Ted Hill (Australian Communist)
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Edward Fowler Hill (1915-1988), Australian communist, was Chairman of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA(ML)) from 1964 to 1986.
Hill was born into a middle-class family in Melbourne and was educated at Melbourne University, where he graduated in law and became a barrister. He joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) as a student. He became well known as the CPA's leading legal figure, and defended the party and its members in several well-known trials, such as the prosecution of Frank Hardy for criminal libel over his novel Power Without Glory. Hill also represented the CPA before the 1947 Royal Commission into Communism and the 1954 Royal Commission into alleged Soviet espionage in Australia (see Petrov Affair).
In the 1950s Hill was Victorian State Secretary of the CPA. When the Sino-Soviet split developed in the early 1960s, Hill supported the position of the Communist Party of China, while the CPA majority, led by National Secretary Laurie Aarons, supported the Soviet Union. Hill was expelled from the CPA in 1963 and in March 1964 formed the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CAP(ML)), taking many militant members from the Victorian CPA with him.
Hill fully supported the "line" of the Chinese Communists until Mao Zedong's death in 1976, but after the 1972 change in Chinese policy away from world revolution and towards an alliance with the United States, the CPA(ML) lost many of its adherents, particularly among radical students. After the rise of Deng Xiaoping in China the CPA(ML) no longer supported Chinese policies, and became a supporter of "Australian independence." This led to a split in the CPA(ML) in 1978.
Despite his prominence as a Communist, Hill was able to pursue a long and distinguished legal career, as one of the best known and highly regarded workers compensation lawyers in Australia. He was widely praised by trade unions, judges and other lawyers, most of whom did not share his political views, on his death in 1988.
