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- Title
NO LASTING PEACE? LABOR, COMMUNISM AND THE COMINFORM: AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN, 1945-50.
- Authors
Deery, Phillip; Redfern, Neil
- Abstract
The formation of the Cominform in 1947 was a decisive moment in the Cold War. Although many rank-and-file activists in the Labor and Communist parties in Great Britain and Australia continued to cooperate with each other, the formal relationship between the two parties sharply deteriorated. In Britain, the formation of the Cominform shattered the Communist Party's hopes of postwar class peace. Communist attitudes toward attitude to the Labour Party became openly hostile, although no fundamental change to Communist Party policy occurred. In industry the Party became more militant, but generally continued to pursue an approach that involved collaboration more than confrontation. In Australia, the situation was different. Cominform perspectives significantly altered the position of the Communist Party, which shifted from conciliation to intransigence, from a desire to cooperate with the Labor Party to an intention to "liquidate" reformism. Enmity was mutual: influenced by both the Cold War environment and the increasingly powerful anti-Communist Industrial Groups, the hostility of Labor to communism became palpable. The article examines the postwar decline of both Communist parties in the context of the interplay between Communist Party policy, Labor/Labour Party antagonism, and the international environment of the early Cold War.
- Publication
Labour History, 2005, Issue 88, p63
- ISSN
0023-6942
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/27516037