Editing Labor Left (section)

=== Labor Party split of 1955 ===
The modern Labor Left emerged from the [[Australian Labor Party split of 1955|Labor Party split of 1955]], in which anti-communist activists associated with [[B. A. Santamaria]] and the [[Industrial Groups]] formed the [[Democratic Labor Party (Australia, 1955)|Democratic Labor Party]] while left-wing parliamentarians and unions loyal to [[H. V. Evatt]] and [[Arthur Calwell]] remained in the Australian Labor Party.<ref name="VN">{{Cite web|title = The rise and fall of the ALP left in Victoria and NSW|url = http://marxistleftreview.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80%253Athe-rise-and-fall-of-the-alp-left&catid=41%253Anumber-4-winter-2012&Itemid=80|website = Marxist Left Review|access-date = 23 January 2016|first = Corey|last = Oakley|date = Winter 2012}}</ref> The earliest formal factional organization was the NSW Combined Unions and Branches Steering Committee (later known as the NSW Socialist Left), which was formed in January 1955.<ref name=jacobin />

The split played out differently across the country, with anti-communists leaving the party in Victoria and Queensland but remaining within in most other states. This created a power vacuum which allowed the Left to take control of the Federal Executive and Victorian state branch, while its opponents were preserved elsewhere.<ref name="VN"/> [[Tom Uren]] described the left of the [[Australian Labor Party Caucus|Labor Party Caucus]] upon his election to Parliament in the late 1950s as "a loosely knit grouping{{Spaces}}... consist[ing] mostly of anti-Catholics, although some members were militants or socialists".<ref name=jacobin />

From 1965, organised internal groups emerged to challenge the control of the Left, supported by figures such as [[John Button (Australian politician)|John Button]] and [[Gough Whitlam]]. After the Victorian branch lost the [[1970 Victorian state election|1970 state election]] in the midst of a public dispute with Whitlam over state aid for private schools, the South Australian Left, led by [[Clyde Cameron]], and New South Wales Left, led by [[Arthur Gietzelt]], agreed to support an intervention which saw the Victorian state branch abolished and subsequently reconstructed without Left control.<ref name="VN" /> Leftists in the Victorian party subsequently regrouped as the formally organized Socialist Left faction. In Queensland, the left coalesced around senator [[George Georges]]. Despite an increasing level of organisation in the grassroots party, this was not reflected within the Parliamentary caucus: [[Ken Fry]] noted that when he was elected to Parliament in 1974, meetings of left MPs were irregular and they responded to events in an ad hoc manner. The Labor Left suffered the loss of two of its key leaders in the mid-1970s with the downfall of [[Jim Cairns]] and the elevation of [[Lionel Murphy]] to the [[High Court of Australia]], yet it continued to make advances in terms of nationwide organisation: right-wing power broker [[Graham Richardson]] has acknowledged that "at the beginning of the 1980s the Left was the only national faction".<ref name=jacobin />