e 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. p> 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. ...
