Stuart MacIntyre

Stuart MacIntyre (died 2021) joined the Communist Party of Australia “as a young historian” in 1971. Shortly after joining the CPA, he left Australia to work on his Ph.D. at Cambridge University, where he also joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). When he returned to Australia in 1980, he did not re-join the CPA. Rather, he joined the ALP and its Socialist Left faction. Reportedly, he declined to re-join the CPA since it was an organisation “visibly in decline”. However, he found political discussions in the Socialist Left “abysmal”.

Stuart MacIntyre and Jim McIlroy both joined the MU Labour Club, the main radical left student club then.

Later on they travelled different paths, with Macintyre joining the Left Tendency of the Communist Party of Australia in the early 1970s and later the Socialist Left of the Victorian ALP.

In 1976 Stuart MacIntyre married Martha Bruton, a social anthropologist. They have two daughters, Mary MacIntyre and Jess MacIntyre. According to Janet McCalman from The Conversation's obituary of Stuart MacIntyre:

His books began with the study of British Marxism A Proletarian Science (1980), the subject of his Cambridge doctorate and the grounding of his mastery of Marxist thought. He wrote on colonial liberalism, the Labor Party, the Council for Civil Liberties and collaborated on a wide range of works with both scholars and journalists, catalysing debate on history, politics and institutions in the public domain.

He was dedicated to the mission of teaching civics in Australian schools. And he wrote on the history and place of the social sciences in Australia.

His greatest work is arguably his penultimate monograph: Australia’s Boldest Experiment: war and reconstruction in the 1940s (published in 2015). It promises to be his most influential because for our own time of existential crisis, he shows how Labor prime ministers, John Curtin and Ben Chifley, advised by the brilliant public servant Dr H.C. Coombs, began building modern Australia amidst the stringencies of war: to win the peace as well as the war.

It is a book about political vision and moral courage, and it is now the bible of the Albanese Labor Party. Macintyre’s greatest legacy may yet be written in a better Australia, and it’s the one that would please him most.

"The True Believers"

Stuart MacIntyre co-edited with John Faulkner "The True Believers: The Story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party".

"Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists"

100 Biographies are available in print only in the new book "Comrades! Lives of Australian Communists" which is available for pre-order here from the New International Bookshop.

The biographies project has produced over 150 biographies of Australian communists - from Aarons to Zorino and plenty in between.

The book includes 100 biographies of Australian communists, listed below. Some people featured are more prominent than others. Some would otherwise be lost to history if this book wasn’t produced. Each one gives a fascinating insight into the activism of the 20th century, their passions, the struggles, the splits and the successes. Quite deliberately, half of the bios in the book are of women.

The launch of the book took place at 6pm AEDT on Friday 30 October, 2020 at the online CPA Centenary celebration event.

The launch event featured a keynote by Reds author Stuart MacIntyre, a toast by a former CPA member, Meredith Burgmann to launch the book and co-editor Bob Boughton in reply, all MC’d by Brian Aarons.

CPA reminiscing

Saturday, 30 October 1920; a sunny spring day in Sydney; and in a hall in Liverpool Street, 26 men and women met to help create the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). Seventy five years later, almost to the day, but this time on a hail and rain swept Sydney evening, 520 people gathered in a Marrickville reception room to commemorate that event and the movement it helped create.

It was a night of speeches (by Laurie Aarons, Pat Elphinston, Judy Gillett, Stuart MacIntyre, Tom McDonald, Pat Ranald, Don Syme, Bev Symons), songs (the Solidarity Choir, Jeannie Lewis), memories, and merriment.

The Reds launch

Ruth Crow honoured women in the CPA when she opened a The Reds launch held at the Victorian Trades Hall on Sunday May 10, 1998. Over 200 attended in a warm reunion. The launch was hosted by the SEARCH Foundation, with Rob Durbridge as MC, and other speakers were Leigh Hubbard, VTHC Secretary, and of course, the author, Stuart MacIntyre.

Broadside Weekly

An addition to the alternative media is due to appear this week with the first issue of a new paper, Broadside Weekly.

Described as "an independent, broadly based left and progressive weekly", Broadside will be formally launched in Sydney on June 5.

Proposals for the project were initiated in the second half of 1990. The new paper has a supporters' association headed by a board consisting of Brian Aarons, Anthony Albanese, Wendy Bacon, Peter Barrack, Meredith Burgmann, Wendy Caird, Patricia Caswell, Kerren Clark, Tony Cooke, Drew Hutton, Ron Knowles, Stuart MacIntyre, Tom McDonald, Peter Murphy, Carmel Shute, Suganthi Singarayar, John Sutton, Lindsay Tanner, Jo Vallentine and Roger Woock.

Broadside Weekly was supported by the SEARCH Foundation.

Broad Left Weekly sponsors

160 people sponsored the Broad Left Weekly in a pamphlet published in the January 30 1991 Tribune - including Stuart MacIntyre.

Australian Left Review

Australian Left Review magazine 145 November 1992.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Tony Aspromourgos, Carol Bacchi, Peter Baldwin, Anna Booth, Peter Botsman, Jennie George, Barry Hindess, Paul Hirst, Ian Hunter, John Langmore, Sylvia Lawson, Stuart MacIntyre, Race Mathews, Meaghan Morris, McKenzie Wark.

The Broad Left Conference

The Communist Party of Australia, Association for Communist Unity and others organized The Broad Left Conference, which was held 1986 28th-31st March, at the NEW SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Broadway, Sydney.

Stuart MacIntyre was among the list of sponsors.