Art Was Their Weapon by Hyde Dylan;

Author:Hyde, Dylan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

‘THE FERVENT YEARS’1

I’ve seen the green hopes wither in young eyes,

Work-heavy days drag on the eager hands;

I’ve seen the sapling brains, fresh with surmise,

Grow gaunt and barren in these barren lands.

I’ve seen the old staunch settlers shrink and shake

As debts tread down the sap from every root:

Dead leaves, dead wood, then they decay and break;

Drought upon men, when will they come to fruit?

The storm is rising. Gusts of questioning

Stir tongues to whisper, anger lights the eyes

Weary with watching the deceitful mists.

Thunder of voices to the deaf skies ring,

And from the fields, swept bare by tricks and lies,

Springs up the challenge of ten thousand fists.2

The CPA in Western Australia was about to endure a period of uncharted political persecution, but state secretary Bill Mountjoy (referred to in local CPA circles by the nickname ‘Das Kapital’) held steady — though increasingly precarious — sway in local Party circles. He ‘was inclined to be a bit bureaucratic and a bit dogmatic, as most Communists were in those days’, remembered Arthur Rudkin, but he was accorded the respect of high office by most within the Party — for the moment.3 As the CPA began to experience the strain of increasing bureaucratic harassment, however, Mountjoy began to falter. He was not a good man in a crisis, and he put off dealing with impending crises within local CPA circles.4 Under pressure, he also had a tendency to ‘get on the bottle’, and he found a willing drinking companion in Detective Sergeant George Ronald (Ron) Richards of the CIB’s Special Bureau and Aliens Office.5

The office, to which state police including Richards were seconded, was formed in 1939 during the lead-up to Australia’s entry into the War. Its role was to monitor ‘the activities of aliens’ and those ‘suspected to be anti-British’, including members of the CPA. Detective Sergeant Richards, whose reputation as a police investigator was on the rise, was appointed head of the bureau in 1940.6

Mountjoy thought having Richards as a drinking companion would serve himself and the Party well, keeping him in touch with police moves on the CPA. But word of the bar-room friendship soon became the subject of gossip in Party circles, and those who knew Richards either personally or by reputation thought Mountjoy well and truly in over his head. Party members ‘were used to the activities of police officers whose use of informers and plants was clumsy and ineffective’, wrote historian Stuart Macintyre later, but Richards ‘was a much more formidable investigator’. He was a cunning policeman who cultivated an extensive surveillance network, and he would learn a great deal about the CPA in Mountjoy’s company.7

Richards plumbed where he could. He befriended Arthur Rudkin as Rudkin was delivering The Workers’ Star across suburban Victoria Park: one of the regular 160 copies sold in the area went to Richards’s home. It was some time before Rudkin discovered that Richards was a policeman, after which Rudkin admitted being ‘careful’ in his dealings. But the everwily Richards often gave Rudkin ‘interesting tidbits of

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