Industrial Groups
Encyclopedia
The Industrial Groups were groups formed by the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 in the late 1940s, to combat Communist Party
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...

 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
H. V. Evatt
Herbert Vere Evatt, QC KStJ , was an Australian jurist, politician and writer. He was President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948–49 and helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

 turned against them, causing a split in the Labor Party
Australian Labor Party split of 1955
The Australian Labor Party split of 1955 was a splintering of the Australian Labor Party along sectarian and ideological lines in the mid 1950s...

, with many 'Groupers' resigning or being expelled, and the formation of the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)
Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)
The Australian Labor Party was the name initially used by the right-wing group which split away from the Australian Labor Party in 1955, and which later became the Democratic Labor Party in 1957....

, later to become the Democratic Labor Party.
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