‘I’ll tell you. The workers were too scared to strike in case they lost their jobs. See, you gotta stick together. One in, all in, or it doesn’t work.’

There were dozens more photos, charting his rise, fall, and journey towards irrelevance. At the end he said, ‘You interested in politics, Clem?’

‘Sorta. We’re doin’ the Russian Revolution in history.’

His eyes lit up. ‘See, one in, all in.’

‘But didn’t Stalin murder fifty million people?’

‘Well, that number’s always exaggerated, and he was trying to make a new sort of society.’

He spent another ten minutes explaining how, if Australia was communist, Packer and Hancock would have to splash the cash, and we wouldn’t be living in fibro huts on the edge of civilisation. This seemed a bit dramatic. They were comfortable homes, and a lot of people in communist countries lived in worse. Still, there was no point bringing this up. Ernie knew best, apparently.

He reclaimed his photo album, searched for another book and opened it. ‘The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms.’

Communism seemed like a good idea. Sharing the goods. Gary Burrell did it; I’d seen the evidence in his back shed. And maybe that was justified.

Ernie said, ‘You can borrow this,’ and placed The Communist Manifesto in my hands. ‘As true now as the day it was written.’

‘But Russia’s pointing all those missiles at us,’ I said.

He sat forward, whispered, as though ASIO might be listening. ‘Well, they’ve got no choice, have they? We’re with America, and America’s all about the factory owners. But they’re closing down, and what’s happening to the workers?’

‘Sacked?’

‘Exactly. That’s what America stands for. That’s why the Russians are onto them. Makes sense, doesn’t it?’

I wasn’t sure it did. ‘Pity if we all go up in flames.’ I noticed a Russian flag on the wall, hidden by a filing cabinet sprouting fifty years of papers.

‘Cost of living rises but wages don’t,’ he said. ‘Man can barely support his family now, but if you got capital.’

I guessed education might lead to better jobs, and income, and maybe that was easier than starting a world revolution. But I supposed not everyone had the brains to become a doctor, so it was proletariat versus slave master.

‘Take your dad, for example. He’d spend ten hours a day laying bricks, and I remember, he told me, lucky if he brought home ten quid a week. Now, you—’

‘Laying bricks?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I never knew he did that.’

‘He was a sub-contractor. The fella that built the homes got paid, the contractor got paid, and your dad, he got whatever was over. Some weeks, he told me, he couldn’t afford petrol. Mortgage first, of course, then food for you lot.’