Ernie Judd

Ernest Edward Job Pullin "Ernie" Judd (9 April 1883 – 20 August 1959) was an Australian bookseller and socialist.

Judd was born at Scrubbing Plain near Forbes to labourer Ernest Augustus Judd and Alice Florence, née Stevens. In 1907 he joined the Socialist Labor Party, a group of Australian followers of American socialist Daniel De Leon who split from the Industrial Workers of the World in 1908, although Judd remained with the IWW. He ran as an independent for the state seats of Wollongong in 1913 and King in 1917, and during World War I was the Municipal Workers' Union delegate to the Labor Council of New South Wales. He opposed conscription and was appointed by the Labor Council as investigator into the imprisonment of IWW members in 1916.^[1]

In 1917 Judd stood for the Senate as an independent without success, and also published The War and the Sydney Labor Council. In 1918 he was prosecuted for "making statements prejudicial to recruiting" and was fined in 1919, although he attracted significant publicity, publishing Judd's Speech from the Dock and The Case for the O.B.U. He continued to campaign for socialist causes and contested Sydney at the 1920 state election, receiving only 282 votes. He distanced himself from the Communist Party, which he considered "a front for capitalist spies". During a clash with right-wing demonstrators in the Domain in May 1921 he drew a revolver and was convicted of carrying a firearm.^[1]

He was appointed general secretary of the Socialist Labor Party in 1920 but was involved in damaging disputes with industrial organiser A. W. Wilson and De Leon's successor Arnold Petersen. Facing declining public support, he engaged in a number of legal stunts; he was convicted of failing to vote for the Senate in the 1925 federal election and supported Thomas Mutch against Bob Heffron in the state seat of Botany in 1927 and 1930. He contested North Sydney unsuccessfully in the 1929 federal election and sued the Barrier Daily Truth for remarks it made during the campaign, winning a farthing's damages. He published How to End Capitalism and Inaugurate Socialism and Why War is Near in 1931; during the 1930s he decreased in relevance and has been described by Ian Turner as "a cantankerous stump orator, preaching the truths of De Leonism to a dwindling handful of the converted". He died a bachelor in 1959 at the mental hospital at Rydalmere.^[1]

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