John Garden

John Smith "Jock" Garden (13 August 1882 - 31 December 1968), Australian trade unionist and politician, was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Australia.

Related Topics:
13 August - 1882 - 31 December - 1968 - Australian - Communist Party of Australia

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Garden was born in Lossiemouth, Moray, in northern Scotland (the same town where Ramsay MacDonald was born). He was educated at a Bible college in Glasgow and was ordained as a Baptist minister. He came to Australia in 1904 and settled in Sydney, where he worked for church organisations. He became involved in radical politics during World War I through his opposition to conscription, and was employed first as Secretary of the Clerks Union and then as Secretary of the Sydney Trades Hall.

Related Topics:
Lossiemouth - Moray - Scotland - Ramsay MacDonald - Glasgow - Baptist - 1904 - Sydney - World War I - Conscription

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Like other Australian socialists, Garden was enthused by reports of the 1917 Russian Revolution. He joined the Australian Labor Party but was expelled in 1919 for advocating revolutionary socialism. When a group of socialists founded the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) at a meeting in Sydney in October 1920 he joined the new party, and rapidly became one of its most prominent figures, leading a group of militant trade unionists known as the "Trades Hall Reds."

Related Topics:
1917 - Russian Revolution - Australian Labor Party - 1919 - Socialism - Communist Party of Australia - 1920

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Under Garden's leadership the CPA concentrated on trying to gain control of the New South Wales trade unions, and through them to re-enter the Labor Party (which was based on affiliated trade unions). This led to a split in the CPA, with more radical members rejecting the attempt to re-enter the Labor Party. In 1922, however, Garden attended the Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, which endorsed his strategy. Although the Labor Party, under its parliamentary leader Jack Lang, rejected Communism, Garden as Secretary of the Trades Hall was a powerful figure in the labour movement, and in 1923 he was readmitted to the Labor Party and elected to its state executive.

Related Topics:
New South Wales - 1922 - Communist International - Moscow - Jack Lang - 1923

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In 1924, however, Lang regained control of the New South Wales Labor Party and had Garden and other Communists once again expelled from the party, a decision which was upheld by the federal executive. This was the end of the CPA's attempts to take over the Labor Party, and by 1925 the CPA had become mainly an appendage of Garden's machine in the Sydney Trades Hall. At the 1925 state elections the CPA ran candidates, including Garden, against Labor candidates in working-class seats and was heavily defeated. This convinced Garden that the CPA had no future, and in 1926 he left the party.

Related Topics:
1924 - 1925 - 1926

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Having rejected Communism, Garden rejoined the Labor Party and became a supporter of Lang. While retaining his power base in the Trades Hall, he was elected an Alderman of the Sydney City Council, and a member of the executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. He also ran the Labor Council's radio station, 2KY. In 1931, when the Labor Party split over the Scullin government's response to the Great Depression, Garden became a leading supporter of Lang's faction, which rejected Scullin's policies and favoured repudiating Australia's debt to British bondholders.

Related Topics:
Australian Council of Trade Unions - 1931 - Scullin - Great Depression

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Garden stood for the House of Representatives at the 1931 election as a Lang Labor candidate in the Division of Cook in inner Sydney. He was unsuccessful, but at the 1934 election he was elected - the first of a number of ex-Communists to became Labor parliamentarians (see Jennie George). However, when the Labor Party was re-united under John Curtin's leadership in 1936, Garden was dropped as a candidate as part of the peace settlement, and at the 1937 elections he retired from Parliament.

Related Topics:
House of Representatives - 1931 - Lang Labor - Division of Cook - 1934 - Jennie George - John Curtin - 1936 - 1937

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When Labor came to office federally in 1941, Garden was employed by Eddie Ward, a former Lang Labor man who was Minister for External Territories from 1943-49. In this capacity he travelled to Papua New Guinea, then an Australian possession, and was involved in the corrupt sale of timber leases to various business friends. In 1946 a Royal Commission found that Garden had engaged in corrupt conduct, and he was subsequently convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years imprisonment. He disappeared from public life and died in Sydney in 1968.

Related Topics:
1941 - Eddie Ward - 1943 - 49 - Papua New Guinea - 1946 - 1968

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