- by Ian Stephenson
- The Guardian
- Issue #2062
The Tribune Printery, Newsletter Press, 21 Ross Street Forest Lodge, 1962. Photo: City of Sydney Archives. (left) Forest Lodge, 1962. Photo: City of Sydney Archives. (right)
From 1943 until at least 1981 the Communist Party of Australia printed their newspaper Tribune at 21 Ross St Forest Lodge, Glebe, which has received a blue plaque recognising its historical value. Other radical publications including women’s liberation posters and anti-Vietnam war materials were also produced here.
The CPA was founded in 1920 and reached its peak membership in the 1940s when it had 20,000 members. Tribune provided well-researched and well-written journalism on social reform.
On 24th May 1940 Tribune was banned on the grounds of weakening the war effort. On 15th June 1941 the CPA itself was banned and hundreds of properties were searched for printing presses and evidence of illegal membership. On 29th July 1941 Tribune returned as a pamphlet, initially printed on rough paper using a manual press. Searches by the Commonwealth police failed to discover its location. On 3rd June 1943, restrictions on the CPA were lifted and the paper was relaunched. The premises were raided by Commonwealth security police in 1949 and 1953.
The printery survives but is now an apartment building. It is a physical testament to a time when there were a great many independent newspapers in NSW, and a reminder of popular radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s, cold war persecution of the CPA, and feminist and anti-war activism in the 1960s and 1970s.
