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Jack Kavanagh
Born	12 July 1879 St. Helens, Lancashire, England
Died	6 July 1964 Loftus, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation(s)	Tiler, Politician, Labour Union Leader
Spouse(s)	Frances Lydia Porter; Hilda Gwendolin Harvey; Edna Louise Hungerford
Children	Kathleen Kavanagh; Aileen Kavanagh Harvey

John Patrick Marcus Kavanagh (also known as Jack Kavanagh) (1879-1964) was a prominent socialist politician and labour union activist who held leadership roles with socialist worker's movements both in Canada and Australia during the early 20th century. Jack was a Central Committee member of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) from 1912 until 1921 when Jack left the SPC to become a founding organizer of the new Workers (Communist) Party of Canada (WPC) and the first chairman of the Central Committee. By early 1922, a majority of the membership abandoned the SPC to join the WPC. In 1925, Jack left Canada for Australia where he joined the Central Committee of the Australian Communist Party (ACP). He was the ACP leader until 1930.

Biography

Early life

Jack Kavanagh was born on 12 July 1879 in the Liverpool - St. Helens district of Lancashire. Jack was the son of migrant Irish copper refinery worker Thomas Kavanagh and his wife Ellen. As a child, Jack's life was marked by the tragic loss of his parents. When Jack was only 6 years old, his father died in a copper smelter accident in 1885 near St. Helens. His mother Ellen died just a few years later when he was 11. Thereafter, Jack was raised as a ward of his elder brother and guardian Peter Kavanagh. Given a rudimentary Catholic education, Jack subsequently regarded organized religion as a danger to the working class. After holding several unskilled jobs working at factories and quarries near Liverpool, Jack followed his brother's lead and enlisted in the King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1898. He served in Cork, Ireland, and later fought in the Second Boer War campaign in South Africa from 1900 to 1902. Jack was severely injured by a shrapnel wound in his lower back in March 1902, and returned home to England to recuperate. He completed his service as a corporal with King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1906.

Adult life

Emigrating to Canada in 1907, Kavanagh settled at Vancouver and learned the tiler trade. The Socialist Party of Canada introduced him to Marxist theory. He held office in trades and labour organizations, and from 1917 worked on the wharves. In 1921 he helped to found the underground Workers (Communist) Party of Canada (WPC) .

The police were soon informed that Kavanagh's 'oratory and knowledge of Marxist principles' had overwhelmed the small and poorly organized Communist Party of Australia. Within three months he was its chairman and editor of the Workers' Weekly. In line with the 'united front' policy promoted by the Communist International, he founded the Militant Minority Movement which sought to work within the trade union movement while maintaining the separate identity of the Communist Party. The success of this strategy was evident in his election (1928) to the Labor Council of New South Wales, a position of influence which he would find difficult to surrender when the Comintern changed its policy.

At the end of the 1920s the Comintern directed that all links with the 'social fascists' in trade unions and national labour parties were to be severed. Kavanagh responded by advocating 'exceptionalism', denying the relevance of the new policy to Australia. At the party's conference in December 1929 he was condemned as a 'glaring example of right deviation' and voted from the central committee, but it took time to eradicate his influence from the Sydney and State committees. He stood unsuccessfully for Newtown in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1930 and 1932 (receiving less than 1.5 per cent of the vote), and led the local branch of the Unemployed Workers' Movement. In 1934 he was finally expelled from the C.P.A. for alleged Trotskyism.

Kavanagh's influence on Australian communism was greater than his period in office would suggest. Using the motto 'understand capitalism to abolish it', he had attempted to steer the Australian working class towards Marxism through education. As a result, he was accused of pursuing theory and proletarian enlightenment at the expense of revolutionary practice. He had schooled the cadre who toppled him from power and, in Stalinist fashion, they suppressed his contribution to party history. Moving closer to Trotskyite groups, he helped to form an anti-war committee in 1935 and remained involved in left-wing activity during World War II.

In old age Kavanagh was still actively vocal as a champion for the rights of old-age pensioners.

Personal Life

Kavanagh married Frances Lydia Porter in Vancouver in July 1909 and they had a daughter Kathleen in 1910. Frances died shortly after the birth of Kathleen in February 1910.

Jack Kavanagh married his second wife Hilda Gwendolin Harvey in Vancouver on 15 September 1917. Their daughter Aileen Harvey Kavanagh was born on 3rd Jan 1919. While still in hospital after the birth of Aileen, Hilda succumbed to a severe case of Spanish influenza just 3 weeks later in February 1919.

In 1925, Jack sailed for Australia from Vancouver with his companion Mrs Edna Louise Hungerford (née Hay). This departure was controversial because Edna was separated from her husband Orpen More Hungerford at the time. They were accompanied by Jack's elder daughter Kathleen and Edna's son Bill. They travelled under the surname Kavanagh and arrived in Sydney on May Day 1925. Edna's previous marriage was dissolved in 1927 and Jack married Edna on 18 January 1946 at the district registrar's office in the Randwick suburb of Sydney, NSW.

Death and afterward

Survived by his wife Edna and daughters, Jack died on 6 July 1964 in his home at Loftus near Sydney. His body was bequeathed to the University of Sydney and later cremated.

Philosophical and/or political views

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Published works

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Awards

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Bibliography

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Akers, David; Sampson, Margaret (1996). "Kavanagh, John Patrick Marcus (1879–1964)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 14. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 15 July 2017.

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See also

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• autobiography
• biography

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