For more than 50 years, Ted Hill was extremely active in the Australian working people’s struggles for a better life and for fundamental social change. He held leading positions in the Australian Communist movement for most of that time. He wrote very extensively on the Australian and international people’s movements and related matters. On the basis of his study of the general principles enunciated particularly by the Communist theoreticians Marx, Engels and Lenin, Ted Hill made an exhaustive examination of Australian history, economics, political and social life. He believed intensely that every revolutionary must make his or her own country the main arena of struggle.
His writings continue to be a source of inspiration to those concerned with Australian independence and socialism.
The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) has pleasure in publishing a volume of Ted Hill’s latter writings.
Reflections on Communism in Australia was the last book Ted Hill wrote and was first published in 1984. A second edition is published here.
Together with this work, we publish some autobiographical notes by the author. These notes were first compiled in 1976 and have not previously been published. They mostly deal with the author’s experiences in the 1930s and the early years of World War Two. Undoubtedly today some sections would have been expressed differently by the author.
Since his death on February 1, 1988, aged 72 years, a number of the author’s colleagues had read the autobiographical notes and expressed an opinion that they should be made available to a wider audience.
Both main works included here have been edited. We feel confident that the author himself would have done so.
The author’s overall approach to the subjects covered remained unaltered up to the time of his death.
But happenings during the intervening years did cause him to develop some questions with different emphasis.
It is in the spirit of his overall understanding of life and development that note has been taken of views which he expressed in the period from when he wrote the material until his death.
Three further articles have also been included. These were all written in the last year of the author’s life and have been published previously. They have been brought together here because they cover subjects important to the people’s struggle in Australia. One deals with the urgent need for Australian national independence, another is on unity, and the third develops a strategy for dealing with the hold which the Australian Labor Party and parliamentary politics has over the ideas and action of the Australian people.