Introduction: The history of the far left in Australia since 1945

The far left in Australia, as has been revealed by scholarship on its equivalents in the UK, USA and elsewhere, had significant effects on post-war politics, culture and society. The history of the far left in Australia is dominated by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), which existed from 1920 to 1991, occupying the space to the left of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Formed from several smaller groups of the socialist and anarchist left, the CPA became the dominant left-wing force in Australian politics during the inter-war period, only rivalled in the early 1920s by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The 1970s and 1980s saw a new range of social movements concerning the environment, uranium mining and nuclear power emerge that had a distinct effect on the Australian left. If the 1950s and 1960s were marked by conservatism, the 1970s and 1980s were decades of liberation movements — women’s, queer and indigenous.