John Garden
John (Jock) Smith Garden (born August 13, 1882 in Nigg , Scotland , † December 31, 1968 in New South Wales , Australia ) was an Australian politician, union leader, co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Early life
John Garden was the second son of Alexander Garden and his wife Ann, née Smith, whose parents were fishermen in northern Scotland. He went to school in Lossiemouth and then trained as a sailmaker . His eldest brother went to Australia in the early 1890s and he and his parents followed him in 1904. In 1906, Garden was employed by the Church of Christ at Harcourt and later in Melbourne , where he married Jeannie May Ritchie of Leith , Scotland. With her he had two sons and two daughters. He joined ALP in 1909 and was a Baptist minister in Maclean , New South Wales . In 1914 he went to Paddington , where he was President of the Sailmakers Union and delegated to the Labor Council of New South Wales, which was a member until 1934.
Political life
After the October Revolution in Russia of 1917, he read Marx and Lenin and was enthusiastic about their ideas and became a member of the Socialist Party of Australia and the Industrial Socialist Labor Party . In November 1920 he founded the CPA with William Earsman . In 1921 he was committed to the All-Australian Trade Union Congress in Melbourne for a socialist policy change of the ALP. In 1922 he was in Moscow and was elected to the Executive Committee of the Comintern . He was expelled from the ALP because of his membership in the CPA. He then tried to convince the ALP at a trade union congress for a left-wing policy and thus run for elections in 1925. Jack Lang advocated moderate politics and later won the election.
In September 1926 Garden resigned from the CPA and tried to re-enter the ALP. In the meantime, the left-wing Australian Workers' Union had taken the lead in the ALP. Lang worked with Garden and they managed to reduce the influence of that union. Garden was resumed in the ALP in January 1929 and in March 1931 he was in the debate about the crisis combat the Great Depression in Australia between long and Prime Minister James Scullin on the side of Lang, who pursued a socially acceptable way out of the economic crisis.
On May 6, 1932, he was ambushed by eight men of the Fascist Legion , a division of the fascist New Gard , who successfully fended off his two sons and dogs.
Lang and Garden had the majority behind them at the National Conference of the ALP in 1933 and united the ALP under the slogan socialization units . On May 12th, Jack Lang was dismissed from the office of Prime Minister by the British Governor Sir Phillip Game because he did not follow the final decisions of the Australian Federal Government of Scullin to combat the crisis. For Australia, Scullin took the path that the financial expert Otto Ernst Niemeyer from the Bank of England had developed and which led to social problems and prolonged the Australian economic crisis compared to other countries.
In May 1934 the unions turned away from Lang and also from Garden and the following national election won the conservative United Australia Party of Joseph Lyons . Jack Lang then founded the splinter party Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist) and ran, after which John Garden was elected a member of this splinter party in the Australian House of Representatives from 1935 to 1937. John Curtin then reunited the ALP, but Garden did not succeed in ending his election candidacies in 1937 and 1940.
Late life
In October he opened Dengar Publications as a private company and from 1942 to 1947 he worked with the Australian Labor Secretary Edward Ward of the ALP.
Garden got involved in betting on horses and started a timber trade in New Guinea . In January 1948, he and his son were accused of forgery because of this business relationship between 1944 and 1945, charged in court and sentenced to three years in prison. In December 1948, however, he was released. In March 1957 it became known that Garden and his son were making horoscopes for a fee and that there were problems with them.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e adbonline.anu.edu.au : Garden, John Smith (Jock) ( 1882-1968 ), in English, accessed June 10, 2011
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Garden, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Garden jock; Garden, John Smith (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 13, 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nigg , Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 31, 1968 |
| Place of death | New South Wales , Australia |