Laurie Short

Who was Laurie Short?

Laurence Edwin "Laurie" Short, AO, OBE was an Australian trade union leader and leading figure in the Australian Labor Party. Short was the national secretary of the Federated Ironworkers' Association, now part of the Australian Workers' Union, from 1951 to 1982.

He at first supported the idea of communism in Australia, but then rejected communism and then was an important anti-communist union leader. Short ran against Ernest "Ernie" Thornton, a member of the Communist Party of Australia, in the 1949 FIA elections — Thornton at first claimed victory, but later his election was ruled invalid, and Short declared the winner. Short was a non-Catholic ally of B. A. Santamaria's Catholic Social Studies Movement, but was seen as playing a key role in preventing the New South Wales branch of the ALP from splitting along sectarian lines in the Australian Labor Party split of 1955.