Obituaries Australia

A very large gathering of Communists and others — unionists, social and personal friends — attended A Memorial Service for Albert Robinson in Brisbane on January 9. Albert, aged 77, died on December 30 after a long and painful illness. He willed his body to the Queensland University School of Anatomy. The oration was delivered by his long-time friend and working colleague, Ted Bacon. Floral tributes came from the National and State Committees of the CPA. Following the service, George Bordujenko suggested that a Memorial Fund would be fitting. This was immediately taken up and it has been decided to launch a wide appeal. Half the proceeds will go to Tribune and half to the CPA Queensland State Committee for organising work in Queensland — the two probably being Albert's closest Party concerns.

Born of a working class family in the heart of the English cotton-weaving county Lancashire, Albert acquired from early childhood a militant trade-unionist outlook and a deep regard for the courage, persistence and kindness of industrial workers.

These qualities, together with his love of song, music and growing things, emerged as his own chief characteristics.

He began work in a cotton mill during World War 1, and soon found himself on short-time in the post-war depression, working on road-building. In 1922 emigrated to Victoria, where he worked first on an orchard, to pay back his assisted fare. From there he moved to North Queensland where he got work as a plate-layer on railway construction near Townsville and in the Northern Territory.

With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, he became unemployed and sold vegetables and raised poultry. He was a successful poultry-farmer and he formed and became the first secretary of a North Queensland Poultry Farmers' union. In 1932 he heard Fred Paterson expound Communist Party policy in Townsville. He joined the Party and soon became a major force in the rapid rise of Communist Party membership in North Queensland in the '30s. 

Workers — employed and unemployed — were brought face to face with harsh realities as the Depression deepened, presided over by a rightwing State Labor Government.

Workers found that their enemies in struggle were not only big employers, but "their own" rightwing-controlled Australian Workers Union and the Labor Government in which the AWU had a big voice.

They also found that they had allies among small farmers and small businessmen.

In mass strikes — especially in the sugar areas — and in struggle for a human life and local development, hundreds of energetic, devoted young people formed Party organisations throughout the North.

They won union positions and got impressive electoral votes, so that by May Day 1937, they were able to launch a Party weekly paper — the North Queensland Guardian — after raising the then astounding sum of £15,000 and building a small printery.

The North Queensland Guardian distinguished itself by running regularly at a small profit, and went into one home in every eight in North Queensland.

Albert Robinson was the chief organising and directing force in this success both before and after he became North Queensland Secretary in 1937.

Much of Albert's success, then and later, was due not only to his meticulous, hard-working organising capacities, but also to his broad human appeal, with his well-known and loved humor, singing and playing.

He knew and sang more Australian songs than most other Australians and also sang in the Appollo Choir.

It was said of him then that he knew and liked most people in Townsville and most of them liked him.

When the Party was declared illegal in 1940, Albert went to Brisbane to help organise and edit the illegal newspaper Sparks, which gained a wide following and helped bring many new members into the Party.

When the ban on the party was lifted he joined the army, becoming a staff-sergeant and devoting most of his spare-time to helping build the Party in the Armed Forces.

Towards the end of the war, and especially just after it, he played a major part in the transfer of the North Queensland printery to Brisbane, and the publication of the Queensland Guardian.

He was also prominent in the planning and organisation of marxist studies in Queensland — from the early study circles of the 30s to the foundation of a Marx School, and the conduct of full-time courses in the post-war years.

As a long-time state secretary, and member of the CPA Central and Political Committees, Albert played a leading and inspiring role in the difficult 50s — the Cold War, with the Anti-Communist Act and Referendum, the Petrov Affair, etc.

Retiring from full-time Party work late in the 50s, he returned to the hard slogging work of roadbuilding, until the western heat forced him to return to Brisbane where he became a licensed drainer and an active member of the Plumbers Union.

He remained throughout the rest of his life an outstanding job and locality activist. He set an example to many others with regular sales of Tribune and collection of donations to the party. He also became popular as an orchid grower and bowls enthusiast.

Despite his untiring devotion to party work, Albert found time to be a loving and faithful husband and father. In 1941 he had married Eva Julius, a member of the outstanding Communist family, and an active political worker in her own right.

Together they lived a full and fruitful family life, widely loved and admired. Tribune offers deep sympathy to Eva, to their sons Max and Jim, to Albert's remaining brother, sister and cousins, the Rushtons (to whom he was deeply attached) and to their children.