History and politics buffs should either be made aware, or be given cause to remember, that in Brisbane, on St Patrick’s Day 1948, Australia’s only Communist Party MP, Fred Paterson, was almost murdered by a Queensland policeman, almost certainly at the instigation of someone higher up.

From 1944 to 1950, Frederick Woolnough (“Fred”) Paterson was the CPA member for Bowen in the Queensland Legislative Assembly.

Soon after his election, it was said of Paterson that only one politician was less likely ever to become premier of Queensland – the unprepossessing Country Party MP for Nanango, Johannes (“Joh”) Bjelke-Petersen.

Born in Gladstone in 1897, Paterson is the first and only Communist Party member to be elected to any state or federal parliament in Australia.

A former Rhodes Scholar and divinity student who became a prominent communist activist and radical barrister for the poor, Paterson was widely known throughout north Queensland as “the people’s champion".

A staunch defender of the rights of Italian cane-cutters and other workers, he helped lessen the influence of fascist ideas among the immigrant community, while also advancing their socio-economic conditions.

Being an avid anti-fascist and having declared he was no longer a believer, Paterson made many enemies, including members of the cloth. At a public meeting in Townsville in 1947, while Paterson was promoting communist ideas, a priest interjected, “Have you ever been to Russia?” “No father,” said Fred, who had never visited the Soviet Union, “Have you ever been to heaven?”

A year later, on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1948, while acting as a legal observer of a march of striking unionists in Brisbane, Paterson sustained serious head injuries after having been deliberately bashed from behind by a plainclothes Queensland policeman.

To try and stop a statewide railway strike, on 9 March 1948, autocratic ALP premier E.M. (“Ned”) Hanlon had rushed through Queensland’s one-house parliament the Industrial Law Amendment Act.

This draconian legislation prohibited participation in an illegal strike and stipulated heavy penalties.

Queensland police were granted power to enter any home or building, to disperse gatherings, and to arrest without warrant; the onus of proof was placed on the defendants. Under the act, the opinion of a police officer was sufficient proof of a misdemeanour.

Paterson had described the Industrial Law Amendment bill as “the greatest scab-herding, strike-breaking piece of legislation ever introduced by a Labor Government anywhere in Australia”.

In an unusually candid response, Hanlon stated in Queensland parliament: “As a matter of fact, this bill might have been called the Paterson bill.”

On 10 March 1948, even the conservative Courier Mail had editorialised : “These powers… are the most far-reaching ever given to the police in any state in Australia.”

Given Hanlon’s publicly expressed antagonism to Paterson, it is significant that, on the afternoon of the day Paterson was bashed, the Queensland ALP caucus met and unanimously decided that no inquiry would be held.

As no charges were laid either against Paterson, or the detective-sergeant involved, the incident could not be tested in court, and thereby be made public.

My biography of Paterson, published by UQP, reveals that the communist MP for Bowen’s attacker was a plainclothes Queensland policeman, J.J. (“Jack”) Mahony.

As I also document in Fred Paterson: The People’s Champion, on 18 March 1948, the feisty Independent MP for Mundingburra, Tom Aikens, asked this three-part question in state parliament:

• Is it the intention of the government to prosecute detective Mahony for attempted murder or any other charge under the criminal code for brutally smashing Mr F. Paterson, MLA, with a baton on the head from behind, in Edward Street, yesterday?
• Did Mahony so brutally attack Paterson under instructions from the government?
• If so, what did the government hope to gain by Paterson’s murder or serious injury?

In his reply to Aikens, Labor Premier Hanlon did not mention any detail of the assault, Paterson’s name, or the Queensland detective’s name. It merely consisted of this gratuitous personal insult :

“You can be sure that (Aikens) was hiding as far away from the scene of the disturbance as he possibly could. Evidently, he takes considerable pleasure in inciting other people to take part in disturbances, but when the opportunity comes, the honourable member will not be found in the vicinity.”

If the brutal bashing of an MP occurred in Australia today, there would surely be either an immediate state parliamentary inquiry, a royal commission, or a formal investigation by the Australian Senate.

Yet, in the ALP-controlled Queensland of the late 1940s, a vicious assault upon a sitting member of parliament was greeted with an extraordinary official silence.

Paterson never fully recovered from head injuries inflicted in his assault from behind by Mahony.

In 1950, Paterson’s electorate of Bowen was gerrymandered out of existence at the behest of the Australian Labor Party in Queensland.

After unsuccessfully contesting the seat of Whitsunday, Paterson moved to Sydney where he worked part-time as a legal adviser to the NSW branch of the Communist Party. He died in 1977.

It is hard to disagree with Paterson’s assessment of the significance of the savage attack on him in Brisbane on St Patrick’s Day 1948: “The story of this action, and the bashing of other people on this day, is one that should be told again and again, to expose the corruption of some members of the police force and the corruption of some government administrators.”

Readers may be interested to know, or be reminded, that the ALP federal ALP leader Bill Hayden served in the Queensland police force from 1953 until 1961 when, aged 28 he was elected to the House of Representatives for the south-east Queensland seat of Oxley.

In his autobiography, published in 1996, Hayden admitted that when he was a constable he knew that Mahony was the plain-clothes policeman officer who so savagely bashed Paterson on St Patrick’s Day 1948.

In 1990, I contacted Hayden stating that while it may be understandable that, when he was a serving Queensland police constable force he may have been afraid to name Mahony, I found it baffling, and profoundly disappointing, that when he was a MHR, he did not do so under parliamentary privilege.

While Hayden did not respond in writing to my request for a response, to understate his reaction on the telephone, the then Governor-General was none too pleased!