Trades Hall Press
February 2022
Newsletter from Sydney Trades hall, home of the largest collections of trade union history in Australia
This Month: Gay Trade Unionist news from the 70s; the BLF and gay rights from 1973; a British Lesbian and Gay rights trade union banner; Newcastle Green Bans exhibition from 25th February; Mascot exhibit continues with an interview with Judy Mundey now online
LGTBI+ Rights and trade union actions
An unprepossessing grey foolscap sheet with no logo or illustration introduces us to the Gay Trade Unionists Group Newsletter. First issue of which appeared in October 1978. A few months after the anger and pride that was the first Sydney Mardi gras. Union members were part of this fiercely democratic and action. Official union responses were muted to say the least, so this group took the case strongly to union hierarchies and through persistence and activism, won through on rights.
Some unions had acted before this, most notably the NSW Builders Labourers, who stood up for the rights of gay students at Macquarie University, and the NSW Teachers Federation for Penny Short not long after that.
Changing broader union policy was another matter.
The first Newsletter details the formation of the group.
The fourth national Homosexual Conference was the catalyst with the first meeting of the Gay Trade Unionist group happening in late September 1978 following that conference
The November 78 newsletter reported a big step by CAGEO, the peak body Government employed unionists from 1975 (it merged/amalgamated with the ACTU in 1981).
The newsletter takes on the language of “anti discrimination” and the increasing legalisation and thus increasing costs that are implied if people take up discrimination via state tribunals.
The ability to take an issue to court or similar is not a right at work that it should be. Workers should have that right through their award. To stand for their rights not appeal to a court of them.
The Group note that NALGO, the equivalent UK public sector body, adopted not the language of discrimination but a need for positive union policy to defend and extend rights
Issue 3 addressed the issue in a different way:
Illustration from issue 3 December 1978
The last issue I can find (courtesy of the Pride History Group page) is number 13 of May 1980 where blue collar unionists take a stand
The BLF and the Gay and Lesbian Movement from the early 1970s
Ken Davis, long time campaigner for gay rights and part of the original Mardi Gras, spoke with Jacobin about the BLF and gay rights at this time:
“It was the experience of struggle that really taught the BLF’s members. The BLF was able to bring part of the working-class movement together with the indigenous movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement, and the movement against prisons and police powers. All of a sudden, all of those issues weren’t separate anymore — they were part of the same fight.”
Liz Ross tells this part of the story.
“A first for working class solidarity were bans, now known as “Pink Bans”, put on by the NSW branch of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in support of two gay students.
In June 1973, student and Gay Lib club treasurer Jeremy Fisher was expelled from a Church of England residential college at Macquarie University. Told by the college head Alan Cole that homosexuality was a perversion, he had to agree to “be chaste” and accept treatment or he’d be out.
Fisher refused and took his case, somewhat hesitantly, to a couple of office bearers in the student union. Rod Webb, editor of the student newspaper Arena, a member of the Socialist Workers League (SWL) and Jeff Hayler, Chair of the Students Representatives Council (SRC), took up his case straight away. They organised some on campus rallies and as Fisher recalls, they immediately went to work, ringing their contacts across Sydney.
The ABC interviewed him and showed footage on that night’s news. “Suddenly the BLF had green-banned construction at the college over me.”
Buildings were being put up apace at Macquarie, including the residences that Fisher was staying at. The union had gone to its members and put the request for support to them. They had voted that if Jeremy Fisher wasn’t reinstated then building would stop, not only at the college but on other sites at the university.
Meredith and Verity Burgmann reviewed the union role on the 40th anniversary of the Green Bans:
“In June 1973 the union placed a ‘pink ban’ on construction at Macquarie University. Jeremy Fisher, treasurer of the campus Gay Liberation Group, had been a resident of a university college until its Master had discovered Fisher’s role as a gay activist. The Master insisted Fisher could not remain at the college unless he undertook to have his ‘perversion’ cured. Fisher refused so was expelled. The Macquarie University Students’ Council approached the NSWBLF, which recommended a ban that was endorsed unanimously by the labourers on campus. ‘Universities are places for people to learn— they should not discriminate against individuals’, Mundey explained to the press. ‘The ban will remain until the authorities at the University allow homosexuals to study there the same as anyone else’. The ban stopped construction of a lecture theatre, extensions to the gymnasium, a maintenance depot and a science workshop. The University Council ordered Fisher’s reinstatement, and the ban was lifted.42
Pringle later explained to gay movement reporters: ‘We as an executive believe that it is a presumption of any sort for society to be the moral judge for an individual’s sexual preference’.43 The union sponsored a motion to its Federal Conference in 1973: ‘Conference calls on all sections of government to alter existing laws to allow homosexuals the same privacy in their personal relations as heterosexuals and be subject to no more control under the law’. Also in 1973, it moved a motion at the Labor Party State Conference calling for legalisation of homosexual relationships and an end to discrimination.44 The National Homosexual Conference in August 1975 cited the ‘direct material support to NSW Gay Lib. by the then progressive leadership and rank and file BLs’ as an example of why homosexual women and men should support unions seeking social change.”
State Library of NSW exhibit 2020: Coming out in the 70s
For more on the BLF see our Jack Mundey online exhibit
The Manufacturing Science Finance Banner from the UK
We found this banner on ebay about 10 years ago. It has been hard to find more information about the banner itself, but the history of the struggles and successes of LGBTI+ activists has been written.
Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF) was formed in 1988 by the merger of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) and the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section (TASS), both of which had themselves grown by the accretion of smaller unions.
TASS's members were skilled and professional staff employed mainly in the engineering industry, while ASTMS had developed into a white-collar union with members in all sectors of industry and services. It merged with the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) in 2001 to form AMICUS. Ken Gill was the first General Secretary. AMICUS merged with the TGWU to form UNITE.
This banner was found and purchased on Ebay a while ago now. The geneis of it probably is from 1976 when members another union - the National and Local Government Officers' Association (NALGO) – one of the predecessor unions of today’s UNISON – took strike action to defend one of their gay members who’d been victimised by the employer. And they won.
Peter Purton, author of Champions of Equality, writes that “When the (then) lesbian and gay movement in Britain got off the ground in the 1970s to fight back against overwhelming popular prejudice combined with being totally illegal, trade unionists were already organising to win their own unions to support this struggle. By the middle of the decade, major unions voted to support their gay members, including NALGO and the teachers’ unions NUT (now part of NEU) and NATFHE (now part of UCU).
By the 1980s, massive progress was made across scores of unions, leading to recognition at both TUC Congress and the Labour Party annual conference in 1985 – assisted by the impact of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (brilliantly recreated in 2014 by the film Pride).
By the 1990s, the whole movement was committed to equality and unions went on to work through the TUC to drive the Labour governments of 1997-2010 to establish almost full legal equality.
Peter said, in an interview with Bicommunity news
“MSF – now part of Unite – they had a debate in 1990. I spoke to the member who I’ve known for many years who took the side of a bi member who had come out and said ‘I want to be included’.
That forced a debate and some were against in the vote but it was carried and so from 1990 that union was inclusive.”
Power to the People celebrates the 50th anniversary of the green ban movement and brings together artists, unions and community groups to re-read their legacy.
In June 1971, Jack Mundey, secretary of the Builders Labourers’ Federation (NSW), led his comrades to the barricades in solidarity with a united group of women fighting to save a bush remnant on Sydney Harbour at Hunters Hill.
Newcastle Green Bans ran in parallel with those in Sydney, beginning in 1971. The exhibition explores green bans to Save Blackbutt Reserve and East End (both 1973), initiated by Newcastle Trades Hall Council and over 25 community groups.
OPENING 25th February 2022 Book HERE
Newcastle Libraries, Lovett Gallery, Laman Street,
Newcastle, NSW
Green Bans at Eastlakes exhibition continues at Mascot Library to 28 February 2022
Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm. INTERVIEW with JUDY MUNDEY here with Alison Wishart Librarian at Mascot, who organised the show
TRADES HALL TOURS ALWAYS AVAILABLE virtually or for real life contact Neale ntowart@unionsnsw.org.au