This paper concerns non-communist activists in a communist-controlled organisation. Such activists were usually dismissed as ‘dupes’ or ‘fellow-travellers’ by contemporary opinion and in subsequent literature. By examining a range of activists in the peace movement during the early Cold War both within and outside religious organisations, the paper seeks to challenge this established view. Generally, such non-communist activists have escaped historians’ attention. The paper seeks to restore to these individuals their moral integrity and political identity, which the label ‘dupe’ denies. In doing so, the paper will also question David Caute’s definition of ‘fellow-travelling’

In his ‘Man to Man’ radio broadcast on 25 September 1953, Prime Minister Robert Menzies denounced the Australian peace movement. It was, he alleged, a communist ‘front’ that cunningly ensnared the unwary Christian fellow-traveller:

Implicitly, Menzies was arguing that deception and duplicity by communists was the overriding explanation for non-communists supporting the peace movement. Thus, non-communist Christian activists within the Australian Peace Council (APC) were either dupes or fellow-travellers. ‘Nothing nauseates me more’, he proclaimed in 1950, ‘than to discover the skill with which these communists can put into their vanguard some deluded Minister of the Christian religion’.2 This assumption, that non-communist proponents of peace were ‘duped’ and ‘deluded’ by communists, was one that Menzies, and others, persistently adhered to even during the decidedly Christian-controlled Convention on Peace and War in 1953.3

This paper will argue for a contrary position: that peace movement activism – even when it occurred through the communist-dominated Australian Peace Council – was different from and more complex than the customary view. The paper will examine a range of individuals, both religious and non-religious, and one organisation, the Student Christian Movement, to demonstrate that the received wisdom about fellow-travelling or delusion ignores or, at the least, under-estimates, the sincerity, dedication and longevity of the commitment to the cause of peace. The customary view also fails to take into account the allegiance of Christians to the peace movement in the face of staunch opposition from their hierarchy, indicated by the endorsement by the leaders of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches for the apocalyptic anti-communist ‘Call to the People of Australia’ in 1950.4 To maintain active commitment, this paper will argue, depended on moral courage and political steadfastness far more than on the ‘devious means’ of the Communist Party, as Menzies put it, to entrap the uninformed. Although the international literature on the peace movement is impressive, studies of the Australian experience are uneven.5 Similarly, analyses and biographies of overseas fellow-travellers are extensive while comparable Australian studies are rare.6 This paper seeks to fill, in small measure, this historiographical gap. Its focus is on the previously overlooked non-communist activists in the peace movement during the early Cold War.

It should be stated at the outset that the issue of communist control of the APC is not in dispute. Despite constant denials from the Council to the contrary,7 the Communist Party was the early driving force behind the APC. The close involvement of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in the establishment of the APC was confirmed by an ‘insider’ – its first organising secretary, Ian Turner: ‘The post-war Australian peace movement had its origin in a top-secret meeting of party members…early in 1949. That meeting agreed to initiate a broadly-based Australian Peace Council’. He believed that the Party was ‘over-manipulative’ and that this led to the departure of individuals such as J.F. Cairns and Leonard Mann.8

Inglis underscored the extent of CPA dominance when outlining how the Party forced Turner to relinquish his position in the APC.9 McKnight saw the APC as ‘an initiative of the CPA and the small group of non-communists initially prepared to work with it’.10 Saunders and Summy agreed that the renaissance of the peace movement ‘was specifically initiated by the Communist Party of Australia’ and that the Party performed ‘a major share of the organizational work’.11 Undoubtedly, too, the Communist Party sought to exploit Christian peace activists in the interests of the Soviet Union, for which evidence exists in the international literature.12

However, many clergymen commenced their involvement with the peace movement long before peace activists were seen as synonymous with fellow travellers and crypto communists, long before the communist-influenced Australian Peace Council was formed in July 1949 13, and long before the Communist Party sought to use the issue of peace as the ‘transmission belt to the masses’.14 Indeed, their history of activism in Australia around peace issues stretched back to the Sudan and Boer wars. Reducing them to dupes denigrates their dedication, astuteness, integrity and capacity to think in ways independent from but, at least in peace work, parallel to the CPA. For them ‘defence policy’ was a euphemism for an armaments build-up. For them, to remain silent or inert was to remain an accomplice in the government’s war preparations. And for them, nothing could sanctify modern war; nothing could defile the cause of peace. Better relations between East and West was their goal, patient negotiation their favoured means. Yet guilt by association, that emblematic feature of this troubled, tense period, applied to the peace movement: peace parsons, if not already pink, were easily hoodwinked and therefore naive but valuable allies on the side of Soviet communism in the great world struggle for moral and military supremacy. Cold War polarities meant that, in the 1950s, any peace work ipso facto assisted, or was assisted by, the Communist Party. Thus, the ideological myopia of cold warriors blurred subtleties and prevented distinctions being seen between desire and outcome, influence and control.

The religious peace activists

The political views of many ecclesiastical activists had their origins in the roots of early Christianity. Friedrich Engels pointed out that early Christianity was a movement of the oppressed against the existing social order.15 Thus, the Melbourne theologian, Rev. C.M. Churchward, believed that the Marxist aim of ‘each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ was nothing more than ‘the social and economic aspect of the kingdom of God on earth’.16 He declared that it was the task of religion to ‘Christianise Communism since the Christianising of capitalism was impossible because it was a system based on ‘selfishness’.17 Soon after the end of World War II, Rev. David Garnsey, secretary of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) believed that Christians were involved in ‘the struggle of a dying order’.18 In an address to the 1947 National SCM conference, Canon Maynard stated that Christians who accepted the Marxist view of history could only regret that it was linked to an anti-religious philosophy.19 These statements suggest clearly that religious activism was grounded in views that had their genesis in traditional Christian theology. In Australia, ministers of religion challenged military involvement from the late nineteenth century onwards. Between the two world wars, and especially in the 1930s, a plethora of Christian-based peace organisations dotted the political landscape. These included the United Peace Council, the Christian Pacifist Movement, the Legion of Christian Youth, the Anti-War Christian Fellowship, the Methodist Peace Committee and the United Christian Peace Movement. Religious activists were also heavily involved with the League of Nations Union and the International Peace Campaign.20 With the spectre of both Hiroshima and the apparent threat of global conflict associated with the onset of the Cold War haunting the post-war years, the issue of international peace once again assumed prominence for religious pacifists. Thus, if support for the peace movement derived primarily from religious outlook, we need to question the presumption of delusion.

While the aftermath of World War II found many men and women of religion committed to alternative ways of resolving international disputes (a widespread sentiment that reached its apotheosis in the establishment of the United Nations), the onset of the Cold War forced politics into rigid ideological frameworks. The space for occupying middle ground or a ‘third way’ sharply contracted. In effect, this meant that religious activists who questioned western government policies often found themselves in alliance with the Communist Party, the only other significant force prepared (or obliged, given its umbilical Soviet attachment) to challenge these policies of the West. Against the backdrop of a hostile political environment, the pressure from their own churches to refrain from association with the APC, and the possibility of loss of employment, it was an act of considerable political will to challenge the conservative ideological hegemony and advocate a position that the majority of Australians found anathema. To ascribe naïve fellow-travelling to such dedicated activists wrongly implies woolly-headed ignorance of the consequences of collaborating with communists.

For those influenced by a religious theology, particularly Catholicism, a ‘just’ war had to fulfil seven conditions before it could be supported. In an essay detailing his opposition to nuclear war, E.I. Watkins explains why a nuclear war could not meet three of these seven conditions. Namely, that only right means may be employed in the conduct of the war; there must be a reasonable chance of victory; and the good that probably could be achieved must outweigh even the probable, if not certain, evil effects of the war.21 The fundamental difference between medieval wars and modern wars was that a modern war fought with nuclear weapons meant the possible destruction of all humanity and was a clear violation of these prerequisites. This was the core of the argument in Abbe Jean Boulier’s pamphlet circulated by the NSW APC, where he called on people to ‘give testimony of your Christianity on the petition where men, all men, can offer evidence of their humanity’.22 However, in only a few instances did mainstream Catholic organisations accept this argument and it was mainly other religious groups that were active in the peace movement, at least until the Vietnam War.

One exception was in France, which had a mass Communist Party and majority Catholic population. At the end of World War II the Catholic Church sent priests into the factories to counteract communist influence. Their experiences there of fighting social injustices convinced many to adopt a Marxist analysis of society. One, Fr. Montuclard, saw the Communist Party as a ‘kind of temporal arm of the church’.23 In Britain, Alan Ecclestone, a Church of England priest, joined the Communist Party along with his wife in 1948.24 For Ecclestone, it was a ‘gesture one makes to affirm one’s belief in the triumph of that movement of the whole human family to take its affairs into its own hands and to order its life in the ways which the Spirit requires’.25 In Australia in 1947, The Beacon, the periodical of the Unitarian Church, called on trade unionists to refuse to build the Woomera Rocket Range.26 This was two years before the formation of the APC, and indicates a long-standing commitment to peace issues. In August 1950 The Beacon specifically rejected prayer alone as a means of achieving world peace and insisted on the need of ‘determined political action’ to achieve this.27 Thus we can see that numerous religious peace activists drew on their own religious ideology to justify working on peace issues with communists.

Alf Dickie was one clergyman who faced strident hostility from within his own church over his peace activism. In his 1973 retirement speech, as Chairman of the Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament, Dickie spoke of the difficulties he encountered from within the Presbyterian Church during the early part of the Cold War.28 He acknowledged that in the ‘late 1940s and early ‘fifties I must have been a terrible burden to my church’ and added that ‘it would not have surprised me if my pastoral tie with my congregation had been severed’. The crucial point Dickie made is that it was ‘important’ that his peace activity was carried out as ‘an accredited minister of my church’.29 During the Cold War, Dickie fought strongly for the right to be both an ordained minister and a peace activist. There was for him a strong congruence between his commitment to the peace movement, and his deeply held Christian perspective, and they could not be separated.

In June 1948, Dickie distributed the self-published pamphlet Should Such a Faith Offend? to the residents of North Essendon, where his church was located. Dickie stressed that ‘[t]his message I have given and will continue to give as if the Lord is my judge and not men; for if all who heard me were opposed to my message, I could give no other’. This underscored Dickie’s devotion to political activity even if it were to cost him his job as a minister. Such faith was entwined with his complaint that ‘the inactivity of the organized church in matters that affect the well-being of men has been an embarrassment to reformers of all ages’. While rejecting Communism as a ‘false religion’, he believed ‘that the zeal of the Communists in the study, propaganda and practice of their faith is a standing rebuke to the apathy of Christians in relation to their own faith’. 30 Dickie’s political activity can therefore be placed within the radical stream that has often existed within Christianity.

Up to the outbreak of World War II, Frank Hartley had been a convinced pacifist.31 But the brutal nature of the Hitler regime and the need to ensure its defeat convinced him that this position was no longer viable, and he attempted to enlist as a private soldier. Since he was already a Methodist Minister, the church refused permission and he enlisted as a military Chaplain.Hartley served with great distinction and bravery in New Guinea, often risking his life to take letters and other comforts to the front line troops.32

On his return trip home to Australia, he was alarmed to find his fellow officers warning about the dangers of a powerful Soviet Union and the growth of Communism, and the need to prepare for the next war. As the propaganda offensive against the Soviet Union and Communism increased, Hartley threw himself into the peace and civil liberties campaigns. In his view, he was defending the ideals that millions of people had died for during the war.33 He rejected the ideological polarisation of the Cold War, and believed that people of good will could overcome division. But Hartley was subjected to significant attacks from his own church for his political activity. Like Dickie, Hartley believed that there was a clear connection between his political activity and his Christian beliefs. If, at any time, the Methodist Conference had directed him to cease his political activity Hartley would quit the church rather than submit to being silenced.34 On the other hand, Hartley was occasionally able to garner some support for his views. At the February 1950 Methodist Conference, a motion on international affairs, that he proposed, denied war was inevitable and pledged support for the cause of world peace. It resolved ‘to urge upon the Commonwealth Government our deep sense of the incompatibility with Christian principles of any preparation for atomic, hydrogen, or germ warfare.35 The motion passed – even if most of those present later neglected to translate resolution into action.

The third ‘peace parson’ was Victor James, a Unitarian Minister. The roots of the Unitarian Church lie in the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, which ushered in the modern world. Over successive centuries, it came to reject the orthodox Christian theistic view of the world.36 In the early twentieth century, two leaders of the church, John Dietrich and Curtis Rose, adopted a religious humanism perspective and in 1933 signed a humanist manifesto.37 While a wide variety of theological and philosophical views existed within the church, it has consistently supported liberal, social, and ethical issues.38 Its involvement with the peace movement therefore represented a continuation of a long-standing tradition in the church to support such campaigns. James, who was to play an active role in the APC, arrived in Melbourne from England in June 1947. Previously he had been a Minister in Somerset and South Wales.39 Just before he retired as Minister of Melbourne’s Unitarian Church in June 1969, he asserted that his goal in life had been to ‘seek the truth and serve humanity’.40 James believed that humanity’s progress to a more open and fulfilling society was blocked by the ‘archaic beliefs of Christianity’. James therefore stood within the humanist traditions of the Unitarian Church, and believed that this was ‘a philosophy of action’ which required an active participation in campaigns to change the world.41 Apart from his involvement in the APC, James also addressed other issues. In a radio broadcast in June 1950 on 3XY, he condemned the sacking of Dr Paul James from the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital due, in part, to his involvement in the APC.42

Religious organisations as well as individual clergymen also supported the post-World War II peace movement. At its first post-war general committee meeting the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) passed a key resolution that shaped its activities in the immediate post-war period. It called on ‘all its members to do the utmost in their power that the post-war period may not be built on hatred, but on the sure foundation of that forgiveness of God which alone can unite people…’43 Five hundred people attended the 1947 annual conference of the SCM at Corio. The members were disturbed about ‘the injustice, disorder and tragedy in the world’ and committed themselves to political action to resolve these problems.44 Gordon Riley, who had just returned from missionary work in South Africa reported that the ‘native population is terrorized by repressive legislation’ and described how he and others challenged segregation in the church.45 A study book, Christian Faith in Action, issued by the conference, urged the SCM to ‘co-operate with non-Christians in the pursuit of limited aims which seem to hold the greatest possibility of justice’. Kurt Metz, who attended the conference, made a call for a joint conference with the Melbourne University Labour Club, because it was engaged ‘in action against the worst of our social ills: Imperialism, fascism, racial and religious discrimination, and segregation’.46

Two SCM members, Heather Wakefield and Judith Lyell, were foundation members of the APC, with Heather Wakefield being elected to the interim national executive.47 The Melbourne University SCM voted to send two delegates to the APC Congress and hear a report back which would determine its future support. One reason was that the SCM desired a direct role in the formulation of the APC policy, to be decided at the Congress. It also emphasised that in order to avoid total communist control it was important that non-communist organisations play an active part in the organisation.48 In July, the Melbourne University SCM voted 48 to ten with seven abstentions to oppose the bill to ban the Communist Party.49 However, by August it had withdrawn from the APC. Its concern was with the degree of Communist Party domination over the direction of the APC.50 Despite this withdrawal, the SCM had not succumbed to conservative Cold War policies, as its resolution on the Communist Party Dissolution Act indicated. Although unwilling to work with communist-influenced organisations, it remained actively committed to ideals of the peace movement.

The central point about the religious figures involved in the peace movement is that they were activists. They were dedicated to doing more than issuing routine propaganda against the horrors of war. Once they made this decision, it bought them into contact with the Communist Party, which was the only other significant body active on the peace issue during the early years of the Cold War. The other key element, as stated above, is that all the religious figures had a long-standing involvement in peace issues prior to the formation of the APC. Whatever illusions some of them harboured about the Soviet Union, they must be seen in conjunction with their religious views.

Other non-communist peace activists

William Morrow, a Labor Party Senator from Tasmania, remained committed to fighting for peace through the APC structure. This commitment, along with his other strong socialist views, helps explain his loss of re-endorsement for the 1953 elections, and his disappearance from mainstream parliamentary politics.51 Morrow’s political outlook can be traced back both to the radical traditions of the early Australian labour movement and to his support for the Soviet Union. Such views were well known when he was first elected to the Senate in 1946, and they never fundamentally altered during his long political life.

Morrow first joined the Labor Party in 1908 and combined this with support for the militant tactics of the Industrial Workers of the World. During World War I, Morrow played an active role in the anti-conscription movement in Queensland, thus establishing his first link with what was to be a long-lasting connection with the peace movement. Like many pioneer socialists, Morrow hailed the Bolshevik Revolution and its ideals, which he later believed were embodied in Stalin’s Russia. In the late 1930s, both as secretary of the Tasmanian Australian Railways Union and as a supporter of the Movement Against War and Fascism, Morrow was again active in the peace movement. This led to his first expulsion from the Labor Party in 1938, when he challenged press reports that a motion supporting ‘universal physical training’ for home defence had passed the State Conference unanimously. Morrow’s commitment to the peace movement and radical politics rather than a possible career in the Labor Party was expressed a few days later when he remarked at a public meeting: ‘If the price of staying in the Labor Party is my silence, than the Labor Party can go to Hell’. By the time of the 1944 State Conference, Morrow was back in the ALP without having to recant his position and he was elected to the state executive.52 However, by the time of the referendum to ban the CPA, Morrow’s star within the ALP was in decline. At the 1951 Federal Conference, his was the only vote in support of widespread nationalisation.53 Morrow’s final departure from the ALP was made without regret and he devoted a large part of the rest of his life to the peace movement and other progressive issues.54 Morrow’s political outlook had been shaped by his early involvement in the Australian labour movement, and the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. Once his deeply entrenched views are located in this broader historical context, Morrow cannot be categorised so quickly as a ‘fellow-traveller’.

Many Australians during the Cold War considered Jessie Street to be a traitor to her class and country. With family roots that could be traced back via her father to Alfred the Great, and as the wife of a Judge of the Supreme Court, who later became NSW Chief Justice, Jessie Street was guaranteed a comfortable life. However, her commitment to radical causes, which became more pronounced from the late 1930s onwards, alienated her from the vast majority of Australians. Just after the first APC Congress in 1950, her commitment to the international peace campaign took her overseas for six years and away from family and friends.55 In common with many other peace activists of this era, Street’s loyalty to the peace movement came at considerable personal cost.

While Street, due to her inherited wealth, did not suffer personally during the Great Depression, her observation of the hardships imposed on tens of thousands of Australians convinced her of the necessity of a socialist society replacing a capitalist one. In fact prior to this she had often voted for the conservative parties.56

From an early age, Street expressed strong support for feminism supporting issues such as equal pay and job opportunities. In March 1931, on behalf of the United Associations, she issued a circular opposing the dismissal of married women teachers.57 When Street travelled to the Soviet Union in 1938, and discovered that the train driver was a woman, she became convinced of the link between feminism and socialism.58 In a similar way to Bill Morrow, Street never lost her faith in the Soviet Union and the (mis)apprehension that it was building a just and humane society. At the end of the war Jessie Street seemed destined for a career in Labor politics. John Curtin appointed her as the sole woman on the Australian delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations to be held in San Francisco in April and June 1945. There she spoke with passion in support of Clause 8, which guaranteed full equality between men and women.59 Street returned to Sydney confident that she would win pre-selection for a parliamentary seat and make a lasting contribution to the welfare and social justice of Australians.60

However, the NSW branch of the ALP became strongly influenced by committed anti-communist forces in the immediate post-war period. At its June 1946 Conference, a strongly worded eight-point resolution was passed denouncing the Communist Party.61 Street’s support for the Soviet Union, her ardent feminism, and espousal of the United Nations as a forum for solving international disputes made her unacceptable to the new leadership. When it sought, in vain, her resignation from organisations that it considered ‘communist fronts’, she was expelled from the ALP.62 When she stood as an independent Labor candidate in the 1949 elections, her election leaflet denied that she was a communist or the organisations to which she belonged to were communist fronts, and called for a mass peace campaign.63 With absolutely no chance of winning, Street departed from the ALP, just as Bill Morrow would a few years later, with few regrets. She remained committed to campaigning on peace and feminist issues for the rest of her political life.64

Brian Fitzpatrick was a foundation member of the APC.65 This represented a continuation of his support for radical causes and socialist ideals. From September 1947, Fitzpatrick disseminated his views in an erratically published monthly newspaper The Australian Democrat. In its first issue, Fitzpatrick explained the aim of the paper was to ‘address readers who believe in toleration which is the essence of democracy, and who are prepared to lend themselves to a stiffening of the democratic spirit  …  ’.66 It was an attempt to challenge the increasing threats to curb the civil rights of communists and other dissidents. Fitzpatrick’s consistent defence of the civil liberties of communists made him a target of bitter attacks from anti-communist forces. It was alleged in federal parliament, for example, that Fitzpatrick had been expelled from the ALP because he was a communist.67 This dominant climate of anti-communism made it more difficult for radical liberals to offer any criticism of the Soviet Union. It would have meant for such individuals giving the appearance of subscribing to the ideology of the political forces they detested. At the Lowe Royal Commission when asked, Fitzpatrick could not recall having ever writing anything critical of the Soviet Union.68 This made it more difficult for him to circumvent the charge that he was nothing more than a ‘fellow-traveller’.

Jim Cairns, a Melbourne University lecturer, was also a foundation member of the APC. Cairns had shown his support for civil liberties by chairing public meetings for the embattled Australian-Soviet Friendship League president, John Rodgers, and was chosen by the Communist Party fraction to be its candidate for foundation chair of the APC. His membership was to last less than 12 months: he resigned over the Communist Party’s excessively heavy-handed control. Indeed, his critical outlook and rejection of dogma made him an unsuitable communist, and he knew it. Yet Cairns never became anti-communist. Within a few years, in the December 1955 federal election in the seat of Yarra, Cairns was prepared to accept covert help from communists to defeat S.M. Keon, a leader of the breakaway anti-communist forces within the ALP. At the 1959 Peace Congress, Cairns refused to support dissidents including former communists and secretaries of the APC, who wanted to condemn Soviet as well as American aggression. Cairns’ reasons were based on his idealised concept of the need for a united movement and a refusal to support those who would risk this in the pursuit of higher ideals.69 Cairns was no dupe.

Conclusion

During the Cold War most observers discredited or dismissed the religious and non-communist peace activists as naive dupes or deluded fellow-travellers. Yet, as we have seen, these activists were motivated by a high degree of idealism on peace issues. This idealism and involvement predated the Communist Party’s embrace of the peace movement in early 1949. Refusal to criticise the Soviet Union was, however, a distinguishing feature of the fellow-traveller – a product, in large part, of being trapped in a bi-polar world in which shades of opinion were limited and a decision regarding ‘which side are you on?’ had to be made. Such naïve faith in the inherent virtue and goodwill of the Soviet Union and the linked assumption that only the western powers threatened peace made the fellow-traveller susceptible to the allegation that he or she was a victim of communist duplicity. This sympathy for the Soviet Union shaped Caute’s analysis of the phenomenon: ‘Basically, fellow-travelling involves commitment at a distance…It is remote-control radicalism’.70 Caute thereby implies that, characteristically, the fellow-traveller is not especially interested in working with local communists or concerned about the struggle for socialist causes within one’s own country. This paper has strongly suggested that this was not the case, at least with fellow-travellers within the peace movement. Instead, as Turner has commented, they were ‘men and women who made their stand in public and who caught both the wrath of bourgeois society and the contempt of anti-Stalinists’.71 And this brings us back to Menzies’ ‘Man to Man’ broadcast. His statement that communists were, ipso facto, cleverer than the ‘peace-loving Christian’ who was easily out-manoeuvred denies the ‘dupes’ their agency. One of these ‘dupes’, Rev. Frank Hartley, was reported as stating that, insofar as peace activity was concerned, the Communist Party ‘relied upon him, a good deal, for guidance’.72 If, as seems likely, this report was accurate, both Robert Menzies and David Caute’s formulations about the fellow-traveller need to be challenged.