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Australian politician (1897–1977)

Frederick Woolnough Paterson (13 June 1897 – 7 October 1977) was an Australian politician, activist, unionist and lawyer. He is the only representative of the Communist Party of Australia to be elected to an Australian parliament.

Paterson was born and raised on a pig farm in Gladstone, Queensland. He was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and then studied classics at the University of Queensland, before joining the military when the First World War broke out. He subsequently saw action on the battlefields of France. While in France, he was involved in two food related strikes, which were both successful. In January 1920, Paterson moved to Merton College, Oxford to study theology, after becoming a Rhodes Scholar. However, by the time he sat for his honours degree in 1922, his belief in Christianity had changed. He had witnessed extreme poverty in Ireland and parts of London, and this concerned him. Not long after returning to Queensland, Paterson joined the Communist Party of Australia. Paterson began studying law in 1923. By 1924, he was giving lectures on Marxism. Then, in 1925, he began working for the Workers' Educational Association. This saw him addressing unions, giving lectures on the history of the working class, and trying to increase the association's membership.

In 1931, Paterson was admitted to the New South Wales Bar. During the late 1930s, the Communist Party continued to grow rapidly in North Queensland, with Paterson at the forefront. He played a significant role in the union movement in the sugar industry during a key strike over workplace conditions, and became involved in the anti fascist movement. In 1939, Paterson stood successfully as an alderman for the Townsville City Council, becoming the first member of the Communist Party to win such an office in Australia. He was then re elected in 1943. The same year, he stood for the federal seat of Herbert, but was defeated.

The next year, he again made history, when at his third attempt, he won the State electoral seat of Bowen at the 1944 Queensland state election. While Paterson had polled slightly behind his rival in Bowen itself, he was far in front in the mining and sugar farming areas, which resulted in a significant victory. He retained the seat at the following election. These policies included increasing nurse salaries, the implementation of the 40 hour work week into law, equal pay for women, capping rents in relation to the average income, and abolishing child labor on farms. Paterson was unable to do any political activity for some months afterwards. An inquiry into the incident found that no wrongdoing had occurred and no police officer was ever arrested or charged with the assault. The ex Queensland police officer and former Labor leader Bill Hayden later named the officer as sergeant Jack Mahony, who had boasted about using a pick handle on "the 'Commie' Fred Paterson" during Hayden's time as an officer. However, his return to Townsville, once he had sufficiently recovered from his injuries to travel, was widely celebrated.

In a 1949 redistribution, Paterson's electorate of Bowen was abolished, and split between two new electorates: Burdekin and Whitsunday. Historian Ross Fitzgerald suggests that the redistribution was done deliberately to split Paterson's electoral support and prevent him from being returned to parliament in the 1950 election. Paterson contested the election in Whitsunday, but lost to Country Party candidate Lloyd Roberts.