Community versus globalisation

No Toxic Dump

By Paul Strangio

Pluto Press Australia, 2001

$24.95 (pb)

REVIEWED BY BEN COURTICE

Paul Strangio introduces No Toxic Dump by comparing the two
buzzwords “globalisation” and “community”. While “the revival of community
is widely invoked as a kind of all-purpose antidote for people's feelings
of disempowerment”, this is usually “in highly abstract terms”, he notes.
The community struggle that Strangio has documented brings the issues of
globalisation back down to earth.

Strangio outlines the nuts and bolts of a campaign that beat the neo-liberal
Victorian government of Premier Jeff Kennett and CSR, one of Australia's
biggest corporations.

In 1996, CSR revealed plans to establish a toxic waste landfill in the
outer Melbourne suburb of Werribee. This was not the first time such plans
had been mooted for the area, and locals were quick to express their opposition.

The subsequent, ultimately successful, campaign was led by the Werribee
Residents Against a Toxic Dump (WRATD). After mass rallies and blockade
training, it was made fairly clear to both CSR and the government that
mass civil disobedience would mean that the project could not go ahead
without huge costs, delays and adverse political consequences. The project
was abandoned.

That's probably what many on the left would remember of the campaign:
a community stood up for itself; the forces of evil were defeated by the
power of the people. Strangio's book doesn't labour that point, but it
provides a wealth of information about how the campaign organised to win.

From market gardeners to Victoria University lecturer (and veteran leftie)
Harry Van Moorst, the campaign drew in a very wide swathe of people, from
all political affiliations: dissident Liberals to left-of-Labor activists;
local residents to local businesses and the Wyndham council.

The campaign may ultimately have been won with WRATD's plan to blockade
the dump site, but to leave the story at that would leave out the far more
interesting story of how WRATD developed the political authority to be
able to make such a call.

Over many months of hard work, WRATD extensively researched the industrial,
political and environmental issues involved in toxic waste disposal. This
enabled them to explain the dangers in a credible fashion and propose alternatives
that consciously went beyond parochial “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) politics.

An extensive engagement with the Environmental Protection Agency's processes
demonstrated that the legal avenues of combating the proposal were limited.
It was only after all this that the mass protest campaign took off in a
big way.

The conclusion of the book details the incoming Labor government's promise
to investigate alternatives to landfill for waste disposal/recycling. Other
groups campaigning against toxic waste facilities in the south-eastern
suburbs and Niddrie benefited from the victory. WRATD transformed itself
into the Western Region Environment Centre, preserving some of the organisational
legacies of the campaign.

For young or new green and left activists, No Toxic Dump is worth
reading not only for its political lessons, but for an account of the hard
work that is inevitably necessary for any successful campaign. That WRATD
managed to defeat the strongest Liberal Party-led state government in the
country and a major multinational at the same time suggests that how they
did it should be of more than passing interest to activists.

From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002.

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From GLW issue 506