Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes

Sydney: a beautiful international city with impressive buildings, harbour-side walkways, public gardens, cafes, restaurants, theatres and hotels. This is the way Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world. But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a radical part of Sydney. The working-class suburbs to the south and west of the city were large and explosive places of marginalised ideas, bohemian neighbourhoods, dissident politics and contentious action. Through a series of snapshots, Radical Sydney traces its development from The Rocks in the 1830s to the inner suburbs of the 1980s. It includes a range of incidents, people and places, from freeing protestors in the anti-conscription movement, resident action movements in Kings Cross, anarchists in Glebe, to Gay Rights marches on Oxford Street and Black Power in Redfern.

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‘It took me by surprise, this hidden history of defiance, crazy idealism and the trashing of cop shops. It’s a Sydney of fabulous characters, some fresh from uprisings in Europe, determined to flick away the trappings of avarice and class. Today we are sleepwalkers, compared to these egalitarian-seeking bookworms and brawlers, who sure knew how to paint the town red.’ —Richard Neville, a founder of Oz (Sydney and London, 1960s), author and futurist

‘Sydney has long needed a people’s political history. This book begins to fill that gap.’ —John Pilger, journalist and documentary filmmaker, winner of Sydney Peace Prize, 2009

‘The authors, with nearly fifty stories on “radical Sydney” have done a wonderful job of capturing the diversity and the spirit of Sydney over two hundred years.’ —Jack Mundey, ‘Green Ban’ pioneer and leader of the NSW Builders Labourers’ union

‘From the Venerable Boote to Mike Matteson and the bolt-cutters, the authors explore radical Sydney in rollicking and sometimes hilarious detail. Did you know that the first Women’s Weekly was printed on Australian Workers’ Union presses and that Merv Flanagan was killed by a scab in Camperdown during the 1917 General Strike? Why wasn’t this excellent book written ages ago?’ —Hon. Dr Meredith Burgmann, radical student activist, historian and Labor MP