboriginal rights by working-class organisations in Australian history. This campaigning stopped a police-planned massacre of Yolngu people in Arnhem Land 1933, challenged the imprisonment of Aboriginal warriors in Darwin in 1934 and laid the basis for a tradition of trade union solidarity that would play a crucial role in many campaigns for Aboriginal rights across Australia in the following decades.
dc.language	en
dc.relation.ispartof	University of Newcastle
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
dc.title	‘Stop the war on Aborigines’: the Communist Party of Australia and the fight for Aboriginal rights 1920-1934
dc.type	Thesis
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney/Provost
pubs.organisational-group	University of Technology Sydney/Provost/Jumbunna
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access	*
dc.date.updated	2025-01-27T23:59:03Z
pubs.filed-date	2020-10-01

Abstract:

This thesis provides a detailed historical reconstruction of the thought and practice of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) regarding Aboriginal rights from 1920-1934. Based primarily upon archives of the CPA press and internal CPA records, it charts a development from a perspective that failed to challenge the racism of the Australian mainstream, and even embraced some of these racist ideas, towards one of solidarity with Aboriginal resistance to colonisation. Running through this study is a critical engagement with early Marxist thought about Indigenous peoples and settler-colonialism. The classical Marxist tradition insisted on the importance of anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles for the revolutionary working-class movement. However, influential texts in this tradition also contained racist ideas about supposedly “primitive” Indigenous people in Australia and this contributed to the delayed emergence of a pro-Aboriginal communist perspective. As the CPA expanded to become a mass party during the Depression, the experiences of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association in NSW (forced underground in 1929) and continuing armed Aboriginal resistance in the Northern Territory, inspired theoretical innovation by Australian communists. In 1931, a CPA manifesto for Aboriginal rights drew on Marxist theory to profoundly articulate the ways that Australian capitalism was predicated on continuing Indigenous genocide, along with the importance of the Aboriginal struggle for the liberation of the entire working class. These new insights provided the basis for the first campaigns for Aboriginal rights by working-class organisations in Australian history. This campaigning stopped a police-planned massacre of Yolngu people in Arnhem Land 1933, challenged the imprisonment of Aboriginal warriors in Darwin in 1934 and laid the basis for a tradition of trade union solidarity that would play a crucial role in many campaigns for Aboriginal rights across Australia in the following decades.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/184256