Police violence is the is the iron fist in the velvet glove of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The state will use force to maintain its supremacy. In colonial times, soldiers and the police were used against the first nations people. Later as the colony developed, violence was used on the goldfields and at the Eureka stockade. In the early 20th Century police fired on striking coal miners at Rothbury, and against unionists and residents fighting eviction amongst other countless examples that occurred across the country during the Depression. Ross Fitzgerald’s article details police violence against an Australian peoples’s hero, Fred Patterson.
Fred Patterson was a World War 1 veteran, lawyer, and activist from Queensland. He organised and supported migrant sugar cane workers in north Queensland. Fred was a strong ally of First Nations people. As a member of the Communist Party of Australia, he worked with ALP members and unionists to build formidable and progressive workers organisation in north Queensland. In line with thinking at the time, the Communist Party participated in elections and Fred was elected as local alderman end eventually to the Qld state parliament.
Fred participated in all aspects of workers struggles, as a lawyer, organiser and writer. Behind the scenes and on the streets, Fred Patterson was a tireless model for all communists , hard working and self sacrificing.
Ross Fitzgerald details the targeted bashing of Fred Patterson during a march on a Brisbane street in 1948 and names the copper perpetrator who used a mattock handle to seriously injure him.
Fred is lauded as a a true peoples champion in ballads and film The Legend of Fred Patterson.
His speeches are available in Workers Bush Telegraph
