The Australian Communist Party was established in Sydney in the 1920s. Harry Black joined the Party in the 1950s. In this interview he describes his childhood and early working life and the reasons he joined and remained a member of the Communist Party.
When I came out of the army I worked in various jobs. I worked, selling, I worked in shops, and I also worked in various other jobs like as a truck driver and eventually in 1950 I joined the wharves and I become a member of the Sydney branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation. Now, before that, I used to go down to the Sydney Domain every Sunday and listen to the speakers, and the speakers that intrigued me more than anything else were the Communist speakers and I listened to them very carefully and they were very good, they spoke very well and they spoke with authority and so when I went into the union, the Sydney branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, I was well aware of the fact that the Sydney branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation was a very active trade union, and I wasn’t in the union very long before I joined the Communist Party in 1953.