MUA Hungry Mile Name Campaign

Date: 05 August 2006

A scene from the film

UnionsNSW has endorsed the Maritime Union push to have the East Darling Harbour named The Hungry Mile in recognition of its maritime heritage and the men and women who worked the wharves and ships for two centuries.

And we need your support!

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

The Hungry Mile has inspired film, verse, song and rebellion.

In the words of poet Ernest Antony: They tramp there in their legions on the morning dark and cold to beg the right to slave for bread from Sydney's lords of gold.

The Hungry Mile, as it has been known since the Great Depression 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 tough and perilous conditions on 24-hour shifts under the degrading and inhumane Bull System.

In the words of film-maker Keith Gow: Lined up like so many cattle, Worker was played against worker, Unionists against non-unionist.

The Hungry Mile is a labour icon. It is where workers united in adversity in the great militant labour tradition of Australia. It is the birthplace of maritime unionism. Over the decades waterside workers struggled and won working conditions second to none.

The Hungry Mile also marks the spot 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 forties, the French and US wars in Vietnam in the fifties and sixties, apartheid in South Africa, French nuclear tests in the Pacific, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor -a place where waterside workers time and time again took a stand.

It is also where in 1998 hooded goons with fierce dogs forced workers off cranes, ships and wharves at Patrick as part of a nationwide lock-out, mass sackings and government/employer conspiracy to replace union workers.

Help make this a part of Australian history, never to be forgotten.

Watch the film about the Hungry Mile

http://mua.org.au/aboutus/hungrymiles.html

Read the poem

http://mua.org.au/campaigns/general/HungryMilepoem.html

Then put in your submission to the NSW Government why Sydney should protect its heritage and adopt The Hungry Mile as the official name for East Darling Harbour.

Go to

http://www.newharbourheadland.com/EntryForm.cfm

ENTRIES CLOSE THIS FRIDAY, Aug 11th

For further information

Contact:	Zoe Reynolds
Union:	Maritime Union of Australia
Phone:	0417 229873
Email:	zoe@mua.org.au
WWW:	http://www.mua.org.au/

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