Swinburne Research Bank http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au Author: Simone Battiston Title: Migrants, Identity and Radical Politics: Meaning and Ramifications of the Visits of Italian Communist Party Officials to Australia Year: 2017 Journal: Australian Journal of Politics and History Volume: 63 Issue: 2 Pages: 187-205 URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/437645 Copyright: Article copyright © 2017 The Author. Journal © 2017 The University of Queensland and John Wiley and Sons Australia, Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Battiston, S. (2017), Migrants, Identity and Radical Politics: Meaning and Ramifications of the Visits of Italian Communist Party Officials to Australia. Australian Journal of Politics & History, 63: 187-205, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12347. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This is the author’s version of the work, posted here with the permission of the publisher for your personal use. No further distribution is permitted. You may also be able to access the published version from your library. The definitive version is available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12347 Swinburne University of Technology | CRICOS Provider 00111D | swinburne.edu.au Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) Migrants, identity and radical politics: Meaning and ramifications of the visits of Italian communist party officials to Australia Simone Battiston Abstract This paper examines ten years (1963–1973) of visits to Australia of Italian Communist Party (PCI) officials. In particular, the visits’ origins, meaning and ramifications are analysed and framed against the background of post‐war migrant worker identity discourses and radical politics. They appear to have shaped markedly the direction of the experience of Italian communists in Australia, especially in Sydney, and their interaction with both the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the PCI. Ultimately, they helped spread the message of Italian communism among migrants and encourage the replication on Australian soil of the successful experience of the Europe‐based PCI federations with thousands of worker members. For the CPA, which had been looking for new ways to break through to the hearts and minds of the migrant proletariat, the visits heralded a stronger partnership with its Italian members, a closer link with Eurocommunism, and a potential new stream of recruits that would have reversed the hemorrhaging of membership. The visits were instrumental, as argued in this paper, for the establishment and promotion of an Italian cultural and language space for which far‐left Italian migrants in Australia had long yearned. Keywords: Italian Communist Party, Communist Party of Australia, Italian migrants. Introduction On 28 April 1973, Antonio Bolzano, a steward on an Italian passenger liner, gave a short address to some 140 people at the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) headquarters in Sydney. According to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIO), Bolzano was “a worker for socialism at sea” transmitting at Sydney. 1 He was also a fervent member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The focus of Bolzano’s address that evening was the acknowledgment among attendees of former PCI senator and recently appointed head of the PCI Emigration Office, Giuliano Pajetta, as well as the growing manifestation of Italian-style communism in Australia. Proudly, Bolzano stated that the PCI had now a full presence in Australia and that Pajetta was spreading the message of the PCI. Bolzano’s comments epitomised the sentiments of accomplishment and the feelings of hope of many other Italian communists in Australia. Such comments came as no surprise. The hierarchy of the CPA eagerly echoed them. In his welcoming speech the National Secretary of the CPA Laurence ‘Laurie’ Aarons went as far as stating that “[…] it was the proudest day of his life to again meet Pajetta personally”. Aarons was exceptionally pleased that “the [CPA] and the PCI were now in an harmonious group together” working shoulder to shoulder for a “socialist Australia”.2 Political rhetoric and flattering comments aside, the warm reception by the CPA for Pajetta vouched for the political stature of the guest and for the central role he fulfilled as a go-between for Australian and Italian communists. The two communist parties regarded Pajetta, who was by then on his third trip to Australia, as the linchpin of PCI-sponsored activity among Italian migrants overseas, and the preferred point of contact of communist Australia with communist Italy. But exactly what message had Pajetta been spreading in Australia? What harmony between the two communist parties did Laurie Aarons refer to? What part, if any, did Italian communists in Australia like Bolzano play in the relationship between the CPA and the PCI? And more broadly, what do the visits of overseas communist party officials to Australia tell us about Southern European migrants and their involvement with radical Australia during the Cold War period? Please note that this accepted manuscript version has rectified some post-publication typos, which remain the sole responsibility of the author. The changes have not altered the meaning of the text. 1 National Archives of Australia (NAA): A6119, 3820. 2 NAA: A6119, 3820. Studies examining visits by foreign-born radical entities to Australia,3 or the political and life trajectory of migrant members of the CPA4, or the recontruction of the presence of the PCI and its members in Australia,5 have so far shed an important light on the influence of touring overseas officials and activists and on the activity of militant migrants in the Australian communist movement during the Cold War period. These studies represent a solid anchor point for further research into the interaction of foreign and/or ethnic elements with communist Australia and the wider community. The visits of PCI officials, Giuliano Pajetta (1963, 1966, and 1973) and Diego Novelli (1971), took place during a period pregnant with significant social and political changes in Australia. Some visits occurred during the so-called “time of hope”, as Australian journalist and social writer Donald Horne once put it, of 1966- 1972—a period that also witnessed the emergence of the ethnic rights movement and proto-multiculturalism. 6 One of Pajetta’s visits, in 1973, took place during an even more significant period of change for Australia, when the watershed election of the Whitlam Labor government (1972) paved the way for the country’s official endorsement of, and widespread support for, multiculturalism. But why are the visits of officials of particular research interest? And why focus on the 1963-1973 period? Far-left politics provides a unique window for scholars wishing to explore traces of political identities among migrants, divided or overlapping political loyalties, or features of politically-minded migrant organisations before and after the advent of cultural and linguistic diversity in both fringe and mainstream Australian politics. The focus of the paper here is on the far- left, rather than the left (primarily represented by the Australian Labor Party). This has been dictated by two reasons. First, in the studied period radical Italians in Australia gravitated around, and were often members of, the CPA, or one of its splinter groups, namely the Maoist Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA [M-L]) (from 1964), or the pro-Soviet Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) (from 1971)—not the left wing of the ALP. Secondly, the PCI identified the CPA as its 3 Phillip Deery’s article ‘Dark Red Subject Has Arrived: A British Communist Visits Australia’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 86, 1 (June 2000), pp.39-50, for instance explores the complex history of British-Australian communist connections through the visit to Australia of the chairman of the British Communist Party Harry Pollitt. 4 See for example Patricia Grimshaw’s article, ‘Zelda D’Aprano, Leadership and the Politics of Gender in the Australian Labour Movement, 1945-75’, Labour History, Vol. 102 (May 2013), pp.101-118. 5 Simone Battiston, ‘“La federazione si sviluppa e si consolida”: il partito comunista italiano tra gli emigrati italiani in Australia (1966-1973)’, Studi Storici, Vol. 50, 2 (April-June 2009), pp.555-571. This paper has recontructed the presence of the PCI and its members in Australia drawing chiefly from archival material held at the Antonio Gramsci Institute Foundation, Rome; in particular its PCI collection. 6 Mark Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975 (Carlton South, Vic. 2000). natural counterpart in Australia, rather than the ALP, at least until the Whitlam era. Lastly, political activities by Italian communists in Australia were closely monitored by ASIO and other government agencies,7 which over time have generated a substantial body of files that unintentionally represents a primary source for those wishing to reconstruct the historical presence of Italian communism (local and imported) in Australia. The visits of Pajetta and Novelli were no exception. Their visits were diligently followed by field officers and informants: their every move was under surveillance and recorded (see also Photos 1, 2, and 3). The ten year period 1963-1973 is of particular interest because it overlaps not only with the seminal phase of the presence of Italian communism in Australia8