AUSTRALIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
LONDON, Feb. 23 -- Copies of the Australian press received here indicate widening differences in the Communist party of Australia as « result of the rift between Peking and Moscow.
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A circular issued by a "rank and file committee of the CPA" has been distributed among the party membership by a pro-Chinese group in Victoria, second most populous state in Australia. It attacks Lance Sharkey, national general secretary, who removed the general secretary of the Victoria area when the national leadership ewitched adherence from Peking to Moscow.
The Sharkey leadership, declares the circular, adopted “positions of self-interest rather than those in the best interest of the working class." It criticises "the unprincipled attacks on the Chinese Communist Party at the Berlin and Italian CP congresses, and on the Albanian CP also at the Bulgarian and Hungarian congresses." It calls for "a world congress of CP's to discuss problems rather than having them aired at individual congresses." It calls for genuine democratic centralism in the CPA.
Sharkey is scored as “such a hater of the so-called ‘Chinese line’ that he has moved ground on this as well as on other questions." The circular claims that "Sydney comrades are joining us-in increasing numbers." -
There are three tendencies in the Communist party in Victoria. First is the pro-Chinese. While it includes some of the most _Stalinist-type leaders such as E.F.Hill, it also has many good militants. A second big Abaya stands strongly for inner party democracy comes close to tskyist positions on many issues; yet it.also supports “peaceful coexistence" as interpreted by Khrushchev. It has fought many bitter battles with Hill on the issue of internal ‘democracy in the party. The third group, probably the most Stalinist of all, is the Sharkey tendency which now supports Khrushchev and condemns the "Albanians" as Trotskyist.
FRENCH