by Jude Paul, Secretary, from Bulletin 8/2019 (October)
As promised in the September [2019] Bulletin, we bring you the text of the citations made in support of life membership for three people at this year’s AGM.
Citation for Jack Mundey
It is very fitting that this meeting which celebrates 50 years of the Glebe Society has decided to grant Jack Mundey its highest honour which is life membership of the Society.
It was Jack Mundey and the brave men and women of the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation who led the fight in the early seventies against the two great expressways that would have trifocated Glebe – the Western Distributor and the North Western Distributor. They were planned to cut a huge swathe through Glebe as we knew it.
At the behest of the newly formed Glebe Society, the Builders Labourers put what was then a black ban on the project. These bans later become known as Green Bans.
In fact, this destruction of Glebe would have wiped out the house I was living in and was one of the major reasons why I first became involved with the Green Bans movement.
Another wonderful aspect to this Green Ban was that Lyndhurst the beautiful old manor in Darghan Street also had a separate Green Ban imposed on it. It was almost derelict and was being rented by a number of different organizations including the Nazis.
Remember that at this time, there were no environmental planning laws at all. There were no environment or heritage laws that would save streetscapes or even important Heritage buildings. We had to wait until the Wran government, elected in 1976, for the Environment and Planning Act and the Heritage legislation to be enacted.
The other great hero of the struggle to save Glebe, and a great mate of Jack’s was Tom Uren. Tom was the minister for Urban and Regional development under Gough Whitlam and it was on his recommendation that the Whitlam government bought the old Anglican housing estate – the nine hundred houses, which are now part of the housing department area. This saved the streetscape of Glebe and gave it the character we now delight in.
The timelessness and the internationalism of the Green Bans and Jack Mundey’s leadership at that time has recently been illustrated by the fact that fifty years after the Green Bans, interest from students and international scholars is so high that our book Green Bans, Red Union: The Saving of a City has recently been reissued.
Jack Mundey should be proud of what he has done to save Glebe and the Glebe Society is immensely proud of Jack Mundey.
Congratulations Jack.
Meredith Burgmann
Citation for Dennis McManus
Our cleaning lady moved to Glebe in the nineteen forties, and people then said to her, “how can you bear to live in such a slum?” More recently, when people hear she lives in Glebe, they say, “how can you afford to live in such an expensive suburb?”
This tells you how a suburb was transformed in a single lifetime. Much the same could be written about many inner-city suburbs throughout the world that have been transformed since World War II. When Dennis arrived in Glebe in 1968 Glebe was regarded as a slum, and hence ready to be demolished and rebuilt.
The small band of academics and professionals that formed the core of the Glebe Society had the vision to see the bones of the suburb were still intact, and worth the fight to preserve them. Then, as now, there were many people who contributed to the eventual success of the Society’s campaigns, but Dennis’ contribution was outstanding and deserves to be recognised.
Dennis has identified five areas of significant involvement in the Society’s formative years.
He was the first Convenor of the Society’s Planning subcommittee, the Society’s first, at a time when there were many imminent threats, including expressways that would have divided Glebe permanently into three parts, the demolition of many Glebe buildings and their replacement by blocks of home units and similar buildings, the redevelopment of the Church of England lands, and the redevelopment of the harbour foreshore and other industrially zoned sites. Dennis as Convenor spawned a number of work groups to confront these and other problems. This was particularly courageous, as the threats must have seemed quite overwhelming.
In 1970 he co-authored, with Terry Metherell (later a reforming Minister for Education) a plan to address indiscriminate home until development in Glebe. This outline plan, the result of many hours of tramping the streets, provided the basis for much better plans for Glebe and the whole of Leichhardt, as well as the basis for discussion with Leichhardt Council and the State Planning Authority. It identified the core of what became later the Conservation Area in the north of Glebe.
Dennis campaigned in 1971 and 1974 for a Better Leichhardt Council in Lilyfield Ward, and in both cases the first candidate on the ticket was elected. As a result, The progressive majority introduced the concept of Open Council, a decisive step in participatory democracy with widespread consequences for Local government.
Dennis actively participated in 1974 in the Fig Street protest in Ultimo, which led within three years to the abandonment of the Western Expressway.
Dennis chaired and worked as a volunteer on the Leichhardt Local, progressive newspaper founded to counteract the bad press given to the new Council.
For these and many other valuable contributions I have no hesitation in asking the Members to make Dennis McManus an Honorary Life Member of the Society.
Neil Macindoe
Planning Convenor
Citation for Virginia Simpson-Young
Of course, if the Bulletin was just a calendar of upcoming events, or nothing but reports of management committee or subcommittee meetings it would be pretty dull reading, but under Virginia’s command, it has been not just informative, but entertaining and lively as well. If there were Walkley Awards for the best community newsletter, I’m sure the Bulletin would make the short list.
As if the Editorship of the Bulletin was not enough to keep her fully occupied, Virginia is also the Convenor of the Communications Subcommittee with a range of responsibilities including the Society’s activity on social media – our website, our Facebook page, our YouTube channel and our Twitter account.
Virginia has also been a driving force behind the very successful gatherings offering advice on methods of online research for the history of particular houses in Glebe, and on creative use of smartphones to take advantage of the many useful apps that have become available.
Over the last year I’ve worked with Virginia on producing a documentary which records the history of the Glebe Society as observed by former editors of the Bulletin. It was a pleasure to work with her on that project, she worked tirelessly to contact the former editors and arrange interviews with them and those interviews provided the foundation of the documentary. And of course she was one of the magnificent triumvirate that so brilliantly managed our 50th Anniversary Festival. She also played a major role in the production of the booklet to mark the 50th Anniversary.
Our membership list includes only 16 people who have been awarded Honorary Life Membership in the Society’s 50 years. Clearly it’s an honour that the Society does not hand out willy nilly, and on this occasion the committee responsible for suggesting these awards to the Management Committee was unanimous that Virginia would be an entirely appropriate candidate for Honorary Life Membership.
So I formally move that by a decision of this Annual General Meeting Virginia Simpson-Young be awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Glebe Society.
Allan Hogan
There are no comments yet. Please leave yours.