John Thomas Lang, nicknamed "The Big Fella", was an Australian politician. He served two terms as premier of New South Wales, in office from 1925 to 1927 and from 1930 to 1932. He was the state leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1923 to 1939 and his Lang Labor faction was an influential force in both state and federal politics, breaking away from the official ALP on several occasions.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been in a steady decline since its peak in 1945. Like most communist parties in the West, the party was heavily involved in the labour movement and the trade unions. Its membership, popularity and influence grew significantly during most of the interwar period before reaching its climax in 1945, where the party achieved a membership of slightly above 22,000 members. At its peak it was the largest communist party in the Anglophone countries on a population basis, and held industrial strength greater than the parties of "India, Latin America, and most of Western Europe".
The worldwide Great Depression of the early 1930s was a social and economic shock that left millions of Canadians unemployed, hungry and often homeless. Few countries were affected as severely as Canada during what became known as the "Dirty Thirties", due to Canada's heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with a crippling Prairies drought known as the Dust Bowl. Widespread losses of jobs and savings ultimately transformed the country by triggering the birth of social welfare, a variety of populist political movements, and a more activist role for government in the economy.
The New Guard was an Australian fascist paramilitary organisation during the Great Depression. It was the largest and most successful fascist organisation in Australian history.
Noel Counihan was an Australian social realist painter, printmaker, cartoonist and illustrator active in the 1940s and 1950s in Melbourne. An atheist, communist, and art activist, Counihan made art in response to the politics and social hardships of his times. He is regarded as one of Australia's major artists of the 20th century.
The Australian labour movement began in the early 19th century and since the late 19th century has included industrial and political wings. Trade unions in Australia may be organised on the basis of craft unionism, general unionism, or industrial unionism. Almost all unions in Australia are affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), many of which have undergone a significant process of amalgamations, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The leadership and membership of unions hold and have at other times held a wide range of political views, including socialist, democratic and right-wing views.
Australia was affected badly during the period of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. As in other nations, Australia had years of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement.
The National Unemployed Workers' Movement was a British organisation set up in 1921 by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It aimed at drawing attention to the plight of unemployed workers during the post-First World War slump, the 1926 General Strike and later the Great Depression, and at fighting the Means Test.
The Workers' Unity League (WUL) was established in January 1930 as a militant industrial union labour central closely related to the Communist Party of Canada on the instructions of the Communist International.
John Solomon "Sol" Rosevear was an Australian politician. He was Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives from 1943 to 1950. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and represented the seat of Dalley in the House of Representatives from 1931 until his death in 1953. He was associated with the Lang Labor faction until the early 1940s. Prior to entering parliament he was a timber worker and trade unionist.
Stanley Kerin Amour was an Australian politician. Born in Hamilton, New South Wales, he was educated at Catholic schools before becoming an insurance agent. He served in the military from 1915–1917. In 1937, he was elected to the Australian Senate as a Labor Senator for New South Wales. He was selected largely because his surname began with A, as did the other three candidates, Bill Ashley, John Armstrong and Tom Arthur. After leaving the ALP briefly for the Langite Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist), Amour served in the Senate for over 20 years, retiring in 1965. He died in 1979.
The Ford Hunger March, sometimes called the Ford Massacre, was a demonstration on March 7, 1932 in the United States by unemployed auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, which took place during the height of the Great Depression. The march started in Detroit and ended in Dearborn, Michigan, in a confrontation in which four workers were shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and the security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. More than 60 workers were injured, many by gunshot wounds. Five months later, a fifth worker died of his injuries.
Nick Origlass was an Australian Trotskyist who served as mayor of Leichhardt in Sydney.
Patricia Devanny, also known as Patricia Hurd, was an Australian political activist.
The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers.
Eric Campbell, was an Australian army officer and later a solicitor who was the leader of the far-right organisation, the New Guard in New South Wales.
The Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one of the most influential political bodies organizing poor African-Americans in the South during and after the Great Depression. Started with just two members, the Alabama chapter CPUSA was established in Birmingham Alabama in 1928, and remained active until it was forced underground by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and police repression, and was disbanded when it was outlawed in 1951. During the height of Jim Crow and the Great Depression, the Alabama CPUSA organized some of the poorest African-American communities in the country, and was successful in leading organization drives in multiple industries including the Sharecroppers' Union, mine, mill, and industrial workers, as well as leading numerous campaigns to organize unemployed workers. The Alabama CPUSA also played a vital role in organizing African-Americans during a period where many activists would later become leaders of the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Ashbury Howard, who later was a significant leader in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement, and Rosa Parks, who would later commit an act of civil disobedience launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were both trained and active with the Alabama CPUSA.
The Housing Protests on the South Side of Chicago in August 1931 began as a clash between white police and African Americans over the eviction of Diana Gross, a seventy-two year old black woman. Police were sent to enforce the eviction and encountered direct conflict with the crowd that had assembled and who were attempting to place her furniture back inside her home. The ensuing confrontation between police and the protesters led to the shooting deaths of two black men during the event, one black man killed later in the aftermath, as well as several injuries to policemen.
The Workers Defence Corps (WDC) was an Australian communist paramilitary organisation during the Great Depression.
The 1933 Dublin riot, also known as the siege of Connolly House, was a multi-night anti-communist riot that occurred in Dublin, Ireland, between 27 and 30 March 1933. The riot took place during a time of heavy political unrest in Ireland, occurring after the tense 1932 and 1933 Irish general elections. The riot was also spurred on by Anti-Communist rhetoric preached by clerics in the Catholic Church in Ireland. The primary target of the riot was "Connolly House", located on Great Strand Street near Bachelors Walk, which served as the headquarters of the Revolutionary Workers' Groups (RWG), a communist political party. A crowd reportedly as large as 6,000 people gathered outside the building and attempted to gain access. They eventually succeeded, and several buildings were set alight during the riot and reportedly over 20 people were injured. Other locations in Dublin associated with left-wing politics were also attacked over four nights. The riot has been described as the most intense political violence the Irish Free State had experienced to that point since the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s.
