Ernie Judd

Great Depression and Aftermath Cold War New Left Contemporary Active Historical Ernest "Ernie" Edward Job Pullin Judd (9 April 1883 – 20 August 1959) was an Australian socialist, publisher, political writer, and bookseller.

Ernie frequented W. H. McNamara's bookshop and The Domain in Sydney, and about 1907 he joined and became treasurer of the Socialist Labor Party, followers of Daniel de Leon in the United States of America, who in 1908 split from the Industrial Workers of the World.

He was a delegate of the Municipal Workers' Union to the Labor Council of New South Wales during World War I, an opponent of conscription and, with H. E. Boote and P. S. Brookfield, critics of the trial of members of the I.W.W.

Judd was prominent in the second conscription referendum campaign and secured a scoop when he published W. A. Holman's Secret Memorandum, which advocated dismissal of single men to encourage recruiting.

Late in 1918, when resident in Albion Street, Surrey Hills, Sydney, the Commonwealth proceeded against him for making statements prejudicial to recruiting,[4] and he was prosecuted under the War Precautions Act.

Though he turned such trials into political drama, the jury found him guilty but urged leniency, which the sentencing judge said he felt had merit, fining Judd just £25.

[6] Judd had begun his own publishing company and was proprietor of 'The Best Bookshop', 140 Castlereagh Street, in central Sydney,[7] advertising free-thought and birth-control literature in Liberator, the secularist newspaper.

Judd refused invitations to a unity conference of Sydney socialists in March 1921, denouncing the Communist Party as 'a front for capitalist spies'.

When, on 8 May, ex-soldiers and right-wing demonstrators beset him in the Domain, Judd drew a revolver later arguing that he thought his life was under threat; he was convicted of carrying a firearm and with offensive behaviour.

In November 1930 Judd, described as a "prominent member of the Socialist Labor Party" sued Sun Newspapers Ltd., for libel over their reports concerning him when he stood in North Sydney for election to the Federal Parliament in 1929.

Although it was a jury trial and they returned a verdict in favour of Judd, derisory damages of one farthing were awarded to him and costs refused.

[13] Still active in The Domain, on 9 January 1938 he was arrested for using "unseemly language" and on 18 February, with Judd defending himself, was nevertheless fined £5 and bound over to be of good behaviour for 12 months.