Tom Dougherty

Tom Nicholson Pearce Dougherty (2 March 1902 – 14 October 1972), was an Australian trade union official and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Dougherty argued that the Communist Party's interest in ending the White Australia Policy was in 'conformity' with instructions from the Communist International. further he tabled a motion in the Union's executive council directing the union to oppose "attempts being made by a strange combination of certain wealthy employing interests and the Communist Party to secure the free entry of coloured and Asiatic labour into Australia."

Visit to the United States

In 1950, at the height of the Cold War, Dougherty visited the United States at the invitation of the American Federation of Labor and addressed its convention in Houston, calling for the end of all trade with the Soviet Union. In 1953 he and Laurie Short, leader of the Federated Ironworkers' Association, met with U.S. Vice-president Richard Nixon and briefed him on what they claimed was the continuing strength of Communism in the Australian unions. He had long believed that the council should be abolished, and had criticised the NSW Labor Party for failing to carry out this policy. He promised to resign if he failed to abolish the council. Following the defeat of a 1961 referendum to abolish it, he carried out this promise and resigned.