People Australia

Albert Robinson, ASIO surveillance photograph, 1970

National Archives of Australia, A9626, 119

Albert Robinson (1903-1979) clerk, railway employee and Communist official

Birth: 20 May 1903 at Colne, county Lancashire, England, son of James William Robinson (1878-1959), cotton spinner, and Jane, née Whittaker (1879-1962). Marriage: 24 December 1941 in the General Registry Office, Brisbane, Queensland, to Eva Isack, known as Julius (1907-1983) a schoolteacher and fellow Communist. They had two sons. Death: 30 December 1979 at Brisbane. 

• Grew up in the county of Lancashire. Began work in a cotton mill during World War I. Worked 'short-time' in road-building during the post-war depression.
• Described as a warehouseman, Robinson arrived in Melbourne, Victoria, aboard the Sophocles in 1924. Worked in an orchard and paid back his assisted fare. Moved to North Queensland in 1925 where he worked as a plate-layer on railway construction near Townsville.
• Did similar work in the Northern Territory. Went back to England to visit his mother in 1926-1927.
• On his return to Australia he gained work in railways at Wallangarra, Queensland. Moved to Townsville in 1928 and was employed on railway construction near Portland. With the onset of the Depression in 1929 he sold vegetables and raised poultry and became a successful poultry farmer. Organised egg producers into the Townsville Egg Producers’ Association and became its secretary.
• Heard Fred Paterson, from the Communist Party of Australia, speak in 1932 and joined the party soon after. Helped with the rapid rise of membership of the CPA in North Queensland in the 1930s and was a popular figure. He loved singing and “knew and sang more Australian songs than most other Australians”. Was a member of the Apollo club, which was a male voice choir. Along with others joining the CPA in northern Qld, he launched a weekly paper, the North Queensland Guardian, in 1937. He became the chief organising and directing force behind the paper both before and after its launch.
• Full-time secretary of the Communist Party, North Qld, in 1937. When the CPA was illegal in 1940 he moved to Brisbane to organise and edit the illegal newspaper, Sparks, which helped to bring more people into the party.
• Joined the army when the ban on the Communist Party was lifted and became a staff-sergeant. Helped build the Communist Party in the Armed Forces.
• Played a major part in transferring the North Qld printery to Brisbane towards the end of the war and directly after the war. Published the Queensland Guardian.
• Prominent in planning and organising Marxist studies in Qld through its beginnings as study circles in the 1930s to the founding of a Marx School and full-time courses post-World War II.
• State secretary of the CPA in the 1950s. Member of CPA central and political committees in the 1950s. Visited China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1957. Life-member of the Communist Party.
• Retired from CPA work in the late 1950s. Worked in building roads in western Qld for cattle trucks. Returned to Brisbane and became a licensed plumber and member of the Plumbers' Union. Regularly sold copies of the Tribune on the streets and collected donations for the CPA.
• Orchard Bowls enthusiast. Long illness later in life.
• Cause of death: septicaemia (6 weeks), perforated gall bladder, congestive cardiac failure and acute renal failure.
• Max Nordau Julius (1916-1963), barrister and Communist, was his brother-in-law. 

Sources
Tribune (Sydney), 23 January 1980, p 11, 27 February 1980, p 13; Robbie Remembers: Some Reminiscences of Albert Robinson 1903-1979, published by Qld State Committee, CP February 1980, pp 1-26.