Issue 4 of 2020 (June 2020) ISSN 1836-599X Valé Jack Mundey: The Builders Labourers’ leader who saved Glebe by Meredith Burgmann The true saviour of Glebe and inner-city Sydney, was one of the major reasons why I first became Jack Mundey, died on Sunday 10 May, aged 90. We involved with the Green Bans movement. residents owe our pleasant and convenient lifestyle Another wonderful aspect to the Glebe Green Ban to Jack and the rank and file members of the NSW was that Lyndhurst, the beautiful old manor in Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF). Sydney Darghan St, also had a separate Green Ban would be a very different place if the BLF had not imposed on it. It was almost derelict at the time and saved green space, historic buildings and workers’ was being rented by a number of different housing by placing world first ‘Green Bans’ on the organizations including the Nazis. shocking overdevelopment being proposed in the early seventies. Jack came down from North Queensland in the 1950s to play rugby league for Parramatta and, failing to make the cut, ended up on the tools. Confronted with a conservative union leadership, Jack fought hard to democratise and radicalise the union, joining the Communist Party along the way in 1957. He became Secretary of the BLF in 1968. Along with Joe Owens and Bob Pringle he led the union in the famous Green Bans period of the early 1970s. Having grown up amidst rainforests, Jack was an environmentalist before that term was even used. But what Jack brought to the struggle was his view The Rocks Green Ban with Jack Mundey, Meredith that workers should campaign around the social Burgmann, Nellie Leonard, Peter Wright, 1973 (photo: responsibility of labour. He believed that workers courtesy Fairfax, supplied by Meredith Burgmann) should think about the sort of work they do and the Remember that, at this time, there were no environment in which they live and work. environmental planning laws at all. There were no The Green Bans were originally just called black heritage laws that would save streetscapes or even bans but were later, in a stroke of brilliance, dubbed important historic buildings. We had to wait until the ‘green’ bans by Jack. There were eventually 54 Wran government, elected in 1976, for the Green Bans and they held up $5 billion worth of Environment and Planning Act and the Heritage building activity in 1970s’ dollar terms. legislation to be enacted. It was Jack and the BLF who led the fight in the early The other great hero of the struggle to save Glebe, seventies against the two great expressways that and a great mate of Jack’s was Tom Uren. Tom was would have trifurcated Glebe – the Western the minister for Urban and Regional Development Distributor and the North Western Distributor. They under Gough Whitlam and it was on his were planned to cut a huge swathe through Glebe recommendation that the Whitlam government as we knew it. bought the old Anglican housing estate – the 900 At the behest of the newly formed Glebe Society, the houses – which are now part of the housing Builders Labourers put what was then a black ban department area. This saved the streetscape of on the project. In fact, this destruction of Glebe Glebe and gave it the character we now delight in. would have wiped out the house I was living in and Apart from this suburb-saving intervention in Glebe, The union’s Green Bans quickly became known the BLF Green Bans saved the Rocks and around the world. ‘Green Ban Committees’ were Woolloomooloo from being turned into a forest of formed by unions in Britain. Jack Mundey was high rise ‘executive suites’; saved Centennial Park invited to lecture in Europe and North America and from being turned into a giant sporting complex; in 1976 he addressed the first United Nations saved Victoria St Kings Cross from destruction; Conference on the Built Environment. saved Surry Hills from excessive high rise; saved The timelessness and the internationalism of the Ultimo from an expressway and saved the Opera Green Bans and Jack Mundey’s leadership at that House fig trees from being destroyed for a car park. time has recently been illustrated by the fact that 50 Individual buildings saved by Green Bans include years after the Green Bans, interest from students the State Theatre, the Pitt St Congregational and international scholars is so high that our book Church, and the Colonial Mutual, National Mutual Green Bans, Red Union: The Saving of a City has and ANZ bank buildings in Martin Place. recently been reissued. The late sixties had seen a massive building boom After he voluntarily left the union leadership in Sydney caused by unregulated ‘hot money’ (believing in limited tenure of office) he remained overseas investment and the activities of the corrupt active in environmental and urban planning issues. and pro-development Askin government. There He was elected to the City of Sydney Council and were few anti-development voices. The media was was briefly Chair of its Planning Committee. He was openly hostile to the Green Bans (although a lot of active in the National Trust and was made a life rewriting of history has gone on) and the only other member of the Australian Conservation Foundation. professional voices were weak. There was a poorly Bob Carr appointed him Chair of the Historic Houses funded National Trust and an even weaker Royal Trust (now Sydney Living Museums). The National Australian Planning Institute. Trust campaigned for Jack Mundey Place in the However, the BLF’s stand was massively Rocks to be named after him. He was made an AO strengthened by the rise of inner-city resident and was voted one of Australia’s National Living activism. The progressive middle class had started Treasures. He was awarded Honorary PhDs from to move into the inner city, which is where most of the University of Western Sydney and the University the pressure from developers was occurring; and of NSW. He once said to me in mock sympathy ‘only these activists were desperate for help in their stark one PhD?’ He did love to provoke. situations. After the tragic death of his first wife Stephanie from Resident Action Groups were formed – first in a cerebral haemorrhage, he married Judy Wilcox in Paddington and Glebe in 1971 (there’s a bit of the 1960s. Further tragedy occurred when his son argument over which was first), quickly followed by Michael died in a car accident at the age of 22. Judy other suburbs – Woolloomooloo, The Rocks, Surry has been his partner in life and politics for over 50 Hills and the very militant Victoria St which even years. She was an important activist in her own right included squatting (and where I was arrested). becoming President of the Communist Party in its The BLF leadership always insisted that every ban important ‘independent’ years from 1979 to 1982. had to occur at the request of the residents and had Jack Mundey and the men and women of the BLF to have the community involved. This involved did indeed save a city, as our book points out, and endless discussion between the union leadership every day all of us benefit from that. and the concerned residents. It was what Jack Meredith Burgmann referred to as ‘the enlightened middle class and the enlightened working class coming together’ to work Dr Meredith Burgmann is a long time Glebe resident and for a better living environment. a former Green Bans activist. She is the author (with Verity Burgmann) of Green Bans, Red Union: The Saving Every proposed ban had to be agreed to by a of a City (re-issued 2017) general meeting of the union. Almost all bans ended up being physically defended and many labourers and residents were arrested and even gaoled for this Jack Mundey and the Glebe Society stoic defence. As alluded to by Meredith in the preceding article, Jack always understood that, on the whole, the bans the connection between the Glebe Society and Jack could only halt development in order to allow time Mundey goes back nearly 50 years. Here we for political solutions. He developed excellent highlight some of those connections over that time. working relationships with NSW Premier Neville Life membership of the Glebe Society in 2019 Wran and with Tom Uren. These friendships Members will recall that at the 2019 Annual General particularly helped in the government intervention to Meeting, Jack Mundey was given Life Membership save Glebe and Woolloomooloo and the building of of the Glebe Society. See Bulletin 8/2019 for the Sirius for social housing in the Rocks. citation which was read by Meredith Burgmann. 2 Glebe Society Bulletin no. 4 of 2020 (June 2020) Jack attends the Society’s 40th anniversary celebrations, 2009 As reported in Bulletin 5/2009, Jack gave the keynote address at a party held at the Woolcock Institute (formerly the Max Factor building) on 19 June 2009, to celebrate its 40th year since it began in 1969. You can listen to a recording of his address on the Glebe Society’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYB5t1B6aMA. Meredith Burgmann speaks to the nomination of Jack Mundey as a Life Member of the Glebe Society (photo: Phil Young) Jack attends the Glebe Society 50th anniversary Community Festival in 2019 Jack Mundey made a surprise – but most welcome – visit to see the exhibition at the Glebe Society 50th anniversary Community Festival held at the Tramsheds in June last year. Fortunately, a few Robyn Kemmis, John Dengate, Jack Mundey and th moments of this visit were captured on video with Jack Lesley Lynch at the Glebe Society’s 40 anniversary talking to the Society’s Allan Hogan.