Published 23 November 200923 November 2009 · Main Posts the legacy of communism Jeff Sparrow In Tom O’Lincoln’s (recently republished) Into the Mainstream: The Decline of Australian Communism, he quotes, at one point, from an interview with party stalwart Vic Williams, discussing the CPA’s work in the fifties: It didn’t matter what happened, if some school committee hit the headlines, you could bet your life, there’d be some Communist Party member at the school, and he’d [sic[ be organising. I used to pick up the paper when I was a Communist Party member organiser and I’d be amazed; I’d see all these issues and I knew someone who’d be running them. I was thinking about that when reading of the arrest of Peter Cundall at a protest over the Gunns’ pulp mill. Cundall’s best known, of course, as the avuncular former host of the ABC’s gardening show. He was also, however, at one time a member of the CPA. Indeed, he stood as a communist senate candidate in 1961, in a campaign that, he proudly boasts, drew the least number of votes in a parliamentary election. I’m not suggesting that’s the only reason he’s still an activist at age 82 (his profile on Wiki records a pretty amazing life). But I suspect it has something to do with it. Certainly, I’ve met many similar people who, even years after they left the CPA, still found political organising as necessary as breathing, wherever it was they ended up. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.