The appearance of Cecil Sharpley, the Commission's 2 9
star witness and public 'draw card', was delayed for 8 days while an 'historical expert' on Communism (Ellis) completed the presentation of documentary evidence. In a very concrete way, the nature of Sharpley's evidence determined the subse quent course of assisting Counsel's case. Occupying the
28. See p. 178 ff-of this Chapter for a discussion of the contrasting approach to the Communist Party's case. S u n, 7 July 1949.
witness-box for a total of 28 days, he was responsible for the bulk of the allegations against the Party, a number of which were later pursued in detail by other witnesses produced by Assisting Counsel, or by persons who denied his allegations. His evidence ranged so widely that there were few aspects of the case which it did not touch upon in at least cursory
fashion; perhaps unfortunately for assisting Counsel, much of their evidence against the Party relied upon Sharpley's word alone. For that substantial section of the case which sought to show the Party's internal operations, the contributions of the three ex-Communists who supplemented Sharpley were severely circumscribed by factors of time and geography. J.N. Rawling and 'Mrs X' both ceased to be members of the Party in 1939; T.C. McGillick told the Commission that his
membership terminated in 1942, but it appeared that for several years prior to that date he had played no active role in
Communist affairs. The evidence of all three was limited to the 1930's, and only 'Mrs X' could contribute to the
picture of the Victorian Party branch. Evidence on industrial matters was at times weakened by a similar thinness. The most serious of Sharpley's allegations were those concerned with trade union ballot-rigging, but of the 14 separate unions involved, assisting Counsel managed to produce supporting witnesses in only 3 cases. Thus to a significant extent the effectiveness of their case depended upon Sharpley's
credibility.
The most prominent witnesses fell into four cate gories. The first two were the ex-Communists, and the anti communist trade unionists (mainly Industrial Groupers).
Thirdly, there was the group of alleged fellow travellers and secret Communists, that is, people who came forward on their own initiative to answer charges of Communist association made against them by Sharpley or other anti-Communists. Assisting Counsel utilised the appearance of these voluntary
30. McGillick admitted to Ted Laurie in cross-examination that his membership fell into abeyance in 1932, but he said that he still considered himself to be a member of the Party even though he did not pay dues or possess a member ship card. McGillick joined the Friends of the Soviet Union in 1935, and during the war the N.S.W. State Labour Party; he was expelled from both in 1942 for opposition to the war effort. (RCT. 5239, 5072).
witnesses to expand their evidence of the Communist Party's connections and influence in the community at large, and wherever possible produced minor witnesses in an attempt to
substantiate the original allegations. Closely cross-examined by assisting Counsel, and by Mr. Reynolds on behalf of Sharpley, the 'fellow travellers' comprised an important, if unplanned, section of the case, although the contribution of their
evidence towards an indictment of the Party was often neglig ible. A fourth category, that of the anti-Communist 'cranks', is less clearly distinguishable, since a number of trade
union witnesses and ex-Communists exhibited in varying degrees that hysterical and paranoid attitude to Communism denoted by the rubric 'crankish'. But there were two witnesses whose extreme paranoia imparted to them an especial prominence at the Commission. Their experience of Communism extended no further than a casual aquaintance with individual Communists, whom they perceived as personifications of the Party's evils. Their motivation in testifying against these individuals
apparently derived from private feuds and resentments, and they proved more of an embarrassment than an asset to assist-
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ing Counsel's effort to denigrate the Communist Party.
The areas of subject-matter covered by oral evidence naturally did not always coincide with the divisions into
witness 'types'. In fact the only subject dealt with as the exclusive expertise of one group was the internal organisation and operations of the Communist Party, about which the ex- Communists alone were in a position to testify. Evidence of other matters was adduced in piecemeal fashion from a variety of witnesses. The ex-Communists elaborated their own versions of the theoretical teachings and aims of the Party first
presented to the Commission in documentary form, while all anti-Communist witnesses contributed information on Communist activities in extra-Party spheres. The examination of the 31. There was one relatively significant section of the case
dealt with by witnesses who did not come within any of these categories. Assisting Counsel called an Executive member of the Victorian State School Committees' Associat ion, and a minor supporting witness, to testify to the Communist affiliations of certain members of that
Association. McLean was strongly anti-Communist, but his style of testimony was too sane and competent to qualify him for inclusion among the 'cranks'.
'fellow travellers' was designed to illustrate the workings of the Party's front organisations, its influence within the
Labour Party and its power to dupe liberal Ministers of Religion. But in the mass of repetitive and frequently
confusing detail offered to the Commission, it was the types of witnesses rather than the precise content of their evidence which emerged as the more significant: what motives led them to testify? what function did they serve in the broad scheme of the case? and how damaging were they from the Communist point of view? These are the kind of questions upon which any useful evaluation of the oral evidence for the anti-Communist case must be based.
The 'histo r i c a l expert'
MALCOLM HENRY ELLIS, historian and B u l l e t i n journal ist, was assisting Counsel's 'expert' witness, his contribution to the case being an extension of the documentary introduction with the professed aim of illustrating the origins and
organisational development of the Communist Party in Australia. Ellis’s career as a student of the subject had begun in 1918 at the request of the Commonwealth Directorate of War
Propaganda (RCT. Ill); subsequently, during the course of private research in Australian history, he had published The R e d R o a d (1932) and The G a r d e n Path (1949), both of which
sought to prove the A.C.P.'s connections with Moscow and with sections of the Australian Labour Party. When Ellis died in 1969, Professor C.M.H. Clark observed that his political philosophy had been based on a deep conviction
... that the Protestant religion, and British political institutions, were the recipe for men of heroic ingredients and that the Russian
Revolution of 1917 was an international conspiracy to degrade and besmirch mankind.
Publicly, he seemed anxious, indeed over anxious, to shake Australians out of their complacency and
force them to see that the barbarism of world communism was already in their midst.
32. C.M.H. Clark, 'R.C. Mills and M.H. Ellis: A Note', Historical Studies, vol. 14 no. 53, p. 96. Ellis was perhaps best known to B u l l e t i n readers under the pseudonym 'Ek Dum'. His extreme view of Communism has also been noted by D.W. Rawson. In 1919 Ellis
Unlike other witnesses for the case, Ellis did not testify concerning his own experience with the Communist Party, nor did he express directly his personal views on the nature of Communism. Essentially he was employed by assisting Counsel as a vehicle for the presentation of documents which they could have tendered themselves. But Ellis possessed the advantage of being able to act as an 'interpreter' of the evidence, backed by more than 30 years experience in research ing the field. He could select those documents of use to the case, link them in logical historical sequence, and place them in context where this was not clear. And he provided an opportunity for assisting Counsel to exploit the conventional image of the detached historian in order to dignify their
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