Leviathan (44 page)

In June of 1971 therefore, the Battlers for Kelly's Bush, as they had become known, turned to an unlikely ally, a rowdy, two-fisted band of actual, swear-to-God communists and industrial brawlers known as the Builders' Labourers Federation. Or BLF for short. The startling, unprecedented quality of this manoeuvre is difficult to appreciate in a post-Cold War world. For the class these women represented, communists had crawled out from under the same rock as Nazis and paedophiles. Communists were killing their sons in Vietnam. Communists hated the Church. Communists ran gulags and death camps. They liked brainwashing and espionage and cheating at the Olympics. They were probably mixed up in drugs and lesbianism. They had definitely taken over the universities. They had enslaved half of Europe, all of China and were no doubt plotting their advance on Hunters Hill at that very moment. Communists in the union movement leapt out of their bug infested beds every morning to wolf down a bowl of cold borscht and plot the destruction of the sort of decent, God-fearing small to medium sized businesses owned by the husbands of women like Monica Sheehan, Chris Dawson, Betty James and Kath Laheny. Communists were not to be trusted.

But the communists of the BLF, as it turned out, were the last hope of the ringtailed possum. After the minister for local government, Pat ‘the Mortician' Morton, signed a rezoning order which cleared the way for Jennings' bulldozers, the Battlers approached the labour movement. The Federated Engine Drivers and Firemans Association (FEDFA), whose members would drive those dozers, tabled the women's request for assistance at the Labor Council on 3 June. The unionists agreed to not to carry out any ‘bulldozing, grading and land clearing work', delighting the women and encouraging them to seek further help from the BLF, whose members would ultimately build the planned luxury homes. The BLF was then a weird, exotic form of life which could probably only have existed in the atmosphere of the sixties and early seventies. Described by Meredith and Verity Burgmann as ‘a corrupt and conservative' gangster regime in the 1950s, the New South Wales chapter of the BLF was remade into something entirely different by a group of reforming idealists during the following decade. The Burgmanns' history of the BLF,
Green Bans, Red Union
, exhaustively details this struggle, describing a union which at the height of its powers was as much of a threat to the mummified dinosaurs of the labour movement as it was to the insatiable greedheads of the private sector. Under the leadership troika of Joe Owens, Bob Pringle and Jack Mundey the BLF grew into the most militant, radical and successful union the city or indeed the country had ever seen.

What separated it from other traditionally combative unions was the BLF's commitment to radical democracy inside their organisation and a novel coalition of social movements outside. The BLF of that time was not like other unions. Its office-bearers were paid no more than the members. They could not stay in office indefinitely, being required to return to their tools after a couple of years. Consulting and involving the membership was not just an empty phrase but something of an obsession. The union leaders would not make a move without the say-so of their membership, and once that sanction was given they could not be moved from it by threat or inducement. (Mundey was once offered a twenty million dollar bribe ‘to allow half of a proposed development to take place', according to the Burgmann history, an approach which was flatly rejected.) Their power sprang from a militant solidarity and technical changes within the building industry itself. The gargantuan nature of the projects underway in the city concentrated thousands of builders' labourers in a relative handful of sites, and the significance of their role in high-rise construction was amplified by the new production techniques such buildings entailed. As the Burgmanns point out, ‘the developers' need for speedy completion of speculative projects, financed by venture capital loans at high interest rates, gave a tactical advantage to the building industry unions, which they were loath not to exploit'. Refusing overtime or ‘a strategic sick day became an industrial weapon of great potential'. Interrupting concrete pours could have disastrous consequences and the ‘ability of builders' labourers to walk off, or threaten to, before completing a pour was an important bargaining point'.

The BLF would use any weapon in its armoury to prosecute the cause of its members who, it must be said, worked in one of the most uncivilized and fractious industries of modern times. The management ethos which had replaced a whole work crew with a starving, desperate Jack Acland in the Depression – because the boss knew a family man could be whipped that much harder – was alive and kicking forty years later. Builders' labourers died on construction sites every year because the development companies would not spend money on safety until forced to. The seething hostility which existed between boss and worker is probably incomprehensible to anyone without first-hand experience. They were, quite simply, enemies. The success of the BLF in confronting this enemy welded the largely uneducated membership of working-class white males, newly arrived migrants and, most surprising of all, women labourers, to the union leadership. Encouraged by their success in battles for the more traditional objectives of improved wages, safety and working conditions, the supposedly conservative working-class BLF members fought campaigns for women's rights, homosexuals, students, prisoners and of course the environment.

Kelly's Bush, the first green ban, was put in place after union president Bob Pringle met with the Battlers' full committee of thirteen women. (According to the Burgmanns the women were a little intimidated by the prospect of meeting this mad leftie who had recently been photographed by the
Herald
‘sawing down the goal posts at the Sydney Cricket Ground to prevent the South African rugby team playing'.) Pringle suggested the union could place a ban on the site, but only if the membership agreed and only if the local community demonstrated that opposition to Jennings' proposal was widespread. A neighbourhood meeting of 600 residents confirmed their support for the ban after which the BLs put their hands up for it. The significance of this action should not be underestimated. By declaring the site black, the workers were denying themselves employment in an industry where job security was more a matter of wish fulfilment than reality. The residents seeking their help were scions of the upper and middle classes, the sort of people who'd signed on with the fascist New Guard to take pot shots at starving workers in the 1930s. And, when you got down to it, no builders' labourer was ever going to be welcomed into their neighbourhood, even if they could afford to move in, which of course they couldn't. However, the labourers' antipathy for businesses like AV Jennings, the incredibly buoyant conditions across the rest of the industry, and the leadership's evolving concern with New Left issues such as the environment and urban planning overrode these objections. The ban came down on 17 June 1971. When Jennings shrugged and said they'd simply go ahead with nonunion labour, they received a swift, brutal lesson in the altered state of their relationship with residents of Hunters Hill. A telegram arrived from a Jennings building site at North Sydney. It threatened that if the company tried it on, if even one tree was lost, ‘this half-completed building will remain so forever, as a monument to Kelly's Bush'. The Hunter's Hill site remains virgin bushland to this day.

The success of this alliance led to an awakening of communities across the city. Residents' action groups sprang up by the dozen to fight unwanted, unrestrained development. A second green ban was placed on a development at Eastlakes in November 1971 after Parkes Development broke a promise not to build on land set aside as a recreation area. Plans to annex vast areas of Centennial Park and Moore Park for a State sports centre, including an 80 000 seat stadium, 10 000 seat entertainment centre and ‘a gigantic parking lot', were hyped as a massive boost to commerce and industry; although the main beneficiaries would be the developers who poured elephant bucks into the coffers of Askin's conservative coalition, walking off with fantastic profits – and eleven knighthoods – in return. A residents' action group, which included Nobel prize winner Patrick White, twitched about in futile opposition until the BLF put a bullet into the whole concept in June 1972.

The confrontation over the sports centre was not the first direct challenge to the State. In 1968 the government had established the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority to convert its ownership of what remained of the Rocks into a geyser of cash. Even after extensive demolitions for plague clearance and bridge-building, a large population of waterfront workers, seafarers and their families remained as tenants of the Maritime Services Board in the clutch of terraces and boarding houses which survived. Gaping at the berserk inflation of land and building prices a short distance away in the CBD, Cabinet decided to realise its asset in one spectacular orgy of exploitation. After ramping up rents for their low-income tenants by 200 and 300 per cent, the State government popped the champagne corks to reveal their blueprint for a 21 hectare, $500 million profanity, featuring high-rise office blocks, apartments, luxury hotels and department stores. Working-class families who had paid rent to the State for generations would be evicted, while private consortiums of multi-national investors were blessed with the certainty of ninety-nine year leases over this ‘public land'.

As with all previous planned developments in the Rocks, no provision was made for the accommodation of the residents. A few token historic buildings would be preserved as curious trinkets but the social fabric of the area would be shredded. In January 1972 bulldozers moved in to begin demolition but a confrontation between residents and drivers led to the FEDFA and the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union joining the ban placed on the project by the BLF in November of the previous year. Askin's government had amended provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act, which the Union Street protesters had taken such a beating for in 1931, leaving the Rocks' residents with no protection against their landlord; i.e., the very government which had just stripped them of their rights. As the Burgmanns explain:

What the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority figured was that these people had the right to get the hell outta Dodge. When contractors pushed the issue by trying to demolish some garages and workshops in Playfair Street a squall of protest, violence and industrial mayhem erupted in a two-week-long battle with thousands of unionists walking off sites around the city, five hundred of them storming the disputed building site. Hundreds of police arrested dozens of workers and residents. As with every other clash in this period, however, the initiative lay with the coalition of protesters. As long as the bans remained in place, the developers and their backers, in this case the state, were effectively powerless. While work on SCRA's grand design was paralysed the residents formulated a ‘people's plan' for the area which stressed a continuing presence for low-income housing along with cultural, civic and small business uses in the renovated historic buildings. Restoration work on these properties had not been banned and by 1974 the government found itself in the humiliating position of having to accept the residents' vision. The restored properties were returning handsome rents while Treasury was haemorrhaging money over the interest bill on loans for the stalled high-rise projects.

The Rocks were spared but sirens were shrieking in boardrooms all over the city. By the mid-1970s BLF green bans had thrown a choke-hold on projects worth at least $3000 million (in 1974 dollars). When told he was taking bread from his members' mouths, union secretary Jack Mundey replied that they would rather build ‘urgently required hospitals, schools, other public utilities, high quality flats, units and houses, provided they are designed with adequate concern for the environment, rather than to build ugly, unimaginative, architecturally bankrupt blocks of concrete and glass offices'. Fine words, but you don't snatch three billion big ones from a gang of land sharks and walk away unscathed. A short distance from the Rocks, the scene of the union's greatest triumph, the hammerheads bared their teeth.

 

Mick Fowler was a big, bull-necked seaman with a slightly scary Dennis Lillee moustache, sideburns like Texas and a hint of Elvis in his hairstyle. He was fond of playing jazz, spinning yarns and – just quietly – smoking dope. But if you didn't know him, his hamhock fists, tightly stretched body shirts and drooping cigarettes lent an air of physical menace which your average bohemian would be incapable of synthesising. He had gone down to the sea as a young man and the life there had hardened him some. He'd worked some tough ships, walked some mean streets and was more likely to be roused to anger than fear by the likes of ‘Karate' Joe Meissner. Like Mick Fowler, Karate Joe presented a fairly intimidating front. With Fowler, a generous, ukelele-playing hepcat, it was just a matter of appearances. With Karate Joe it was business. Meissner (aka Machine Gun Joe, aka Ivan the Hoon) had been hired by Frank Theeman to facilitate the rapid transit of a lot of inconvenient pensioners, battlers and boho spongers who were standing between Mr Theeman and a pile of money. A Very Big Pile Of Money.