People Australia

Ted Tripp. n.d.

from newspaper clipping in his ASIO file held at National Archives of Australia

Edward Clavell Howard (Ted) Tripp (1900-1979) fitter, railway employee, political activist, Communist and Trotskyist 

Birth: 25 September 1900 at Acton, London, England, son of Clavell John Francis Tripp (1862-1908), a cigar merchant, and Violet Mary, née Vinall (1875-1917). Marriage: 30 July 1938 at Erskine Presbyterian Church, Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, to Queensland-born Ruby May Bullock (1911-1995), a waitress. They had one daughter. Death: 21 September 1979 at Footscray, Melbourne; usual residence Scovell Street, Maidstone. 

• Undertook an engineering apprenticeship in Locomotive shop of Metropolitan Railways in London. Became acquainted with left wing pamphlet literature from the age of 16.
• Arrived in Western Australia about 1924 and gained farmwork. Went to North Queensland and found work at Chillagoe. Worked as a fitter in Townsville Railway shops in 1925.
• Helped to re-form the Townsville Communist Party of Australia (CPA) group in 1926. Became secretary in the North Queensland executive of CPA group when other CPA groups were formed in North Qld in 1927. Was a regular speaker at propagandist meetings and organised trade union work of the Townsville CPA.
• Elected Amalgamated Engineering Union representative on the Townsville Trades and Labor Council in 1929. Helped to build an active Communist faction in the Townsville TLC.
• Attended the 1927 conference of the CPA; became an Independent (Communist) candidate for the seat of Mundingburra in Qld.state elections in 1929 and gained 1500 votes to the 4000 votes of Jack Dash (ALP).
• Travelled to Moscow to study at the International Lenin School under the pseudonym of Clayton in 1929-1930. Participated in a lecture tour describing the Soviet Union on his return to Australia.
• Was sent to Mildura by the CPA and after a couple of incidences that he felt were provoked by the New Guard returned to Sydney. He was expelled from the CPA in 1934 for disagreeing with social fascism, which was a policy where communists should work not only against fascists but also social democrats. He had developed sympathy to Trotskyism during his time in Moscow but it only emerged in Australia in response to the ‘social fascism’ strategy of the CPA.
• Working in the Ammunitions Factory at the time of his expulsion and the CPA attempted to get him dismissed, accusing him, without evidence, of such matters as having embezzled CPA funds and made his communist and industrial ostracisation almost unbearable. He stuck out the harassment and became a prominent Australian Trotskyist.
• Joined the Balmain Trotskyists (Independent Communist League) in Sydney in 1934 after his expulsion from the CPA and remained until 1938. It ran the Unemployed Workers’ Movement.
• Moved to Melbourne in 1938 to get married. The Independent Communist League was not the same organisation as the Workers Party and Tripp arrived in Melbourne after the Origlass-Short takeover of the Workers Party. There was no Trotskyist party in Melbourne at the time. Tripp became a Marxist Lecturer at Melbourne Trades Hall Council’s Labor College for many years and although he had no political affiliations since he remained a Trotskyist. He was secretary of the United Front Against Fascism.
• Cause of death: haematemesis (30 minutes), peptic ulceration (1 week) and ulcerative colitis (15 years). 

Sources
MUA, Trade Union and Labour Movement – Individuals p.145; Hall Greenland, Red Hot – The Life and Times of Nick Origlass: 1908-1996, (Sydney, 1998) p 307; Malcolm Henry Ellis, The red road: the story of the capture of the Lang party by Communists, instructed from Moscow (Sydney [1932]; Labor History, (Melbourne), No. 62 Beilharz, Peter Trotskyism in Australia – Notes from a Talk with Ted Tripp, 1976; Normington Rawling, Communism Comes to Australia [unpublished, held at Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU].; Diane Manghetti, The Red North: the popular front in North Queensland (Townsville, 1981)  pp 17-19; Workers Weekly, No. 297, 3 May 1929, p. 6.