The Hungry Mile name campaign

Warren Smith, Sydney

The Maritime Union of Australia (NSW) is campaigning for the foreshore redevelopment of Sussex Street wharves in East Darling Harbour to be renamed "The Hungry Mile" in recognition of the men and women who worked the wharves and ships for two centuries.

The Hungry Mile, where as many as 24,000 waterside workers sweated below decks for generations shifting goods in and out of the harbour, is earmarked for parkland and a commercial centre.

The Hungry Mile, as it has been known since the Great Depression, has inspired film, verse, song and rebellion. It got its name from the men who trudged from wharf to wharf in search of work, some days going hungry, other days toiling around the clock without rest in perilous conditions on 24-hour shifts under the degrading and inhuman "bull system". It is where workers united in adversity and is the birthplace of maritime unionism. Over the decades, waterside workers struggled and won working conditions second to none.

The Hungry Mile is also the site of some of the union movement's proudest solidarity protests: black bans on Japanese shipments pre-WWII, the Black Armada of Dutch arms during the Indonesian independence war in the 1940s, the French and US wars in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, apartheid in South Africa, French nuclear tests in the Pacific and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.

Help make this a part of Australian history. For more information, go to <http://mua.org.au/campaigns/>.

[Warren Smith is the assistant secretary of the Sydney branch of the Maritime Union of Australia.]

From GLW issue 679