A 1932 article from the Comintern’s ‘Negro Worker’ detailing the depravity of Australia’s genocidal settlement; the role of terror, sexual violence, and the official policy of enslavement through the ‘Aborigines Protection Boards.’ Ending with the assertion that going forward no demand by white Australian workers be put forward without those of Aboriginal peoples championed as well.

‘Native Peoples in Australia’ by H.I.M. from the Negro Worker. Vol. 4 No. 2. April, 1932.

The aboriginal race of Australia are among the most exploited subject peoples in the world. Not only are inhuman exploitation, forced labour and actual slavery, forced upon the Aborigines, but a campaign of mass physical extermination is being and has been carried on against them, until today less than 60,000 full bloods have survived the murder drive-out of the million or more who inhabited Australia less than one and a half centuries ago.

Such gentle British colonising devices as “Abo shooting hunts”, poisoning of the only water holes in the desert country, cyanide in the meat, and strychnine in the flour, police shooting parties, burning the bush over the heads of the tribes, segregating the sexes, kidnapping the children — particularly females — and putting them to work hundreds of miles away from their race and parents, killing off the game on the territory inhabited by Aborigines, thus starving them to death, arresting without any warrant, or for that matter any cause whatever, the most virile men in the tribes (after killing off the aged and infirm) and forcing the arrested to work with chains around their necks on Government roads and for station owners, issuing licenses to any capitalist desiring to employ unlimited numbers of native without pay for an indefinite period, setting up organizations of crawlers and kidnappers, known as “Aborigines Protection Boards” to enslave the remaining members of the tribes and “Mission Stations under dope-peddlers to muster the youth so that they can be sold into slavery — such truly British methods were used, and are still being used to enslave the Australian aborigines and totally to exterminate the race so that the crimes of the British and Australian imperialists may be covered up.

The Aborigines have no political, social, or economic rights, and no right to hold property; they are denied education or to have schools, intellectuals from among the Aborigines are not allowed to practise their profession; the tribal customs and arts are stifled; wages are not to be paid to Aboriginal workers except to the amount of 5/- per week (the Labour Government takes 2/- of this amount), and no wages at all to be paid by holders of licenses. Although subject to all the penalties of the capitalist criminal code in the courts of justice (!) Aborigines have no status therein, and their evidence is inadmissable in “mixed” cases. Police accusers have the right (and exercise it) to beat and even shoot the accused until they “plead guilty to whatever crime the police desire to fasten on them.

Persons who expose the maltreatment of aborigines, or who discover the burnt remains of whole tribes, and demand inquiries, are officially threatened with death, and transported (Rev. E.R.B. Gribble, 1926 massacre). When inquiries are held into police murders of aborigines (and the inquiries are remarkably few), police only are put on the Enquiry Commission (Exposure of Constable Murray, 1928-1929), and always find the massacres “justified” because the victims “did not stop when the King’s name was called out to them” — this, despite the fact that they cannot understand English.

The women of the aboriginal race are subjected to terrifying experiences — there is no protection for them, despite the “ordinances” that appear on the statute books. Not only are they the legitimate prey of the station owners, government officials, but the so-called “protectors of the aborigines” the police have been proved to have raped the women without any action being taken. The tribal natives who object to this practice are murdered for their objections, but should one native be successful in preventing his own murder and killing the station owner, then “drastic steps” are taken, not only against him, but against the whole tribe, which is thereupon exterminated by an infuriated mob led by the mounted constable “protectors” of the aborigines. Mothers or fathers have no right to their own children, and police, Aborigines Protection Boards rats, or others appointed, may kidnap them at any time, in any place, without the knowledge of the parents, and hire the children out as slaves, gaol them on fake charges, or put them in “Homes” of correction. This happens every day in all parts of Australia, not only to full blooded aborigines, but to half castes as well.

Aborigines (full or half caste) who take part in politics are subject to the vilest of terror, denied the right to live, and threatened with having their children taken from them, and they themselves with being gaoled for “cattle stealing” or any other charge that may be considered necessary.

In New South Wales the scale of rations of Aborigines is 3/10d per week for adults, l/10d for children — little more than half that granted to whites to make their standard of living considerably lower than that of other unemployed workers, and is part of the drive to exterminate the race.

Hitherto the conditions of the Aborigines have not received any attention from workers in the revolutionary movement, and the rank and file organization set up by the aborigines was allowed to be broken up by the Aborigines Protection Boards, the missionaries and the police, but, henceforth, no struggle of the white workers must be permitted without the demands of the aborigines being championed, no political campaigns without political programmes applicable to our fellow exploited — the aborigines — being formulated.

The white workers in the trade Unions, and in other mass organizations, the militant intellectuals, scientists, and humanitarians, must all unite with the revolutionary movement in a common fighting front against murderous, rapacious British imperialism, and help win back for the natives of Australia, part of their native country and common rights as human beings.

First called The International Negro Workers’ Review and published in 1928, it was renamed The Negro Worker in 1931. Sponsored by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), a part of the Red International of Labor Unions and of the Communist International, its first editor was American Communist James W. Ford and included writers from Africa, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and South America. Later, Trinidadian George Padmore was editor until his expulsion from the Party in 1934. The Negro Worker ceased publication in 1938. The journal is an important record of Black and Pan-African thought and debate from the 1930s. American writers Claude McKay, Harry Haywood, Langston Hughes, and others contributed.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/negro-worker/files/1932-v2n4-apr.pdf