Lance Sharkey

Lawrence Louis (Lance) Sharkey (born August 18, 1898 in Warry Creek near Cargo , New South Wales , Australia , † May 13, 1967 in Sydney ) was an active trade unionist , a politically radical journalist and communist . From 1930 to 1948 Sharkey was chairman and from 1948 to 1965 general secretary of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). In the course of his political career, Sharkey was an Orthodox communist who followed the political party line of the Soviet Union with almost no criticism.

biography

Early years

Lance Sharkey's parents were Michael and Mary, farmers from Ireland , who raised him Roman Catholic . He left school at the age of 14 and trained as an upholsterer in Orange . He later worked as a farm helper, and as a wandering forest worker got into the conflict over Australian conscription during the First World War and supported the Industrial Workers of the World .

After the end of World War I , he went to Sydney and worked as an elevator attendant and became a militant activist in Sydney's Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union . In 1922 Sharkey became a member of the Sydney labor union council . Sharkey was elected to the leadership of the Miscellaneous Workers Union; he lost the post in 1925. In 1928 he became a delegate of the Labor Council of New South Wales .

Political career

In 1924 Lance Sharkey joined the CPA and was elected to the Executive Committee of the CPA in 1926, where he was dismissed in 1927, as was against the change from the Popular Front policy with the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

In 1928 he was reassigned to the Executive Committee because he strongly advocated the new policy of the Third Period of the Comintern and against all reforms. Sharkey was elected to the Central Committee of the CPA and was prominent in the party, as were Bert Moxon and JB Miles . After he had gained control of the CPA in 1939, he became the editor of the party newspaper Workers' Weekly and, in addition to this magazine, published other publications of the CPA until 1930.

Sharkey was named chairman of the CPA in 1930, a post he held continuously until 1948.

In the summer of 1930 he visited the Soviet Union as the first to represent the Australian party at the 5th World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU).

At the 7th Comintern World Congress , Sharkey was elected as an alternative to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). When the Australian government banned the CPA in June 1940, Sharkey and other party leaders went underground . When National Socialist Germany invaded the Soviet Union a year later in June 1941 and both the Soviet Union and Great Britain entered World War II , the CPA ban was relaxed and Sharkey was once again able to pursue public policy. In 1942 the ban on the CPA was lifted.

With the onset of the Cold War , Sharkey ousted Miles as Australian General Secretary of the CPA became openly hostile to the ALP and withdrew its previous conditional support of the American-sponsored program of post-war reconstruction.

In March 1949 Sharkey declared to a journalist in Sydney: "If Soviet Forces in pursuit of aggressors entered Australia, Australian workers would welcome them." (German: "If the armed forces of the Soviet Union occupy Australia, they would welcome the Australian workers.") For making this statement, Sharkey was arrested and charged with attempted treason. The High Court of Australia sentenced him to three years in prison for high treason, of which he served 13 months.

After his release, he went on a speaker tour of Australia and then went to a sanatorium in the Soviet Union for six months to treat his heart problems.

Because of his strong leadership, he managed to minimize the decline in Australian party membership despite Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 condemnation of Stalinism .

In November 1960 he was at a meeting of 81 communist and workers' parties in Moscow , where the Australian Communist Party initially sympathized with the Chinese communist path before ultimately moving back to the Soviet political line. In October 1961, Sharkey was at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow.

Late Years, Death and Legacy

Lance Sharkey left Laurence Aarons the post of general secretary in June 1965 and was appointed vice-general secretary, who mainly has to perform representative tasks for the party.

Sharkey died of a heart attack on May 13, 1967; his body was cremated.

Sharkey was hailed as a heroic communist leader on numerous occasions, but his reputation declined, as did his party's fortunes. In the 1998 book on the history of Australian communism by Stuart Macintyre, Sharkey's political path is interpreted as an exaggerated personality cult of the 1930s.

"[Sharkey] was presented as a son of the soil, steeped in communist theory, yet always a man of the people. The list of his virtues was directed so unringly to his limitations as to suggest parody. It was noted that 'like all the leaders of our Party, Comrade Sharkey was temperate in his habits'; in fact his binges in Moscow were notorious. He was a brilliant mass agitator; actually his oratory was leaden. He had an instinctive genius; yet when he took up Lenin's favorite pastime of chess, lesser party members had to be careful to lose. "

literature

Branko Lazitch, Milorad M. Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern: New, revised and expanded edition. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 1986
Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality. Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1998

Web links

An Outline History of the Australian Communist Party by LL Sharkey. Marxists Internet Archive .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Branko Lazitch, Milorad M. Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern: New, revised and expanded edition. P. 424. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 1986
^ Stuart Macintyre: The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality. P. 134, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1998
^ Macintyre: The Reds, p. 176 (see literature).
↑ Lazitch / Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, p. 425 (see literature)
↑ Macintyre: The Reds, p. 362 (see literature)

personal data
SURNAME	Sharkey, Lance
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Sharkey, Lawrence Louis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	General Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia (1930–1949)
DATE OF BIRTH	August 18, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	Warry Creek , Cargo , New South Wales ,
DATE OF DEATH	May 13, 1967
Place of death	Sydney , Australia

[laz-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Branko Lazitch, Milorad M. Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern: New, revised and expanded edition. P. 424. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 1986

[2] Stuart Macintyre: The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality. P. 134, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1998

[3] Macintyre: The Reds, p. 176 (see literature).

[4] Lazitch / Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, p. 425 (see literature)

[5] Macintyre: The Reds, p. 362 (see literature)