The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality by Stuart Macintyre

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Stamps on inside. RFID patch on inside back cover. Wear to book corners and edges. Marks on foredges. Large format trade paperback.

In 1920, 26 men and women met in a dingy hall in Sydney to create a new political party. They expected the overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity, here and all around the world.

Two decades later, when Australia joined the Second World War, the Commonwealth government suppressed the Communist Party of Australia. The handful of idealists and dissidents had become a political force powerful enough, in the view of the authorities, to threaten national security.

The Communist Party was a major part of Australia's political landscape for more than half a century. It played a vital role in the country's largest trade unions. It blazed a trail for a range of social movements and attracted writers and artists who influenced much of Australia's cultural life. It also became the target of sustained surveillance and penetration by state police and federal security agencies.

Stuart Macintyre's account is the first comprehensive study of Australian communism in its formative years. The first volume of his epic two-volume work on the Communist Party of Australia.