t also decided to fight to alter the basis of representation of unions and branches. Both aims would be achieved and both proved crucial to the outcome of the conference.
The Unity Conference inspired by the Federal Executive finally took place on August 26-27, 1939. While Lang glowered from the public gallery the result on the conference floor soon showed the anti-Lang forces were in control. Hughes moved the key resolution structuring the future organisation of the party, which won 221 to 153. Shortly afterwards fist fights broke out in the gallery and order had to be restored. The conference put undercover CPA members in key roles on the executive. Jack Hughes became Vice-President (an office he held simultaneously with the powerful Presidency of the New South Wales Labor Council) and Walter Evans became General Secretary of the NSW branch of the ALP. A week later Hughes conducted a ballot for parliamentary leader and a rebel from the Lang camp, William McKell, finally toppled Lang.
It is one of the ironies of politics and history, that a moment of triumph is often followed by an inexorable plunge into disaster. During the Unity Conference there had occurred what seemed at the time merely a minor disruption. A delegate unsuccessfully proposed the suspension of standing orders to discuss the international position. But the chance for a debate was brutally cut short by uproar when he explained his motive. He wished to move a resolution В«expressing abhorrence with the onward march of fascism В»and viewing with disgust the signing of the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact. Criticism of Russia was guaranteed to provoke loud opposition from the anti-Lang Left. However, defence of this pact became the seed of destruction, which would destroy both the CPA's influence and the strength of the broader Left within the NSW branch of the Labor Party for decades to come. p> The Non-Aggression Pact was quickly followed by a German invasion of Poland, which was then divided between the USSR and Germany. On September 3, Britain, which had undertaken to assist Poland, declared war on Germany. Initially, however, due to poor communication with the USSR and following the logic of the united front the CPA and its undercover Labor fraction boldly declared their support for Britain's war against fascism. In a radio broadcast for a federal by-election in the seat of Hunter, Jack Hughes echoed these sentiments. But as the line of the Communist International became clearer the CPA's attitude to the war soon began to change toward one of opposition to Britain's war on Germany. This had two consequences for the CPA dual members who had fought for three years to unseat Lang and had won at the Unity conference just a month earlier. First, instead of remaining in the broad stream of the militant unionism, they now had to swim against the tide of incomprehension of their own sympathisers whom they had won by their opposition to fascism and isolationism over the previous three years. The second consequence flowed from this very public shift in the line: the communist dual members in the Labor Party rapidly became identifiable as dogmatic adherents of the CPA. p> The resulting situation was the undoing of the CPA's new found influence in the Labor Party but this was of no consequence to the Anglo-American Secretariat of the Comintern. A Comintern report noted that the Australian government of RG Menzies as В«the weakest government in the British Empire В». It anticipated that the Menzies government's would be replaced by a Labor Party whose leadership В«is being increasingly put under pressure by the growing anti-war movement В». It noted with satisfaction that the CPA had rectified its line on the war with a statement on December 8, 1939, admitting that the party had В«misunderstood the importance of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact ". p> After the CPA's political somersault on the war, the issue of communism in the Labor Party sharpened. With the Easter 1940 annual conference approaching, John Hughes received a call from the state Labor leader, William McKell, whom he had helped install. McKell wanted to meet him. Hughes later recalled:
When I got to his office, he not only closed door but he locked it. He said: В«I'm glad you could come. I've got the security records of all the communists in the Labor Party. I think we ought to go over it together. With the conference coming up, we want to make sure we don't have any of these birds on [the next executive] В»
I said: В«That's a very good idea, BillВ» And I'm thinking, В«I guess my name will feature prominently here В». Then I thought, В«well if that's so, that's so, I'll handle it.В» Anyhow, it wasn't. That was surprise number one. And I wasn't sure of that until we had really finished.
The result of the meeting was that while at ...
