Prior to the ECCI discussions with the Australians in April 1928, preliminary skirmishes between Stalin's and Bukharin's supporters had already taken place at an ECCI meeting in February and at the Fourth Congress of the Red International Labor Unions (RILU). On 20th April when the ECCI met to discuss the Australian question, divisions as to the general line would have existed (at least covertly). Bukharin was present at the discussion. Likewise, both sides of the argument in the CPA over its policy in relation to the ALP were represented. In addition to H.W.R. Robson and Herbert Moxon, there were two of the four CPA members who had been removed from the CEC as “rightists” at the 1927 annual conference. These were, jack Ryan, research officer of the Sydney Labor Council, and Norman Jeffery former CPA organiser in Queensland. Both Ryan and Jeffery were returning from the 4th Congress of RILU, which they had attended as delegates of the NSW Labor Council.”
Prior to this meeting the protagonists had been given the opportunity to present their views about the ALP in written form to the Anglo-American Secretariat. Moxon, as representative of the CEC, detailed the differences and attacked both Ryan and Jeffery on a number of issues but chiefly with submerging the Party in their mass activity and as being more concerned with working with the leadership of the ALP than with the rank and file. He concluded, “The majority of the Australian Party is looking to the ECCI to give a decisive ruling in connection with the faction fight.”
Both Ryan and Jeffery had produced a comprehensive report explaining their viewpoint in which they gave the history of the CPA's attitude to the united front since 1921 when “The CP under instructions from the CI adopted the policy of "working from within' [the ALP] with the object of ousting the reformist leaders'. They dealt with 1924 when members of the Communist Party were banned from membership in the ALP at Lang's instigation and the consequent campaign in 1925 to demand the right of unions to delegate Communist Party members to ALP conferences if they so chose. According to Ryan and Jeffery the fight in the ALP had now (1927-28) changed its form. Instead of it being a clear cut issue between the reactionary rightwing and the militant left wing, led by the Communist Party and putting forward CP demands, it had developed into a struggle for control between the reactionary right-wing politicians and the trade-unions allied with some politicians. The second were as nearly reactionary as the first'. They stated that this was where they quarrelled with the majority of the executive of the Party. The CE C decided not to support either side and they (Ryan and Jeffery) opposed this stand, arguing that, 'whether the trade-unions were to control the ALP or not was a matter of concern to the working class, therefore we, [the CPA] could not isolate ourselves from such a struggle.' They reminded the ECCI that the policy put forward by the minority at the 1927 CPA conference was strictly in conformity with the thesis from the CI of organising the left wing in the Labor Party to challenge its leadership on the basis of “a programme of immediate economic demands” and was drawn up with Robson's help.
Robson, in presenting the report at the meeting on April 20th, was critical of the poor organisation of the CPA. He did point out, though, that the membership, only 250 when Tom Wright was in Moscow in 1927, had doubled in less than six months due to the role played by CPA members in the sugar strike in South Johnstone. His view was that the Party's weakness stemmed from divisions in the Central Executive of the CPA on how to deal with the anti-communist attitude of the ALP leaders, and argued that the ALP move to the right called for sharper criticism from the CPA. This applied particularly to Queensland (where an election was due) with the open desertion of the workers by the Labor Government.
After the presentation of Robson's report, the ECCI placed Willie Gallagher (Communist Party of Great Britain representative) in charge of a committee, which included members of the Political Secretariat of the ECCI, together with Robson, Moxon, Jeffery and Ryan, to recommend a policy for the CPA. At the insistence of Petrovsky (CPSU representative on the ECCI) the resolution took up the question of the Labor Party. Within days, the committee put its resolution to the Comintern's Political Secretariat and it was endorsed by the ECCI on 27th April, 1928. While referring to the earlier October 1927 resolution which had envisaged the possibility of having to support a left opposition within the Labor Party the new resolution dealt particularly with the McCormack Labor Government. The Communist Party was to take the lead in the forthcoming Queensland state elections drawing in the masses by adopting the following procedure:
1. In some constituencies left-wing ALP candidates were to stand and would have specially created workers' electoral committees to support them.
2. In all other constituencies a clear campaign against the McCormack Labor Party was to be conducted. Labor Party candidates were to be pressed to repudiate their past policy and to support working class demands. If they refused, workers were to be asked not to vote for them but to make their reason for withdrawing support quite clear. Opposition was to be against persons not the Labor Party itself.
3. Three or four Communist candidates were to stand in carefully selected constituencies.
This document, to be known as the Queensland resolution, did not yet embody Stalin's 'social fascist' line. It was a composite of the 1927 October resolution, the CPA's militant approach to the ALP Queensland Government in Queensland and the new line which was emerging internationally. The resolution was brought back to Australia by Jeffery, was endorsed unanimously by the CEC on 12 July 192 8, except for section 25 which stated that the creation of the left-wing inside the Labor Party should be carried out organisationally along the same lines as used in the formation of the left-wing inside the trade-unions, a proposal already contained in the l927 October resolution. The reason given, and accepted by the Anglo-American Secretariat, was that the Party was 'too weak to make this work'. The campaign for the coming state election in Queensland was then initiated accordingly. The discussions with the ECCI in 192 8 were not seen in Australia as 'interference', but were welcomed by most as an indication that the CPA was indeed an integral part of the Communist International. Wright, as general-secretary, regarded the discussions around the Queensland resolution as the ECCI's first serious consideration of the Australian situation.
The great distance between the Moscow headquarters of the ECCI and Sydney, the home of the CPA's Central Committee, exacerbated by the “artificially imposed tyranny of distance” caused by the political censorship of the Bruce/Page Government which banned material arriving from the USSR meant that, as Margaret Sampson puts it, “the Party was largely ignorant of the battles being fought within the Comintern and the CPSU over Stalinisation”. Those who were in Moscow at the time of the April discussion may have had some knowledge of the divisions. Jack Ryan was not impressed with some of the Comintern personnel he worked with while in Moscow and according to Edna Ryan was beginning to have some doubts about the way it functioned. Esmonde Higgins, editor of The Workers' Weekly and CPA delegate to the VIth Comintern Congress in August 1928, had some idea of the CI conflicts. Though he arrived in Moscow too late to participate in decision making at the Congress, he must have been aware of the situation between Stalin and Bukharin as it had been widely discussed among delegates. Compromises had been exacted from Bukharin at the Congress. He had conceded that social democracy had 'social fascist tendencies' but added 'it would be foolish to lump social democracy together with fascism.' He had also conceded that 'the right deviation now represents the central danger.' Stalin had won the debate over the 'third period' though it was to be another year before the significance of this victory was to penetrate through to the sections of the Comintern. Even the resolutions passed after 'hard-fought compromises' still reflected Bukharin's policies.
Higgins gave a glowing report of the Comintern's Fourth Congress at the CPA's eighth annual conference in Sydney, December 1928 remarking that 'We glory in the fact that we are an International Party ... Decisions are arrived at the instance of representations of these parties and always with their advice.' During the conference, Higgins was the main speaker for a resolution entitled, “The Struggle Against Labor Party Reformism” which said that the ALP was increasingly identifying itself with the openly reactionary aims of the employers and that as the CPA was the only party of Australia 'coming out as an independent revolutionary force we must energetically endeavour to capture the leadership of the Australian workers from the reformists. 'In elections the call was no longer `Vote Labor but Vote for the Revolutionary Workers' candidates' (CPA or left-wing candidates).”
It is interesting to note that left-wing ALP candidates were still included. Supporting the resolution, Wright added “that if left-wing organisations do come into existence, that we ourselves shall be on good terms with them” and “we must be careful not to isolate ourselves from them by ill-considered attacks”. J.B. Miles, representing Queensland, agreed with this to some extent but he considered that 'lf it is going to be necessary to have left-wing electoral committees let us have them, but we must realise that after the elections these committees must go out of existence, or otherwise we are going to build up a second reformist party.' Lance Sharkey, who had been voted out as a rightist' at the 1927 annual conference, in supporting the resolution emphasised that it was a new policy and further that “Although a lot of people are in the habit of declaiming that Australia is a different country from others ... the development of the ALP here is similar to development of Social Democratic Parties in other countries.”
This resolution was much more general in its criticism of the ALP than had been the Queensland resolution and aroused Jeffery's suspicions. Having attended the Comintern discussions he stated, “lt is apparent to me that the Committee [which drew up the resolution] intends the Queensland tactic to be applied to the whole of Australia” and that he did not think this was correct. Higgins replied that there was no reason to make an absolute distinction between Queensland and the rest of Australia and said it was “time we adopted a new line”.
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