Jack Mundey and BLF Green Bans

Jack Mundey arrested in The Rocks in 1973

Originally from north-western Queensland, Jack Mundey – a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Australia and elected official of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) – became “the best known unionist and best known conservationist in Australia,”

“The battles that Mundey, the BLF and the various community organisations fought to defend urban amenity and inner-city heritage would place matters of conservation and integrated, living cities into the public consciousness for the first time.”

Mundey was well ahead of his time in his concern for the preservation of historic and culturally significant buildings and living spaces. Under his leadership, the BLF entered new territory by claiming it was a union’s right and responsibility to intervene into such matters, particularly when government and other institutions refused to do so.

Green Bans

'Green bans' and 'builders labourers' became household terms for Sydneysiders during the 1970s. A remarkable form of environmental activism was initiated by the builders labourers employed to construct the office-block skyscrapers, shopping precincts and luxury apartments that were rapidly encroaching upon green spaces or replacing older-style commercial and residential buildings in Sydney. The builders labourers refused to work on projects that were environmentally or socially undesirable. This green bans movement, as it became known, was the first of its type in the world.

In a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in January 1972, Mundey articulated the union's principles:

Yes, we want to build. However, we prefer to build urgently-required hospitals, schools, other public utilities, high-quality flats, units and houses, provided they are designed with adequate concern for the environment, than to build ugly unimaginative architecturally-bankrupt blocks of concrete and glass offices…Though we want all our members employed, we will not just become robots directed by developer-builders who value the dollar at the expense of the environment. More and more, we are going to determine which buildings we will build …The environmental interests of three million people are at stake and cannot be left to developers and building employers whose main concern is making profit. Progressive unions, like ours, therefore have a very useful social role to play in the citizens' interest, and we intend to play it. 

During Mundey's visit to Liverpool in the UK he was met by veteran building worker Pete Carter who handed him a song composed in his honour to the tune of The Wild Colonial Boy.

It's of a wild colonial boy, Jack Mundey is his name.

A building workers' leader from Australia he came.
He said you lads in Birmingham can beat the bosses plan;
Do like we did in Sydney - just put on the old green ban.

Than means you fight for wages, but you fight for something more-
Not only for the right to work - but what you're working for!
A place that's fit to live in, where your kids can thrive and grow,
And not a concrete jungle where you scurry to and fro.

The greedy men of property have knocked old 'Brum" around
Broad Street, Bull Ring, Aston Cross - they've razed it to the ground;
Put up skyscraper tombstones where a working city once stood But there is still time to call a halt, hold on to what is good.

So listen to Jack Mundey when he says 'Green bans are beaut'!
A Green ban on Victoria Square will surely bear some fruit.
If you can win the Post Office, you lads of high renown,
You'll win the right to take the fight to every part of town.

Joe Owens



With other BLF leaders Jack Mundey and Bob Pringle, Owens was an instrumental part of the Green Bans movement that saved some of Sydney’s now-iconic tourist sites such as The Rocks, the Museum of Contemporary Art building, Woolloomoolloo’s heritage and Centennial Park.

Owens played a key role in other social issues such as the push for Indigenous and women’s rights and the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

He was also a key player in the democratisation of the BLF that included a limit on tenure of the executive and was Secretary when BLF Federal Secretary Norm Gallagher took over the NSW Branch and blacklisted the former leaders.

Parker says the union movement has lost an outstanding leader.

“Joe Owens never took a backward step in his commitment to the betterment of workers’ lives.

“Through the Green Bans, with Jack Mundey and Bob Pringle, he sought to save our city from over-development.

“He did this in the belief that workers were not only concerned about better wages and conditions they also wanted to live in a better environment and protect their children’s future.”

Bob Pringle

Bob was born in Queensland 54 years ago. He was the quintessential Australian knockabout. He had a variety of jobs in Queensland, including a stint at that back-breaking job, cane-cutting.

He came to NSW and worked mainly as a scaffolder and rigger where he joined the then Builders Labourers Federation (BLF). Bob became president of the NSW branch in the late '60s, leading the struggle around wages and decent working conditions during the late '60s and early '70s. Those were the days when building workers did not have hot water on jobs to wash and changed in humpies containing cement bags. Bob went through the vicious margins strike of 1970 and the 1971 strike for full compo when off sick.

He was instrumental in gaining BLF support for the first green ban in Kelly's Bush, and was highly active in the Victoria Street green ban against the developers' thugs.

In his full and active life, Bob was an outstanding activist against racism. When the tent embassy was erected in Canberra, Bob was the only non-Koori received into the Koori caucus.

And one cannot forget that memorable night when Bob, with a mate Johnny Phillips, set out to saw the goalposts down the night before the Springboks game. He was half way through just as the coppers lifted them. It took four hours to get him out of jail because he was giving the coppers heaps.

His other interests were many and varied, including playing jazz on the drums and writing poetry, and he was often in the Harold Park Hotel, where his wake will be held.

Bob drowned on the central coast last week. His funeral service will be on August 7 at the Eastern Suburbs Crematorium at 2.30pm. Our condolences to his step-daughter Jane and to the myriad of friends who will miss him.

— Joe Owens