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Rhodes Scholar Frederick Woolnough Paterson enlisted in active service during World War I before becoming the first and only member of a Communist party ever to be elected to parliament in Australia.
Paterson joined the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party in 1923, later providing lectures on Marxism. By 1925, he was working for the Workers’ Education Association, addressing unions and presenting lectures on the history of the working class.
Paterson became Deputy Mayor of Gladstone in 1927, winning the seat of Bowen in 1944 as a communist. During the Railway Strike of 1948, the Hanlon Labor government introduced the Industrial Law Amendment Act. Termed as the 'Paterson Bill', the legislation essentially curtailed the rights of strikers.
On St Patrick’s Day, police, who had unionists under surveillance, attacked strikers, viciously injuring Paterson. He later appeared on behalf of the Communist Party in the High Court case to challenge the validity of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill.
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 | Police Department surveillance reports on the activities of Townsville Alderman Fred Paterson before he became a Member of the Legislative Assembly, c 1940-41
Queensland State Archives Item ID 1139499, Digital Image ID 2912 Police Department, Police Service Commissioner’s Office
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 | 1944 Liberal Party of Australia founded | |
1944 DNA discovered | |
1945 Atomic bomb detonated | |
1945 World War II ended | |
1946 ENIAC first computer | |
1947 Microwave oven invented | |
1948 ‘Big Bang’ theory proposed | |
1949 China became a communist republic | |
1950 First photocopier | |
1951 Rock’n’roll music started | |
1952 Elizabeth II became Queen of England, and Australia | |
1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Mount Everest |
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