Lawrence Louis "Lance" Sharkey (18981967) was a trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

 activist, a radical

Political radicalism

The term political radicalism denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, and a Communist politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

. From 1948 to 1965 Sharkey served as the Secretary-General of Communist Party of Australia

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...

 (CPA). Sharkey was an orthodox Communist throughout his political career, closely following the prevailing Soviet line

Party line (politics)

In politics, the line or the party line is an idiom for a political party or social movement's canon agenda, as well as specific ideological elements specific to the organization's partisanship. The common phrase toeing the party line describes a person who speaks in a manner that conforms to his...

 in each major turn of policy.

Early years

Lawrence Sharkey ("Lance" was never his official given name) was born on 18 August 1898 at Warry Creek, near Cargo, New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

. His farming parents, Michael and Mary, were Irish and raised him as a Roman Catholic: a religious background he would share with numerous other Australian communist officials. He left school when only 14 years old, and commenced an apprenticeship as a coachmaker in Orange

Orange, New South Wales

Orange is a city in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. It is west of the state capital, Sydney, at an altitude of . Orange has an estimated population of 39,329 and the city is a major provincial centre....

. Later he worked as a farmhand, claiming that itinerant bushworkers drew him into the anti-conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

 struggle during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and into support of the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

.

After World War I Sharkey moved to Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 and obtained a job as a lift attendant

Elevator operator

An elevator operator is a person specifically employed to operate a manually operated elevator...

, also becoming a militant activist in the Sydney Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union. In 1922 Sharkey became a member of the Sydney labor union council. Sharkey was elected to the executive of the Miscellaneous Workers' Union, but lost that post at another election in 1925. In 1928 he became a union delegate to the Labor Council of New South Wales.

Political career

By this stage Sharkey had already been a member of the Communist Party of Australia

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...

 (CPA) for four years. Elected to the executive of the CPA in 1926, he was dismissed from it the following year, when he resisted the turn from a 'united front' with 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...

 (ALP).

In 1928, he re-emerged as a strong advocate of the Comintern's new 'Third Period

Third Period

The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....

' line of opposition to all forms of reform. Sharkey was elected to the CPA's governing Central Committee and rose to prominence in the party alongside his factional allies Bert Moxon and J.B. Miles. After they won control of the party in 1929, Sharkey was appointed editor of the party's newspaper Workers' Weekly. He continued to edit that paper and another party publication, The Tribune, throughout the 1930s.

Sharkey was named Chairman of the CPA in 1930. He remained in this post without interruption until 1948, despite the twists and turns of party policy during that time.

In the summer of 1930 Sharkey visited the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 for the first time as one of the Australian party's representatives to the 5th World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU). At the 7th World Congress of the Comintern Sharkey was elected as an alternate to the Executive Committee of the Communist International

Executive Committee of the Communist International

The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...

 (ECCI).

When Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies

Robert Menzies

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....

 declared the CPA illegal in June 1940, Sharkey and other party leaders went underground

Resistance movement

A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...

. A year later Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union entered the Second World War as an ally of Britain. The ban on members of the CPA was accordingly relaxed, and Sharkey resumed open political activity. In 1942 the ban was removed completely.

With the onset of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 Sharkey displaced Miles as the Australian Communist Party's Secretary-General. 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 told a Sydney journalist that "if Soviet Forces in pursuit of aggressors entered Australia, Australian workers would welcome them." For this statement Sharkey was tried and convicted of sedition. The High Court

High Court of Australia

The High Court of Australia is the supreme court in the Australian court hierarchy and the final court of appeal in Australia. It has both original and appellate jurisdiction, has the power of judicial review over laws passed by the Parliament of Australia and the parliaments of the States, and...

 upheld his conviction; and in October he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, although actually he served a mere 13 months.

On his release, he undertook a national speaking tour. He then spent six months at a sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

 in the Soviet Union, for treatment of a heart condition. Under his strong leadership he was able to ensure that the CPA did what many other countries' Communist parties failed to do: namely, minimise the impact of Khruschchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

's repudiation of Stalin early in 1956, and of the Soviet invasion of Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 later that year.

In November 1960 Sharkey attended the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers Parties in Moscow, at which the CPA initially sympathised with the Chinese in the Sino-Soviet split

Sino-Soviet split

In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...

. Ultimately, though, it backed the Soviets. Eleven months afterwards, Sharkey attended the 22nd Congress

22nd Congress of the CPSU

The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held from October 17 to October 31, 1961. In fourteen days of sessions , 4,413 delegates, in addition to delegates from 83 foreign Communist parties, listened to Nikita Khrushchev and others review policy issues...

 of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

 in Moscow.

Later years, death, and legacy

Increasingly ill, Sharkey ceded supreme control of the CPA to Laurie Aarons

Laurie Aarons

Laurence "Laurie" Aarons , Australian Communist leader, was National Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia from 1965 to 1976. He was born in Sydney, son of Sam Aarons, a leading member of the Communist Party and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. The Aarons family was of German-Jewish...

, the party's first Jewish leader, in June 1965. Thereafter he held a ceremonial post as the party's Vice-Chairman. He died of a heart attack on 13 May 1967 in Sydney. His body was cremated

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

.

Sharkey was lauded by many in his wartime and post-war heyday as a hero, but his reputation sank during the 1960s, along with the fortunes of his party as a whole. In a 1998 book, the historian of Australian Communism Stuart Macintyre

Stuart Macintyre

Stuart Forbes Macintyre , Australian historian, academic and public intellectual, is a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. He has been voted one of Australia's most influential public intellectuals...

 (who had long since abandoned his own CPA membership) noted the hyperbolic way in which Sharkey was portrayed during the cult of personality

Cult of personality

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...

 period 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 unerringly 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 favourite pastime of chess, lesser party members had to be careful to lose."

Writings

• Nationalisation of Banking and Socialisation of Credit: A Critical Analysis of the Policy of the Labour Party, from a Lecture delivered in May 1933. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1933.
• Nationalisation of Banking: An Analysis of the Socialisation of Credit: Lang's Part in the Signing of the Premiers' Plan. Sydney: Modern Publishers, 1933.
• An Appeal to Catholics: Democracy, Fascism, Mexico, Spain, Peace, War. Sydney: Modern Publishers, n.d. [1938].
• Democracy for Whom? A striking Contrast: Democracy in Australia and the Soviet Union. Sydney: Central Committee, Communist Party of Australia, n.d. [c. 1941].
• Manifesto: Communist Call to Defend Australia. Melbourne: Political Rights Committee, n.d. [c. 1942].
• History: Communist Party of Australia, from a lecture by L. Sharkey. Twenty years of the Communist International. With Otto Kuusinen. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1942.
• The Trade Unions: Communist Theory and Practice of Trade Unions. Sydney: N.S.W. Legal Rights Committee, 1942.
• Growth of Trade Unionism in Australia. n.c.: n.p., 1942.
• Australia Marches On. Sydney: N.S.W. Legal Rights Committee, 1942.
• The Soviet and the Japanese War. Sydney: N.S.W. Legal Rights Committee, 1942.
• For National Unity and Victory over Fascists, LIft Communist Party Ban. Sydney: Legal Rights Committee, n.d. [c. 1943].
• The left, "Dr." Lloyd Ross and Nationalisation. Sydney: Legal Rights Committee, 1943.
• Congress Report on the Work of the C.C. from the 12th to the 13th Party Congress. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1943.
• An Outline History of the Australian Communist Party. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1944.
• The W.E.A. Exposed: And an Exposition of the Principles of Democracy and Marxian Socialism. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1944.
• Results of the Victory over Fascism. Sydney: Central Committee, Australian Communist Party, 1945.
• The Story of Government Enterprise in Australia. With E.W. Campbell. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1945.
• Dialectical and historical materialism: Quotations from the Works of Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Stalin. With S. Moston. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1945.
• Labour Betrayed! Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1946.
• Australian Communists and Soviet Russia. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1947.
• For Australia, Prosperous and Independent: The report of L.L. Sharkey to the 15th Congress of the Australian Communist Party, May 1948. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1948.
• The Labor Party Crisis. Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, n.d. [c. 1952].
• Petrov's 25,000 Dollar Story Exploded: The Devastating Answer to Petrov's "Moscow Gold" Story as Presented to the Petrov Commission. With Edward F. Hill. Newtown: R. S. Thompson, n.d. [c. 1955].
• Basic Questions of Communist Theory: Documents Relating to the Cult of the Individual and to Hungary. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1957.
• Socialism in Australia: Communist View on Democratic Socialism. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1957.
• Socializm v Avstralii. (In Russian). Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958.
• 18th Congress, April 1958 : Report of L.L. Sharkey, General Secretary. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1958.
• The Trade Unions. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1959.

External links

• An Outline History of the Australian Communist Party by L.L. Sharkey. Marxists Internet Archive
  Marxists Internet Archive
  Marxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
  
  , retrieved 22 September 2009.