P is for Politics

John's father, Herbert John Moxon (always known as Bert) was born in Wrightville near Cobar in 1902 but spent most of his childhood in Sydney living with extended family.  Returning to Cobar he worked in a bakery but even at 16, he stood up for his working rights, taking the master baker to court and winning.  Having left school at 13, he had no qualifications but he was obviously bright since one teacher cried when Bert was told he had to get a job.  He went backwards and forwards to Sydney.

Bert was in Sydney and about to commence many years of political activism. He was there when two “communist parties” amalgamated to form the Communist Party of Australia in Sydney in 1922. Bert had worked in the office at the copper mine in Wrightville recording the number of containers of ore that each team had mined and brought to the surface. 

He told his son that he had begun to realise that the “boss” was falsifying the records and cheating the men out of their pay – so he told the men and promptly lost his job. 

Whether this experience influenced him to side with the far left, I don’t know. Nor do I know how he came to be involved: with communism but involved he became. Stuart Macintyre, in his book The Reds – The communist party of Australia from origins to illegality (1998) describes Bert in 1922 as “a knockabout with a quick tongue” (p73). Macintyre also described how, as a group of dissidents was forcedly moving the assets from one organisation to the other (effectively to form the new party), that, because it was too heavy to carry, “Moxon wanted to burn the (printing) press, but saner heads prevailed”. 

Bert became an organiser and recruiter for the CPA and travelled up and down the east coast of Australia (sometimes working as a cook in a circus), as well as to inland areas, speaking and urging workers to join the party. He wrote many pamphlets and contributed many articles to the party’s newspaper – The Workers Weekly. 

Beris Penrose, a historian from Melbourne, in an undated article Herbert Moxon – a victim of the “Bolshevisation” of the Communist Party of Australia, lists some of Bert’s involvement (achievements??) in the 1920s.  Jim Fletcher in his story Bricks at the dead of night  tells how Bert Moxon and others arrived in Bourke (1000km west of Sydney) to preach communism but were effectively driven out of town. 

Someone by the name of Eldorado even wrote a poem which was published in the local paper on 27 November 1931: 

All's Quiet on the Western Front "All's quiet on the Western front!" 

Reports the head sherang of police; 

Which means we may now thank the Lord Or Sergeant, for preserving peace. 

The Dubbo hops have hopped away, The guards have thrown their waddies down,

 The cry of victory rings out From every shop and pub in town. 

No longer Alcorn's gallant troops The hairy scalps of Bolshie's hunt, 

For Sergeant Sturgiss now reports, "All's quiet on the Western front" 

No more will hen-fruit, over ripe, At Park debates be in the boom; 

No more will bricks at dead of night, Invade the Mayor's reception room. 

No longer at a sporting Club Will Dinny Maher on "good things" punt, 

Since Moxon's colt, Komrada, came A "Gutser" on the Western front. 

An ill wind it must surely be 

That to a town no blessing blows,

 For now united, 'neath one flag, 

Are two contentious medicos. 

And though the Press it seems would have Our peaceful gutter tinged with blood 

The fact remains, the only tinge Discernable, so far, is mud. 

So, barring Davidson's retort That made the Mayor go somewhat sore 

The atmosphere about the town Is even deader than before. 

So here's respects to "Sudden Death" And all the Johns who in the hunt, 

Assisted by the Sergeant, saved A scrimmage on the Western Front. 

As with all political parties, there was constant jockeying for positions of power and many instances of betrayal. By 1929 Bert Moxon was General Secretary, but his position was almost immediately under siege – and from an unlikely source. A chap by the name of Herbert (Harry) Moore Wicks arrived in Australia ostensibly sent by the Soviet Union to keep the CPA in line with Moscow. In fact, he was a police informer (unbeknown to anyone at the time) and he urged adoption of a number of radical and sometimes violent tactics supposedly to “hasten the revolution”, but which now can be seen as efforts to have the CPA engage in activities likely to discredit it in the eyes of the general population. 

Bert Moxon often argued against these tactics – not always because of the violence, John adds, more because of their absurdity (arming a small number of protesters to resist eviction by police of a returned soldier from his house, for example). Bert had sworn allegiance to Moscow, and basically followed the suggestions of Wicks, as he was known. But Wicks wanted Bert Moxon out of the CPA and he accused him of “right deviationism”, and after Wicks left Australia in 1931, others accused Moxon of “left sectarianism”. 

Herbert John Moxon was expelled from the party in early 1932. 

As far as John knows, he had nothing to do with the CPA from that time.  John was not born until several years after his CPA involvement ceased, so he has no first-hand knowledge of what he was like then. But he does know that the political behaviour described above did not fit with the man he knew as his father. 

Bert Moxon was the most gentle person you could ever meet, John says.  Perhaps he saw the error of his ways and changed – who knows? During the second world war - he volunteered for service but was rejected due to “flat feet” - he wrote to the Ministry of Defence with suggestions as to methods of “pre-rotating the landing wheels on aircraft (prior to landing) to reduce tyre wear. His ideas were not taken up. Bert worked in the motor trade for all of his life post-1932 – he was a spare parts salesman – mostly in brake and clutch components. He worked for Dawson’s and for Angus Trading Co. He wrote articles for motor trade journals on brake efficiency and safety.

He advised his son never to join a political party, saying politics would ruin him.  And John never did, although all three of his children have joined current political parties at some stage in their life.

As did Bert.  In his mid-80s, he joined the Carlingford Branch of the Australian Labor Party.  A very small branch in the Bible belt of the northwest suburbs of Sydney.

Bert died in 1987, never admitting to student historians who came knocking that he was that  H.J. Moxon.  He also did not want a death notice in the paper.