Young, Richard.

The story of the Eureka Youth League / by Richard Young. [Sydney?] : Eureka Youth League, [1944]

The connection between the organization and the Eureka uprising is put forward using the convention of mates yarning around a camp-fire. This is meant to place the Youth League firmly in the Australian nationalist tradition. The predominantly red cover illustration of men firing on other men from behind logs is meant to portray the rebellion in the nineteenth-century, but with the boy looking towards us in the foreground it has a modern feel to it which is strangely unsettling. It is as if we are looking at a scene from the Australian Revolution.

This pamphlet carefully avoids any admission that the Eureka Youth League is connected to the Communist Party.

We are not affiliated to nor do we pledge allegiance to any political Party. We do not raise the question of parties amongst ourselves or with new members. …

But we do regard ourselves as part of the great Labor Movement, which is not only the Labor Party, but also the Trade Unions, Consumers' Co-operatives and the Communist Party. Many of us are Trade unionists and some of our clubs are connected with factories and Trade unions. …

Some people believe that there should be no politics in the Youth Movement. We don't, because if you are not satisfied with the pay many young workers have to live on - and we aren't - to do something about it you've got to enter into politics. (p. 18)

The pamphlet has interesting details of the resistance the League encountered from the media and the Catholic Church.

We find big business newspapers like the "Sydney Morning Herald" attacking the League. This is part of the general attack on democracy in Australia by big business. The millionaires are very worried about the hundreds of young people now joining the League and are attempting to frighten them away. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of young Catholics in our League, some Church leaders are also on the hunt. In Victoria and New South Wales these people have used the Catholic Church to organise squads of young Catholics into basher gangs against the League. We know that the majority of young Catholics have a high regard for the work that our League does, and some have nothing but contempt for these people. The work of these Church leaders in poisoning the minds of some young Catholics is not much different from Hitler's poisoning of the whole generation and the organisation of them into basher gangs - it boils down to the fact that they are helping Hitler and Tojo to create disunity. (p. 19)